The world needs more science journalists, especially those with mad skills and ethics training. All that is provided for free by @theopennotebook.bsky.social, but we need your help. Join me in donating to support these amazing resources: www.theopennotebook.com/15thannivers...

President Trump’s spiteful defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize Board may backfire, as the latter is now demanding Trump’s psychological records, prescription medication records, and tax returns in the discovery process. trib.al/LUCScTR

Watch, listen, or read wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2FzG...

Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding www.nature.com/articles/d41...

There are more than four million guns in Australia, and Australia Institute research shows that a gun is stolen every four hours. 📺 Research Director Rod Campbell on CNN @rodcampbell.bsky.social #auspol

This is WILD. Power goes out in San Francisco and the robot cars, needing the lights to "self" drive, all stop at once, blocking streets and emergency vehicles - which are needed more than ever in a black out! We knew AI causes power outages. Turns out it also makes them worse by being stupid.

"Babies in the randomized, controlled trial will or will not receive the vaccine at birth... "It is a breach of scientific ethics to withhold an intervention that has been proven safe and effective." www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

As we crawl to the end of another unhinged year in Australian research, on behalf of the nation I would just like to say to @arc-tracker.bsky.social ❤️❤️❤️THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE❤️❤️❤️ Have a well-earned break, whoever and wherever you are. But please don't leave

As Jean says (👇) it’s been quite a year in Australian research … in all sorts of unhinged ways, & not really many good ones. I would normally do an “ARC year in review” thread, but I won’t get time this year. Sorry. I’m taking a break now – back next year. I hope you all have a good break, too!

We’re seeking a commitment from Opposition Leader Sussan Ley that her party will not push to introduce any religious criteria or test for immigrants, following comments from an MP wanting ‘faith’ made an ‘Australian value’ that immigrants needed to support. More: rationalist.com.au/rsa-question...

The White House claims the vote to rename the Kennedy Center was “unanimous.” That is false. I was muted on the call and denied the opportunity to speak or register my opposition. That is not consensus. That is censorship.

Today I received FOUR death notifications for people in ICE custody. That's 30 deaths since Trump took office. It's appalling & unacceptable.   ICE is required—by law—to ensure detainees are safe & their basic needs are met. It's clear this isn't the case. We NEED answers.

Yes! State-of-the-art image segmentation now available in #rstats #rspatial Thanks @kylewalker.bsky.social !

Preprint for "Foundations of Causation", from my 2024 talk at the Minnesota CPS. I've been saying this offhand for years, so it was good to finally get specific and into the weeds about what it means to branch out a new science of causation. #philsky #philsci philpapers.org/rec/ANDFOC-2

from earlier this year -->>

coca-cola single-handedly created the single-use plastics crisis but they're not done, so they're creating the single-use digital slop crisis

All references and calcs here docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Coke admitted they had to generate 70,000 video clips for their latest Christmas slopvertising BY MY CALCS: - 4x the CO2 impact of a normal ad project - 1 day of 2-5 medium hospitals - 1 month of 250 households - 44 years of continuous Netflix viewing futurism.com/artificial-i...

And the BoM have issued a Heatwave warning for Victoria. Summer has arrived. #MelbWeather

7 Dems joined House Republicans in voting for a bill that would enable ICE agents to strip search 12-year-olds. Henry Cuellar (TX-28) Don Davis (NC-01) Laura Gillen (NY-04) Jared Golden (ME-02) Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34) Adam Gray (CA-13) Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03)

The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.

This is disgusting!

This is hilarious!! Trump is suing the Pulitzer Prize Board for defamation. For giving NYT and WP awards for coverage of the 2016 campaign and Russia. Trump, of course, claiming fake news Now it’s in the discovery phase 🤣 He’ll drop it very soon.

There goes peer review. It was always their plan to politicize the process. www.science.org/content/arti...

#BREAKING 🚨 Police have now confirmed at least 12 people are dead and 29 others injured after a mass shooting on Bondi Beach, which has been declared a terrorist attack NSW premier Chris Minns says the shooting targeted the Jewish community at a Hanukkah celebration

An update to a classic #ClimateInactionStripes #ShowYourStripes CC: @tadziomueller.bsky.social

At least 12 people are dead after two gunmen opened fire at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in an attack authorities said targeted the Jewish community during a major holiday celebration. politi.co/4oV403l

Is the over use of SatNavs causing potential future problems for the population. I discuss with writer Moheb Costandi in his section of this article on Five voices on the future of human intelligence: newhumanist.org.uk/articles/648...

More on ARC job cuts & restructure: ARC’s spending $374k on consultants for organisational “review” & “planning & development”. They’re also spending $765k on “risk management”. That’s $1.1 million on consultants being spent over 1 year. Un. Believable. Slow clap, ARC.

Major update to our map of Anglo-Saxon London... we've now added etymologies for each place name, so you can find out what your bit of London used to be called.... and why londonist.substack.com/p/mapping-an...

Are you interested in adding alt text to your publications? It helps share your data visualisations with vision impaired readers. Try out github.com/numbats/auto... to get a reasonable first draft or maybe complete text. @r-forwards.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy @rladies.org @rconsortium.bsky.social

Democratic-led states are standing up to RFK Jr.'s ACIP and say they will continue recommending the universal birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. My latest for @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/many-s...

There is this fantastic photo of Max Planck from 1901. The source on wikipedia is a dead link, but I assume there is a great story behind this one. I believe his black-body radiation law was published in 1901, so maybe this was taken after celebrations. Anyway if anyone knows more plz plz link

www.theguardian.com/inequality/2... disgusting

This is INSANE www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/t... and these are our closest allies!

Question for early- and mid-career researchers about ARC assessment requests: Have you ever been asked to review Fellowships that are more senior than you’re eligible to apply for yourself? e.g. Future Fellowships if you’re within 5 years of PhD (incl. career interruptions)?

Please have a read of part 1 of my two-parter on this, here: www.crikey.com.au/2025/12/04/d... And keep and eye out for part 2: where I dig into shiny new data centre lobbying, and specifically the idea of 'forcing' data centres to "invest" (🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐🫠🤔🧐) in renewables

^^ unremarked by climate groups / renewables advocates, I should specify (there has been some good coverage, eg from @ryancropp.bsky.social www.afr.com/policy/energ... or also @petrastock.bsky.social at the Guardian here: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...)

It is remarkable how all of these things seem to have gone mostly unremarked, or if not unremarked, then sort of shrugged off as irrelevant To me, it's the spectacle of a predatory industry feasting on infrastructure that was meant to be used to eliminate fossil fuels, and killing climate progress

HEY FRIENDS!! Did you know that Australia - #2 in the world for data centre investment - is now formally missing its climate targets thanks in large part to the resulting surge in power demand? It's massive news - @crikey.com.au let me NERD OUT to explain why: www.crikey.com.au/2025/12/04/d...

Australia: CSIRO facing up to a decade of belt-tightening (free to read): www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-aust...

Alert for DP27 EOI applicants who “hold an Industry Fellowship in 2025”: ARC has contacted research offices advising that if the Fellowship will “remain active beyond the DP27 project assessment date (1 July 2027)” then you can only be listed on one (1) DP27 EOI. On the very eve of submission😱🙄

Putting Dr Høeg in charge "is like dropping an atom bomb," an agency source said. "Multiple top-level officials are preparing resignations." "It's an extinction level event. She's has never supervised a drug review, never has conducted a clinical trial. She doesn't understand laws &regulations."

I know this probably isn't very useful since I don't even have speaker's notes, but here are the slides from that recent talk. The title was "The Librarian’s Dividend: Pathways towards Information Ethics and Literacy in the Age of Generative AI" docs.google.com/presentation...

Here's the reality this example illustrates: It's not even just about people blindly trusting what ChatGPT tells them. LLMs are poisoning the entire information ecosystem. You can't even necessarily trust that the citations in a published paper are real (or a search engine's descriptions of them).

I’ve tried using the AI-powered Google Scholar feature a few times. I was asking things like “find papers that apply method X in context Y”. It would return papers that don’t actually use method X, and tell me that they do. Way less useful than regular Google Scholar search.