Paul R. Pival 🇨🇦 he/him

@ppival.bsky.social

629 Followers 413 Following

YYC, cyclist, mostly road but some gravel and CX too. Librarian at UCalgary. Husband of a knitter. Father of 2 + 2 dogs. Feeling kinda old these days.

A close-up of a person's hand holding a piece of paper with printed text. The text discusses concepts related to human language models, underlying structure, and biases in language processing.
An ostrich stands on a dry landscape with its head lowered to the ground. In the background, there are wind turbines, solar panels, and an oil pumpjack. Snow-capped mountains under a clear blue sky are visible in the distance, while two small animals are in the middle ground.
Thank you for your email regarding Standards for the Selection, Availability and Access of School Literary Materials. The Honourable Demetrios Nicolaides, Minister of Education and Childcare, has forwarded your correspondence for a response. On July 10, 2025, Alberta’s government announced standards to provide school boards with clear direction on selection of and access to school library materials. These standards were developed in response to increasing concerns from stakeholders, including parents, about the materials available to students in school libraries. Examples of sexual content found in school library materials prior to the development of these standards can be found at the following link: viewer discretion is advised. The original standards led to some schools planning to remove books that were never meant to be affected. In response to one (1) school board’s proposed removal of more than 200 books, including classic works like Brave New World and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Alberta’s government has updated its standards for school literary materials to ensure that classic literary works remain in school libraries, while books with graphic visual depictions of sexual acts do not end up in the hands of children. As you note, under the standards, by October 31, 2025, school authorities were required to provide the Minister with a list of any school literary materials identified for removal to support implementation of the standards set out in the Ministerial Order. These submissions were provided for information purposes only and are not subject to ministerial approval. Decisions about which materials are removed are at the discretion of school authorities. Should you have any questions on how your local school board is implementing the standards, including questions about any school literary materials they plan to remove, you may wish to contact them. Thank you for contacting Alberta Education and Childcare.
Screenshot of Air Loom, showing flights around London Heathrow
A screenshot showing 4 citations from Perplexity. For Google Earth, the snippet appears to be an advertisement for body odour!
A screenshot showing 4 citations from Perplexity. For Google Earth, the snippet appears to be an advertisement for body odour!
Screenshot showing amount of energy used by generating a paragraph of AI text vs watching a 1-hour Netflix movie.
Graphic showing how many litres of water are used by data centres for various online activities.
Although the observed effect sizes of the current study may not seem large at first glance (e.g., the average performance gap between Gen Zs and Millennials is 0.25 standard deviations, equivalent to approximately 0.6 points on the MIST, or 3 percentage points) – given how much time most people spend on the internet, how much misinformation circulates online, how easily it spreads (Vosoughi et al., 2018), and how consequential it may be – from decisions regarding vaccinations to decisions at the ballot box – the real-world impact of these differences may be non-trivial (Götz et al., 2024).
Occupational representation in Claude usage data vs US workforce distribution
An AI-generated hyperrealistic image of an office worker commuting inside a giant potato, modified as a vehicle. The potato has wheels, headlights, and a small windshield
Alt text: A mobile app screenshot displaying energy data for February 20, 2025. The section shows a bar graph representing energy usage in kWh over a 30-day period, with higher usage between days 22 and 03, and lower usage from 03 onwards. The bottom section shows total energy at 140.3 kWh and average daily energy at 4.68 kWh. Navigation tabs at the bottom include Home, Module, Data (highlighted), and Settings. The top section shows the time as 9:14 with an orange gradient background labeled "Data."
A screenshot of an image generated by ChatGPT showing a whimsical scene of human miners, librarians, and scientists "data mining" along with many owls, even though I explicitly asked for zero owls.
Screenshot showing the rise in book challenges in Canadian libraries from 2015-2023
Picture of a mouse shaking its head underneat the word "No".
Screenshot showing the deactivation of my Xitter account.
Screenshot of a news article about blood infection diagnosis technology at the University of Calgary that includes a person who LOOKS like Trevor Tombe.
Screenshot showing that ChatGPT won't allow the sharing of conversations with user uploaded images.
The provided text does not contain the words "library" or "librarian".
Picture of a lot of snow outside my kitchen window
Screenshot showing locations of Skeets in Canada
Screenshot of an evenly-matched Letterpress opponent
Lapdog
A crappy map created by ChatGPT that most definitely does not show the location of Calgary.
A poster advertising spicy pig brains
Awful transcription of voice mail
Screen shot of ChatGPT describing a tactile paving surface
ARL/CNI 2035 Scenario Set. Scenario 1: Democratizing AI, Scenario 2: Technocratic AI, Scenario 3: Divisive AI, Scenario 4: Autonomous AI
OpenAI and Apple Shortcut icons
ChatGPT transcript where I insist ChatGPT really can read through PDFs
puke-face emoji
A screenshot showing how ChatGPT not only removed the background, but also changed the subject of the photo!
A Numbat