📢New paper alert: 🍄 Friendly #fungi hijack #plant regulator to promote #symbiosis - study uncovers #mechanism that helps fungi to colonize plant #roots 👉 Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41... @an-pocheng.bsky.social @carogutj.bsky.social

If plant-based foods must be more honest, let’s do the same for meat – fancy some ‘cow muscle’? | Deirdra Barr www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... Some good points here. But I would then expect/demand that all food be labelled as Genetically Modified. Because of practically ALL* FOOD we eat

Great. Can we now move on to the monarchy?

Our dependency on fossil fuels makes us vulnerable. Wars across the world are pushing up prices for households in the UK. Why keep waiting for the next crisis? We need to transition to clean power as fast as we can to protect people and our economy. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

New Dispatch article on the multitude of fungal symbionts now being reported in lichens, led by @puginiercamille.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A Sunday afternoon walk.... These are some fungi we found. Yellow Rust on wheat

We need safe and legal routes for refugees. George Monbiot explains what’s often missing in the debate about asylum seekers and refugees: "My worry is that we end up talking about what's good for us and forget about what's good for people."

This just keeps on coming back around forever doesn't it (and then we have to point out all the issues with grammars yet again) - selecting by "ability" often means selecting by wealth, and outcomes are worse for the kids outside of grammars - we should care about them too.

Damn right they shouldn't. The small boats are dangerous, and a way for criminals to make money out of people's misery. I suggest they should be giving them a voucher to use on a ferry, or Eurostar. Together with a work permit, if they are old enough to work

"Critical shortage of micro violins prevents national orchestra from playing"

Envy? I long for the days where most will disdain parents who choose a private education for their children. A failure: that they have to buy success, because if their insecurities. I also long for the time when private education is outlawed, as a divisive socially malign institution.

Genuine question: why do we (ie the UK) "have" Akrotiri. Don't give me the history. I mean, why are we still there as a military base? (Same goes for Diego Garcia)

Looks like we have solved the demographic problems caused by too little migration at a stroke...

How long before she defects to Reform? That seems like her real home

Another dinosaur here reposting this

Ok. It is now clear: Mahmood must go.

So, there are still some Lab politicians with their head screwed on the right way up. Labour must cease taking progressive voters for granted, says Sadiq Khan www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

"The levels of illegal migration are putting immense strain on our country". A simple solution: make it legal. Let migrants work and contribute to our society, as the majority of them probably do. Like the rest of us...

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026... I am not Muslim. This alienates me too. It's the whole cabinet who needs to review and repent. They are trashing all the good they may be trying to do on other fronts.

Why should communication involving the royals be exempt from Freedom of Information requests? It really is one rule for the rich and powerful, and one rule for the rest of us. I intend to work with other MPs to close this outrageous royal transparency loophole.

'You can’t really fix student loans without also changing something structural about higher education – and any structural change to HE requires a comprehensive funding review.' Ultimately, this is the inescapable bottom line. 1/2

... Be more Brown - Gordon or Tina ….

This reveals the root of the rot: The idea that university (or other education) is a privilege or service to be paid for by the student. This is the foundation fallacy. Whoever started this, and continued it (I am looking at you, Con Lab Lib) are responsible for this rot.

This is causing despair in academe. (1) We were forced to close during Covid. We had no choice! (2) We're not service providers like a restaurant, we are institutions of state. (3) We did everything we could. (4) This will cripple current students' education. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The Good Old Days. When even lab equipment was crafted in precious hardwood, like antique furniture. Exhibit #1

A specialized ARGONAUTE enables trans-species RNA interference in plant immunity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.18.706620v1

Good news - but let’s hope the professionals at the FDA will be allowed to do their work without interference.

Not sure if Man United owner Jim Ratcliffe will see this being as he literally migrated to Monaco to avoid paying tax in the UK, but we wanted to put this up outside the stadium anyway…. 📍 Old Trafford, Matt Busby Way

‘...taken all over the world by Scottish immigrants ' There you go: bloody immigrants again. 'A great wee place’: the small Scottish factory crafting Olympic curling stones www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/f...

Honestly, I prefer these

EM FRS... Other fellows are available, but seemingly unable to realise the disrepute this guy is bringing you down to. @Paul Nurse: are you listening AND what are you doing about it?

This must be the Universal Record for Heavy Lifting. Winner: Slightly (in The Guardian)

We really should be asking ourselves why one rich twat’s racist opinion can become headline news in this country While the perspectives of thousands of volunteers welcoming migrants in their communities & mixed migrant/British families are never heard?

And that is why they will get my vote

Actually, I think all the USA Olympians should be competing as AIN.

Sounds like he should defect to the Greens. What a good idea

Hoping that relationships with Palantir go the same way

hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/whats-on/sto... Quite a "life"... Thinking of the countless, anonymous, and mostly forgotten people who spent time and life intertwined with this wondrous piece of steel

New on FT website: Downing Street has refused to say whether Sir Keir Starmer knew Palantir was a client of Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm when they both visited the company in Washington last February — ahead of it winning a £240mn UK government contract. www.ft.com/content/5bba...

Excellent piece. Very concerning. One highlight, which should come as no surprise to those at the coalface: A really significant contribution is exacted from overseas student fees. Think of that every time you hear about curving migration (to the UK)

This hits the nail on the head: today's Britain is fundamentally ungovernable because its governments will consistently fall into the same Sisyphean trap, unless they are willing to confront the electorate with some harsh truths - and a crucial one being that Brexit is simply unworkable.

Palantir. Hiding in plain sight. Look up JRRT's fantasy about it.

It can be done. Sanity.

A really weird take. The Mayflower was the epitome of migration. Illegal, persecuted, seeking a better life. There is no "unless". We are all immigrants/migrants

It should have been you @edrybicki.bsky.social

Left: Labour's Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, "Illegal migration is ‘tearing our country apart’" Right: PM of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, "Yes, my country has offered a path to regulate half a million undocumented migrants" "This is the path we choose. Dignity, community and justice"

Dear USAmerican friends and colleagues, History doesn't repeat itself. Thinking so is lazy. But the hard lessons it teaches must not be forgotten.

Dear German Railways (DB), I strongly recommend an urgent rebrand.

In other words. China is funding a critical portion of the UK HE establishment. It's been doing this for years.