Our February editorial celebrates 100 years of Fermi-Dirac statistics. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Divination. I see my visual history of divination is now up on the Yale website. Forthcoming this year, Oct 2026. Enjoyed the challenge, once again, of exploring global traditions. Complex and rich. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

I'm grateful for the opportunity to sit down with @davideagleman.bsky.social to spread optimism about the next steps in brain research & their impact on understanding brain and mental disorders. For a bolus of that excitement, start at 32:50, where David nails a summary of it (in 3.5 minutes).

I had a great chat with Evan at the wonderful The Giant's Shoulder about How Life Works. youtu.be/9SseGx0R0fY

The story here is not about Obama talking about aliens. It's about the media hyperventilating and writing dumb headlines about Obama saying entirely reasonable things about aliens. Thanks to conspiracy theories in this arena, we have culturally lost the plot.

I love the anecdote about Feynman and Bob Crease. I suspect that had more to do with Bob knowing the history and philosophy of physics, and Feynman being averse to the complications that both disciplines introduce to the "beauty".

I could be wrong but I think this might be the first experimental demonstration of the purported advantages in charging a quantum battery as opposed to a classical one. Not clear how practically valuable it'll be, but nice to see proof of principle. journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...

The death toll from Musk’s budget cuts will surpass that of every war in the last few decades combined. He knowingly triggered famines and collapsed health systems, yet he faces no consequences. We need to stop calling it cost-cutting and start calling it what it is: mass murder

These cuts to physics research will be a disaster for UK scientists – and for our standing in the world www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Nick is right that if they feel they don't know, why are they doing what they're doing? I suspect it might be because they do actually know: No, the models are absolutely not conscious FFS. But it's edgy to say otherwise.

This piece is getting attention, and rightly. All the more reason that the occasional wayward element not be used as reason for Edgelords to dismiss the rest. Genetic algorithms are not "systems theory mixed with race science". They are... www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

This isn't something distant or far away. Super-agent & close Epstein ally, John Brockman had huge influence. His 'rockstar' writers, scientists and academics dominated our book pages & broadsheets. We need nothing less than a total revisionist history of the last 20 years. 2/

Here, @philipcball.bsky.social sums up the whole ugly Epstein mess and why it matters (along multiple dimensions). Reading it was therapeutic.

Donald Trump v the BBC: it should be easy to know side you’re on. We should rally to the cause of public service broadcasting before it’s too late app.prospectmagazine.co.uk/story/72423/...

Just added this to my WordPress site, so it's free to read. homunculusmusic.wordpress.com/2026/02/14/e...

The problem with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics was not that it invoked a mysterious "wavefunction collapse" (whoever told you that?!) but possibly just that Bohr & co didn't apply it carefully to the "quantum-classical transition". www.quantamagazine.org/are-the-myst...

‪I roll my eyes at most people talking about the measurement problem in quantum mechanics, but Wojciech Zurek is the real deal. He's been working on it for decades, making steady progress. This is a good quick intro to where he's at now. Of course it's no substitute for reading Zurek's papers!

Jesus, this hits hard.

It's so wild people this dumb are in charge of so much

If you want a colourful weekend read, here's the extract from my book Alchemy: An Illustrated History published in @chemistryworld.com www.chemistryworld.com/culture/cruc...

Resolving the "measurement problem" in quantum mechanics would be a huge deal. Doing it without any exotic assumptions or additions to standard QM would be amazing. Now, I'm not reckless enough to say that is what has been achieved here, but... www.quantamagazine.org/are-the-myst...

civil society and right groups orgs that often keep a tab on and organise campaigns against these evil corporations are overstretched and underfunded. this internal memo from Meta is insidious and sickening

Does Consciousness Require a Subject? The Self, Agency & AI Limitations www.mindbodysolution.org/kevin-mitche... - really enjoyed this chat with Tevin Naidu! 😊 cc @cdj.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social

I don't expect there to be exactly a huge clamour of agreement here, but it feels to me that the work I talk about here may have supplied the basic framework for understanding "the measurement problem" in quantum mechanics - and with no added magic!

Qualia essays go where curiosity leads. This week, follow @philipcball.bsky.social down the rabbit hole into the subatomic realm, where he examines entanglement's role as the bridge between the quantum and classical worlds. www.quantamagazine.org/are-the-myst...

“If a single animal can have several different genomes at once, which one is the blueprint? This may not even be the right question to ask...” Intriguing jumping-off point for a superb piece on why our favourite metaphors fail to capture biology; @elisecutts.bsky.social in @pioneerwork.bsky.social 🧪

The scriptwriters have been really poor in this series. Time they gave us some believable characters instead of just cartoon villains. That blanket scene - come on, no one does that in real life!

I couldn't be more delighted to be among this stellar line-up. Looking forward to hearing what the others have to say about this. There will be a series of papers too in a forthcoming special issue of Phil Trans B.

Hoorah for @jomarchant.bsky.social launching her new book In Search of Now (which looks fabulous) last night in Kensington. Lovely to see my friends and colleagues including @wanderinggaia.bsky.social @helenpearson.bsky.social @castelvecchi.bsky.social @mpshanahan.bsky.social, Marnie Chesterton...

I've reviewed Adrian Woolfson's new book On the Future of Species, for @thelancet.com. The book is a curious mixture - it says good things about what the genome does & does not constrain or control, but then seems to spin a fantastical vision of synthetic genomics. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

The essay is finally up! Here's a link: pioneerworks.org/broadcast/ge...

There we have it, US media. He has revoked the ruling. He has not revoked the scientific finding that led to the ruling. Those are not the sort of thing one can revoke. This is not hard. If you're keen not to be actively complicit, use words properly.

Why are all the US media using words like "revoke" and repeal"? They mean nothing in this context. Why not "refuse to accept", "deny", or "lie about"?

You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.

How can one a 'revoke' a scientific finding? www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/12/n...

This is the key point - it's not about Moderna's flu vaccine, it's about sending a signal to the rest of the industry that vaccine development isn't viable in the US. It's all part of the larger anti-vaccine agenda.

“At the hearings, Pam Bondi had a choice to make: she could deliver the answers that Epstein’s victims and the American public deserved, or she could give the performance that Trump would enjoy. “Bondi chose Trump over Epstein’s victims. No wonder she couldn’t look them in the eyes.”

I've written two @nature.com stories this week looking at whether EU efforts to lure US scientists are working 🧪 They are: the number of US applicants wanting to take up ERC grants has doubled. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I certainly don't dismiss all of this. Especially for some jobs. And even given that its message is "Buy our products". But: "If you’ve always wanted to write a book but couldn’t find the time or struggled with the writing, you can work with AI to get it done." So... fortune.com/2026/02/11/s...

I think this is possible, but never forget the default assumption in cases like this: sheer incompetence. At any rate, headlines like this saying "Musk says something wild that will never happen" reflect a deep problem with tech reporting in the media. I'm so tired of it.

This by @zoesqwilliams.bsky.social is really worth a read, in spite of the fact that it mentions me in passing. She's convinced me, anyway, that vice-signalling really is a thing - and a phenomenon/technique we need to take very seriously.

Just giving this another round this morning (though I'm sure all of us have seen Epstein's face far too many times now).

FDA is refusing to consider Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine. Yet, as @angierasmussen.bsky.social explains, if we had mRNA vax technology for flu, we might have been able to quickly update this season's shots to cover subclade K before it hit the US. @jackiefmogensen.bsky.social reports @sciam.bsky.social

There hasn't been much media coverage outside the science media of the Epstein scientists. So I wrote about them here for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social. As many in science know, John Brockman was central in linking Epstein to scientific "public intellectuals". www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...

Well this was a looonnng time in the production pipeline, but finally, and just before the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology is officially closed, here is my article on how we might be able to find out if gravity is a quantized force at all. physics.aps.org/articles/v19...

💯 Even if it wasn’t such a great read it would be my favorite book to have lying around just to look at :)

Anyone remember what Geoff Hinton said about radiologists?

Huh...the New Yorker writer who wrote the bootlicking profile of Anthropic *AND* who writes about "technology & books" doesn't mention the massive lawsuit against Anthropic for stealing authors' work.

Come on folks - at this price, it's worth it for the cover alone.