I’m trying to be good about actually taking time off for Christmas this year and had some time to paint for once. So here’s a birb, in honor of the small cheeping army that comes to my place to munch through a truly impressive quantity of birdseed every day.

1/ Here are some (ok, most) of the books I read and listened to this past year, mostly in order. Some real gems, as always. “A life without books is a life not lived” Jay Kristoff.

Who is a scientist friend or colleague of yours doing truly excellent work that more people should know about?🧪

Shrimply having a prawnderful #Crustmas time! This came to me in a dream in like June. Peppermint shrimp are born male but can switch to being hermaphrodites later in life. They lay festive green eggs. 🧪🦐⛄

The same vest thing really outs Santa as a geoscience prof

This thing has got to be one of the weirdest space objects I've read about in a long time.

Where is the trophy for whoever designed this trophy?

Wow. CERN has secured a promise of $1 billion (!) towards its planned Future Circular Collider from private donors (such as the Breakthrough Prize Foundation & Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fund) - the first such donation for CERN, which has until now been taxpayer funded home.cern/news/press-r... 🧪⚛️

🧪 Une étude se penche sur comment notre cerveau traite la prosodie (la musicalité de la voix). Et il semblerait que ce soit des régions du cerveau qui se superposent avec celles du traitement du language et des expressions faciales qui s'en occupent 😮 Un super article par @elisecutts.bsky.social 👇

This is a really interesting result: human-specific "updates" to old hominid genes that scientists thought would be pretty important for fancy human brain development seem... not actually that important. I discussed the study with the first author in an extended Q&A last week:

A few days ago, a very cool preprint went up on how the brain processes prosody — the melody of speech. This is one of those studies that I feel like helped me understand my brain better. So it's the topic of this week's post, which ends with a little future-studies wish list for science Santa 🎅🧪

cortical neurogenesis, showed no obvious differences in brain anatomy." See also Q&A with lead author:

Hey physicists ⚛️: Are you getting a flood of AI-written theories of everything lately?

Luckily it is not a fact www.snopes.com/fact-check/s... A reminder to not trust Google AI summaries. Just because something is screenshotable does not make it true.

Writing pop sci for me is a) 90% typing and then deleting a sentence b) 8% going on a walk to clear my head, and c)2% writing the draft in one go during a 2-hour episode of trancelike clarity after my brain somehow I guess wrote the whole thing in the background during steps a) and b).

I go back and forth on thinking it'd be great to have a cat and thinking I should just invest the money time and energy I'd invest in a cat in other actual humans. The debate rages on.

Getting emails addressed to "Dear Dr. Cutts" is always a good sign that someone did not spend even 1 minute looking me up before asking me for whatever it is they want. I just go one asking me to review a paper and it's like: my dude I left academia so I could have a life please let me enjoy it

is it normal to write about what bird you would be if you were a bird in the cover letter for a job application

I feel like the problem is not a lack of ideas, but rather a lack of contexts in which ideas can thrive.

Sometimes I wonder: why is my brain doing this thing? And then I talk to my aunt — who I barely met as a child and only started talking to with any regularity in my mid-20s, and whose life looks very different from mine. And she has the same weird. The same. Genes, man. They do stuff sometimes.

@hankgreen.bsky.social's new video on textiles is: 1) mind-blowing and you should watch it (go! now! you'll never look at a shirt the same way again!) and 2) a master class on handling mistakes in science communication.

Peaking in high school: tragic Peaking in preschool because your parents are paleontologists and you know all the dinosaurs: magic

Do you ever forget to drink water, then realize you forgot to drink water and are very thirsty, but then just don't do anything about it and go on being thirsty and forgetting to drink water?

I know it’s cathartic to complain about how bad things are now but who here would ~actually~ like to have been born earlier in time?

I was today years old when I found out that the Japanese asteroid sample return mission Hayabusa2 has a mascot called haya2-kun with its own Twitter 🥹🔭

I'm becoming a bit video-curious — I'd ideally like to produce science content that reaches people, and while it hurts my text-loving heart, video is where the people are these days. So, I'm curious: what kind of video content would you be most interested in from a science journalist like me?

GO OUTSIDE AND SPY ON BIRDS THEN REPORT THEM TO A CENTRAL DATABASE

The reason I use old public domain paintings and other artwork for the cover image of every post for my newsletter is because I want visitors to immediately get a specific vibe: this place is for real human thoughts. A painting that existed before 2020 is obviously, unambiguously not AI.

On our evolutionary branch, a few genes got an update unique to humans. Some used to think those variants might have been difference that made all the difference: the key to becoming human. This month's Q&A with Barbara Molz @mpi-nl.bsky.social gets into new results that tell a different story. 🧪

Fascinating study covered by @maxkozlov.bsky.social that analyses the shared genetic roots of many neurodevelopmental (ADHD, autism) and mental health conditions www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

Very cool paper out today on ancient variants of genes that supposedly got an "update" shared by all modern humans — and the effects these variants *don't* have on the rare people who carry them. If you needed more evidence that a single gene can't explain what makes us human, here it is! 🧪

Do I need to be afraid that the gamma ray laser guy works in a city 2.5 hours away from my house?

I've been thinking about this a lot because I had a few interviews on the neuroscience of language recently — and despite not having covered this topic much and having 0 formal education in linguistics or cognitive science, I basically understood all the jargon.

I sometimes wonder if I would have kept going in academia if I'd ended up in a different field. Geobio seemed right when I was an undergrad but I honestly had no clue. I hadn't discovered myself enough to know where my true interests were.

Vote for the tiny skull or you're a square!

I was in school for 5000 years and the only reason I'm employed now is because I used to write short stories in my spare time

Comments on my YouTube video have been awful lately - mean, sarcastic, degrading and just hateful. I wonder what —oh.

It's so heartwarming watching scientists celebrate their ERC grants right now.

when do you think they'll start writing think-pieces about unfair discriminatory bias against people who wear oura rings

If anyone ever tells you that Austria isn't over-regulated, please kindly remind them that "Production of Natural Scratching Posts for Cats" (Erzeugung von Naturkratzbäumen für Katzen) is its own official specific trade/commercial enterprise here.

-prepares to dodge rotten fruit- I am generally pretty anti generative AI. But for text, at least, there are some use cases that I think are fine.

It's been a thrill and an honor to collaborate with @teorth.bsky.social on his first popular math book—a short and friendly introduction to six core areas of mathematics that, taken together, reveal the creative essence, analytical power, and wondrous connectedness of the mathematical enterprise.

This is really good. Finding the basic “ingredients” for life everywhere means we don’t have to worry to much about where they come from. But the real question is what conditions and processes can turn interesting chemicals into sufficiently interesting chemistry.

trying to google Bohr and ending up on Borb

hi i'm a billionaire my company, which will definitely not murder everyone, is named SauronMurdersEveryone Inc after the beloved jrr tolkien character sauron whom i have always admired for his disruptive use of world changing technology and for murdering everyone

It took me way too long to learn that good friendships aren't transactional, and it wrecks me to see friends who haven't learned that yet keep being vampirized by cruel people. Yes, there are people who will value you just for who you are, and want nothing from you but your friendship.

Some thoughts on the Bennu space sugars and what they mean (if anything) for the origin of life. 🔭🧪 I end with the groundbreaking conclusion that simple organic molecules are not, in fact, LEGOs. Mind-blowing, I know.

The good ol' "I need to overcome my executive function issues to get the appointment to diagnose my executive function issues" spiral is really a doozy