For anyone interested in vikings: a symposium on the impact of the viking Great Army, to be held at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge on 24 April 2026.

Things you can only see before dawn: - Mercury - Venus - England batting

This garbage is what we’re up against. I have seen multiple families who have received ‘stem cell therapy’ for their child with autism and intellectual disability. Not well-off families, probably spending 5-figure sums. These bottom-feeding influencer scum are preying on the desperate.

The origin of 'pedigree'. This type of C12 figure (not a family tree but a way of calculating relatedness – the titles of various relatives have not been put in the circles) looked like a crane's foot, thought medieval folk. So 'pied de grue' and hence 'pedigree'. Source in alt.

New issue of Studies in Late Antiquity Vol. 9, No. 4 (2025) online.ucpress.edu/SLA/issue/9/4 Paleoscience and the Study of Late Antiquity @ucpress.bsky.social @janetekay.bsky.social @shakenbeck.bsky.social @r-c-jackson.bsky.social

people are actually very susceptible to just-so stories about human origins because listening to bullshit helped us survive on the savanna

Want to walk into and through an actual Iron Age house…and UP THE STAIRS? Of course you bloody do. Come with me. Carn Liath broch, just sitting quietly beside the A9 as thousands whizz by without stopping. Their mistake. Far too excited to wait for #HillfortsWednesday

Hard missing the old twitter days. It’s a bit icky that a lot of interactions amongst academics now happens on linkedin… eventhough bluesky could absolutely be the twitter of old, people just aren’t engaging like they used to. Hope it changes…

As I told the CNN, without details and data it is not possible to assess the claims. More importantly, the scientific value of this media campaign, balanced against the possible stigmatization of individuals with these real conditions today, is highly questionable. edition.cnn.com/2025/11/13/s...

This, like all supposed resolutions of the Fermi paradox, fails because it explains only why _some_ alien civilizations may not have come here. A successful resolution must apply to _all_ aliens in the galaxy, now and in the past, bearing in mind the number of planets in the galaxy and its age.

Can I just say that getting an automatic "I'm away, please contact my PA" when you reply directly to someone is fucking irritating. Mail clients should block sending when auto-reply is on.

A great 40th anniversary event for the Anglo-Irish Agreement at @chuarchives.bsky.social. A unique panel of Irish & GB negotiators: Michael Lillis, Dick Spring, Sean Donlon, Charles Powell. Moving to see deep respect & lasting friendships between "opposing" teams; very thankful for the later peace.

Get outside into a dark place if you can tonight - no guarantees, but a possible brilliant display of the northern lights.

Going through my dad’s collection of books. Found this software management book from 1973, before my time, and struck by how rational the project structure works. Forget agile and scrum.

Darwin is thrilled to welcome its first cohort of students as part of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Programme. Congratulations to Jacqueline, Abubakar, Esther, Samson, Ruquaiya and Isaac! We wish you all the best with your studies. www.darwin.cam.ac.uk/news/welcome...

One for #HillFortsWednesday Lego hillfort at the Museum of the Iron Age, Andover

I learn from my students of the Icelandic Saga map: hours of fun! sagamap.hi.is/is/

🌟 Ready to take the next step in your career? Applications are open for the Cambridge Biosciences Doctoral Training Programme! 🔬 ➡️ Fully funded opportunities: supported by the BBSRC Learn more and apply now: bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk/how-apply #Postgraduate #Cambridge #PhD

Come and join us here in Cambridge! Applications open for a new faculty position, for a researcher in computational and/or theoretical biology, based jointly in Genetics and Mathematics. Happy to answer questions about research, teaching and working here. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/faculty...

To celebrate the publication of the paper about GHIST 2024, the 2025 Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament has been extended to December 1st, 2025. Read about the 2024 competition in Molecular Biology and Evolution: doi.org/10.1093/molb... And join the 2025 competition at ghist.bio!

This is out now: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Association between lactase persistence and height in the past (indicating people with the persistence allele were better nourished by drinking milk than those without it) provides a potential explanation for why it was under strong selection.

OK, I have set up a Substack and posted an article there going into much more detail about Francis Crick and the poet Michael McClure. If the link between science and art is your thing, or you just like psychedelic poetry, have a read:

Difficult to believe a sentient being could have written this headline.

A negotiation expert running for Congress (full disclosure: I’m married to him) explains exactly how bad the deal was that some Dems struck last night. www.facebook.com/share/v/1FPD...

Read ‘Complex de novo structural variants are an underestimated cause of rare disorders’ from @sangerinstitute.bsky.social, @genomicsengland.bsky.social, @cuh.nhs.uk and collaborators in @natcomms.nature.com here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

That Roman database of roads that's been in the news: treat with some caution.

Okay, here are some first reflections on Watson. Watson's life is a tragedy, really of Shakespearean proportions. He did not, as most bios will tell you, do one great thing when he was young and then collect laurels for it for the next 60 years. His career arc was unlike any in science.

Bluetorial-Jim Watson I met Jim Watson a few times but did not know him well. However, I was greatly influenced by his book “The Double Helix”. He was a complicated human being with some very, very bad features, but some good contributions. What follows is my personal perspective. 1/41

These brave men. The end of Scott’s last expedition. Read these diary entries; they will sober you up.

Labour MP, “I’ve never heard of Zohran Mamdani.”

If I see one more stupid Rosalind Franklin take I'm going to lose my mind. Thank god for @matthewcobb.bsky.social and @nccomfort.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

On the event of James Watson's death, I highly recommend this 2023 commentary from @matthewcobb.bsky.social and Nathaniel Comfort with crucial new insights into the discovery of the double helix. (And also check out Cobb's brand new biography of Francis Crick) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A high-resolution digital map allows people to plan their routes along the ancient roads of the Roman Empire go.nature.com/4qMYGRw

‘Epigenetic serum’ makes you wonder !

Dublin Bay at dusk.

New preprint from another part of my PhD! 📝👇 Some mutations arise after fertilisation 🧬, so early they can appear in both a parent’s body and their germ cells. By analysing family trio genomes 👪, we built one of the largest catalogues of these “hidden” inherited variants yet. tinyurl.com/mvns2ytv

Darwin alumna and President of the UK Space Trade Association Dr Alice Bunn will present the story of the International Space Station as it marks its 25th anniversary. Out of This World: 25 Years of the ISS will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 8pm on Saturday 1 Nov. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

The tomb of Sir Edmund Goldyng and his wife Elizabeth Fleming (I bet it was his idea), in the grounds of St. Peter's Church, Drogheda. This effigy dates from the 16th century. It is known as a ‘cadaver tomb’ and depicts the decomposing bodies in their burial shrouds. #Ireland #SpéirGhorm #Samhain

Political scientist Charles "Bell Curve" Murray has at last found God, finding evidence for divinity in the existence of consciousness and terminal lucidity: phenomena that we don't (yet) understood. Steve Pinker and Michael Shermer criticize Murray's latest contentions. bit.ly/4huVCFr

New podcast, in which I explain why the Battle of Hastings doesn't feature in my new book on eleventh-century Europe 💅 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/1...

That's the award for comical headline of the year decided. www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

Let's talk about the grotesque Führerprinzip sweeping Republican institutions. With receipts. This is one of my favorite documents from the Reagan Library: a White Paper prepared for him that led up to one of the ideas he was most impassioned about, a "North American Free Trade Area."... 1/x

It was a pleasure for the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta to host a visit from the Ambassador of Ireland to Malta, Caroline Whelan.

This usage also really confused me when I first encountered it, and I still dislike it!

Anecdotally I'm seeing a big increase in postgraduate applications here in Cambridge. Unfortunately no big increase in funding for them though.. :(

Wow. Harvard nuking its PhD programs - Science PhD admissions reduced by more than 75% - Arts & Humanities reduced by about 60% - Social Sciences by 50–70% - History by 60% - Biology by 75% - The German department will lose all PhD seats - Sociology from six PhD students to zero

Serious questions for the Wellcome Trust and Wellcome Leap to answer here. Allocating $50m to microbiome pseudoscience is bad enough. But things get alarmingly murky when you notice that the Program Director is working on commercial microbiomics products.

In a new paper led by Jiaqi Yang we trace the distribution of Denisovan introgressed DNA in ancient modern human genomes over time. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Take note of all these people turning out for protests in small towns in red states. Remember them the next time you’re inclined to write an area off because “they voted for this.”