James A Campbell
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rtbecard.bsky.social
James A Campbell
@rtbecard.bsky.social
(he/him) Former bird dude, current fish guy; currently based in Berlin. I'm into ecology, stats, bioacoustics, and artificial light.

Currently working as part of this ETN: https://www.msca-ribes.eu/
Pinned
New #FishSci #AcousticTelemetry positioning paper: PMC-TOA positioning.

I used adaptive importance sampling & mixture distributions to position fish in environments prone to tag reflections. Mixed with post-processing, this gives great tracks!

doi.org/10.1111/2041...
Reposted by James A Campbell
5 days, 5 reasons to apply for a Lectureship @bristolbiosci.bsky.social (Day 3):

Ecology & Reversing the Biodiversity Crisis

Our research includes mapping ecosystems, monitoring ecological change & restoring biodiversity

www.bristol.ac.uk/biology/rese...

Job advert: tinyurl.com/3ebphy34
February 18, 2026 at 7:49 AM
Reposted by James A Campbell
Obsessed with this journal for publishing caricatures of “prominent ornithologists,” which no academic today is brave enough to do
February 17, 2026 at 9:13 PM
This looks pretty interesting!
February 16, 2026 at 11:36 AM
Reposted by James A Campbell
Really nice to have our #pollack paper out 🎣 full paper here! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
February 16, 2026 at 11:11 AM
Reposted by James A Campbell
If you would like to help put pressure on the @royalsociety.org to finally take meaningful action on this issue, you can politely decline their requests for your labour (eg invitations to review or to sit on their editorial boards or grant panels), and refer to the arguments in this blogpost.
FOR THE RECORD: one year on, I lay out clearly how Elon Musk FRS has breached the @royalsociety.org’s code of conduct, why the Society’s failure to defend its values has been so damaging, & what they need do to recover their standing in the scientific community. occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2026/...
February 13, 2026 at 8:55 AM
#linux users rejoice! OnlyOffice is FINALLY adding support for multi-page layouts.

It's currently the #opensource office suite that has the best compatibility with MSOFFICE docx... but has never allowed you to view more than one page of a doc at a time (which was frankly, insane).
February 12, 2026 at 5:10 PM
This is a great podcast. Its very refreshing to hear senior researchers candidly discuss the (rather obvious) problems we have in academia currently.

Also, really good gossip about the RS & Elon Musk.
Academia doesn’t need another minor tweak. It needs a total overhaul.

Welcome to the debut of Under Review, my podcast where we stop polite desk-shuffling and start reimagining a system that actually works.

Episode 1. @deevybee.bsky.social

Spotify
open.spotify.com/episode/0vdP...

1/3
February 2, 2026 at 5:23 PM
A friend sent me this paper... I tried reading it... But i literally have no idea what this paper is even supposed to be.

Is this a legit paper? Or is this some AI bandwagon slop that got past the editors?

#ai #datascience #academiclife
Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus - Nature
Artificial intelligence boosts individual scientists’ output, citations and career progression, but collectively narrows research diversity and reduces collaboration, concentrating work in data-rich a...
www.nature.com
January 28, 2026 at 11:24 AM
Guardian did a nice podcast on the origins of the Trump Greenland thing...

It's exactly what you expect. Some New York nepo-billionair-baby with financial interests phoned him and told him to do it... And that's apparently all it takes to do an "inception" on Trump.
Why Donald Trump really wants Greenland – podcast
Tom Burgis on Donald Trump’s friend Ronald Lauder, a billionaire with business interests in Greenland
www.theguardian.com
January 21, 2026 at 5:44 PM
Reposted by James A Campbell
Trump has been in office for one year. We at @nature.com did a deep dive looking at the administration's disruption of science in numbers.

Take a look—the numbers are staggering. By me, @dangaristo.bsky.social, Jeff Tollefson, @kimay.bsky.social, & help from @noamross.net @scott-delaney.bsky.social
US science after a year of Trump: what has been lost and what remains
A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce.
www.nature.com
January 20, 2026 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by James A Campbell
This graph makes me want to cry.
This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
January 20, 2026 at 11:54 PM
Has anyone heard of the journal F1000Research? Is this a sketchy-ass journal?

I just got a review invitation for a paper there that was submitted more than three years ago already!?!? (first published: 17 Oct 2022).

Very confused, and opted to decline this one.

#academiclife
January 16, 2026 at 2:39 PM
"I'm old, I'm white, I'm a man, so everything's against me. And so didn't apply...".

Says the president of the Royal society after being elected a second term.

It's the same a-hole who refuses to consider removing Elon from the RS.
The whole interview is deeply problematic; but this statement, right near the start of it, when questioned as to background behind him applying and getting a 2nd term as President, really takes the cookie:

“I’m old, I’m white, I’m a man, so everything’s against me. And so I didn't apply...". [2/3]
January 12, 2026 at 7:40 PM
The r/RealOrAI subreddit is a goldmine for learning the subtle tells of convincing AI videos...and also fucking horrifying.

Most things I see on there, i would have never second guessed them.
RealOrAI
Unsure if an image, video, or audio is real or AI-generated? Post it here and we'll figure it out together!
www.reddit.com
January 9, 2026 at 7:15 PM
Reposted by James A Campbell
I've been sitting on this for over a month...but given how cross I am with @royalsociety.org at their ongoing inaction over #Elon #Musk I thought I'd share this.

They invited me to serve on their Public Engagement Committee; I could have been more eloquent, but I had to give a firm "no"...
January 9, 2026 at 6:30 PM
Finally making it through Grant's (3brown1blue) talk on transformer models.

Is there some nobel-prize of math communication we can give this guy? If not, can we just give him a "sexiest man alive" award?

Dude deserves every accolade for his fantasic math animations.
Visualizing transformers and attention | Talk for TNG Big Tech Day '24
YouTube video by Grant Sanderson
youtube.com
January 4, 2026 at 5:22 PM
Reposted by James A Campbell
Trump is trying to force US oil companies to rebuild Venezuelan oil fields that are too expensive to invest in at current crude prices while a full blown energy revolution is happening with cheap solar and electrification growing exponentially.

This is a dying empire shit.
a lot of interesting revelations between the lines of this story www.politico.com/news/2026/01...
January 4, 2026 at 1:34 AM
Reposted by James A Campbell
“I propose academic journals submit to independent regulation through an international quality-management standard. Organisations must demonstrate operations are customer-focused, committed to continual improvement, underpinned by systematic management approaches & evidence-based decision-making”
Put pressure on publishers to follow best practice — external regulation is the answer
Journals that work hard to meet the needs of both authors and readers should be acknowledged publicly — encouraging others to follow suit.
www.nature.com
December 31, 2025 at 7:37 AM
Dear #rstats,

Is there a good review paper (or vignette) that details when/how to use the tuning parameters for `optim(control = list())`.

The inner workings of these optimization algorithms are currently a blind spot for me, and i just use the default params and pray everything is fine.
December 28, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by James A Campbell
Universities embracing generative AI be like:
another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls
December 27, 2025 at 7:43 PM
Reposted by James A Campbell
Worth noting that the student admits that she just threw the thing together in 30 minutes without reading the paper she was supposed to be responding to.
December 23, 2025 at 1:06 PM
"...we occasionally have to mention specific concepts before properly introducing and/or defining them---we ask the reader to bear with us in these cases."

It's always a pleasure to read papers where the author explicitly empathizes with the reader.
December 23, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by James A Campbell
Canada doing Radio Free Europe for Americans
BREAKING: WATCH the full 60 Minutes CECOT segment here. This was sent to me anonymously. It appears to be the segment CBS' Bari Weiss killed. www.muellershewrote.com/p/watch-the-...
WATCH: The 60 Minutes CECOT Segment
I was sent the CECOT segment anonymously in a group chat.
www.muellershewrote.com
December 23, 2025 at 10:25 AM
For the underwater noise folk. Oceannoise2026 conferende dates. Once again in Barcelona (pretty happy about that).

2026.oceanoise.com
December 22, 2025 at 4:18 PM