THIS IS HUGE! Researchers have just identified a powerful new antibiotic that is 100x STRONGER than existing drugs against deadly superbugs like MRSA and VRE. Hiding in a well-known soil bacterium, pre-methylenomycin C lactone KILLS drug-resistant bacteria WITHOUT triggering resistance.

A new arrival from Subterranean Press - with a beautiful cover by @alisonsampson.bsky.social - this collects the vast majority of my short fiction to date, along with commentary on particularly noteworthy entries.

For the Aussies, the zoologists and the architects out there. 💩🧊🧪 By @chazhutton.com

Zoom in on Planetary Nebula NGC 6072 by JWST Full video animation: flic.kr/p/2rFniEA Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/j.Roger/AndreaLuck CC BY 🔭🧪 Full image 5K & more info below ⬇️

When I talk about the invention of "AI" as an attempt to manifest the Infinite Money God, this is part of what I'm talking about. Private equity achieved the ability to make money without a good or service—AI is the attempt to make money without even customers or employees.

The EU’s Digital Omnibus could roll back key parts of the GDPR, AI Act, and ePrivacy rules — laws that set global standards for privacy and AI. Leaked drafts suggest companies could get more leeway on data use and slower enforcement, reports Ramsha Jahangir (@ramshajahangir.bsky.social):

Scriam recent că cercetătorii în științe politice compară relația dintre PSD și social-democrații din Parlamentul European cu cea dintre Fidesz și popularii europeni. După congresul la care și-au redefinit valorile, pare că asemănările dintre PSD și partidul lui Viktor Orbán sunt mai profunde.

A word of caution about the new Axios report that Dem Senators are caving. Remember the NYT ran articles for months claiming that Harvard was caving, which.. never happened. Turns out their anonymous sources were Trump staffers. Axios may be similar. But, it never hurts to call your Senator. 1/

KeEpiNG mEmORIals iS AbOUt PrEsErVinG hIsTorY

Timeline cleanse. You'll be a lot happier if you just watch some puppies.

Curiosity Mastcam R sol 1459 - From 2di7 & titanio44 - https://flic.kr/p/LMntfY

Why are we weakening our climate targets to appease the oil industry? We really need a different breed of politicians to stand up against this kind of insidious pressure.

Sigh. Once again, things you think are ridiculous or wasteful are often meant to or happen to help disabled people. Forearm pan holder? Not because people are lazy. Tide pods? Have you tried pouring detergent with a tremor? Don’t get me started on the damned pre-cut ingredients.

there's definitely an essay in this, about how this entire generation of right wingers have spent their entire career smashing the drywall and kicking the legs out from under polite society, seemingly so sheltered that they honestly never considered that it might end up affecting them too

Wow! 😮🤩 There's a new interactive map of Every Known Road in the Roman Empire!! 🤓 itiner-e.org We might have to have a lie-down.

lol

Happy book day to Kate Elliott's THE NAMELESS LAND!

And happy book day to Kemi Ashing-Giwa's THE KING MUST DIE!

And happy book day to Bogi Takács's SONG OF SPORES bsky.app/profile/bogi...

People blocking you, whether artisinally or via blocklist, are doing you the courtesy of signaling that you will not vibe well with each other and self-selecting out of the pool of people on Bluesky you will potentially have to deal with.

The Star Trek You Never Knew file770.com/the-star-tre...

FOR THIS MAN TO HAVE THE FAINTEST DROPLET OF INTROSPECTION

Ooooh now this looks like an interesting labeler

Yes. All the empirics on misinformation indicate that the way to defeat bad ideas is to mock and marginalize them. Constantly declaring "hey the far right isn't so bad" is a terrible strategy both morally and electorally. Dems should be way more comfortable saying "look at these fucking psychos"

trickle down economics trickle down economic trickle down economi trickle down econom trickle down econo trickle down econ trickle down eco trickle down ec trickle down e trickle down trickle dow trickle do trickle d trickle trickl trick

Days of Shattered Faith by @aptshadow.bsky.social is a bargain £1.29 on Kindle today #affiliatelink amzn.to/47B9aLm

AS IT IS HALLOWEEN, It IS TIME FOR ME TO POST THE HALLOWEEN POLLING JOKE:

I am begging certain “journalists” to remember that interpersonal niceness from someone who would prefer you and everyone like you be dead is what we call “lies” and falling for it makes you both a mark and a chump. Big ‘ol chump. Jegus, some folks never learn.

⚖️🗺️Our friends at World Justice Project just released the 2025 edition of the Rule of Law Index. Unsurprisingly, they found an accelerating decline in the state of the rule of law globally. Let's take a look at Central & Eastern Europe and how this trend plays out there. 1/

ladies and gentlemen...we got him

Well now, would you look at that? A massive, 26-YEAR-LONG study of MORE THAN 2.4 MILLION people in Sweden found found NO EVIDENCE to support a causal link between acetaminophen (the API in Tylenol) use during pregnancy and increased risk of autism, ADHD, OR intellectual disability in children.

Elon Musk’s new Wikipedia rival, Grokipedia, uses AI to push its creator’s views — something Moscow has been trying for months with its Ruwiki project. Meduza compares the results. meduza.io/en/feature/2...

I remember after the previous Sudanese genocide, even when the then president was indicted by the ICC, there was virtually no media coverage. The right, certainly, will always be like "whatever". But the numbness from the left hits you differently.

Elie Mystal on why the GOP needs the illusion of a Trump third term

Holy fucking shit

“they reverse-engineer an explanation for their pick” This is essentially all human decision making. We had to invent a whole new method called science to get around it.

The same is true of the Black Death, Mount Tambora’s eruption and the Mongol Invasions.

…in the sense that no US political media in my lifetime *wouldn’t* have had the knives out for a Mamdani and *wouldn’t* have whitewashed a Cuomo. The difference is that people now realise that what looks like corruption to them isn’t just some partisan bias on their part, it *is* corruption.

General Corneliu Dragalina, commander of Romanian VI Corps, on the eastern front during the Second World War with a portrait on his table of his father General Ion Dragalina, commander of Romanian First Army, who was killed on the eastern front during the First World War.

There's been endless talk about an AI bubble, but less about exactly how, why, and how much it's a bubble. So I turned to the framework put forward by scholars Brent Goldfarb and David A. Kirsch, authors of "Bubbles and Crashes," for assessing tech bubbles. Spoiler: On a scale of 1 to 8, AI is an 8

Elon Musk's Twitter in one image

Just normal Albanian government things

Doomerism is enemy propaganda. We don’t need to help them.

Putins Krieg zielt nicht auf den Donbass, sondern auf die Vernichtung der Ukraine als Staat und Nation. Er sieht sich als Wiederbegründer des russischen Imperiums. Wer glaubt, ihn mit territorialen Zugeständnissen von dieser "Mission" abbringen zu können, irrt gefährlich.

The siege of al-Fasher in Sudan by the RSF militia has been on-going for 18 months now. Famine has set. People are suffering. If the city falls, untold atrocities will unfold. The resistance committee of al-Fasher wrote a statement 2 days ago. I read it out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wJU...