Jarome Ali πŸ‡ΉπŸ‡Ή πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆ
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jarome.bsky.social
Jarome Ali πŸ‡ΉπŸ‡Ή πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆ
@jarome.bsky.social

Biologist* wondering why the world is so colourful. Currently NYU, formerly Princeton. Generally bird/scienceposting πŸ§ͺ

Opinions are official Bene Gesserit policy.

πŸ“ Jersey City

*actually three parrots in a parrot suit .. more

Environmental science 52%
Agriculture 21%
Pinned
Hi new followers (bots and real people alike 😝). I'm not here to collect followers but it'll take me some time to go through and follow back people with shared interests etc. In the meantime here's a nice bird ✌🏽

Expect more birds, science, politics and occasional shitposting :)

I think this is the real inspiration for American Pie 😒
AI could end scarcity, end humanity - or boost trend growth by 0.2 percentage points

Good generative models for:

writer's block β€” your brain after a walk
song recommendations β€” your friend's brain
visual art β€” your brain + pencil/paint
music β€” your brain + your fave instrument
AI can help authors beat writer’s block, says Bloomsbury chief
Publisher last week reported jump in revenue in academic and professional arm thanks to AI licensing deal
www.theguardian.com

Postdoc position available at NYU Anthropology to work on topics related to longitudinal aging in the long-running (>80 years) study of rhesus macaque biology on Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico πŸ§ͺ #primates #academicsky

apply.interfolio.com/173938

πŸ“·: davidraju, wikimedia commons
Postdoc position available at NYU Anthropology to work on topics related to longitudinal aging in the long-running (>80 years) study of rhesus macaque biology on Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico πŸ§ͺ #primates #academicsky

apply.interfolio.com/173938

πŸ“·: davidraju, wikimedia commons

better yet, leaf

Leave.
Leave Twitter for Bluesky. Leave Bluesky for Mastodon. Leave Mastodon for Klerb. Leave Klerb for Chunk. Leave Chunk for Goobus. Leave Goobus f
Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Reposted by Jarome R. Ali

Leave Twitter for Bluesky. Leave Bluesky for Mastodon. Leave Mastodon for Klerb. Leave Klerb for Chunk. Leave Chunk for Goobus. Leave Goobus f

E I G H T
H U N D R E D
M I L L I O N
Truly impressive number of birds migrating tonight. More than 800 MILLION birds up in the air right now❗ #BirdMigration
Truly impressive number of birds migrating tonight. More than 800 MILLION birds up in the air right now❗ #BirdMigration

Sep 28! I can't wait for the weird frog spam.
this "passion tax" appears all over the place & should be talked about more. you see it in book stores and game stores all the time

excitement for particular work is constantly weaponized to depress wages & pit workers against each other

Summoning both of them at once reveals your true form

Has anyone succeeded in persuading people you know to drop GPT, Grok etc.? And if yes, HOWWW?

Who's out there getting their weather in Kelvin?

"Looks like it'll be a nice dayβ€”300 and sunny!"

Reposted by Jarome R. Ali

Black Tailed Godwit on Teesside the other day.
@teesbirds.bsky.social
@rspbengland.bsky.social
@rspb.bsky.social
πŸͺΆ

Reposted by Jarome R. Ali

#AvianAugust Day 15 - 'Oma'o. These little guys like to forage in moss and lichen-covered branches. #birds #birdart

Reposted by Jarome R. Ali

My building super once asked, "So, do you work?" πŸ™ƒ

A really fun project with Rosalyn, Ben Hogan, @ajshultz622.bsky.social & Cassie Stoddard. Made possible by awesome museums & curators (@nhm.org, ansp.org) and with lots of imaging help.

Here's the paper, complete with a beautiful feather close-up taken by Rosalyn (if I remember correctly):
Hidden white and black feather layers enhance plumage coloration in tanagers and other songbirds
Colorful songbirds use hidden white or black feather layers to enhance plumage color, an optical trick well known to artists.
www.science.org

This optical effect is not news to artists. A white gesso layer has the same effect. I particularly like Dale Chihuly's description of the white underlayer of glass that he uses in his sculptures as a 'cloud layer'.

But, as is so often the case, nature did it first!

In the tanagers we studied, males are often more vibrant. To our surprise, some instances of male-female differences were not due to the pigmented feather tips but rather the hidden layer! So the story of males putting more pigments (re: honest signals) into feathers is more complicated than that...

Using a *bunch* of imaging techniques and optical modelling, we showed that a white layer makes red/yellow/orange brighter by scattering light back through the red feather tips. The black layer prevents this backscatter, which would wash out blue colours, resulting in more saturated 'purer' blues.

By looking at specimens at the @nhm.org and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel, Philadelphia, we* found that this phenomenon is widespread across passerine birds!

*the looking was really done by Rosalyn and @ajshultz622.bsky.social

This project began when Rosalyn noticed that red/yellow/orange feathers seemed to have a medial white zone while blue/green feathers had a black medial zone (NB: not the downy part). The value of spending time with your study subjects--even (especially?) if they're museum specimens!

"Hey, bullshit machine! Is your bullshit bullshit?"
The #1 thing that blows my mind about how most people use LLMs: they believe if they ask the LLM a question about how it works or how accurate it is, the LLM will truthfully answer them.

I have seen SO many seemingly-smart people do this.
i don't think it helps that the llms constantly lie to the user about the capabilities of llms as part of its whole obsequious fawning style of interaction that oversells its abilities and obscures its obvious limitations by fundamentally misrepresenting how the technology works
The #1 thing that blows my mind about how most people use LLMs: they believe if they ask the LLM a question about how it works or how accurate it is, the LLM will truthfully answer them.

I have seen SO many seemingly-smart people do this.
i don't think it helps that the llms constantly lie to the user about the capabilities of llms as part of its whole obsequious fawning style of interaction that oversells its abilities and obscures its obvious limitations by fundamentally misrepresenting how the technology works

attacked right in the middle of the work day
You are lost.