Alongside "who built Hadrian's wall?", another great example of knowledge falling foul of 'common understanding' is scurvy. The Royal Navy discovered the cure for scurvy, won the Napoleonic War, humanity then lost that knowledge without realising, then got saved by two Norwegian guinea pigs 🧵 /1

It's MAYDAY! which, among other things, means that at @globalvoices.org we're closing out last month's AI Spotlight (my editorial will be publishing soon...😬) and kicking off POSITIVE ACTION ON CLIMATE! The Spotlight will fill up over May with articles, essays, & analysis from all over the world!

🦄 Historiae naturalis de quadrupedibus libri: . Amstelodami: Apud Ioannem Iacobi Fil. Schipper, MDCLVII [1657]. [Source]

Freedom is only a hop away. Can he make it?

Fun to read as my wife and I are literally on the road driving to Carleton to visit our kiddo. This piece really captures the quirky and caring atmosphere.

If any more awful men wish to file their resignation from Congress, for heaven’s sake, send them in. I’m quite at my leisure.

just to be clear, everyone, when 8 pm EDT comes and goes, regardless of what does or does not happen, the president still threatened genocide and war crimes and we should still impeach, arrest, and try him

Scroll All The Way D O W N

Democracy isn't a modern luxury—it's a political strategy with deep roots. In our new study for Science Advances, we analyse 40 different societies and develop a framework for measuring human governance along a collective-autocratic axis. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excellent reading to pass along to anybody who thinks violent revolution would be an improvement on our current non-violent protests -- short form is, the success rate of the former is abysmal, the latter very good (and working *very well* right now): acoup.blog/2026/02/13/c...

NASA scientists and engineers have developed low-cost lightweight #RemoteSensing instruments that anyone can build and use to bring remote sensing science to communities beyond traditional professional scientists. 🔗 Learn more in AGU's Perspectives:  buff.ly/tfFIR95 #AG#AGUPubsT#STEMd#Education

Passages in a tower. Marvelous (and very calm) work by Egbert van der Poel of Delft, who tended more toward catastrophe. He was born on this day in 1621..

Posting this now. #2026MMM starts soon. I am team Honey Badger, and actually I do care. I care very much.

TWO HONORARY MAMMALS ENTER ONE HONORARY MAMMAL LEAVES If you are deeply confused, tune in at 7:00 PM CDT for the strange and terrible tale of the #2026MMM That's So Metal Wild Card round. The winner gets to go up against my beloved Honey Badger.

Not just water governance. My bosses want science based on old, simple, well-established methods. Novelty might get you published, but it also might mean the results are less likely to impact policy or practice outside academia.

this is such a classic villain quote

This Upton Sinclair quote never misses “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

We do NOT have 8 maids-a-milking but we do have a linguist who could probably tell us why it's 'a-milking' - Sean Wren from @taranhunt.bsky.social 's THE KYSTROM CHRONICLES! Open to US/CAN/UK & IE only. Like, follow, repost & drop a ☄️in the comments to enter! Ends 11th Jan 2026 23:59 GMT🪐📚💙

I feel this is probably quite important information. You wouldn't want to get it wrong.

I've waited 3 years to make this post

You probably heard the US admin is threatening to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research: but did you know they already froze funding for the 9 regional Climate Science Adaptation Centers? From tracking invasives to helping tribes with drought, here's why the CASCs matter ⬇️

Knives Out rickroll

AI is about as accurate as someone who sounds smart because they are good at improv that sounds like it could be true. But because truth is often stranger than fiction, that person is often wrong. Like this type of person, the system is rewarded by popularity, not accuracy.

Perhaps this dates me, but I remember listening to that show when I was a graduate student.

My entire existence has been summed up in a t-shirt . . .

To my office, practising arithmetique alone and making an end of last night’s book with great content, and so home to supper and to bed.

Merry Holidays and Happy #InverteFest !! Hope everyone is having a tentalicious time today ✨🐙 #inverts 🦐🐞

Day 25 of my 2025 Favorites: the most festive of boys Phidippus cardinalis. Just a lovely little velvet ant mimic lad. That red is so striking in the sandy scrub. ❤️ #EmotionalSupportSpood #InverteFest Merry Whatever-The-Hell-You're-Doing-Today Day to you all

I can relate, Murderbot. I can relate. #murderbot #slyart

There is an unfortunate error in this newly published @globalchangebio.bsky.social paper. The caption for this image reads "upper panel with dragon icon symbolising all tetrapod" but this is incorrect. That is either a wyvern (with two wings and two legs) or it is not a tetrapod (6 limbs).

As in South Africa, also in Michigan. I have had these same arguments in favor of savanna preservation and restoration over tree planting in what were incorrectly classified as "understocked forests."

Long thread on energy policy, and well worth the 49 posts.

There is a west Michigan vs east Michigan rivalry, an MSU vs UM rivalry. On both counts, I enjoy laughing at Ann Arbor. This is priceless. The comments.

Am I going to comfort watch The Big Short? No, I am not. Do I find much needed comfort in that last line of the essay? Yes, yes, I do.

Cooperation is a universal feature of complex systems, from the origins of life and microbiomes to societies. What universal patterns can be found in these systems? Here's our new @pnas.org paper. @jordipinero.bsky.social @artemyte.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Me, submerged headfirst in Brie: Shu’ up, ’s medishinal.

Going with number 3 movie for that year. Looks like 2026 will be another year of doomscrolling... or maybe another re-watch of the Loki 2 series.

Join us on this #BugBanterPodcast, to hear from two incredible artists behind the studio Ink Dwell, Jane Kim & Thayer Walker, about how they use their art to connect people with conservation! 🦋🖌️ Audio & transcript 📻 xerces.org/bug-banter/w... Video w/ captions 📺 www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRB0...

this was a huge project - i interviewed dozens of americans who feared the worst from the start of the trump era, i wanted to understand why it was obvious to some, but not others i'd like to thank everyone who participated newrepublic.com/article/2042...

In this article, just out, I argue that scientists have a crucial role in the science-policy interface: keep making questions, especially those whose answers decision-makers don't know they want to know, or know they do not want to know. Here's the link: journals.plos.org/sustainabili...

What infuriates me too is all those silly "anti-woke" science people screeching about Lysenko because of, you know, pronouns, who will be silent on this. (The piece below was in response to one of those.) pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/12/imme... @drkarenlord.bsky.social @annaleen.bsky.social

shot and chaser: marcusolang.substack.com/p/it-started...

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...

We need to move beyond optimism and pessimism. We need to celebrate policy progress AND increase urgency based on recent science about climate sensitivity, feedbacks, and nonlinearities.

Happy 100th birthday to Dick Van Dyke who starred in one of my favorite childhood movies, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I still remember the lyrics to most of the songs. #DickVanDyke