ICE arrested press tonight. They threw a tear gas canister into the press last week. This was not an accident. Release Steve Held.

# of paragraphs for news orgs to mention there's no discernable need to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon The Guardian: 1st paragraph BBC: 4th paragraph AP: 5th paragraph Time: 6th paragraph Politico: 8th paragraph NPR: 9th paragraph CNN: 10th paragraph NBC: 12th paragraph Fox News: never mentions

My one weird trick for PR folks who want to get a story placed in New Scientist is to actually read New Scientist

Astronomy 🔭 and physics ⚛️ GRFP applications are due Nov 14! Only seniors and 1st-year grad students can apply now (no second years).

ICYMI, earlier this year, Ars Technica covered one of my shark research fundraiser charters. Yes, I can bring you and your group (of up to 15 total people) on a shark research expedition in Florida! Interested? Let's chat. arstechnica.com/science/2025... 🧪🦑🌎🦈

Here we go! Over 13,000 H-1B workers have joined 200+ land-grant, sea-grant, and R1 research institutions so far this fiscal year. I also found that public institutions in large, Republican states are disproportionately affected by Trump's $100,000 H1-B fee. Find your state or your school:

Morning walk

With science falling under increasing attack, this medical historian is here to remind people of the power of #vaccines. THREAD🧵 Hard-hitting polio advert from 1958. In the first half of the 20th century, polio was the leading cause of death in children and young adults. 1/7

Nature: Exclusive: RFK Jr cancelled mRNA research — but the US military / DoD is still funding it by Elie Dolgin go.nature.com/3Kl9C8n

Most of my students think it's okay to use for "brainstorming" and "generating ideas." Once again: GENERATING IDEAS IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF YOU

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪 Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students. I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

Every day, as a leftist on Long Island, I bite my tongue. Around the people who make my children's prescriptions. Around the people who control whether I can continue to live in my apartment. Around my employers. That's where free speech is contested and conservatives like it that way. They're liars

In a UN speech today, President Trump said that "all of these [climate] predictions were wrong". Back in 2019 I led a research effort to digitize old climate model projections and assess how well they did. Turns out they got future warming pretty spot on!

Job Klaxon! Science Museum is looking for a Curator of Chemistry. Job Details Salary - £41,177.63 Full Time London Deadline - 29/09/2025 ce0111li.webitrent.com/ce0111li_web...

Do you understand that a huge portion of the wellness podcaster and influencer community is now going to be paid to push folic acid as a treatment for autism despite no actual evidence for it. This is a windfall for the supplements industry. It's all a grift.

If you read one story about the autism announcement, make it @amymaxmen.bsky.social's. One detail that others miss: "Fevers can harm the mother and the developing fetus, she said, adding that fevers are more strongly associated with autism than Tylenol." kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

Regularly, I get emails about how a popular physics YouTuber showed my article in a video, and every time they're saying something snappy, or worse, about it. Funny how someone gets to churn out highly watched, mostly negative content thanks to the hours and legwork I put into actual reporting.

The article echoes what I’ve seen and heard from peers: AI makes it easy to produce slick but shallow work that looks plausible on the surface, yet riddled with errors or bad assumptions underneath. Your coworkers end up having to fix or redo it. It’s workslop, and it’s spreading fast.

This ought to be engraved somewhere.

new from @kylietcheung.bsky.social in @teenvogue.com: recently, men have impersonated plainclothes ICE agents to assault women—only possible, she argues, because state agents commit violence with impunity. "To be clear, men wouldn’t be posing as ICE agents and assaulting women if ICE didn’t exist."

breaking from me: the trump administration just suffered its first major loss in court over its onslaught on offshore wind the revolution wind project can now resume construction after a federal judge found its developer orsted was likely to win against the trump order to stop work @heatmap.news

For my personal newsletter this month I watch a dystopian sci-fi show devoid of scientists and ask what it might have to do with how the stories of science and scientists are being narrowed and curtailed right now ultracold.substack.com/p/luminous-s...

There's a reason they chose this spot: it's in rural North Louisiana, one of the poorest places in the country, a place national media barely knows exists, a place with essentially no local journalism, where people and resources can be exploited (and lied to) with no consequence

Kirk’s ‘memorial’ getting a live coverage on The Guardian is a great example of how the right gets automatically framed as the default political movement to be ‘understood’ while the victims of that same movement never will never get the same amount of coverage

“A study of fatal mass shootings, incidents in which 5 or more ppl were killed, from 2014 to 2019 found 59% were domestic violence [DV]. In 68% of cases, the shooter was committing or had a history of DV. Fewer victims survive mass shootings tied to DV than ones where that dynamic isn’t present.”🧪🛟

"Quarter of UK university physics departments at risk of closing, survey finds"

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

I don't understand where these debate guys think politics happens or what politics do? Like has it never occurred to them that the reason abortion rights activists aren't going to evangelical churches to ~persuade them~ because their time is spent, like, helping people pay for their abortions

How will Texas A&M operate administratively from now on? Following the complaint of a single student about course content, within less than a day: a faculty member was terminated, the department chair was removed from that role, and the dean of arts and sciences was removed from that role.

This is so cool! More quantum zines please

It was never, ever about protecting girls' sports

Working through the copy edits for my book and the copy editor was painfully thorough, but also left nice notes whenever they thought I'd written a good sentence so I am more comforted than harrowed. Big shouts out to them! For a first time author like me, a little kindness goes a really long way.

There's this funny thing happening where I get PR emails advertising quantum computing breakthroughs then I ask a basic follow up question, like how many qubits the computer in question has or what their fidelities are, and then never hear back.

Governments have been over-promised on near-term usefulness of quantum computing - they invest expecting economic growth. To get a grant, academics are forced to work with clueless industry partners on pretend applications instead of doing fundamental research that actually moves the field forward.

In the first year alone, covid vaccines are estimated to have delivered between $5 trillion and $38 trillion in global benefits in terms of averted sick days, avoided hospitalisations and prevented deaths 🧪 They cost $69 billion to develop and deliver www.newscientist.com/article/2496...

You’ve probably heard that if you scream in space, no one will hear a thing. Total silence? Not really. Space is a vacuum, but it’s not completely quiet. buff.ly/9gNEBgZ

It's 2025 and we're still doing this, huh?

If you are on the TPUSA list of professors or are an otherwise visible left academic, I strongly recommend reviewing your digital footprint. Is your address public information? What about your family members? crimethinc.com/2020/08/26/d...

Meanwhile, on HBCU campuses, lockdowns after bomb threats and though I'm sure this won't interest most media types, it is worth noting: abcnews.go.com/amp/US/multi...

Far-right influencers and violent extremists are posting identifying details about people they view as celebrating or glorifying the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. www.wired.com/story/right-...

Notice how not a SINGLE CLIP of Charlie Kirk is being shown on TV as the news organizations try to eulogize him kindly. Even Fox News. You cannot show a SINGLE THING he ever said that wasnt spewing HATE and violence. What a legacy.

If an NHL enforcer known for taking out players on the opposing team died, we wouldn’t eulogize him for his grace and nimbleness on the ice. Kirk was a skilled propagandist who had a very loose and opportunistic relationship to what most people would call “the truth.” Why pretend otherwise?

One final thing. It's odd to see Ezra Klein, a total policy nerd, say Kirk did politics the right way when Kirk had almost no interest in either policy, or the empirical rigor necessary to get policy right. Kirk's approach to politics was 99% culture war rage stoking w/ almost no policy content.

When you publish a website that posts the names and photos of scholars who have written or said things you disagree with and encourage people to surveil and harass them, you are not, in fact, a “free speech” organization.

I have two professor colleagues who have faced threats and harassment due to the organization Charlie Kirk built, and they were not alone. We can denounce and loathe political violence without hagiography for its victims. This is dangerous nonsense.

I know this isn't the news right now. But I have some updated info on Covid vax availability. Several states where CVS/Walgreens weren't offering them or required Rx 1.5 wks ago now have them without Rx because of state officials' actions. But still 13 states where CVS and/or Walgreens require Rx.

Gravitational waves have finally proven Stephen Hawking's 50-year-old black hole theorem. This research was made possible because of increasingly sensitive gravitational wave detectors, but also an extremely loud signal. www.newscientist.com/article/2495...

Quick heads up- Bird flu popping back up in raw cat food.

A review of the five main methods proposed for cooling down the poles or slowing the loss of ice concludes they are all wildly impractical, wouldn't work, or both