Here's your daily thought about the Roman Empire: Did droughts really help to trigger conflicts in late Roman Britain? @newscientist.com https://www.newscientist.com/article/2520194-historians-dispute-link-between-drought-and-rebellion-in-roman-britain/

Researchers studied the use of humour in the talks at academic conferences, in order to combat the tedium of the talks at academic conferences. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2521449-how-many-academics-does-it-take-to-tell-a-joke-time-for-a-study/

Thanks to @michael-marshall.bsky.social for this great write up of our new response piece in @newscientist.com! #Skystorians #MedievalSky

We now have proper causal evidence that "autoantibodies" targeting people's healthy tissues are one of the drivers of #LongCovid - @newscientist.com https://www.newscientist.com/article/2521476-attacks-from-our-immune-system-are-a-cause-of-long-covid/#LongCovid

Awesome 🤩

A new book makes the case that flowers, far from being purely decorative, have been transformational for all ecosystems. We literally couldn't live without them. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26935880-400-what-to-read-this-week-the-persuasive-how-flowers-made-our-world/

It shouldn't be possible to spend several hundred words figuring out how large a "shedload" actually is, but here we are. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26935882-400-how-big-is-a-shedload-lets-ask-the-nuclear-physicists/

OK, now, don't panic, but suppose the UK got dragged into a full-scale war. Here's what the health system would need to do to handle the casualties - @doctors-net-uk.bsky.social https://www.doctors.net.uk/news/what-would-it-take-to-prepare-the-nhs-for-a-war

If you have an hour to spare and don't mind my face, here's an online talk I gave for @newscientist.com last week on prehistoric peoples https://app.events.ringcentral.com/events/deep-time-journeys-a-cross-continental-look-at-early-human-archaeology/replay

In the 40,000 years before their extinction, the Neanderthals lived through massive upheavals. @newscientist.com https://www.newscientist.com/article/2520319-genetic-clues-tell-the-story-of-neanderthals-decline/

For several months, people have been wondering why Reform hasn't declared any crypto donations, despite Nigel Farage saying they'd received some Now @theobserveruk.bsky.social can reveal why...

It's interesting how The Daily Wire attacks the idea that gender is a performance when their sets are all about gender performance. Look at the aesthetics here — the cigars and crystal decanter with Japanese whiskey, the black dress shirt, the tight suit with two-toned double monks and tie bar ...

If (as Andrew Neil says) GB News has become Reform TV then maybe there’s a case for the @ElectoralCommUK to start taking an interest app.prospectmagazine.co.uk/story/72784/...

WTAF

This is a decisive moment in the push to give Harriet the recognition she deserves. I actually gasped when I read the headline.

In these trying times, it's good to know that some people are thinking big happy positive thoughts - like how we could turn the moon into a source of revenue. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26935873-700-its-time-to-monetise-the-moon-definitely-maybe/

We know Neanderthals used tar made from tree bark as glue. They may also have used it as an antiseptic to treat wounds. @newscientist.com https://www.newscientist.com/article/2519668-neanderthals-may-have-treated-wounds-with-antibiotic-sticky-tar/

I know enough lawyers to understand that this ruling is lawyer-speak for “you absolute bunch of fucking clowns”

Sonselasuchus cedrus, discovered in fossils from Arizona, was a crocodile relative from the Triassic period that grew into an ostrich-like adult

Who were the Goths? Tradition says they were Scandinavians who moved south. But genetics tells a very different story - @newscientist.com https://www.newscientist.com/article/2519371-the-ancient-goths-were-an-ethnically-diverse-group/

We’ve been relentless in our warnings on this and we're not going to stop. Christian Nationalism, imported from the US, threatens over a century of progress that generations of women fought to secure. By seeking to impose dogma, this movements endanger women’s freedoms. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I was in a supermarket this morning and they had racked up the prices of their bouquets of flowers to £15-25 ahead of Mother’s Day. Part of me thinks this is blatant profiteering but another part thinks it’s a tax on shit husbands.

Childbirth may have been difficult and dangerous for our Australopithecus ancestors over 2 million years ago, much as it is for women today https://www.newscientist.com/article/2519325-our-extinct-australopithecus-relatives-may-have-had-difficult-births/

Social media often becomes a war of escalation, which is why the influencers on #CleanTok have been pouring cleaning products onto newly-fallen snow to get rid of it https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26935862-200-as-pure-as-driven-snow-not-if-youre-a-cleantok-influencer/

For reasons that are probably obvious, I've stopped posting on Twitter/X. https://www.michaelcmarshall.com/blog/im-not-posting-on-twitterx-anymore

So, weirdly, even though Homo habilis was named 62 years ago, it's only this year that we can really be confident that it existed as a coherent species. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2518316-weve-only-just-confirmed-that-homo-habilis-really-existed/

A single leg bone from Bulgaria hints that some European apes were walking on two legs 7.2 million years ago. That's before the oldest evidence of bipedality in Africa. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2518516-the-first-apes-to-walk-upright-may-have-evolved-in-europe/

UK peeps: we have until midnight tomorrow night to respond to the government's consultation on the future of the BBC. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/britains-story-the-next-chapter-the-bbc-royal-charter-review-green-paper-and-public-consultation

Before dinosaurs really took over, crocodiles were in their prime. They evolved in all kinds of ways, including into these ostrich-like creatures. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2518365-ancient-weirdo-reptile-graduated-from-4-legs-to-2-in-adolescence/

Most people also won’t finish your 500-word article. So write at whatever length is appropriate for the subject.

Anyone who wants Britain to join the war in Iran needs their head examined open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/...

Feedback in @newscientist.com: Yet another unconventional unit of measurement, to convey the mass of snow that needs to be cleared from an impromptu outdoor skating rink: the polar bear https://loom.ly/qjExlsM

In @newscientist.com: Cats have a super-flexible section of their spine, which helps them turn over in mid-air and land the right way up. I'm not trying this on either of our cats: that's a guaranteed smack with claws. https://loom.ly/kOtMLMQ

For @doctors-net-uk.bsky.social: Doctors are increasingly using AI scribes to generate medical notes after every consultation. They work well - if they are used correctly. https://www.doctors.net.uk/news/six-things-every-doctor-needs-to-know-about-ai-scribes

In @newscientist.com: The end-Permian extinction is basically The Worst Thing That Ever Happened. But despite the enormous losses, many ecosystems still had complex food webs, including top predators. https://loom.ly/Nfd4Kkk

I have to say the Post chose a hell of a moment to lay off all their foreign correspondents

By me in @newscientist.com: When Neanderthals and modern humans interbred, it may have been mostly Neanderthal males and human females, not vice versa https://www.newscientist.com/article/2517239-when-we-interbred-with-neanderthals-they-were-usually-the-fathers/

Yes 🎉

Feedback in @newscientist.com: You can now contribute to science by wearing a sensor in your underwear that detects when you fart, helping to build an atlas of human flatulence https://loom.ly/WkKhxOo

This is so well-deserved, Allister Heath is an utter cockwomble

For the past five months, I've been doing a research fellowship studying how democracies beat elected authoritarians like Trump. I found a deceptively simple answer: if you want to save democracy, you have to *actually talk about democracy*. www.vox.com/politics/479...

Researchers in Ireland are growing microalgae on farm waste. It could be a way to make sustainable, low-emissions fuel for aeroplanes. Commissioned by @esci.eu https://emag.directindustry.com/2026/02/16/green-algae-sustainable-aviation-fuel-saf-flight-europe/

New in @sciencenews.bsky.social: The entire planet froze over 717-658 million years ago, becoming Snowball Earth. So how come rocks from the time preserve evidence of what looks like El Niño? https://www.sciencenews.org/article/snowball-earth-dynamic-open-seas

Or, stay with me on this, we should tax billionaires like crazy because their very existence has a distorting effect on politics that is threatening democracy. Any money raised is a bonus.

So there was this study that claimed trees had predicted a solar eclipse, but there are a few gaps in the evidence. Here's this week's Feedback in @newscientist.com, your light relief from any big stories you might be reading today. https://loom.ly/ICvW1X4

!

For decades we knew little about how our hands evolved, because there were so few preserved hand bones. Now we have some, we can finally grasp what happened (see what I did there?) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2514431-the-untold-story-of-our-remarkable-hands-and-how-they-made-us-human/

Unbelievably dangerous ⬇️

I'm on this week's @newscientist.com podcast, talking about prehistoric seafaring and trying not to be overawed when Maggie Aderin speaks to me. NS: https://loom.ly/dIA2DXY Apple: https://loom.ly/rZrfeXw Spotify: https://loom.ly/q1hzeEA

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”