Fun thread about archive stories. Here's one of mine: I was the 1st person to use the papers of the geneticist Barbara McClintock at @amphilsociety.bsky.social. ≈100 lf of scientific notes, uncatalogued. The good staff at APS had wracked their brains: How had McC organized her files?? 1/2

I think we’ve all been there

hey, some people are into that sort of thing

Nice to see @matthewcobb.bsky.social’s biography of Francis Crick reviewed in @nytimes.com Sunday Book Review. It’s not an insightful review—she doesn’t engage w/ the science at all and mainly faults Cobb for not writing the book she would have written. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/b...

Ha! Called it on the SF Waymos sfstandard.com/2025/12/20/w...

Just got out of the San Francisco blackout. Traffic is of course a mess. That mess was made considerably messier by the SIX disabled Waymos my friend and I saw in about 25 blocks. Most of which were stranded smack in the middle of 4-way intersections. Not a good look for autonomous vehicles.

Not sure whether I should repost this, but...

TRUMP IS DEAD if you read the sign closely, with attention to grammar

Over forty years of writing in a wide range of venues, in academia and for broad audiences, I have come to appreciate the importance of not having a sticky "L" key when writing about pubic affairs.

Rx reading for educators and educated alike. I need large blocks of time to write the hard stuff. On writing days, I check email once a day, if that—much to the consternation of my more micro-managey colleagues. Hard cheese, bureaucrats. Pththt.

100%. I often use a decoy lede that I have no intention of keeping. The ability to trick yourself into writing is a key skill.

Fuckfuckfuck, busted.

I do enjoy the fact that the primary entertainment value of this feature seems to be laughing at how wrong it is.

ooh, that’s gonna leave a mark. I have regular Dylan kicks myself. Yet it thinks I’m (nostalgia?? hits???):

🧵 beautifully describes the messiness that often accompanies thoughtful writing— and what’s lost when ppl try to make LLMs do it

Haha! Sic’em!!

i’ve looked at horror rags, but this is the scariest magazine cover i’ve ever seen

As an old white dude, my attitude has always been, Yeah, but that's the basic concept of civil rights, innit? In a just society, we right past wrongs. You can't make a rich, spicy omelet w/o breaking some eggheads.

I'm planning a X-C (USA) #roadtrip. I'm PO'd @GMaps b/c it won't let you save a route. I want to: -drop pins on a map -automagically connect them in the best order, w/ dists, times -save route in editable form -have it be available offline There must be an app for that. Rx welcome!

RIP Rob Reiner Director of some deeply funny movies Advocate of some deeply compassionate causes He went up to heaven His dial went up to eleven But he’ll always be Meathead to me

I hadn’t clocked this. This is google maps. #dontbeevil

this is not behavior becoming of a FIFA Peace Prize recipient.

The three-hour faculty meeting is a stupefying, brain-melting, soul-crushing abomination that escaped through the sole air vent of a dank, fetid underground laboratory of torture. And yet I have one today.

Very excited to see that CRICK has been shortlisted for the Hatchards First Biography Prize. Here are all five books!

“Slop” = low-qual digital content produced by means of AI. “All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again.”

I have read, blurbed, reviewed quite a lot of science books this year. Here are some I have particularly enjoyed, in no particular order. @matthewcobb.bsky.social's long awaited biography of Francis Crick did not disappoint. Authoritative and highly readable. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

You and me both! My sources say late ‘26- early’27

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

Found a man crumpled, shivering, sleeping at the bottom of the steps this chilly morn. My Baltimore reflexes made me first shout, "Hey!" But as I nudged him awake, my heart melted. I told him softly that he needed to get up and have had a pit in my stomach since. What a cruel world we've created.

All but the sickest parents try to do the best they can by their children. The thing is, good teaching is a skill and requires training. If only there were a way that a state could provide all of its children with access to a good <cough, PUBLIC, cough> education...

This.

Brown’s student newspaper is posting updates about the shooting at its campus. www.browndailyherald.com/article/2025...

Pop Tarts are commensal symbionts

The structure of DNA was discovered in a flash of intuition when Rosalind Franklin stepped into the braided stream known as Watson Crick.

100%. Pop-ups are parasites that kill their hosts.

For this week’s DOOMSDAY MACHINES, I interviewed my good friend @cherylrofer.bsky.social about her +30 year career at Los Alamos — topics discussed include gender, lasers, and much more — doomsdaymachines.net/p/working-at...

Sprightly new piece from @patrickmccray.bsky.social on some wholesome hackers from Princeton, NJ. My only regret is that they missed out on one hell of a band name.

Shameless Self-Promotion Dept: This piece @matthewcobb.bsky.social and I wrote (author order determined by flip of Rosalind Franklin 50p coin) was the most read article in @nature.com News & Comment in 2023 — and again in 2025! Very thankful for smart, generous colleagues I get to work with.

That’s a big 10-4 on the plasma actuators, little buddy. I’d flip on th’ overthruster while yer at it— you got some bears back here sniffin around for some honey…

Ah think if we all pitch in at this, wec’ld get ‘er done right quick, dontcha? #duckbutts4peace

I grow old, I grow old, I will wear one pantleg rolled

Thank you for your service, @wellerstein.bsky.social

Nails it!

Put some green onions on that today for Steve Cropper, an architect and purveyor of Memphis soul. One of the greats. (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/a...

I might humbly add my own Science of Human Perfection as a complement to Stern’s Telling Genes. Alex and I chased each other through some of the same archives as we were researching them.

Important thread 🧵 on what eugenics is and isn’t from @jackiantonovich.bsky.social. Thank you, Jackie!

To simplify: We don't call historical geocentrism (earth at the center of the universe) pseudoscience. That's just where science was at the time. People who believe in geocentrism *now* however are pushing pseudoscience.

Project 2028?