Luis Apiolaza
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ojala.bsky.social
Luis Apiolaza
@ojala.bsky.social
760 followers 200 following 47 posts
quantitative forester @UCNZ • latinamerican diaspora • @ojala@mastodon.nz & @zentree in the dumpster fire • personal views, random commas • ojalá del ár. hisp. law šá lláh 'si Dios quiere' • Post impermanence

Ōtautahi, Aotearoa | Christchurch, New Zealand
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
manjusrii.bsky.social
The irony here is that academics don’t just write the articles for free—we also referee and edit for them for free. Something is deeply broken.

“New Zealand's eight universities spent $30-million a year on journal licences and about half of that sum went to Elsevier.

www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
Universities in 'battle of the century' with journal publisher Elsevier
One New Zealand university told its staff all universities in New Zealand and Australia would "lose some degree of access" to the publisher's 1600 titles from the start of next year.
www.rnz.co.nz
November 15, 2025 at 5:50 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
imnothomer.bsky.social
November 15, 2025 at 12:51 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
stephencollins.bsky.social
Every ad now
[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]
November 13, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
rodemmerson.bsky.social
In today’s NZ Herald
November 13, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
christinahood.bsky.social
As New Zealand Minister Hon. Simon Watts heads to #COP30, here's some remarkable new information from an Official Information Act response I received today. 1/-
November 13, 2025 at 7:35 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
caylen.bsky.social
a “Space Force”, if you will
dieworkwear.bsky.social derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 2d
we need a department of kerning
The Department of War's seal hangs on a wall. The kerning appears to be off.
November 13, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
thoughtfulnz.bsky.social
Level of move
November 11, 2025 at 8:08 PM
ojala.bsky.social
Love this version of "The very thought of you" by Lyle Ritz and Herb Ohta.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dk5...

#music #ukulele
The Very Thought Of You
YouTube video by Herb Ohta - Topic
www.youtube.com
November 11, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
nbody6.bsky.social
😲 Canada loses its measles elimination status — as it happened
Canada loses its measles elimination status — as it happened | CBC
www.cbc.ca
November 11, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
shakingstick.bsky.social
Just seems a little short while ago that various government politicians, and people acting as their media surrogates, were outraged and scandalized by, and poured scorn on, comments from younger women politicians for suggesting many people don't trust cops.

Highest levels of the force - filth.
November 11, 2025 at 4:44 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
michaelplanknz.bsky.social
"Universities teach us to ask questions without tidy answers. They train us to look for truths we didn’t know existed and to challenge assumptions we didn’t realise we held. At their best, they remind us that intellect isn’t about having opinions, it’s about earning them."
November 10, 2025 at 7:38 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
korimakoecology.bsky.social
It is impossible for deer at any level to maintain and enhance natural biodiversity.

"Herd management plans aimed to keep deer numbers at a level which enhanced the recreational hunting experience while maintaining and improving natural biodiversity and forest health." www.odt.co.nz/southland/ca...
Call for opponents to support wapiti plan
The group which instigated the move to get wapiti in Fiordland classed as a herd of special interest says opponents should get right in behind it...
www.odt.co.nz
November 10, 2025 at 5:55 AM
ojala.bsky.social
Today’s version wouldn’t let you type in the computer because you run out of yellow ink.
histoftech.bsky.social Gales of November ReMar-mbered @histoftech.bsky.social · 7d
We could have had it all.
platestealer.bsky.social Plate Stealer @platestealer.bsky.social · 8d
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: The 1993 Canon NoteJet laptop with built-in inkjet printer
November 8, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
kylekulinskishow.bsky.social
Evangelical Christians
November 8, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
virgcatt.bsky.social
Well said, Susan
#NZpol
Letter to the editor about Lifeline funding crisis vs money found to bring Michelin to AoNZ
November 7, 2025 at 6:25 PM
ojala.bsky.social
Listening: "The hermit" by John Renbourn (1976).

#music #acousticGuitar

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uP7...
John Renbourn ''The hermit''
YouTube video by Walter Hego
www.youtube.com
November 6, 2025 at 2:44 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
nytpitchbot.bsky.social
Pope Leo is doing Catholicism the wrong way.

by Ezra Klein
christopherjhale.bsky.social Christopher Hale @christopherjhale.bsky.social · 10d
BREAKING: After ICE refuses to allow detained migrants to receive the Eucharist, Pope Leo calls on Trump and Vance to respect migrants‘ dignity and religious liberty.

“They must allow ministers to assist with their needs. They've been separated from their families and no one knows what happens.”
November 5, 2025 at 3:31 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
juliusgoat.bsky.social
Dick Cheney Was Doing War Crimes in Exactly the Right Way, by Ezra Klein.
November 4, 2025 at 11:59 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
csmfht.bsky.social
November 4, 2025 at 8:00 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
eso.org
Open Sesame!

The ELT doors have moved for the first time. This was no small feat, as each door will weigh 650 tonnes once completed.

The ELT dome & its doors will guard the telescope from the harsh conditions of the Atacama Desert.

https://www.eso.org/public/videos/potw2544a/

🔭 🧪
📹 ESO/ACe
November 3, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
andrew.heiss.phd
Wrote up a little intervention post/explanation for my class about why using LLMs for trying to learn programming (as first time learners!) is bad and detrimental datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-11...
In the first week of class, I had you read an article about how ChatGPT is philosophical “bullshit”, as well as this other post about AI and LLMs in this class. I’ve seen a surprising increase in the amount of ChatGPT-based weekly check-ins and graph interpretations in the exercises. (In the past, I’ve even had students tell me they PDFs of the slides into ChatGPT to generate interesting and confusing things.) Don’t do this! LLMs cannot find three things that you personally found interesting from the readings. LLMs are not you. It’s a huge waste of time for all of us to for me to spend time evaluating and grading output from ChatGPT. I want to read what you think and do, not what a computer invents. NoteMy personal stance on AI and LLMs Many of you have asked about how I think about and use LLMs in my own work (and in the class materials). Please check this short little page where I explain what I do with text, images, code, research, and learning. In short, I do not use LLMs to create any of the materials for this class, and I do not use them to grade or evaluate any of your work. I’ve even had several students submit completely made up stuff for mini projects and final projects. In your final project, your job is to take a dataset, make three different plots with it, and combine the plots into one graphic that tells some sort of story. I’ve (really truly) received projects like this: (a ChatGPT-generated plot of completely made up data from gapminder) At a very quick glance, that looks like a plausible image. But holy crap it falls apart fast, both comically and tragically. Comically because, like, look at the y-axis in the scatterplot; or the x-axis ticks in the population grown chart that are sometimes spaced every 20 years, sometimes every 10 years, and has 1980 there twice; or the weird blobs in the map. Tragically—and most importantly—literally nothing in this image is real and none of the annotations make sense and none of the colors make sense and everything here is completely meaningless and devoid of any information. It’s pure philosophical bullshit—an image “produced without concern for its truth.” That’s what I mean when I say that it’s a forgetful and unreliable resource. Lots of that code is helpful as an illustration of what’s going on. Lots of the explanation is good and fine. But it subtly changed its mind halfway through and didn’t realize it (because it can’t realize it! it’s just a chain of statistically likely text!) Hopefully you can see where this is dangerous for learning. It can often “teach” you wrong, and you can only recognize that if you know stuff already. It’s extra dangerous if you then take that example output, paste it into your exercise, and submit it. I’m not even concerned about the plagiarism aspect of that—code is code and there are only a few ways to write {dplyr} code that will do this, and it’s easy to adapt from real human-based examples online, so I’m less worried about stealing other people’s work here. I’m concerned that it’s not real data. It made up values of 1, 2, 3, and 4 for some countries to illustrate grouping and summarizing. That’s good and normal. None of that is real. Don’t treat it as real.
November 2, 2025 at 10:17 PM
ojala.bsky.social
Done. Come on people, whatever you can.
grumpyyetamusin.bsky.social Grumpy @grumpyyetamusin.bsky.social · 16d
Give a little if you can, please share if you can't, do both if you're extra awesome, and let's see if we can help Beckie get more than her two front teeth for Christmas (showing my age with that reference).

She's good people and deserves some love.

Ngā mihi, G

givealittle.co.nz/cause/beckie...
Beckie's Fund-raiser For A Partial Denture
Beckie needs a partial denture to restore function and visual alignment of her bottom teeth.
givealittle.co.nz
October 31, 2025 at 8:37 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
eddelbuettel.com
#r2u is back with 162 (jammy) and 202 (noble, for arm64 and amd64) package "kittens" (well: .deb files) catching up for time lost since the last update Friday. Big thanks to the CRAN admins and the @posit.co folks for unplugging their piping, and to @glin.github.io for the heads-up. #rstats
Photo of adorable kittens as a standin for the adorable .deb binaries once again flowing from CRAN to your Ubuntu #rstats installation thanks to #r2u (and p3m.dev for an intermediate stop).
October 28, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
hissandaroar.bsky.social
The wind in #wellington is forecast to be even stronger tonight... so I am preparing v2 of the aoelian pipes!
8 pipes this time, with 8 mics, gaffer taped to my boom

just waiting for the rain to stop
October 27, 2025 at 2:47 AM
Reposted by Luis Apiolaza
slanecartoon.bsky.social
My #nzpol cartoon for The Listener #megastrike www.nzherald.co.nz/the-listener...
Chris Slane’s Cartoon of the Week
Chris Slane shares his perspective of the week in politics.
www.nzherald.co.nz
October 27, 2025 at 10:27 PM