Science writers: Join the EFSJ on June 30 for a free webinar about reporting on solar eclipses. Presented by Javier Armentia, astrophysicist and science communicator in Spain (which is expecting a lot of eclipse tourism and news coverage this summer!) #scicomm efsj.eu/2026/06/14/e...

I think it's not helpful to call every year the "hottest year on record", because people might be imagining a peak that's going back down, rather than a continuous upward slope. "It's hotter than it's ever been, but could easily get even hotter" is what you actually want to say, right? #scicomm

When reality surpasses fiction! Top: fictional forecast for August 2050, broadcast by French TV in 2014 to warn about the consequences of global warming. Bottom: Real French forecast for yesterday, June 22, 2026.

Need somewhere to cool off? Many of London’s Cool Space’s offer aircon, alongside a place to recharge and take respite from the heat. 🧊 Find your nearest Cool Space: www.london.gov.uk/programmes-s...

BREAKING NEWS: #Ebola case in France is 1st in Europe connected to ongoing outbreak in #DRC LSHTM expert says risks to Europe & UK remains low... Read more 👉 www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/n...

I forgot to bring a pen with me today. I packed two notebooks but my pouch with pens didn't make it into my backpack. A horrible tragedy for a writer, until you realize that this can mean only one thing: I get to buy stationery!

Writing about heat waves in a heat wave. I brought this entirely upon myself. (I pitched this article idea when it was a more reasonable temperature)

Horrifying to read how the ebola outbreak is worsening in large part due to aid cuts and a drastic lack of water infrastructure. Aid cuts impede efforts to to track virus spread as well as care and water infrastructure issues endangers control efforts. There is no vax for this strain

Writing about heatwaves and climate resilient buildings from a coworking space that isn't exactly built for London summers. No air conditioning, top floor. Hot desking indeed.

I wrote about how teachers across the world are still very attached to the idea that each student has a preferred learning style. The experts I spoke with are finding out why this is, and how teachers can offer students a mix of learning tools. Read and/or listen at boldscience.org/why-is-the-l...

I've been kind of following this because I'm fascinated by complicated connections: Japan has been disproportionately affected by the US-Iran conflict, even though it's far away from both countries, because they rely on imports for oil and more than 80% of it goes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Don't tell the AI, but I think I found a word that flags something as human-written: Secondly It's not a great word, but I've only ever seen it in writing from real human students or academics. (Probably because editors edit out every "secondly" before the text ever gets to the AI scraping pile!)

New EFSJ webinar for science journalists: "Beyond the corona: what science journalists should look at in a total solar eclipse" June 30 16:00 CET (that's 15:00 in the UK) efsj.eu/2026/06/14/e...

I've registered for the European Conference of Science Journalism! Who else is going? (I'll repost this in the morning when everyone is awake...) #scicomm #sciencejournalism wissenswerte.wpk.org/en/program-2...

I've registered for the European Conference of Science Journalism! Who else is going? (I'll repost this in the morning when everyone is awake...) #scicomm #sciencejournalism wissenswerte.wpk.org/en/program-2...

While this all sounds fascinating, I need everyone to back up a couple of steps and please explain why we are asking AI to tell stories in the first place. It's just casually mentioned here as a thing that people do? WHY? Have you all LOST YOUR MINDS? Stories are meant to be told BY HUMANS!

I'm glad I could rarely be bothered to do the scan tasks. At the time, even when people considered what the data could be used for, we would imagine it was for things like delivery robots. And maybe that's what Niantic originally intended, but then they sold it :( dronexl.co/2026/06/09/p...

This just means that future PhD students will be expected to do 10x of what recent PhD grads had to do. I already had to do much more work than people a generation before me, who seem to have gotten entire degrees based on sequencing a few genes.

New Mixture! It's about Nature's TikTok account, and why I should probably be making more videos, but that's hard, so I just typed a newsletter about it instead. open.substack.com/pub/mixture/...

New Mixture! It's about Nature's TikTok account, and why I should probably be making more videos, but that's hard, so I just typed a newsletter about it instead. open.substack.com/pub/mixture/...

This plan involved transporting US citizens with known exposure to ebola (e.g. from DRC) into Kenya (instead of repatriating). So moving them to a 3rd country, as part of a plan to... *checks notes* limit international spread. No, that's making the international spread WORSE! That's MORE countries!

Remember during the winter Olympics this year, when a Dutch speed skater crashed into another skater? Well, his brother just won the Gloucester cheese rolling competition this week.

Voice actors are facing the same issues as writers, but it should hopefully be easier to prove that an AI voice is directly trained on a recognizable human voice than it is to prove based on writing.

Make any comment about the evil of AI on the internet and you will inevitably get people saying, "Ah, but you can't halt progress." You know what else people thought was progress not long after it came into common use? Asbestos. www.tom-cox.com/in-the-villa...

Reviewers in two groups were given identical resumes for Emily Clarke and James Clarke and told they had used AI. Emily's was 2x as likely to raise doubts about competence. "She can't even write a CV herself." But James "just needed a bit of help." fortune.com/2026/05/10/i...

Solved mystery: Sometimes I see people reminiscing about having been taught to type two spaces after a period. (Or after a full stop, if they're British). I do not remember this AT ALL, even though I'm older than some of the people talking about this. Am I from an alternate timeline, or....(1/5)

I'm planning to buy gazpacho ingredients on my way home. I haven't made it in many months. I remember how to make it, and can visualise all the ingredients. One of the ingredients is a leafy green herb but I cannot remember if the herb I'm picturing is parsley or coriander/cilantro. Help?

New Mixture! In which I discuss Lonni Besançon's Nature Careers article about science journalism, as well as the new @royalsociety.org report on public engagement (and @jackstilgoe.bsky.social's comments) and of course some recent science news pieces. #scicomm mixture.substack.com/p/how-scienc...

A NEW TWIST in Africa's soaring solar story: It's now manufacturing its own panels. The factories use imported Chinese cells, which are 40% of the value of panels, keeping much of the value domestically. 9 GW of cells+wafers in Mar/Apr alone🧵

Tell publishers to keep the news in the Wayback Machine: www.savethearchive.com/newsleaders/

I have never done so badly at Connections. Even with the answers shown I still hadn't heard of a lot of these. It's....VERY American today. Connections Puzzle #1075 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟩🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟨🟨 🟪🟪🟨🟩 🟪🟪🟩🟨

I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?

Epidemiologists -- I need your help! Are there any examples of previous #ebola outbreaks where cases were first flagged by humanitarian workers, who then alerted health officials? I'm hearing a lot about the importance of informal surveillance of humanitarian work, and am looking for examples.

Registration for this closes today because the venue needs numbers. #scicomm #london #sciencejournalism

BREAKING NEWS: One student has died and two are ill in #meningitis outbreak in Reading, UK. Eliza Gil explains what we know so far, the symptoms to look for & what #vaccines are available: www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/n... #PublicHealth

This was an excellent session at the Summer school last year that is coming back as a standalone workshop due to popular demand. Make sure to register if you missed it last year!

Another meningitis outbreak in the UK, this time in Reading: www.bbc.com/news/article...

The story feels tailor-made for Bluesky

Reposting for my Canadian friends. (Who are just about waking up right now)

Rewriting my CV to fit within a character limit and I'm realising that I've just done way too much stuff (and that most of my affiliations have stupidly long names.)

Reposting for my Canadian friends. (Who are just about waking up right now)

I'm doing an online course but I got to a point where I need to set aside 90 uninterrupted minutes for an assignment and I don't know if my attention span has that option anymore. (Also, I'm home alone and expecting a package delivery, so I can't start until after they've been.)

Had convos w/ multiple people in the past 4 days who DID NOT KNOW that 1. AI doesn't "think" or know anything; it's a probability machine 2. It was created using massive amounts of work stolen from actual people including me 3. The environmental costs are astronomical Spread the word, every time!

It’s David Attenborough’s birthday today, on the very day that I had to publish a Mixture issue. How convenient! :) I share my favourite clips and link to some more birthday celebrations online. open.substack.com/pub/mixture/...

Hitting your printer with a hammer: 2026: entirely reasonable and probably justified. 1926: assault with a deadly weapon

The type of virus in this outbreak has been confirmed as Andes hantavirus by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, South Africa & the Geneva University Hospitals, Switzerland.

🚢🦠 New case in Swizterland – “previously a passenger on the cruise ship on which several cases of hantavirus occurred”, “returned from a trip to South America with his wife at the end of April.” – Now in isolation; his wife, too, as a precaution Full story: www.bluewin.ch/en/news/swit...

Great story. This is a perfect ourobouros -- AI-makers desperately need to hoard data for training but their own data centers' needs are crowding out the public resources that preserve the data.

Cruise ships are hotbeds for anything infectious. Lots of people in a small space all interacting with each other and within the same environment.

Last year, @absw.bsky.social Young Science Writer of the Year (and secondary school student) Hasset Kifle already covered the link between shoes and running records. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...