I truly loath anti-vaxxers. Life saving vaccines ought to be mandatory, with only genuine medical exceptions

New publication: On the role of #mutualisms in #plant #biogeography: consequences for ecology, evolution, and invasion, by @camilledelavaux.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1111/nph....

It also contributes to the country, and especially the wealthiest parts of it, feeling worse than they ought. Which is bad in and of itself, but also helps fuel reactionary sentiments

Wikipedia’s survival has never been under greater threat. There’s the growing volume of anti-Wikipedia sentiment on the right. And who will need Wikipedia if they can get an AI summary? Imogen West-Knights on the advantage that humans have in keeping it alive: www.thedial.world/articles/new...

It would be a crime, a disgrace, and a mistake for the government to fail to support the World Service

Also, and I can’t emphasise this enough, it’s not a strict binary choice. Anglo countries are terrible at teaching foreign languages, but if you learn from countries good at them (Netherlands, Scandis), it is possible to have a population where most people speak 3-5 languages

Hot off the press! New paper in Biology Letters (@royalsocietypublishing.org) showing that heatwaves impair female but not male fertility in burying beetles 🐞🌡️ Huge congratulations to Izzy (@izzygrieve.bsky.social) on her first first-authored paper! 🥳🙌 royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...

damagemag.com/2023/08/31/i... Just re-upping something I wrote years ago

calls to return to “traditional indigenous agriculture” are calls for billions to die, it literally did lead to famine in Sri Lanka when it was tried, I’m firm believer that we should be bigger assholes to people hawking woo shit.

This is a feeling I’ve seen repeated time and time again in Labour circles. We’ve turned our back on our actual base in an attempt to placate our imaged base, and lost the former without regaining much of the latter

I have today been informed that, despite personal assurances to the contrary, the Green party have once again used my image and misrepresented my words on a second leaflet circulated in Gorton and Denton ahead of the by-election. I have now lodged an official complaint with the returning officer.

We are increasingly finding that the friction of social interaction was a load bearing part of society

In many specific cases we don’t know the ideal solution for species or habitat X, and all conservation should be first and foremost science driven. But the biggest barrier isn’t usually lack of evidence, but lack of money

Don't want to sound flippant about the nature and severity of the threat, but to quote that anonymous Ukrainian soldier, "we are lucky they are so fucking stupid". Imagine how much more dangerous this would be if they weren't threatening invasion, dissing NATO troops, hitting us with tariffs etc

The Greens are learning how to win by-elections using the LibDems’ patented secret sauce (lying)

3 million disgusting nudified images were produced by Grok in just 11 days. Existing safeguards don’t work; we need preventative measures for AI. My letter with other MPs to @lizforleicester.bsky.social.

there's no "get out of human rights" card where special historical circumstances that allow you to do blood and soil ethnonationalism. landback is bad because it's predicated on a lockean/libertarian absolutist theory of property that's stupid and impracticable

He seems to genuinely have the same concept of freedom as G. A. Cohen’s parody of a German’s ideal of freedom youtu.be/ey-hYJM7B3I?...

This, for me, is the decisive argument for getting rid of FPTP: voters, activists, and strategists will effectively be going into the next election blind, and a lot of the results will feel basically random

I’ll never forget the voter in the 2017 GE who said that democracy was broken, Britain needed a strongman to take the country by the scruff of the neck and make things work properly, and that is why he was voting LibDem

Matt Goodwin isn’t very British. He doesn’t get our values, our culture, or our history. Britain has always been about different communities coming together to form one nation. My piece in the @newstatesman1913.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/comment/2026...

Under a fractured electorate, one of the main benefits of FPTP, stability, disappears. Surely just self preservation should make the government consider some sort of electoral reform in these conditions?

“Jaywalking is permitted in London. In 1966, the police tried to crack down on it, but gave up after three months.” People walk and cycle on roads by right, people drive under licence. Jaywalking is not a thing in English law and Waymo must not change that. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Are you a palaeontologist? Do you have OPINIONS about what that means? Want to vent them anonymously in a scientifically productive way? Fill in the #yourpalaeolife survey to ensure you are represented in our results! forms.gle/5db3uUVeSNYm... #disgruntledpalaeomasses #showusyourhydrothermalvents

It’s time to deprecate Palantir’s contract with the NHS. Maximum disconnect.

The worst thing that can come into the screen of any biologist

Pleased to see mine & @morganj0nes.bsky.social's old Renewal article about Mary Harrington cited in this excellent piece on "Reactionary Feminism" by @jamesbloodworth.bsky.social

I’m an academic earning a U.K. academic salary (which is fine, but a fraction of what these schmucks make), an beyond just the joy of studying what I want for a living, I reckon I have a more fulfilling social life and hobbies than these grindset people

Every government likes science, no government likes paying for it

The simultaneously confident and sycophantic nature of these chatbots don’t just not help educate students, but actively undo the education of people who’ve benefited from it already. LLMs shouldn’t be anywhere near a classroom

Not just the American, but across the world there’s a divide between those of us who are environmentalists who incorporate the latest science best we can (and embrace things like urban density), and romantic back to the land type environmentalists

The undermining of UK research isn’t just coming for the arts and humanities which are the favourite bogeymen of the right wing press, but also for STEM subjects which are the foundation of our future prosperity

🌊 Parasites are not always bad! In blue mussels (Mytilus edulis), trematode infection can buffer acute heat stress, linked to increased heat shock protein expression. A surprising twist on host-parasite interactions under warming conditions 📖 buff.ly/5dVyY6X

A poll about as useful as “I asked the fellas round the pub what they think”

I don't exaggerate when I say that Andrew Wakefield should be tried for mass murder. We'll never know how many people have died or will die as a direct result of his fraudulent study.

This line of reasoning is surprisingly common amongst early20th/late 19th century New World eugenicists, who had to explain why their ancestors had good genes but new immigrants, even if from the same part of Europe, didn’t. The idea of the Atlantic as a filter and Europe being left with the dregs

Now I’m definitely spending some time canvassing in Gorton and Denton

I think a lot about Parmy Olson's observation that AI companies actively push everyone to talk about existential risk, because it distracts from more prosaic current day concerns like copyright theft, conditions for data workers, energy & water use, and their financial situation

Braverman and Farage would have this on the streets of Britain. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I have unironically used this argument when talking to physicist friends

That any MP replaces thought for the techno-plagiariser-cum-sycophancy machine is worrisome, that it is a cabinet member even more so than

Sometimes services don’t need transformation or revolution, they just need enough funding and proper direction

Am pleased that my editorial for @renewaljournal.bsky.social is now online. It was written back in September, but it seems even clearer now that the choice really is between social democracy and the (tech) bros. renewal.org.uk/articles/rit...

Every time Labour, the Lib Dems or Greens refer to Reform UK, Farage or any of their members they should instead refer to them as "the Trumpists". Every time they use the logo or any of their faces in promo, put it next to a photo of Trump. Make the public association of them with Trump Pavlovian

Western countries are hitting refugees twice: they are making it harder to claim asylum *and* they are cutting aid to troubled regions. I went to Sudan, the world's worst humanitarian situation, where the UN refugee agency has had to cut half its staff. Please have a read: as.ft.com/r/df593f1e-e...

Turns out pen, paper, and listening to a lecturer are better than modern ed tech snake oil