There is no law preventing Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Microsoft from deciding tomorrow that any solution their AI creates for you or your business belongs to them and you are required to license the answer or share the revenue you make from building it

New JWST data confirms complex organic molecules are likely abundant across the universe. 🌌 Detecting solid organic ices in the metal-poor Large Magellanic Cloud suggests life's chemical architecture is a universal constant, forming even in harsh, primitive environments. Read more here: 🔭 👇 👇 👇 🔭

A New Online Archive Lets You Read the Whole Earth Catalog and Other Whole Earth Publications, Taking You from 1970 to 2002

I’ve been arguing this for decades, and I know a great place to start. texastriffidranch.com/2011/05/16/i...

Sign me up right now, because this task feels like the mothership calling me home. I have a PhD lying around and nothing makes me happier than criticizing, nay, ridiculing AI tech and the people who use or produce it.

Remote work 2. Exact same people exact same problem

Same here! Though most know me as AI’s Most Grizzled Hater, I started on the remote work debate in 2021 www.wheresyoured.at/the-upcoming... bsky.app/profile/devi...

Treating AI like fast-food workers: and yet we’ll be surprised and shocked when our Glorious AI Future is straight out of “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.”

“Crawford Tillinghast, please pick up the ultraviolet courtesy phone…”

Algorithm please find me people who would be interested in seven trash bags of ALF dolls open.substack.com/pub/mmcarrig...

You'd think the software industry would produce software, but mostly it's smug bastards.

I was on Tune FM (the University of New England student radio station) to talk about Polypodium hydriforme - a bougie caviar-munching jellyfish relative 🧪 #Invertebrate www.tunefm.net/2025/12/23/t...

museums are cool because the people who work there are like look at this neat thing and you're like wow that is neat and you just do it over and over again until it is time to go

I think we’ve got better and more culturally-varied street food than I could have imagined, cool jackets galore, and drugs that make us think we’re really fast and strong before they kill us.

I left Meta a year ago, and I just made the mistake of clicking on a link to a Facebook post. Man, some of you were born in a barn or live in Portland, but I repeat myself, and it shows.

All this thing needs to make a road trip complete is a 300-pound Luxan attorney.

This is one of the fine wasps you might get on pulling the lever on the wasp slot machine.

Toltec Potter Wasp, Parazumia tolteca. Texas.

Six years ago today 🌿 Aseroe rubra, the Anemone Stinkhorn Fungus, thrives on the rot of the forest floor on the Waihe’e Ridge trail. One of the stranger things I’ve seen, it should be called the Mind Flayer I think.

And because Bluesky keeps blowing up on me, may I recommend some nourishing high-fiber content to keep your hunger slightly abated until I can get more cat/sand boa/hermit crab photos? stremedius.com (For best results, share early and often.)

“I am an antichrist, I am an anarchist, don’t know what I want but I know how to get it, I wanna destroy PASSERSBY!”

Microsoft CEO says AI “risks becoming a speculative bubble unless its use spreads beyond big tech companies and wealthy economies.” Brother you’re the one building this dogshit, we’re three years and hundreds of billions in, how have you not worked it out? www.ft.com/content/2a29...

“Somebody said something on the Interneeeeeeet!”

In this species, males can sometimes have asymmetrical arm like this, with one much larger than the other. This is actually the first time I have ever seen it! None of the guidebooks I own show a photo of this condition, so if my ID is correct, I think this might be a pretty rare shot 🦐✨

This is it. This is The Great Filter. We've created Sexy Barista Is Super Interested in Watching You Solo Game (SBISIIWYS).

All over the world, millions of worthless MBAs (but I repeat myself) were completely unable to function. And who says that Microsoft’s obsession with vibe coding was all bad? www-neowin-net.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.neow...

OpenAI has absolutely zero ideas. They have no business. This is not a real business line and it’s so utterly vague and specious, I’m shocked at the credulousness to just print it without saying “there is no logical way this works of course” or talking about how the CFO of OpenAI is saying nonsense

Once again, Microsoft doing for tech and civilization in general what Jeffrey Dahmer did for vegan cuisine…

🔭 Io in True Color Image Credit: NASA, JPL, Galileo Project apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap26012...

What’s so funny about this is that ultimately Sarah Friar’s idea is “somebody else comes up with an idea and they pay OpenAI for it” bsky.app/profile/chri...

Someone suggested I “think I’m cool” and let’s get one thing straight: I have never thought this about myself for a second. I get into things years late. I learned how to dress myself properly like two years ago. I have no idea what I’m doing nor will I ever

“Look upon the face of God…”

Working on a eulogy to my friend Rod Woodruff, and it's really hard to describe the general vibe of midnight movies circa 1985, but this promo from AMC does a really good job. (The theater seats here even match the old AMC Northwood Hills 4.) youtu.be/_GJoLw48t-w?...

You know what to do. You won't regret it. Prove Bo wrong, up to and including movie and TV options.

“Furthermore Dawn Palethorpe, the lady show jumper, had a clam called Stafford, after the late chancellor. Alan Bullock has two pikes, both called Chris, and Marcel Proust had an 'addock!”

No, YOU forgot to update your webcomic until just now. theunfamiliars.site/comic/49/

Okay, command decision: the plan was to have a St. Remedius gathering at the Dallas Museum of Art Late Nights event this coming Friday, but the current weather prediction includes heavy rain with a high likelihood of ice and snow. Time to reschedule for March 20: stremedius.com/campus-and-o...

Have a book or book-adjacent podcast? I'd love to be a guest!

Because everyone was asking, here’s the breakdown on the new menagerie, let’s start with Parker the cat:

Bone histology of phorusrhacids (terror birds) indicates rapid, uninterrupted growth (typical of most modern birds but unlike flightless paleognaths such as ostriches and kiwi): anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🪶🧪 (📷Dreyer et al.)

One of the issues that has come up again and again in my reporting on misinformation and social media is the massive influence social media companies have on research in the field. Last night a preprint dropped that tries to get at this with some numbers. My piece in @science.org (and 🧪🧵 coming):

News from Lyme Regis, 17 January 1831: 'Miss Anning has again made a discovery of a grand fossil animal ... Geologists are now very numerous: perhaps much more than at any former period'. Then at the height of her fame, #MaryAnning and her discoveries attracted droves of fossil collectors to Lyme.

Textbooks tend to say it's William Buckland or Robert T. Bakker, who made modern dinosaurs. But what if I told you, palaeoart started in South Africa, was revolutionised by Nazi-fighting Polish women and illustrated by an Oxfordian homemaker and her pet tortoise? Let's rewrite the history 👇

Fantastic photo from Phil Laybourne capturing the moment a Red Deer steps on some Lego.

Join me Wednesday, Jan 28th for the debut of The Black Lodge with a tribute to David Lynch. I highly recommend you sign up for a kick account now. After the 28th, I'll be dark until Feb 18th when The Black Lodge will continue weekly events. See you then!

As a warning to those who think I post too many cat photos, I went to the wake of an old and dear friend and came back with a Kenyan sand boa and a hermit crab. Both orange. You’re going to be SO sick of this account this year.

Up this week: Proteaceae. Flowers are 4-merous, stamens fused to the uniseriate perianth, 1 carpel with a long style & pollen presentation. This Gondwanaland family is found throughout the S. Hemisphere but is most diverse in Australia. 📷: Leucospermum sp/cv. #Proteaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

#MythologyMonday #yokai

www.planetary.org/articles/091... Not the source, but an explanation

Can we work with Prehistoric Museum and Museum of the San Rafael to develop some serious exhibits on the Cretaceous Marine Ecosystems of the Mancos Group around the San Rafael Swell? Public collecting area in Juana Lopez like U Dig It? @utahpaleo-ufop.bsky.social @jeremybroberts.bsky.social