I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

This is brilliant. Watch it all. youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?...

Kash Patel today: "You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want." Really?

This March 1965 Herblock cartoon about police violence against civil rights activists has added relevance today.

New story out now from @lightspeedmagazine.com! This one is all about how it feels to work in higher education these days. Spoiler: it feels extremely bad, like “what if your university signed a compact with the actual devil and now there’s an unbreakable curse” levels of bad 🫠

The science behind Walking With Dinosaurs! Curator on our excavations at the largest ankylosaur bonebed this week at Science Thursday. You’ll learn about discoveries that weren’t featured in last year’s BBC/PBS documentary including some that are rewriting the books on armored dinosaur biology!

Nikki Glaser calls out CBS News at the Golden Globes while it’s being broadcast on CBS. “And the award for Most Editing goes to CBS News. Yes, CBS News, America’s newest place to see B.S. News.”

Gullible, easily-misled dolts

It’s beyond insane that our overarching internal security agency has spent months tweeting barely-coded messages of support for neo-Nazi groups and the entire media apparatus looks at it and says “That’s odd but certainly not part a major story that is relevant to current events, I’m sure”

January 6, 2021 was the most shameful day in American history. It should live in infamy. We will never forget it, and we will not let the nation or the world forget — despite the revisionism of Trump and his lackeys in the Republican Party.

#FossilFriday (or at least #BiologicallyMediatedSedimentaryStructureFriday) One of the North Pole Dome, Australia, Paleoarchean stromatolites

[December 26th, 1925] A Princeton scientist found the first Cambrian vertebrate fossil, a fish scale named Eoichthys howelli. Found in Vermont and confirmed by experts, it is the earliest known chordate and fills a major gap in the fossil record.

Watch it before it gets taken down 60 Minutes CECOT video. www.yahoo.com/news/videos/...

I'm thrilled to earn the endorsement of Bernie Sanders. "Enough is enough. We need members of Congress who have the guts to demand that the billionaire class start paying their fair share of taxes. Nate’s values and courage make him the clear choice." -Sen. Bernie Sanders

Ceratopsian Wall Fridge Magnets! Available at Scaled Beast! #dinosaur #paleoart #sciart

THREAD 👇

This PSA to active Military Dems put out: bsky.app/profile/slot...

Remember the plastic surgeon in Utah who threw away Covid-19 vaccines, giving kids saline shots instead, and selling faked vax cards? Pam Bondi just dismissed all charges. RFK Jr. says the guy deserves a medal for his "commitment to healing!" More ignorance and broken oaths.

More than 2 million oil and gas wells sit unplugged in the U.S., many leaking contaminants into waterways, farmland and neighborhoods. Time and time again, oil companies have walked away — leaving taxpayers to pay for cleanup. Here’s how. (Published Dec. 2024)

The Smell Test

Del Toro's new Frankenstein adaption reimagines Mary Shelley's 1818 Gothic novel. Frankenstein was like a tech bro: "creating something without considering the consequences," he explains.

This #fossilfriday, we move in time to the #Permian when the #amphibian Seymouria sanjuanensis lived in what is New Mexico today. Clusters of large animals like this one are rarely found in the #fossil record, especially this well preserved. Photo: Amy Henrici

For #fossilfriday here is the Golden Gate walrus - a partial snout and tusk of a walrus dredged from late Pleistocene sediments on the seafloor below the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco! This is the southernmost record of modern walrus in the eastern Pacific. On display @calacademy.bsky.social

Worth listening to @techwontsave.us on how news is increasingly consumed through social media and now "AI" platforms www.techwontsave.us/episode/288_... and then reading this BBC piece...

mRNA 🧬 vaccines - but not other kinds - trigger an innate response that can allow the immune system to 'see' and attack tumours, animal studies suggest 🧪 If true, the covid vaccines should do this - and now we have the first evidence this is so www.newscientist.com/article/2500...

It's a good time to lean into using Wikipedia as your first point of call for researching stuff. It certainly shouldn't be your last, but it's always a great jumping-off point, with links aplenty.

Instead of standing on the sidewalk waving a sign, Hubs and I went about our morning spreading the word at a packed local breakfast joint and busy grocery store. Quite a few side-eyed looks and muttered disapprovals. HA! Here’s to making those who avoided the protest downtown see me!! #NoKings

Axolotls for democracy. #nokings #saltlakecity

#nokings #saltlakecity

Just so we’re clear…

A Mighty Wind

Good morning 🌞

Damnation, why did I only just see this *today*, Brian.

I'm not making this up. LLMs always will. Says the math.

The antivax destruction coming from RFK Jr is unspeakably bad. Many many people will die. Babies will be harmed for life. Unspeakably. Bad. Impeach RFK before it’s too late, Congress.

They seem to think we recruit, indoctrinate, train and meet every other weekend to dress up in tactical gear and engage in exercises to prep to kill fellow Americans We apparently even have membership lists and strict lines of authority That’s not Antifa. That’s Trump’s idiot America

Charlie Company stevebrodner.substack.com

A deep dive into the destruction of US cancer research by @jonathanmahler.bsky.social “It’s an absolutely unmitigated disaster,” a former top official at NIH told him. “It will take decades to recover from this, if we ever do.” Gift link: nyti.ms/48iH3Cr

"Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm about a bill in the US House of Representatives that they fear could allow Secretary of State Marco Rubio to strip US citizens of their passports based purely on political speech."

Or maybe round them up and gas them. In chambers. More efficient And these malignant turds wonder why we call them Nazis

Their beliefs are ugly Their policies are ugly Their souls are ugly Their leader is ugly

This man will not be fired for calling for the murder of American citizens, yet multiple journalists/reporters/teachers lost their job for accurately reporting things Charlie Kirk actually said and stood for. But it’s the “violent left” that’s the problem

“If we are to have another contest in the future of our national existence I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason & Dixon . . . but between patriotism & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other." —U.S. Grant

Watching all these centrist pundits stress the “civility” of Charlie Kirk’s style without addressing the ugliness of his substance is giving me a renewed appreciation of how the civil, polite White Citizens’ Councils conned the same crowd into thinking they were distinct from the cruder Klan.

There is mounting evidence that indicates that Long COVID is a complex condition that continues to affect the health of millions of people worldwide. Browse this collection of Long COVID research from Communications Medicine. #medsky 🧪

Found a nice resource for feather identification. Cooper's hawk primary feather from our driveway.

Delish. Utah Republicans tried to get a judge to delay her order to redraw the state’s gerrymandered House districts, arguing it was too late to do so. The judge told them that there was plenty of time…and cited Texas’ recent redistricting as an example of why. www.pbs.org/newshour/amp...