🫐 Tyler Smith 🫒

plantarum@ottawa.place

I'm a botanist and conservation biologist in Ottawa. My work focuses on crop wild relatives and wild-harvested species, particularly berries; and invasive plants. I am trained as a plant taxonomist and community ecologist.All opinions expressed are my own, and do not reflect those any of my employer(s) past, present or future.My interests include photography, woodworking, kayaking, swimming, hiking and natural history.

Posts

Post #3784580
This is something I've suspected from the early days of the AI boom. If this stuff was as good as they claim, it would be a closely guarded industrial secret. The fact they're so eager to get us to use it tells me it's primary value isn't what it can do, but what it can be sold for. Or, as Cory says, "Go Meta!". If you think about it, this is coming from a group of people who famously fetishize disruption. The fact that they aren't using their own #AI to disrupt &a...
Post #3422962
> "Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. This nightmare is the surveillance advertising industry's fondest dream, a world where it's literally illegal to avoid their tracking, all in the name of saving kids…from them! @pluralistic@mamot.fr Spying on kids to save kids from spying is very, very stupid (23 Jun 2026) https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/23/destroy-the...
Post #3338762
The tiny blooms of Diapensia laponica are a special treat for fieldwork in #Labrador. The stems are only 1-3cm tall. The little flowers look robust, but I've learned they only last a few days in the short northern summer. #botany #photography #Makkovik
Post #2206234
Spring has finally sprung in #Ottawa #botany #photography #bloodroot
Post #2206233
We&#39;ve moved to a new purchasing system. Currently 800 orders in a queue that isn&#39;t moving and no one knows how the new system works, or if it will work at all. But we have a trade deal with India, and Modi made a pinky-promise to probably not assassinate any more Canadian citizens, so I guess it all balances out.
Post #1770364
Are #AI-generated summaries suitable for studying and research? tl;dr: no, they are not. First, because they are simply not good at it, with testing indicating the latest models achieve at most 66% accuracy, with a tendency to over-generalize findings. Second, and more importantly, offloading summarization to an AI robs researchers of an important step in the learning process. Struggling with the literature makes us better at what we do - that&#39;s the point, the summaries we create are...
Post #1425706
Canadian Federal transparency law changes could shield government emails, text messages | #TheNarwhal https://thenarwhal.ca/canada-access-to-information-changes/ #Canada #ATIP
Post #1315347
Is #substack really the only option for #IndependentJournalists? It seems pretty horrible, but there are a lot of people I&#39;d like to support that use it as their main/only web presence
Post #1315345
#Ontario #NDP is now pushing to #BanPredatoryPricing: https://banpredatorypricing.ca/ Following up on Wab Kinew doing this in Manitoba, and the Avi Lewis pushing this federally: https://www.ndp.ca/news/ndp-moves-ban-surveillance-pricing-gouging-canadians Here&#39;s hoping this leads to more momentum for the NDP!
Post #1315343
I hadn&#39;t thought of #AI as an attempt to enclose and commodify intelligence, but it&#39;s a framing that makes a lot of sense Make ‘em dumb, sell ‘em smarts, from @parismarx https://disconnect.blog/make-em-dumb-sell-em-smarts/
Post #1101019
Today&#39;s #Bash lesson: `basename` doesn&#39;t accept `stdin`, so you can&#39;t use it in a pipe (without resorting to `xargs`). This doesn&#39;t work: ls path/to/*fq.gz | basename But with the `-a` flag, `basename` will accept multiple arguments: basename -a path/to/*fq.gz
Post #1101017
@pluralistic Don&#39;t Be Evil (11 Apr 2026) Cory is addressing the #Internet in this piece. But the message is increasingly urgent in all aspects of our lives: we need to come together to build, maintain, and defend our communities. Too many evil fuckers are counting on us to buy the company line that we&#39;re all just self-interested, rugged-individualists, and that we won&#39;t notice that *their* self-interests are burning the world down. https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/11/o...
Post #1101016
&gt; You have read 24 articles so far this year ok, fair enough #TheGuardian, take my money!
Post #992759
@pluralistic Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages (06 Apr 2026) https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/
Post #759748
&quot;We did this with #AI&quot; has become a synonym for &quot;We don&#39;t care if this is done well&quot;: @pluralistic : Understaffing as a form of enshittification (23 Mar 2026) https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/22/nobodys-home/