When you're grumpy because three annoying ghosts kept you up all night.

suspect a big reason why many academics and others who work in areas where getting facts RIGHT is key are disinterested in using LLMs for research: they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.

I had multiple papers from my classes with hallucinated citations this semester. Reviewers and journal QC protocols need to be absolutely vigilant about this. This issue is ruining the literature even more than we realize, per this 🧵:

I’m not the biggest fan of boxing as a concept, but I do think we’re at the point where the only thing that’s going to prove to some people that they aren’t the main character with pro level skills at anything they want is to be punched in the face repeatedly.

Jo Cox was murdered before the vote by a far-right terrorist & this is the language this complete disgrace chooses to use

ICYMI: The government has released a progress report on its work on AI and copyright, as required by the Data Act, as well as a summary of responses to the consultation on the new Bill 👇

this is a good reminder of how things that are shitty but have been accepted as normal and inevitable can actually turn out to be abnormal and evitable with some science, time, education and political will

New paper in PSPB on the benefits of giving positive feedback to students, especially from underrepresented groups. Although not the norm in STEM, giving positive feedback boosts self-efficacy and belonging, which increases STEM performance, attitudes, interest journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

New preprint on pop #genomics of #spittlebug—the main insect vector of Xylella, the bacterium that has ravaged olive groves in southern Italy 🇮🇹 🫒 Take-home: problematic insect vector may be less widespread than initially thought—important implications for disease control 💥 👇

We have a new preprint! In this study, we use #genomic data to uncover population structure and adaptive potential in the meadow #spittlebug, the main European #vector of #Xylella fastidiosa.

When you drift through some unheralded point in your 40s, you start accumulating actuarial risks. The odds of illness, heart attack, or the chances losing of a parent go up. But there is another risk- particularly acute for men. There is a risk you will lose your capacity for joy.

Learned today that “Galápagos” comes from a Spanish word for tortoise, meaning that “Galápagos Tortoise” is, in fact, a tortology

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

So happy to see Mark recognised for his incredible work. Over a ~40 year career he and his group discovered ECF sigma factors, characterised many key developmental regulators of the Streptomyces lifecycle, and identified new mechanisms of bacterial gene regulation, antibiotic action and resistance.

I’ve posted this before but the light was perfect today- a little Victorian cat paw in a brick at the front of the old Norfolk & Norwich Hospital. As this is on the front-facing corner of the main gates, the bricklayer quite clearly put it there on purpose, at a height where children would spot it.

Me and the fellas beating the toxic masculinity out of each others souls

Scientists now believe that the human brain--a magic goo for worrying--can also be used to do other things

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque: "This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

Camilla explaining how to bowl reverse swing

This is scary. "Three of the five worst harvests on record have now occurred since 2020, leaving some farmers asking whether the growing impacts of the climate crisis are making it too financially risky to sow their crops." www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"You are in the top 6% of users of {brms}" "Your indentation style puts you in the category of 'chaotic neutral'" "You have called a data frame `temp` or `test` 164,293 times"

I’ve sometimes fallen into the trap of thinking that complementing a creative person for their work is less sophisticated or desired than discussion or debate about it but very often the best thing you can say to them is hell yeah and that doesn’t make you dumb it just makes you nice

We should not hold fish back from their true potential

If you have a student, anywhere in the world, who would like and entomological society membership please have them come on over to our entopoc.org website to sign up for up to three free memberships per student!

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Very proud to named in this article. It's exciting times for the study of species interactions! www.cell.com/trends/genet...

To the average European, US online discussions about health insurance are basically "Curtains for Zoosha? K-Smog and Batboy caught flipping a grunt."

The hidden danger of Biorender (& the death of scientific illustration) A short thread 🧵

who says the humanities are dead

Scientists work for free for the publishers. Then this happens: english.elpais.com/science-tech...

🫣 #LLPS #Droplets #phaseseparation

👀

*goes to a natural history museum and holds up a bouquet to an Allosaurus skeleton so they can finally see some flowers*

“I was just following otters.”

Moose are ACAB

Anna Backhaus, group leader at @leibnizipk.bsky.social, has been awarded the 2026 IWGSC–Feuillet Early Career Award and will receive her award at the Plant & Animal Genome Conference (PAG) in San Diego, California (USA) in January 2026. Congratulations! www.wheatgenome.org/people/early...

Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷

Trees are amazing! They build their bodies from thin air, move water with pressures that would crush a human, and grow using a system of living cables wrapped in layers of corpses. Watch our video to find out how they work, and why they might even be immortal: https://kgs.link/TreesAreDead

Environment groups are technicians trying to help maintain the life support systems on our spaceship. Their interests are definitely everyone's interests

Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

It's the anniversary of Darwin publishing Origin of Species, if you've not read it just skip to the final paragraph. It slaps

PRESS RELEASE – Dr Hassan Salem to lead independent research group on plant-insect interactions Following an international search, we are delighted to announce that Dr Hassan Salem @hassansalem.bsky.social will be joining us in early 2026: www.jic.ac.uk/press-releas...

There are over 18,000 types of lichen in existence. My personal favourite is ‘village bench lichen’, which devotes its entire existence selflessly to gradually making communal public seating more furry and comfortable.

“I asked ChatGPT” “I asked Claude” I asked this horseshoe crab and he said your ass wouldn’t have lasted two seconds in the Triassic

Mr. Jekyll, when I shared the outcome of COP30 with him this morning. #caturday

When I was in 7th grade my science teacher had everybody write up the instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich Then, he brought in the ingredients and followed the instructions very literally to hilarious effect. It was an intro to describing methodology, and a good bit

Metaphors take the rest of the decade off. Great work lads

In an era filled with tech dipshits who never developed emotionally past the age of 13 & use their wealth to become odious monsters ... ... listen to Steve Wozniak.