This week on the pod: ✈️ Collecting contrails at 30,000 feet 🃏 Fakery in science go.nature.com/4sj37Dy

Heraclius is easily one of the most important historical figures most people, even too many students of Islamic history, have never heard of. Link, although probably behind a paywall. If you don’t get it, go to a library and read the print story.

Fantastic cover story in this month’s NatGeo mag (I still get it in print) on the discovery near Croatia of a 7th c. Byzantine shipwreck laden with artifacts, like this signet likely bearing the image of Heraclius, whose reign, 610-641, witnessed an epic war with Sassanid Persia & the rise of Islam.

Some more drawings…

Blank pages invite use. In this 1578 print album by Philip Galle, published in collaboration with the Officina Plantiniana, a later reader used the flyleaves and leftover white space to sketch contemporary faces and figures. #bookhistory #rarebooks #earlymodern 💙📚📜

Aliferous: (adj.) [āˈlif(ə)rəs] having or bearing wings; winged #Writers #WednesdayWord

Took the kids to the library today and got my next read here. #booksky

Have you heard? @jennyrohn.bsky.social

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradica... Wonder if this squeezes in as #lablit @jennyrohn.bsky.social @hstiles1.bsky.social

From this morning @404media.co: "How Thomson Reuters Powers ICE and Palantir": www.404media.co/how-thomson-... #indielib26

The Saudis are hardly pleased by having Trump insult them this week. A friend said MBS should invite DJT to the Saudi embassy...

Why the hell is the King off to the bloody USA for?

Seems pretty clear to me that Trump has some form of dementia...

#booksky 💡📚

Hybrid Evolutionary biologist, comedian, and aspiring Dr Frankenstein Simon Watt is on a quest to improve the human body, with a little help from our animal cousins. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/serie...

The Radio Universe by Emma Chapman - www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

You attend a clinic in a place that only one country recognises, what do you expect? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Washington Yotto Ochieng on the navigation tech that keeps our world moving www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Phrases That Attract Me to Books #ReadingLife #BookBlogger #TuesdayBookBlog #BookX #BookSky #TopTenTuesday readingladies.com/2026/03/31/p... @readingladiesbc.bsky.social

Have you finished a good #book recently? Did you #review it? Reviews help #authors in many different ways! Review #library books, too! Thanks! What book do you recommend today? #amreading #recommended reading #BookSky📚💙 weirdsisterspublishing.com/index.php/ou...

More from my November #BookBlog "Andrew Michael Hurley’s ‘Starveacre’ is an interesting folk horror story, obliquely told." bloginbasket.com?p=754 #BookSky 💙📚🩸

Static electricity has puzzled researchers for centuries. Nature reports on the experiments that are finally making sense of its unruly behaviours. (Just don’t shuffle your feet on the carpet while reading this) ⚛️ 🧪

THIS is the sort of way I would like to see space science money spent...

On the one hand I was extremely absorbed by the Apollo missions in the 60s & 70s, but having read A City on Mars by @weinersmith.bsky.social & @zachweinersmith.bsky.social I am very sceptical about the LEGAL basis for forming settlement on the Moon, & exploiting, were it possible, any minerals

The People's Emergency Briefing explores the national implications of climate and nature breakdown and the credible, evidence-based response we need now. Screenings begin next week. Host one in your area or find the nearest event on the map below. 👇🧪

A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky —for everyone on Earth 🏺🧪 theconversation.com/a-million-ne... The human eye can see fewer than 4,500 stars in an unpolluted night sky. If we permit SpaceX to launch these satellites, we will see more satellites than stars.

Physicist David Mermin was born #OTD in 1935. He made contributions to condensed matter physics and quantum mechanics, coined the phrase "shut up and calculate," and is a prolific writer of and about science. My favorite sly Merminisms are these index entries from his Solid State textbook. 🧪 ⚛️

Amazingly the Trump faithful are still behind him. The USA really is a most peculiar place...

Fingers crossed for some #lablit tomorrow in tyhe Sunday paper reviews! @lablit.bsky.social

@premnsikka.bsky.social All political donations should be taxed....

I am not saying do not go, but wonder what the cost will be, keeping them supplied, regularly returning to earth. The health implications for astronauts. Money that could be spent on other space science. Also note the legal implications www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourw...

Have you heard about our Video Contest? 🧪Early-career scientists, we’re looking to hear from YOU on why a biomedical research question you’re studying can benefit science & patients. Submit by Apr 2. Winners will be featured by Journal of Clinical Investigation & get $5K: https://ow.ly/490G50Yo8Mj

“‘The results from this study are both disturbing & not very surprising to me,” says @elisabethbik.bsky.social …. ‘This raises concerns not only for research integrity, but also for clinical workflows, insurance claims & legal contexts where imaging evidence is used’.”🧪🛟

Our new #BIEN biodiversity data workflow paper is out! BIEN is an ecosystem of modular, open-source BIEN tools for collecting, harmonizing, and validating biodiversity data -- and an integrated global database (BIEN db) of plant occurrences, traits & geographic ranges. doi.org/10.1111/2041... 🧪🌐🌾🌵

I would guess that the Stockholm Airport on it's floors has the largest collection of polished slabs with Ordovician faunas, traces fossils and especially orthocone cephalopods! Hundreds and hundreds of acres 1/2 🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Corrupt bastards www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Social organization of craft production and the rise of symbolic practices? It seems children shaped clay 15 Kya, long before pottery Modeling identities among the first-sedentary communities: Emergence of clay personal ornaments in Epipaleolithic Southwest Asia 🏺🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Neanderthals survived on a knife’s edge for 350,000 years | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

Iran’s internet shutdown muddies global efforts to track damage to historical sites | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

The UK's biggest climate polluter, Drax Power Station, wants to build a massive 100GW data centre. It could be the first to be powered by burning trees. E-mail North Yorkshire Council to demand a full assessment of the environmental impact of the plans. www.foxglove.org.uk/campaigns/dr...

Most honest reporting in the past few weeks.

Eel smuggling more lucrative than cocaine smuggling www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Fantastic news! 🦋🦋 Link to full report in 🧵 www.worldwildlife.org/news/stories...

I just resigned from NASA. It breaks my heart to leave, but I’ve become convinced the best path forward is to do the best science I can, and that can’t be here anymore. I’m still in love with the promise of those four magic letters. Ad astra per aspera, and remember: Earth is the only good planet.

Never heard of her, to my shame, but her work looks amazing.

Norwich is indeed a Fine City. And since the Canaries have started turning up to matches, it will become even finer.

best terriers. that's for sure!

Boran was a Sasanian queen of Iran from 630 to 632. She is the second of only three women to rule in Iranian history. Though her reign was brief, she brought stability to Iran by creating just laws, rebuilding the infrastructure, and by lowering taxes and minting coins. #CelebratingWomen

A male Brimstone butterfly, seen in today's sunshine. #UKButterflies #UKWildlife