As a new study calls into question one of the central planks of the "lab leak" hypothesis, I review the long history of pandemics and describe how researchers have long puzzled over their origins. markhonigsbaum.substack.com/p/opportunit...

NYT: Scientists Get a Glimpse of How New Pandemics Are Made Researchers have devised a new tool for discerning between naturally occurring viral outbreaks and those resulting from lab accidents by Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com @nytimes.com nyti.ms/4uoaA6w gift link

The night sky is ours. All of ours. Our children’s. Their children’s. We should be doing more to preserve the view of the stars for all. We give this up for some ludicrous to churn out wasteful nonsense to feed rich maniacs’ grift, it’s not coming back…

I have devoted much of my weather & climate career to engaging with journalists--including 200-300 news media interviews per year, many of which involve recurring conversations to facilitate timely & contextually accurate coverage. This recent collapse has been stunning and deeply disconcerting.

Sleepwalking into a new age of gender inequality. "Women make up just 12 per cent of AI researchers and female founders receive only 2 per cent of venture capital funding. We are not the ones building this new world. But we will have no choice about living in it." www.ft.com/content/60e2...

Today's must-read: time.com/7358059/econ...

Conspiracy theorists often see themselves as critical thinkers, yet they may fall for obvious disinformation when it aligns with their beliefs. It happened last Spring with a claim that the origin of the 2024 Marburg virus disease outbreak in Rwanda was a lab leak. ▫️1/6 🧵

Just added this to my WordPress site, so it's free to read. homunculusmusic.wordpress.com/2026/02/14/e...

"Young people are quickly becoming so dependent on A.I. that they are losing the ability to think for themselves. And rather than rallying resistance, academic administrators are aiding and abetting a hostile takeover of higher education." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...

Unser Dokufilm #Blame kommt jetzt ins Kino, so vielleicht ist es ein guter Zeitpunkt mal ein paar Termine hier zu posten. Der Film wird von "Rise and Shine Cinema" vertrieben und es gibt alle Info auf deren Webseite: riseandshine-cinema.de/portfolio/bl... Okay, so hier ein paar infos: 1/

Hot News from @naturehealthglobal.bsky.social Re. the documentary Blame: Nominated for major award, released in theaters in Germany/Switzerland, & US PREMIERE at the Sedona Film Festival in April 2026!!! 🧵 naturehealthglobal.org/update-blame...

We all live in Jeffrey Epstein's world now. That's what we can't face. It's our world. Where sexual desire for children is protected, victims receive no justice & the President of what used to be called the free world is Jeff's friend. This is Jeff's World now. 1/ open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

“The U.S. Supreme Court said that you could detain people based on their race, their accent, or the language they spoke … There is nothing to preclude ICE from doing that while you’re standing in line getting ready to cast a ballot,” Stacey Abrams tells Anne Applebaum. theatln.tc/qkeYrlaM

Die Fragen, die man sich vor der #Halbierungsintiative stellen müsste: Was können private Medien (nicht) leisten, die auf Reichweite und Klicks zielen müssen? Und was sind uns die Öffentlich-Rechtlichen als Infrastruktur für Demokratie und Föderalismus wert? www.derbund.ch/srg-halbieru...

Tooze: polycrisis meets sodom and gomorrah adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

Perhaps it was coincidental timing, but nothing underscores the collapse of the Washington Post like firing most of the Pulitzer prize winning #climate reporters the very same day as their opinion pages publishes a BS screed by climate misinformer Bjorn Lomborg.

An open letter Jeff Bezos and Washington Post leadership:

This work sits at the core of machine learning’s breakthroughs, which rest on the fact that AI is only as good as the data it is trained on. In India, this labour is increasingly performed by women, who are part of a workforce often described as “ghost workers”. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

@sammyroth.bsky.social reporting that the Post cuts include 14 climate journalists: www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/washington...

"Those who were laid off include Caroline O’Donovan, the Post’s beat reporter covering Amazon"

“It’s like someone who slices your Achilles and then asks you why you’re limping.” nymag.com/intelligence...

“After thoughtful consideration, I have decided to withdraw my Symphony No 15 ‘Lincoln’ from the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. .. the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the symphony." www.theguardian.com/music/2026/j...

Please spread this far and wide, as stories don't get much bigger than this. When the government blocks even the intelligence services from telling us we're heading for environmental catastrophe, you know we have a problem. A very big problem. Thank you. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The actor, Edward Norton, calls for a General Strike! "What they are doing in Minnesota with the strike needs to expand. We should be talking about a national General and Economic Strike."

"One can object that there are elements of classical European fascism that are not found in Trumpism ... Trump is building something new on old principles. He is showing us in real time what 21st-century American fascism looks like."

BBC faces ‘profound jeopardy’ without funding overhaul, Tim Davie says

The story is not that there are two conflicting versions of what happened. The story is that the federal government is lying about what happened. There is plenty of evidence. Your job, our job, is to sift that evidence and describe what actually happened ffs.

Kare 11 local news just read, in full, this statement from Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti. "Please get the truth out about our son."

🧪 💉 Bill Foege is an absolute #PublicHealth legend And furious to the end about the destruction of US public health “Kennedy’s words can be as lethal as the smallpox virus,” he wrote… “I had no idea I would be this angry at the age of 89.” Ht @boghuma.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

“Heute haben Patienten mit schweren Brand­verletzungen deutlich bessere Chancen, zu überleben. Selbst wenn sie nahezu keine unverbrannte Hautstelle mehr haben, schaffen wir es, das Leben jeder zweiten Patientin zu retten” sagt Clemens Schiestl von Kispi Zürich. Wie das möglich wurde: 👇

"In a hyper-capitalist culture optimised for skimming and distraction, the ability to sit still with a novel is both subversive and truly gratifying. The real question, then, is why so many men are not picking one up." www.ft.com/content/da33...

Five hundred people in a small Canadian province were diagnosed with a mystery brain disease. What would it mean for the patients if the disease was never real? bbc.com/news/article...

“Mpox viruses have caused two public-health emergencies in the past three years, so we need to be paying attention to it.” www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Are you familiar with the story of the EMI article? If not, good for you, you did not waste time with a manufactured controversy aimed to sow distrust. For the curious, here's how lab leakers tried (and this time, failed) to generate outrage: ▫️1/6 🧵 #covidorigin

This is horrifying pauloffit.substack.com/p/rfk-jrs-tu...

According to a recent report from the I.E.A, the emissions intensity of oil and gas operations in Venezuela is six times the global average. The country produces 1 percent of the world’s oil but 45 percent of all methane released in Central and South America. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/c...

2025 was a miserable year for global health It’s nice see some hopeful things we can look forward to 👇🏾 www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Since Ioannidis is quoted in Science today, I'd like to share something many of us probably (mercifully) missed. Six months ago he published the most insane under-estimate of Covid mortality averted by vaccination I've seen: 2.5 million deaths globally in 2020-24 jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

It is utterly catastrophic that RFK Jr. plans to end CDC recommendations for most childhood vaccines. It’s a betrayal of science, ethics, compassion, and the people of the United States. And it was also a specific goal of Project 2025 (page 254).

Could America win the AI race but lose the war? on.ft.com/44r03Mn

Your yearly reminder that this Dec 1st date for the beginning of the pandemic is not correct: the case's symptom onset date was later corrected. The case is well known, and there's basically no debate about this, even with hard-core leakers who have studied the data. 🖼️: 2021 WHO report, page 47

Wunderbare reportage von @ostprog.bsky.social für @radiocorax.social.anoxinon.de.ap.brid.gy Hat 3sat Nano wirklich sauber journalistisch gearbeitet bei dem Thema? Freut mich besonders auch im Deutschen so ein qualitativ hochwertige Hinterfragung des medialen Laborursprungsnarratives zu hören.

“The year featured a record number of violent incidents over water around the world, far surpassing the 355 in 2023, continuing a steeply rising trend. The violence more than quadrupled in the last five years.” www.latimes.com/environment/...

Another Cop wrecked by fossil fuel interests and our leaders’ cowardice – but there is another way | Genevieve Guenther

Thoughtful and informed post about the past and future of science journalism, based on an excellent talk

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight www.cityam.com/the-british-...

Defunding scientists for the nationality of who they co-author with or who they train. One of the most radical attack on freedom of speech in US history. A far right nationalist destruction of US science. Such a shameful time to be an American that this racist stupidity has become mainstream.

What is worrying about these publcations: look at the reviewers. then their publication list: loop.frontiersin.org/people/21038... No publications. loop.frontiersin.org/people/25785... A few, case studies, reviews, etc. These journals can do more harm than good.

Quick thread on the BBC and the political and societal significance of recent developments: One of the main reasons the UK has historically been so much less polarised than the US, is that Britain has a shared source of information, consumed and trusted by most people regardless of their politics.