The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2025 #NobelPeacePrize to Maria Corina Machado for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy

"Asking enslaved people if they actually want to work the plantations for free would kill the cotton industry." -- Nick Clegg #AI #aicon #exploitation #bigtech

Head hits desk.

Nobel prize for chemistry shared by #palestinian - Jordanian - American born to refugee parents. Anyone gonna tell #trump? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_M._Yaghi

Talked to my friend who is furloughed from an intel agency on Sunday. Told her to enjoy her furlough and that she'll get paid when it's over. She snorted and said, "Yeah maybe." Every federal worker - including those now working without paying, like TSA - need to know the dictator's plan is to […]

Trump urges mediators to 'move fast' as key Gaza peace talks set to begin Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes continued in Gaza, despite Trump telling Israel to "immediately stop the bombing" on Friday after Hamas responded to the proposed plan. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj3y6g43248o

We utterly condemn what appears to have been an arson attack on a mosque in Peacehaven.

Fernando Salvaterra on BlueSky(@salvaterra.bsky.social) posted sketches of all 32 minerals competing in this year's Mineral Cup. #mincup25 #minerals

And here are color versions of the 32 minerals in #mincup25 placed on the bracket. Winner #Kyanite, runner up #tugtupite Drawings by Fernando Salvaterra on BlueSky(@salvaterra.bsky.social)

Holy hell. When even Palantir is worried about reputational damage then you know it's a bad idea.

Geological timescales FTW

I wrote a short piece for the Observer on the attacks in Manchester. observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

First they came for the schools, then the hospitals, then the food, even the seed bank was not safe. https://globalvoices.org/2025/08/07/israel-destroys-palestines-last-surviving-seed-bank-echoing-a-colonial-legacy-of-erasure/ #palestine #israel #food #genocide

An Audit of the #anu accounts show … surprise, surprise … that there is no black hole and the ANU in fact made a $90m profit in 2023-24. ————— Quote: To be clear, as a government owned, not-for-profit entity, the ANU is under no pressure to maximise its profits so that it can maximise […]

"We have a message for Elon Musk. Get the hell out of our politics and our country.” Ed Milliband, U.K. Energy Secretary. #ukpolitics https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-government-ed-miliband-elon-musk-get-out-of-our-country/

Labour has a chance now to turn a corner and win support from people who want it to succeed. Or it can continue with this type of vicious populist filth and alienate everyone. It's your call guys. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.” ― Jane Goodall 💙 RIP to a real one. My childhood hero

This morning, I wrote that that shutdown would make Russ Vought visible in a way he was not, to normies, and might become a villain like Elon Musk was w/DOGE. Since then, he has stepped on his dick several times. www.emptywheel.net/2025/10/01/a...

I regret to inform you that Royal Society has dropped the ball on Elon Musk once again. Whether they like it or not, these spineless bootlickers have endorsed or at least lent their credibility to are now complicit with any violence that Musk incites […]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@luddchem/115112613957881783 Good news the DOI link now works. You go to the paper and no longer get "404 Not Found"

693 new Crystallography Open Database entries were added to CrystalWorks during September This brought the total to 528,309 There is open access to the CrystalWorks implemention of the COD via the server at Daresbury. Those at a UK acacemic institution can also register as a user and also […]

@gilduran Gil’s reporting should be the topic of pastors at theologians all over America. Certainly his ideas are bankrupt, but consider the wealth and power of the individual who can perpetrate their own folly on the rest of the world. Everyone is subject to folly. The super rich differ in […]

Headline: Trump says he’s out for justice, not revenge, but he’s a liar.

Killed seeking food - Jeremy Bowen on Abdullah's shooting and Gaza's lethal aid system - BBC News - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75qr0gk0yqo

Apparently, it’s socially unacceptable to compare anyone or anything to Hitler. Mention Hitler, and you’ll be shouted down with a chorus of “Godwin’s Law”. Well sod that. Until we start comparing Trump to Hitler, we’re unprepared for what is barrelling towards us. 🧵1/4

He is their Horst Wessel.

Updated bracket. #MinCup25 ⚒️ sci-fi 🧪 🖖🏼 scifi Geosciences #WomenInSTEM geology 🔭🪐

#Tugtupite is our second sodalite-structure (after #Haüyne). FInch et al. (2016) investigated the sources of color from point defects, bonds, and coordination in the #sodalite cage structure. Tugupite is different, due to the beryllium substitution by also […] [Original post on fosstodon.org]

Having AI crammed down our throats is bullshit, but machine learning has some real uses in science. This awesome page shows experimental cyclone track forecasts from Google DeepMind and Google Research's AI weather models, along with forecasts from ECMWF. 😍 deepmind.google.com/science/weat...

CPJ - Israel’s targeted strikes on two newspaper offices in Yemen’s capital, which killed 31 journalists and media support workers, is the second deadliest single attack on the press ever recorded […]

From Jonathan Freedland - The Guardian "But the Trump administration is not confining its assault to the media. The Kirk killing has handed it an opportunity to crack down on dissent itself" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/19/donald-trump-us-abyss-nigel-farage-britain

From things I've seen recently, I think many people would benefit from reading this. It's short, and it's free. 👉 rdcu.be/dbFbB

Jeremy Bowen: UN genocide report a blunt indictment of Israel's actions in Gaza - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0m4rxjppl8o

Repost from: Mika McKinnon @mikamckinnon.bsky.social‬ Prefer bio to geo? Thbbbpft, but also: 1. #ikaite towers are a globally-unique ecosystem with cool critters! https://arctichub.gl/unique-mineral-columns-in-ikkafjord-are-thriving-again/ (includes video). Bonus: They’re currently doing ok […]

I want to stress, *everyone* must be safe and must feel safe. Anything that even passively but intentionally makes people feel unsafe is unexceptable. Sadly, that seems to be common again, and intentionally so. You cannot spread hate when people feel unsafe. Basic human behavior. So, next […]

Encountering the fascists outside Waterloo iandunt.substack.com/p/encounteri...

FFS

Am I to understand that after arresting many hundreds of quiet people holding signs under "terrorism" legislation over the past few weeks, after hours of "significant aggression" and "unacceptable violence" today the police arrested a total of NINE people? How reassuring that the new Home […]

@mike What a comparison. Clegg versus Berners-Lee!

When Nick Clegg was a VP at Facebook, Nadine Dorries called him demanding he take down tweets by Vladimir Putin, and he had to explain that Twitter was a different company to Facebook. Wow […]

@egonw Must admit I have not given up looking for any Danish Chemical Society contacts. Does it still exist?

Titanite forms in high pressure & temperature environments associated with metamorphism, & is an indicator mineral used to infer the geological history of its formation. Its beautiful crystals have a wide range of colors due to the variety of REE it can store in its crystal lattice. More 👇🏼 #MinCup25

A very disturbing thing I missed in researching this week's column. Three of the four junktank ultras hired by Labour to groom civil servants are named in this investigation of a Westminster network involving the disgraced eugenicist Andrew Sabisky. investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/andrew-sabis...

Astonishingly, I've discovered, the Tufton Street junktanks that shaped Liz Truss's agenda are still operating at the heart of government. Remind me what we voted for again ... This week's column. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

@egonw Just to clarify the Acta Chem. Scand. archive is now full accessible via the link: https://actachemscand.org/ On that site there is free access all the individual articles as PDF files. All the articles have been assigned DOIs but all links generated fail with "404 Not Found" like this […]

https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/07/googles_ai_cites_written_by_ai/ so ai is going great

de Adder. 🎯