"And right there is the punchline to this long, historical joke... The machine, in its quest to sound authoritative, ended up sounding like a KCPE graduate who scored an 'A' in English Composition. It replicated the linguistic ghost of the British Empire." marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-...

#XRISM joins the crew of telescopes observing comet 3I/ATLAS. The image shows X-rays coming from a region of around 400 000 km around the comet nucleus. These X-rays could be generated by the interaction of the solar wind with gases from the comet. Read more 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... 🔭

The thing I have found about my current job is that there is no piece of learning I do not use. It's not just about facts (although those, too). Learning to do proofs taught me patience with material and the skill of banging my head against a brick wall.

This is sorta the good news/bad news but really good news kinda thing: The Roman Space Telescope has completed construction (yay!) and astronomers have now discovered more than 40,000 near-Earth asteroids (yikes?) but it's good to know where they are. badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/roman-spac... 🔭 🧪

The radicalization of Silicon Valley is the subject of my forthcoming book, "The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and The War on Democracy." It exposes a decades-long campaign to use tech power to overthrow democracy and destroy nations. Pre-order here: www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ne...

need a holiday present?

This is horrific and exactly what those of us in Black studies, gender studies, women’s studies have been warning our colleagues in the sciences about. Their seeming neutrality will not save them.

A stunning image of a monstrous stellar factory: the Tarantula Nebula, measuring nearly 1,000 light-years across. It is thought to contain more than half a million times the mass of the Sun in gas, and it hosts some of the most massive stars known. https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0650/ 🔭

So AI, which will turn any half-cocked idea into a mediocre text/script/whatever is an amateur’s *dream*. But something pro largely shrugs off – especially because a good final product usually only slightly resembles the initial idea. The actual work improves it greatly. Still can’t skip that.

It’s the mark of an amateur – in journalistic writing, book writing, TV, whatever – that they think ideas are the currency, where the value is, and need fiercely protecting. Everyone has ideas. Usually ten before breakfast. Executing them well is the hard bit.

Some of my editorial work comes via Reedsy. Over the past year it's become completely overrun by people (I can't call them authors) who are asking for editorial help on manuscripts that have been generated by #AI. Often, what they want is for someone to make the text sound more human.

This isn't even the point, but I feel pissed off that my years of editorial experience and genuine, lifelong enthusiasm for the work is being channelled into a new role as a professional fluffer for a large-language model.

But also creatively, intellectually, personally. Where's the reward? Where's the pleasure, where's the pain? Just like the text it generates, the experience, too, is frictionless, humourless, effortless, dull, unfelt, literally predictable. The whole thing frigid as a robot's bare metal arsecheek.

I'm excited to announce this new study, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, which explores public support for degrowth and ecosocialist transformation. The findings are quite surprising. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

#Repost #FromTheBlog #Archive 📖 This week, we're featuring a blog post by Aurelia Brandenburg and Adrian Demleitner. They discuss bare-chested men as protagonists and the depiction of violence in 1980s video games. Read the full article here: chludens.hypotheses....

black friday: a great time to unsubscribe from brand mailing lists you forgot you were on

My hot take is that in the era of easily-generated AI nonsense papers journals that want to ensure high quality will need to start hiring full-time professional editors and reviewers instead of relying on volunteer labor from overworked academics.

This quote from Michał Nowakowski is SO important: [Opening the Boston studio] "brought in a wealth of multi-layered experience, skills, and backgrounds. We strongly believe that this investment will pay off in the future, bringing the next Cyberpunk experience to a new level."

Required reading from @astroroamer.bsky.social 🔭 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

📡Signal Boost! There's still time to enter our quantum micro-fiction competition, closing Mon 8th Dec ⚛️ 👉https://london.sciencegallery.com/sgl-events/stories-of-the-quantum-universe-micro-fiction-competition We're looking for original works of micro-fiction between 300-500 words. Good luck!

you just can't have a meaningful conversation about the potential benefits of "AI" while this stuff is happening. it's like trying to talk about how useful an airplane might be during a hijacking

Premium: This is The Hater's Guide To NVIDIA: A 14k word guide to how NVIDIA makes its money, how millions of Blackwell GPUs have been sold with nowhere for them to be installed, and how NVIDIA's future relies on companies raising hundreds of billions in debt. www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-g...

Imagine, if you will, that NASA updated its website to suggest gravity might not exist, prompting CalTech and CERN to release statements saying, "With great sadness, we can no longer recommend listening to NASA." This is what's happening in epidemiology.

It’s widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort — specifically, if you don’t have to work at getting the knowledge, it won’t stick. Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.

Dr. Munazza Alam, an assistant astronomer at STScI, was named in The City University of New York's 50 Under 50 alumni awards in 2025. Each year the school celebrates a class of distinguished graduates who have made headway in their respective fields over the past year. 👏

Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other. Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq

It's Friday, and apparently bluesky is ready for this fun revelation: Dinosaurs lived on the other side the Galaxy.

Currently writing a proposal on science misinformation and 3i/ATLAS and hooboy some of those theories are wild. It's only knowing that this has happened so often in history as well that prevents me from thinking we've lost it as a species....

What happens when you combine the most powerful infrared telescope ever built with the most powerful X-ray telescope ever built? Absolute, astonishing gorgeousity. badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/powers-of-... 🧪 🔭

So there's a side conversation about slow fashion and sustainable wages, and I have a lot of thoughts because I went through a period where I was trying to figure out how to get things that would last that were ethically made and also fit me.

My other other conclusion is that "outfit recycling" should be the highest badge of honor in fashion and so we should STOP complimenting people for new clothes and START complimenting people who wear the same thing again.

🧵 I was browsing through NASA’s Photojournal archive when I found this historic image of Saturn, taken by Voyager 2 on Aug. 11, 1981. The spacecraft was about 14.7 million kilometres away when the picture was captured. Image credit: NASA/JPL ➡️ science.nasa.gov/photojournal... 🔭 🧪 #histsci 1/5

In 2022, #Arrakihs was selected as a fast mission under #CosmicVision. By imaging Milky Way-type galaxies in the nearby Universe, Arrakihs will provide important measurements to address key questions in galaxy formation theory.  1/ #CM25 🔭

Save the CSIRO Our national science & research agency is now facing more job cuts than under Tony Abbott Call on the Albanese Govt to fund the scientists & research we need to tackle big issues we face from climate to food security and everything in between www.davidpocock.com.au/save_our_csiro

A paper by @univie.ac.at researchers found an awful security flaw in WhatsApp - there was zero rate limiting preventing anyone from querying the details of every single WhatsApp user on earth in just a few hours 🫠

"Microsoft warns that Windows 11's agentic AI could install malware on your PC: 'Only enable this feature if you understand the security implications.'" bro what-- what are we doing here, exactly, how can you--anyone be okay with this?

3 years ago, NASA crashed the DART spacecraft into an asteroid at 22,000 kilometers per hour. The event changed the asteroid's orbit and tilt & sent it tumbling. A nearby cubesat captured these remarkable images of the asteroid immediately after the impact. 🧪🔭 aasnova.org/2025/11/03/s...

NASA will host a live event at 3 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Nov. 19, to share imagery of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS collected by a number of the agency’s missions. The event will take place at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. www.nasa.gov/news-release... ☄️🔭

Enquiry from an 8yo asking what the Fulton Orrery planets were? Apparently the #Kelvingrove museum staff didn't know, so he e-mailed the Astronomer Royal to find out! I also didn’t know, but the AstroSociety of #Glasgow did (after watching an old VHS recording on the topic!) 🔭 #histsci 1/2🧵

ESA’s Mars and Jupiter missions observe comet 3I/ATLAS @esa.int is making the most of its interplanetary missions to observe the comet from multiple vantage points. 🧪🔭 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... @science.esa.int #3IATLAS

3I/ATLAS is the first interstellar object bright enough for amateurs to image: so fabulous to see the delight ☄️😍

Looking for ideas about what to teach this spring? (Or, not even thinking about spring yet... which is where I am). We have a list of teachable articles about visual culture, ethnic studies, capitalism, activism, and more. www.feministstudies.org/classroom/cl...

We are seeking short reflections on: Surveillance culture and technology Artificial intelligence Climate change Fake news and misinformation Reproductive justice Racial and gender inequalities Indigenous rights More here: www.feministstudies.org/home.html

"What James Watson got wrong about DNA" By the great Sohini Ramachandran (@sramach.bsky.social) and your boy for The Boston Globe (@bostonglobe.com). www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/14/o...

A #CosmicVision mission, #ESAEnvision will be the first mission to provide a complete view of Venus from its inner core to its upper atmosphere. Its goal is to determine how and why Venus and Earth evolved so differently. 1/ #CM25 🔭

from a wider standpoint, we show how AI can add to "efficient inefficiency" (it may improve the efficiency of already inefficient practices) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Note - there is a Measles vaccine available across Australia! Even if you were vaccinated when you were younger, if you get another round (2 shots, several weeks apart) it will not harm you, and boost your protection. Measles is a *terrible* illness and you do not want it.

🥳 Huge congrats to @sherwoodobs.bsky.social! Their hugely successful creation of the Sherwood Observatory and Planetarium has been recognised with a King's Award for Voluntary Service! If you're in the Nottingham/Derby/Sheffield area, they are well worth a visit! 🔭 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

You can disagree and argue as much as you like but the point of evaluating something scientifically is that not every statement should be given equal credence because evidence matters