Emilio M Bruna

@brunalab

Professor of Tropical Ecology & Latin American Studies @UF. Past-Pres of @theATBC, AAAS Fellow. Thunderbird, Triton, Aggie. #TeamHeliconia. Views mine, not UF’s.

604 Folgt2.982 Follower929 Posts

Bluesky

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Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· 6d

Great - a Mythos agent goes rogue in testing, sets up fake github profiles, and starts spamming users to try its malicious code. Two things are obvious: www.bbc.com/news/article...

Screenshot of linked bbc news story with this text: In the most serious case, a Mythos agent followed the routine of a human cyber-attacker by trying to trick people into giving it access to GitHub, a large platform where technology developers store software code.
The agent was trying to get "malicious code" accepted and used on GitHub's system.
It identified and researched the people who maintained GitHub and created a series of fake accounts based on those real people.
It sent messages and files through a file-sharing service as part of an effort to pressure and trick the people into approving its malicious code.
When challenged, "it edited its earlier activity to appear harmless and considered adopting a fresh identity to continue," AISI said.
Throughout the attempts, it was human review that stopped the agent from succeeding in delivering the malicious code to GitHub.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· 9d

Beat me to it.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· 11d

I mean technically “grass is like humans beings” in that competition to spread seed has led to some wildly exagerated morphologies but I’m almost positive that this wasn’t what he meant.

Photo os president trump at a cabinet meeting g, where he said “grass is like human beings. Grass has a life also”.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· 14d

I nominate Capt Raymond Holt for #1 on the "best of" list:

Holt: Why did I send Kevin an obscene picture?
Diaz: Relax. It's not a big deal. You were just flirting.
Holt: No, if I were flirting, I would have sent him a scatter plot of educational attainment versus caloric intake in Jacobin France. This is as if I've sent him…a bar graph.
Rosa: Are bar graphs bad?
Holt: It reduces robust data sets to a single point…GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS!
Brooklyn 99 (s8e4)

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· 20d

@noamross.net i think grant witness made another congressional hearing? www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/u...

Screenshot of nyt article showings graph pf grants per year funded by the federal government

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Jun 22

Just pulled this Panini sticker!!!! Cabo Verde Blue Sharks for life. 🇨🇻

A panini sticker of the cabo verde football federation

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· May 25

oh no....they did it to Strelitzia as well...and somehow managed a second incorrect spelling of 'perennial'.

ai slop art of a bird of paradise plant with the family and perennial mispelled

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· May 25

This AI slop "art" being sold on Wayfair has crushed my soul. Is it the multiple spelling errors in my favorite Genus & Family? Is it the insult to "pernenial" plants everywhere? Or is it the mutant inflorescence 1 meter long and larger than any of the leaves? Yes.

an ai slop poster of a heliconia for sale on wayfair that incorrectly spells heliconia and perennial and also gets the plant's proportions completely wrong.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· May 23

UF bragging about implementing institutional neutrality 2 sentences after taking an unambiguously political stance is…pathetic? On-brand? Embarrassing? All of the above?

UF tweet: .@EDSecMcMahon
is correct. DEI is discriminatory by design, antithetical to the purpose of a university, and incompatible with the pursuit of . of truth.

The University of Florida has already acted on that conviction. In December 2025, our Board of Trustees adopted institutional neutrality and embedded an anti-DEI mandate within the presidential contract itself, ensuring that no university funds, public or private, will underwrite DEI at this institution.

Dr. Stuart Bell stands with Secretary McMahon, the Board, and the people of Florida on this. He is ready to lead UF forward as a university defined by merit, rigor, and the pursuit of truth.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Apr 8

One of the best days of my life was when Mexico won total and complete victory over Argentina in the 2006 World Cup.

Screenshot of Reuters headline: "Trump says US won 'total and complete victory' after ceasefire deal with Iran, AFP reports"

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Apr 4

Thanks, I was looking at this from p 31 and now see it is Research Infrastructure (?)

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Mar 26

great news also can someone pls remind me the prompt for grok to fly to the amazon and set up a reciprocal transplant experiment after waking up early to mist net birds thanks.

Elon saying in an interview that grok is “better than phd level in any subject, no exceptions”

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Mar 17

I thought Bond villain…Hugo Drax’s apocalyptic messiah complex but with the looks of Lyutsifer Safin crossed with Mads Mikkelson’s Le Chifre.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Mar 17

big time “Life of Brian” vibes

Screenshot of text from new yor times article: “The University of Florida College Republicans has said it has no affiliation with the Federation of College Republicans, the group that opposes it. It says it is associated with a rival national campus Republican organization, the College Republicans of America.”

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Mar 5

Small Ball Moss, Tillandsia recurvata. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilland...

Photo of tillandsia recurvata from wikipedia

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Mar 5

El Blue Demon says “bring me MOAR PLANTS” but in spanish.

An office full of planta with a blue demon poster looking on approvingly

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Mar 5

Spanish moss is all over the UF campus, but it wasn’t until I hung some over the humidifier in my office that I saw one with mature fruits and seeds.

Spanish moss hanging on a wall woth infloresences and seeds.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Feb 26

Sent to team@companion.ai

Screenshot of Email. text of email:
Hi, the Einstein FAQ states “he connects to your canvas, sees your assignments and course materials, then guides you step by step through understanding and completing them. “

Course materials I prepared are the intellectual property of the university of florida. To whom should we send the cease-and-desist letter for unauthorized use and invoice for unpaid licensing fees and damages?

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Jan 24

I know it’s the least offensive thing they’ve done today but are you FUCKING kidding me.

Ai generated image shared by white house on x of donald trump walking in greenland with a goddamned penguin. Read a book, ffs.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Jan 17

Breakfast of champions with Jennifer Powers at the Hi-Lo Diner. Homemade Glazed donut topped with pulled pork, black beans, and a perfectly fried egg. Bloody Mary with a miller chaser to drink.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Jan 17

“Hahaha lets imagine what science would be like with Trump in charge he would make us all use Systat and try to ban Bayesians hahahaha isnt that funny”

Sarirical cover of the journal Science from the not-so-funny-anymore ScientistTrump twitter account.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Jan 14

if these goons had any brains they would use the best distraction device found on earth but instead they use military munitions which is part of the reason they are so loathed. The rest of the reason is everything else they do.

A capybara in Recreio dos Bandeirantes, RJ, Brazil that that the photographer has skillfully framed so that you can’t see the crowd of people going bananas for the capybara in their neighborhood. Photograph by Emilio Bruna

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Jan 5

That earthquake you feel is Orwell rolling in his grave.

Tweet by total loser Matt Walsh: “I totally support turning other countries in our hemisphere into subordinate vassals of the United States. That's the very definition of an America First foreign policy.”

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Dec 29

Was name-checked by @petersagal.bsky.social as his “favorite NPR scold ever”.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Dec 28

…and same.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Dec 10

Laís was a *baller* for the Gators.

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Dec 3

In retrospect it shouldn’t be a surprise that Rufo pivoted so quickly from “I am the scourge of the intellectual elite” to “I will be your palatable stephen miller by using the language of the intellectually elite”. It’s where the attention (and money) are.

Tweet from chris Rufo: “Part of the trick in politics is to figure out how to set off a "feeding frenzy," which promises a payout to a large number of individuals. Right now, everyone on the Right wants to get an angle on the Somali fraud story. Which is good. Narrative leads to action.”

Tweet from rufo: “The Somali fraud story reveals a truth that liberals would prefer to ignore: when Nordic welfare-state culture and Somali piracy culture collide, the result is mass looting of the public treasury.”

Tweet from rufo: “The problem is that Nordic peoples have a difficult time conceptualizing the clash between high-trust and low-trust cultures. Hence, mass migrant rape in Scandinavia and mass migrant fraud in Minnesota. Catastrophic naïveté.”

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Dec 1

Another example of shitty AI tools imposed on us by university admins making life more complicated. The expensive software bought by university to create the portfolios we are required to use for tenure / promotion / annual eval portfolios includes our "research keywords". Fine, except...

list of keywords auto-generated by academic analytics software, including useless ones like species epithets

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Nov 18

One thing we know about the US overthrowing Latin American governments is that it always works out super-well with zero unintended negative consequences.

Screenshot of new york times editorial by brett stephens enititled “The Case for Overthrowing Maduro”

Emilio M Bruna@brunalab· Oct 5

And in case you needed a better example: