UK’s culture secretary and department quit X citing concerns over democracy ft.trib.al/1AV7wrF

An excellent BMJ editorial sharply criticised the WHO's stance on so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) edzardernst.com/2026/07/an-e...

PSA for trainees cold emailing with interest in joining a lab: Be careful about your use of LLMs in writing these emails!! It is now *extremely* common to get emails with a bizarrely-detailed, clearly-LLM take on a paper finding or with specific phrases pulled from the lab website. Don’t do this!

This is really sad news. Apart from this offering excellent journalism in the sector and often covering key areas that similar outlets miss, Research Professional News has consistently tackled problems in the sector and held academia to account. Good people work there, too.

This short Radio 4 programme about Edward Goldsmith and The Ecologist magazine brought back memories. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

With alt text

The POINT of the Arabian Nights stories is that the genie ALWAYS goes back in the bottle because the genie promises to give you what you want, but the hero always realizes they're better off without the genie.

Same as I argue here. Trump could have been remembered as a popular reality TV host, which is more than most people get. But seeing a Black man rise to the presidency broke his already broken brain. www.salon.com/2026/06/19/t...

This was a blast! Some nuggets: 0: Preprints are amazing 1: Let's build infra that empowers rich interactions with *constellations* of scientific objects 2: Narratives are great + meaning-bearing, let's keep them alongside structured semantics 3: AI motivates + could greatly enable (1) + (2)

Today’s independent front page Brexit has been a disaster – it’s time the guilty men felt some shame

It's incredible that the entire panic over "ultra-processed foods" is based on the results of just *five* RCTs, four of which were less than three weeks long. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Yes, but let me just clear this up: the scientific world is not divided on whether Musk is an engineering genius. There is near-unanimous agreement that he is not. We have been saying this repeatedly, and would love the non-scientific media to listen.

Reform politicians in the UK are importing culture war bullshit and targeting LGBTQ+ people by attempting to censor library collections 📚📜

How can one learn to investigate the #integrity of published #scientific papers? This Community Page by @cosig.net, @reeserichardson.bsky.social, @solalpirelli.bsky.social presents COSIG, a collection of guides enabling anyone to perform forensic peer review 🧪#AcademicSky plos.io/43uZsbC

"30 women have been murdered in Northern Ireland in the last six years - not one road was closed, not one protest. What was the connection? They were murdered by white locals."

New online: Geneticist @adamrutherford.bsky.social investigates how Jeffrey Epstein courted scientists in pursuit of a eugenic fantasy

“Five months prior, a man on an online dating app had reported her threat to "kill all the Jews and Muslims in Britain", but the matter was sent back to local police, which Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) has now admitted was a mistake.” 🤨

Today on International Archives Day, we recognize how the National Archives and Records Administration safeguards national documentary history, ensuring accountability and keeping records accessible to all. Explore decades of #webhistory with the Wayback Machine: web.archive.org

Alex Brewer: Questions commonsense, says historically right to vote for women wouldn't be seen as 'commonsense'. Talks about concerns of orgs around expensive litigation. They will want to know precise guidelines not general 'commonsense' approach. Talks about conflicting groups sense of 'comfort'

Young people don’t just need to use the internet — they need to understand it. We’re calling for: 📊 stronger data literacy to combat misinformation 🤖 better scrutiny of algorithms 🔍 real evidence on how platforms work Safer online spaces = skills + accountability. Read more 👇

‘Went from orange to red’: Lawmakers and pundits shred Trump over NBC interview tantrum Gavin Newsom said the walkout was the ‘most severe case of California Derangement Syndrome we’ve ever seen’

Ghost is now a digital public good and part of the social web (on activitypub). ghost.org/changelog/di...

No, it’s not just a trend: The real reasons adult ADHD and autism diagnoses are on the rise www.sciencefocus.com... Dr Dean Burnett tackles a pernicious and harmful misunderstanding (or deliberate misrepresentation) about the rates of neurodiverse diagnoses. For Science Focus magazine #ND #AuDHD

'On 3 June, the European Commission laid out plans in the European Tech Sovereignty Package, which includes several proposals to enhance digital autotomy, including plans to boost home-grown cloud services and artificial intelligence and promote use of open-source technologies.'

Also… it’s completely demeaning that our media humours this latest American shit stirring. It needs to be immediately rebuffed. No. We’re not doing this. You know nothing. This is wildly irresponsible and we will not engage with it. Maybe King Charles could say it as they appear to listen to him.

“We are here because you were there” A Sivanandam

And it's not as if Vance didn't marry the daughter of immigrants from India. "I didn't mean THAT sort of migrant"

We must, of course, seek ways to protect children from the firehose of disinformation, fascism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, threats, bullying, non-consensual porn, child porn etc etc. The question is why we should not also seek to apply similar protections to our society generally.

Parliamentary debate on Code of Practice - @sarahowen.org.uk describes code as ‘fundamentally trans exclusionary’ and cites worry of drop in European LGBT rankings

There is a small minority of English people who want this debate, unfortunately they are all columnists.

If Noah was any type of cowherd, Noah knew cattle come in at least 3 genders (bull, cow, freemartin). If he was a shepherd, he knew 10% of rams only like the other boys. (Noah predates chickens in the Levant, but chickens also masculinize under certain conditions.) Bobby Charles ain’t no farmer.

I love Gareth Southgate, and it's great that he's taking the underperformance of boys at school seriously. But there's good evidence here and the answer is not to "teach boys differently." It's actually the opposite. What works for everyone works best for boys. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is a brilliant examination (and refutation) of claims that AI can be conscious and ethical.

This, the morning after a race riot was incited by the leadership of two major political parties is pathetic. Vapid, directionless responses to basic ideas on racism. No ability to push back on substance only on technicality. Asleep at the wheel in the fight against fascism.

Shameful. I wish government ministers would defend the principle of equity. In healthcare it’s not controversial to say that decisions are based on clinical *need*. Why can’t we apply a similar approach to policing etc?

If you can, please please give this a watch. Endometriosis is truly one of the most sinister devils and women are constantly fighting for our lives. This does a great job at showing the dark reality, and as an endometriosis sufferer, this is a perfect display of our lived reality 🎗️ #endometriosis

What a horrific disease.

I just saw a hashtag that made me wonder ‘what is alliteracy?’ Then I looked closer and realised it was #AIliteracy ! That is #AILiteracy or #ailiteracy. Different capitalisations change the look.

On this: I’m a tall Brown woman with a strong jawline. A whole white woman accused me of being a man in a public toilet the other day. I didn’t correct her because my being trans or cis was not the point. The point was she felt entirely comfortable and confident doing that to someone in a TOILET.

Readers should tell librarians where they came across their reference. If it was a slop machine making stuff up, the library should send a thumpingly large bill to the slop machine company. Thieving ghouls filling human knowledge with asbestos. #libraries

Terrible news for US children. I feel for them. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

More about the Centre here: www.sussex.ac.uk/research/cen...

Jackdaw karate! Love it. #SpringWatch

Intestinal spaghetti from a red squirrel! I don't think it will catch on. #SpringWatch

Opinion | ‘Worry no longer, I am back’ – Tony Blair’s Why I Have Always Been Right About Everything, digested by John Crace - The Guardian apple.news/AjL2BvRhQQZ-... The brilliant John Crace

As DCMS Chief Scientific Adviser, I have written a short blog post on the wider context: why these ARIs matter, how they fit into our wider evidence ecosystem, and why the challenge now is to make them useful and usable. proftomcrick.com/2026/05/26/f...

A livestream of a volcano in the Philippines captured a meteor crashing to Earth today. What are the odds? Mayon Volcano, Location: Albay, Luzon, Philippines

It’s a hot day in London:- 33 degrees C. I’m so dehydrated that when I go to the bathroom my urine comes out as powder.

'Accept cookies/confirm choices'. If you don't offer a 'reject/decline all' option from the outset, I'm not going through pages & pages of your 300 vendors selecting & deselecting as appropriate. Nor am I just going to agree to all out of resigned apathy. I simply don't use your site/app. Fuck off.