My post today is a (first?) #metaphor and discourse analysis of #peptides for wellness/woo makingsciencepublic.com/2026/03/06/p...

Reminds me of Swift’s Modest Proposal.

A quite extraordinary thread.🧵 Not exactly a secret that the Sun is a mouthpiece for the racist right, but the sheer extent of its misrepresentation & lying here is mind-boggling. The Sun's relationship w the truth (it has no interest in it) now feels close to Nazi rag Der Stürmer in 1930s Germany.

Pleased to say that two images I designed for the BRAID Museums and Heritage resource (sites.google.com/sheffield.ac...) are now featured in the "Better Images of AI" collection - a project curating graphics for AI that avoids the usual humanoids, blue grids, and binary sequences. Available here:

6 key dilemmas as human embryo models get ever closer to the real thing. Research is proceeding without enough attention on ethical issues www.statnews.com/2026/03/03/h... My latest @statnews.com column #stemcells #IVF

Aspiring writers! The folk at Wollaton Hall (aka Batman’s house) are running an event for young people hoping for a career in writing I’ll be there to talk history & non-fiction, alongside brilliant children's authors, poets, & novelists 🗓️ 10 March, 4–7pm wollatonhall.org.uk/writing-for-...

A brilliant detail in this piece Ben Delo told @isaacbarbosa1.bsky.social his first contribution to the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences was 2 or 3 years ago, when he helped them buy some “very special chalk that comes from Japan” that is the “absolute best” for writing on blackboards

Timeline synchronicity. I hope they bring you coffee Tamsin!

Here we are: "Almost 60 heads of university departments in physics and related disciplines have told science minister Lord P. Vallance that the cuts will damage the UK’s scientific standing" #UKRI 🧪🔭 Top academics warn UK physics cuts threaten effort to boost economy www.ft.com/content/a235...

Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez: “Today more than ever, it is essential to remember that one can be against a hateful regime as is the case with the Iranian regime…and at the same time be against an unjustified, dangerous military intervention outside of international law.”

This might be of interest to cog scientists at large - quote from one of Nick Enfield's recent article mentioned in the podcast overview: "while concepts are indeed mental objects, they function as choice architectures in the dynamic flow of situated language usage"

The whole point of people getting trains is flexibility. This will create huge problems for business travel. I bet some companies will try to push the cancel fee onto staff if they're ill on the day. Plus £40 million sounds big but overall ticket revenues are £12 billion, so it's 0.33% of costs.

I'm addicted to these videos from a bakery in Uzbekistan this bread is beautiful

"Not only do people have preconceived views of AI, but it also turns out that AI itself can be driven by AI-infused viewpoints that shape what the AI opts to do." Interesting twist in the AI-metaphor story discussed here by Lance Eliot here www.forbes.com/sites/lancee...

Chronic ocean heating fuels ‘staggering’ loss of marine life, study finds. Fish levels fall by 7.2% with as little as 0.1C of warming per decade, northern hemisphere research shows www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Of note for Canadians with a British parent: “We also have the group that are now considered dual citizens because their parents were born in the U.K., who have always been Canadian citizens, that under these rules technically now need to apply for a U.K. passport.”"

When will the UK government wake up to the wholesale destruction of HE that's happening? This affects towns and cites across the UK, our businesses, the NHS, schools, young people, our global standing, everything! Higher Education, Universities, contribute over £265 BILLION to the economy.

Last shout-out for my post on #AI, #metaphor and #magic! makingsciencepublic.com/2026/02/27/m...

This is very good. Economics focused, but generalises to pretty much everything. A lack of societal trust is very expensive - to the least advantaged most of all.

This week's post is about #AI, #metaphors and magic, and, inspired by @davemurrayrust.bsky.social and @mlucel.bsky.social, how to deal with the enchantment through design makingsciencepublic.com/2026/02/27/m...

This week's post is about #AI, #metaphors and magic, and, inspired by @davemurrayrust.bsky.social and @mlucel.bsky.social, how to deal with the enchantment through design makingsciencepublic.com/2026/02/27/m...

I am reading, or rather chuckling through, an 'old' book, from 2007, by Daniel Kehlmann "Measuring the World" about the exploits of Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss - they were as mad as a box of frogs! (I now have to read it again in German to see how mad they are in that language)

I enjoyed talking with @kensycoop.bsky.social on the Many Minds podcast about the metaphors we use to conceptualize AI. manyminds.libsyn.com/seven-metaph...

The urgent plea of @garymarcus.bsky.social demands rapid action: the US Military, in the hands of fascists, seeks to bend Anthropic to the knee in the aims of incorporating AI into military weaponry. Gary asks us to call our political representatives right now. I just did. Now it's your turn.

Nottingham move to cut academics' protected research time to 25%, as staff-student ratios rise, brings strong warning from the UCU branch - this "threatens Nottingham's status as a research-intensive institution".

"Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill!" —Flann O'Brien, after reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Top tips on how to successfully lobby a minister: 1. Be their mum. The End.

Always a joy to find a piece by Kathryn Schulz in the latest New Yorker. This article (nay, meditation) on Richard Holmes’ new biography of Tennyson is quite wonderful. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

I think it's a problem for the wider public that there are so few books talking about how science is done and the lives of those who do it. occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald...

Seems sensible and accurate.

wow

Are you doing work related to how we communicate about #AMR? JCOM is calling for abstracts for a new special issue on this topic! We are looking for innovative empirical work, reflective practice insights and expert insights. Details at jcom.sissa.it/news/46/ #SciComm

Anthropic is evil, but it is the least evil of the companies. That Shithead is trying to strongarm them into being more evil says a lot.

Just a couple more days before the submission deadline for this event.

#AI #scicomm

Influencers are promoting peptides for better health. What does the science say? www.npr.org/2026/02/23/n... Chatting with NPR on unproven peptides that could be more bad things than any chance of even one good thing @sarahboden.bsky.social

Covid, 5 years on: "The mRNA vaccines prevented millions of deaths. [...] Masks worked. And as with every pandemic in recent history, subsequent reviews have found that the advice to go early and hard with containment was correct." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

so you've probably heard about the London measles outbreak. A lot of people are talking about anti-vax misinformation, but that's not actually the problem here. The problem is austerity. 🧵

What if science showed up where people already are? Like in a bar! "Plötzlich Wissen!" (Sudden Knowledge!) shares 7 years of hard-won lessons in guerrilla #scicomm Packed with practical tips for scientists wanting to reach beyond the choir - doi.org/10.22323/167... @schroep.bsky.social

I took a deep look at AlphaGenome: what it can and can't do, how it was reported, and the perils of supposing that AI is going to solve our most difficult problems in science and tech. www.marginaliareviewofbooks.com/post/alpha-g...

This potentially warrants equal, if not greater, attention at the moment.

#scicomm #AI #AIslop

Feeling quite patriotic. This is what equality under the law is meant to look like.

Part of the reason this is all so tiresome is that what we're calling AI is a political project combining a bunch of preexisting sociotechical processes designed to shift power from the masses to the managerial class. A non-exhaustive list in no particular order:

Meanwhile

Analogy and metaphor galore! I was interviewed by the @nightsciencepod.bsky.social podcast about metaphor and analogy in science: open.spotify.com/episode/1hqU... Pairs well with @sflusberg.bsky.social's interview on metaphor on the @manymindspod.bsky.social podcast disi.org/the-aura-of-...

I tried to toss a pancake once, But found it quite impossible. Now, maybe I am just a dunce, But IS a pancake tossable?

Will the rain ever stop?

Last week I wrote a blog post on the Moltbook spectacle of 'autonomous' 'AI' 'agents', which nobody read. So I have now turned it into a podcast with NotebookLM so that nobody can listen to it. It's quite fun though. You can find it at the top of blog post makingsciencepublic.com/2026/02/13/m...

Since a handful of hate filled people protested outside RNLI HQ yesterday because they're angry that crews don't discriminate in their rescues and work to save all lives at sea you might want to show your support with a one off or regular donation. rnli.org/pages/ig/new...