An absolutely mind-melting image taken by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, featured in @sciam.bsky.social's Best Space Photos Of 2025: www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-... There's just so much out there.

I'm a renowned neuroscientist and I'm here to tell you that what your brain needs most of all is for you to be still eating Christmas cake for breakfast and lunch and also dinner. Don't fight your brain.

I know I’m a broken record saying the same line over again, but the HPV vaccine is a great gift to give a kid ⬇️ (And all the other recommended vaccines, too.)

Bad things are happening in the world, but there have been huge advances in health care in the past few years. This is amazing.

Over the past 20 years, I find myself performing less and less colposcopy and LEEP procedures. These procedures are literally becoming extinct because of the HPV vaccine!!! Never been so happy to be obsolete.

Also very cool: a study from 2024 found that in Scottish women fully vaccinated with the HPV vaccine in 2008, *no* cases of cervical cancer have been found. Not a single one. 100% success rate. Co-author: "It is [now] possible to make cervical cancer a rare disease.” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Pretty cool www.bbc.com/news/article...

Last year I thought getting older is about finding joy in getting wiser, but then one day I had the best shave of my life, *so* smooth, & then realised I’d put the head of my razor on upside down. Now I think getting older is about becoming tolerant of the idiot you have to work with. Sorry, kids.

I'm very grateful to environmental scientist Sam Matey-Coste showing me these Our World In Data charts when we had a chat recently. (sammatey.substack.com/p/a-conversa...) Yes, so much is a worrying, enraging mess right now. But the bigger picture is a little more reassuring.

A tale of two Yorkshires, just 30 miles apart. Crazy weather today.

Every time someone says "I can't write X, editors will never buy it" an angel loses its wings Those shining adamantine feathers, sharper than death, slice all creatures in their path to molecule-thin ribbons, blood raining down onto acres of land rendered poisonous for decades. So maybe reconsider

“I like this feeling: to put on a warm coat and hat and gloves, and go for a walk somewhere cold & quiet, feeling the vastness of everything around me and then imagining all of it stretching backwards in time, far beyond my shrinking-to-nothing lifespan, so far that I completely vanish”

DEEP TIME is horrifyingly vast & will make you feel like a vanishing tiny flicker of nothingness but in an oddly comforting (and scientifically accurate!) way, and this is unfortunately how I write HAPPY NEW YEAR essays so here you go & also Sorry: open.substack.com/pub/everythi...

According to Carl Sagan's famous analogy: If you think of the history of the universe being the whole of the last year, it'll be at 10.30pm this evening when human beings first arrive.

Also you are currently nearer in time to Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the laying-down of the first stone of the Great Pyramid of Giza, so even human time is completely unfathomable to us, let alone the vastly deeper variety. Follow me for more science-based existential horror in 2026. 👍

Also you are currently nearer in time to Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the laying-down of the first stone of the Great Pyramid of Giza, so even human time is completely unfathomable to us, let alone the vastly deeper variety. Follow me for more science-based existential horror in 2026. 👍

According to Carl Sagan's famous analogy: If you think of the history of the universe being the whole of the last year, it'll be at 10.30pm this evening when human beings first arrive.

As @ironspike.bsky.social just said (I would have quoted, but doesn't seem to be working) - sickle cell disease is a perfect example of how things have leapt forward recently: www.theguardian.com/society/2025... See also the HPV vaccine in Scotland - 100% effective in preventing cervical cancer.

THIS. Did you know sickle cell is curable, now? FULLY curable. If you're feeling down or despairing about what FEELS like technology/advancement/science "standing still" or being fully malicious, I have great news: You're not paying attention to actual science. Just tech industry marketing.

I just saw @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social quoting someone's description of jellyfish as "organised water", so - a reminder: - no circulatory system - no skeleton - seem to “think” with their nerve-endings - 95% water, meaning any jellyfish you see almost entirely isn’t one. The ultimate rebel.

This is true and I was the only one on set excited about it (and playing the song on my phone to blank stares)

Here's something that quietly haunts me when I see social media at its angriest: *When you rage about how stupid a thing is, you also help it reach even more people.* It’s not a clean, neutral process. It comes with polluting side-effects that need offsetting. How? 1/

Here's something that quietly haunts me when I see social media at its angriest: *When you rage about how stupid a thing is, you also help it reach even more people.* It’s not a clean, neutral process. It comes with polluting side-effects that need offsetting. How? 1/

I will never understand how human beings adjust to temperatures like this. (This is in Celsius, but -40 is also the intersection point with the Fahrenheit scale, so it's both.)

I'm back in Yorkshire for the new year, and it's cafe menu items like this that really hammer that fact home. No messin'.

This is a Genuinely Great Thing (the rollout of a solar-powered blanket for folk sleeping rough, a potential life-saver in winter) & I'm surprised it didn't get more coverage, although maybe that's because other folk have invented stuff like this too, which is my hope because it's about damn time?

You know what? You lot are OK*. Merry Christmas to you. ..... *British for “the absolute nicest”.

Ah, Scotland: where the post-boxes have knitted Christmas cosies. Proper lovely idea. (Spotted in Glasgow Central Station, but apparently happening elsewhere across the UK as well.)

Update: this is YARN-BOMBING - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarn_bo... - and good grief, what a lovely thing in its cheerful ridiculousness.

Ah, Scotland: where the post-boxes have knitted Christmas cosies. Proper lovely idea. (Spotted in Glasgow Central Station, but apparently happening elsewhere across the UK as well.)

Biggest commitment to a 3 second joke I've ever seen

My dream legacy: "Sowden’s writing blazed a trail with his uncanny eye for the bizarre & profound, attracting fans as diverse as Bill Bryson, King Charles III & all five members of Wet Leg.” Possible reality: “Oh, I never knew he had a NEWSLETTER as well.” Cough. everythingisamazing.substack.com

Thinking is rather fun, isn't it? Those "aha!" moments. That almost-audible SNICK when 2 half-baked notions fit together & the result unfolds from one horizon of your mind to another. The giddy possibility of bending reality with something as insubstantial as an idea. Farming that out to AI? Nah.

Out for a walk for the first time in over 2 days after being clobbered by the flu (possibly That Flu That's Going Around) & my god, it's amazing how fresh air can smell & taste so good, even when the Scottish sky hurls it in your face at 40mph accompanied by half a bucketful of rain. Glorious stuff.

It's disability history month in the UK. Here's my favourite sketch and something to think about.

If you read one U.S. president's remembrance of Rob Reiner today...

The thing I am asked the most is “what can I do?” Followed by “is there any point?” I am not asked “Is the climate crisis real/bad?” There’s your lever. It’s right there, with a big flashing light, and you still have people saying “no, no, don’t pull the lever, that’s hopium!”

If you genuinely believe the future is worth fighting for, then we need 1) visions of what a better future looks like and 2) a movement that facilitates climate action at all scales. Both of those require knowing what works (and talking about it!). This is not a bad thing in movement building!

PROPOSED NEW SCIENTIFIC UNIT FOR PSYCHOLOGISTS: Self-confidence will be measured in *Sias*. 0.1 Sias - falling to pieces. 1 Sia = figure it out but don't stop moving 5 Sias = able to swing from chandelier, dollar bills not needed to have fun tonight 20 Sias = unstoppable, the greatest alive.

PROPOSED NEW SCIENTIFIC UNIT FOR PSYCHOLOGISTS: Self-confidence will be measured in *Sias*. 0.1 Sias - falling to pieces. 1 Sia = figure it out but don't stop moving 5 Sias = able to swing from chandelier, dollar bills not needed to have fun tonight 20 Sias = unstoppable, the greatest alive.

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

Thank you @kottke.org for teaching me this part of the elbow is called a WENIS, and now it seems I can't un-know this, although I certainly intend to try. kottke.org/25/12/004798...

Reading "Wuthering Heights" for the very first time It's a laugh a minute, isn't it A proper knees-up *whisky*

I just wrote about battling my insomnia, & since these are desperate times for newsletter writers, I've used every engagement trick I know: - clickbait title - stock image of cat - audio voiceover in comedy Game Of Thrones accent (ie. my real one). everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/fix-your-d...

This is a lovely animation to accompany BBC coverage of controlled production of fire at Barnham

It’s 1775, & Swedish-German chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele has made a discovery that will go on to delight, entertain and, um, kill a lot of people. Scheele is by any measure a remarkable scientist. A better world might celebrate Scheele’s legacy for what it was. Instead, it gently ridicules it. 1/

A really good point for scicommers, and an even better attitude to have about it. "Debunking can end up promoting nonsense. We need to REPLACE it."

"There are no more free public spaces!" Your library is right there. "I can't afford to subscribe to every media outlet!" Your library is right there. "I have to subscribe to corporate streaming or else I can't watch movies or play video games!" Your library is right there.

How are you feeling about all this fake AI garbage stuff? What worries me as an amateur science communicator is that it'll make so many folk - maybe even most folk? - so cynical about everything they see that they assume EVERYTHING that surprises them is confected nonsense... 1/

How are you feeling about all this fake AI garbage stuff? What worries me as an amateur science communicator is that it'll make so many folk - maybe even most folk? - so cynical about everything they see that they assume EVERYTHING that surprises them is confected nonsense... 1/