Elon Musk is not set to become the world's first trillionaire because this pay package has a bunch of preconditions he will never meet. The 600,000 people he killed are dead for real, though.

I think about this post every day 🧪

#OnThisDay, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize was born: Marie Skłodowska-Curie. Today, the MSCActions 🇪🇺 fellowship carries her name, supporting young scientists in their research.  Together, we’re building a brighter future for generations to come.

Remove “event” from the sentence and it still describes the scene pretty accurately

"Robocop 3" (Prime) wasn't high on my to-watch list b/c of low expectations, but it had its moments. Trying to make a low-budget Spielbergian Robocop teen-flick as a 70s cop drama was a terrible idea. They had much of the same cast (and Rip Torn!) and in-jokes; not the cynical, harsh fun.

New experiences can be great. I had a taste of what a short-term bout of morphine dependency and withdrawal feels like. The pain-relief-on-demand was very welcome. But the 2 days of hallucinations and mania as I withdrew, probably too quickly, suuuuuuuucked. I have a new respect (fear) for morphine.

I investigated the hype on "K Pop Demon Hunters" (Netflix) and was not disappointed. It's funny, bursting with creative energy and superpop power, with cool demons and an engrossing story with characters you care about. Of course, I am a sucker for the tusked cheshire cat spirit.

ITS A COYOTE! CHASING A ROAD RUNNER!

Awesome: 111,000 spiders, of 2 species, make a vast colonial web in the darkness of a sulphur cave between Greece and Albania, feeding on midges. www.livescience.com/animals/spid...

#RuinMe" (Prime) makes it clear it's a satire on slasher flicks- but in what ways and with what tropes of tricks? It's uneven but the central role holds it together. I would not try to explain the plot to someone.

I contributed to this a bunch during grad school (Aves, of course). Sad to see it go (μ_μ)

"Spherical cows and bipedal goats: perspectives on mathematical models in biology". 13 and 14/11/2025 (Salle Jaurès, ENS-PSL, rue d'Ulm, Paris). More info about the event: montevil.org/talks/2025--...

We have progressed from data collection to data analysis.

This Halloween, meet the real masters of the night! 🦇 This study by Quinn et al. shows that Seba’s short-tailed bats use tiny sensory hairs on their wings to fine-tune flight — changing wingbeat and shape mid-air! anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Sad day for the folks who staked their reputations on lab leak conspiracy theories. www.telegraph.co.uk/global-healt...

There's still time to apply for our Career Development Fellowship scheme, which aims to support the retention in STEM of researchers from underrepresented backgrounds. The deadline for this application round is Wednesday 19 November: https://royalsociety.org/grants/career-development-fellowship/

Are you an oceanographer or marine biologist with an interest in marine biodiversity and climate change? Our upcoming scientific meeting will look at #ClimateChange and #BiodiversityLoss linkages in ocean ecosystems: royalsociety.org/science-even...

If you know me personally, you may know that I've suffered from awful, disabling chronic health issues (not the epilepsy, which is controlled) for >5 yr. Yesterday I had major elective surgery that hopefully will sort it out. It's scary. Onwards I go; a new life journey. The only way out is through.

Crazy-looking larval cusk eel with an impressive external gut. We’re still not sure why having the intestines on the outside is advantageous, but there must be a good reason 🤔 TL ~2.5cm #cuskeel #larvalfish #deepseafish #deepseacreatures #blackwaterdiving #chrisgug #gugunderwater #gug

"I DON'T NEED YOU TO FUCKING REWRITE WHAT I'VE JUST WRITTEN!"

There's a hole in the bottom of the trashcan and he grows underground like a big green ginger root. Jim Henson confided that in me before he died.

Day 28 of #Croctober, we're racing towards the finish line This is one of my favourite images of Dakosaurus for two reasons Reason 1: it nicely shows just how enormous this animal got Reason 2: it also shows how stupidly tiny its arms were Photo by Sven Sachs ft. Joschua Knüppe

I legitimately didn't know they were competing with Steam and it's crazy to me that they burnt so much money on what sounds like something with very little (or wildly misguided) market research.

Just in time for Halloween-- happy 40th birthday to splatter-horror-comedy "Re-Animator". It blew my mind when I saw it as a teenager. So obscene and yet so funny, and even scary. And again Jeffery Combs proves his genius; he is the perfect mad scientist. www.bbc.co.uk/culture/arti...

I'll be running #MothershipRPG games during #MothershipMonth2025 over on StartPlaying. If you're interested to play in one of my games, here's my profile link: startplaying.games/gm/wacomatrixo

Mesquite now has a built-in adventure game, which you may be able to find if you say the correct magic word. You can also build your own versions of the game. 🤔

Was the common ancestor of scorpions aquatic or terrestrial? An argument in favour of the latter-- onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Before today, the strongest storm to make landfall in Jamaica was category 4 Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 with sustained winds of ~130mph. Category 5 #HurricaneMelissa is sustaining winds at 175mph. The wind is far from the only danger, but that difference is staggering. (1/2)

It's a very high-quality movie, not just a horror film. Great acting, emotional heft, and effects.

Another timeline cleanse video. This is why I Bluesky

The earliest appearance of gigantic lamniform #sharks has now been pushed back by ~15 Ma (upper Aptian, ~115 Ma) with the discovery of enormous cardabiodontid shark remains from northern Australia.🦈🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Tomorrow Wednesday 29th at 11am, lesson #3 of @neilshubin.bsky.social guest Professor @college-de-france.fr on ‘The evolutionary origin of bones and teeth’. The second lesson is available @ www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B6y... . No registration, Free access, dentures accepted.

d100 Pieces of Life Advice from Werner Herzog open.substack.com/pub/1dzero/p...

"Hellboy: The Crooked Man" (Prime)- I'd avoided this as I'd heard it's bad. It's not great. I like that it sort of follows the graphic novel and its Appalachian theme. But oh, the CGI is pretty crap, and the production just doesn't look good. It's hard to follow del Toro's 2 films, and Ron Perlman.

I've never seen a brittle star swim. Stemless crinoids (Comatulids) are beautiful swimmers. Search them up if you've never seen it.

Misleading content can be both hard to spot and dangerous. But how can we identify and debunk it? Join Professor Iryna Gurevych for the free Milner Prize Lecture on 17 November as she explores: https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2025/11/how-to-spot-and-debunk-misleading-content/

I watched "Orgasm Inc.: The Story of OneTaste" (Netflix), a documentary about the descent of a "TED talk and Silicon Valley darling" startup into deep, deep depravity. I didn't know what it was about. It started innocent enough. But then I started gasping at revelations and yelling at the TV.

#MetalMonday, another deep cut from my commuting listens-- from the majestic "Operation: Mindcrime" concept/rock opera album. Among my top 10 favourite albums, not just metal albums. It's hard to pick one ideal track but this ties up the album nicely. www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4du...

OMG this is a good catch. We wrestled with this a long time ago when setting up Slice Geometry. The correct way to set slice spacing (pixel spacing in z) from a DICOM is to use the slice position info (0020,1041 or 0020,0032) and divide by (stack size - 1). It can be out by not much or quite a bit.

We highlighted the problem that arbitrarily chosen statistical models provides a heaven for cherry picking here journals.plos.org/plosone/arti.... Down propagation of "slicing errors" makes it all worse :o #brainevolution?

Analysis of 985(!!) baboon skulls' CT scan data from MorphoSource shows that >18% have slice spacing errors that propagate to downstream analyses-- an important cautionary tale on checking CT metadata vs. errors, and a goliath effort: peerj.com/articles/201...

Complex, ambitious experiments & finite element modelling of walking & sprinting green iguanas show (1) no adaptation of tibia morphology to compressive loads; (2) good match of empirical and FEA data: academic.oup.com/iob/article/... From the late Russ Main's group.

This also totally fails to account for different fields having different norms. In astronomy, the last author slot is meaningless (and is almost certainly someone who didn’t contribute all that much). 🔭🧪

How the elephant lost his tail

IMPORTANT

just so you know beach ken wearing black board shorts is called a ryan gothling.

As much as I love sci-fi movies (esp. if with some horror/fantasy), and as much as I love Linda Hamilton, I think I'll give "Osiris" (Prime) a pass. Doesn't sound to me like 1.75 hours well spent. I may change my mind if I'm feeling like I need to turn my brain off and just enjoy some action cheese.

We saw @realgdt.bsky.social's Frankenstein at the Light Cinema in Cambridge and loved it! Elordi as The Creature looks and acts fantastically, delivering the existential goods. Gothic gorgeousness (and some ghoulishness) oozes off the screen in every scene. It's ideal for a larger than life screen.

lol.

People on twitter are losing their minds over this, including several scientists who I have to assume have either brain poisoned themselves or were always like this. People don't always cite what's best; they cite what they know & researchers from historically excluded communities get the short end.