The heatwave in western Europe is the most severe and widespread ever, with almost half of Europe’s largest cities experiencing their worst ever heat stress, a combination of high temperatures and humidity. Unless we stop burning fossil fuels, future heat conditions will become even more extreme.

This was fascinating! The past really is an alien planet.

In times like these, you might be asking: How hot can Earth actually get? My feature touring Earth history to answer that question for @sciencenews.bsky.social last year feels, uh, timely ... and I just realized that it made the cover! Check it out to be glad you don't live in the Cretaceous. 🧪

When I first spotted this butterfly a couple of hours ago, the first thing I had to do was stop my hands shaking. It's one of the rarest butterflies in France, a vanishing species in much of Europe. It's the mountain Apollo (Parnassius Apollo). Just in time for #InsectThursday #lepidoptera

excuse me while i cling to the temporary AC unit in my coworking space for dear life

Europe is warming at a rate that’s more than double the pace of warming worldwide since the mid-1990s, due to melting Arctic sea ice, reduced pollution-related aerosols, and less snow cover. These changes are also altering weather patterns, leading to more frequent and intense heat waves.

Surprise surprise. I wonder why /s

I'm trying to give my right hand a break because I can tell my wrist is UNHAPPY with all the clicking and tippy tapping and I'm realizing... I'm not actually as hopeless with my left hand as I thought I'd be? Like, it's not great. But it's kinda fun and good enough to click around my comptuer.

I am just so, so tired of this. We all are. www.wgaeast.org/wgae-scienti...

I’m so sad to share that yesterday was my last day at Scientific American. It was an honor to work alongside my incredible colleagues and to speak with researchers across the sciences. If you’re looking to hire staff or freelance, please consider me and my other laid off coworkers (🧵)

40 people, mostly young, have drowned since June 18th in France as they tried to escape the heat. Forty. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

I had an interview yesterday that ended up becoming cross-talk, where I spoke in English and the other person spoke in their native language and we understood each other just fine and it was so cool 🥺 The crossover between my hobby (language learning) and my job I never knew I wanted

'Carl Bergstrom, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington, has developed bonds with many crows at his home and on campus....“I’ll find myself sneaking across campus in a tunnel or through buildings,” he says, “because I feel so bad when I run into them.”'

This is the kind of almost magic-like payoff we get from decades of basic and applied research by thousands of scientists across the globe. This is why we do it.

If I were a billionaire I would start a high-quality, multichannel news network and hire all these incredible journalists and media folks that have recently been laid off.

Employees at Scientific American were told today that the magazine has been sold to LabX Media Group, the outfit that runs Discover Magazine and IFLScience. And that means -- of course! -- editorial layoffs. The media mass extinction rolls ever onward.

Today is my last day at Scientific American, which has been sold to LabX media group. For three decades I've led the magazine's coverage of human origins, archaeology, paleontology, animal behavior, ecology, BIRDS. End of an era. Anyway this feels weird to say, but I'm now available for assignments!

if your euro freelancers/colleagues are slow to respond or inactive right now, bear with us it is because we are being fried alive

Sad to hear that this is happening because the California Academy of Sciences is no longer funding them — but hopefully the independence works out! If you know fancy people with fancy checkbooks for donations, now would be a great time to tell them about this shiny new science media nonprofit.

Irony is dead

I had this feeling that something was going on at Sci Am for a while based on some interactions when pitching + negotiating rates... This sounds so bad. Firing the union staff to push through a sale. 🙃

I got some encouraging email feedback on my newsletter relaunch 😂😂

Begging news outlets to stop illustrating deadly heat waves with happy beach fun 🏖️😎 and life-saving vaccines with terrifying needle assaults 💉😭. Especially on social media (where many/most people get their news) the photo is the most prominent part of the story; these choices undermine it completely

I really appreciate it when I get to a point with an editor that I can send them some deranged chaos-pitch at midnight fired off in a fit of excitement after an off-timezone interview and they'll respond with enthusiasm and a kind request for clarification 😅😂

I’m starting to get really allergic to people using fancier words than they actually need to express their ideas clearly.

Are you an astronomy graduate student interested in science communication? Apply for the AAS Media Fellowship by this Friday, 26 June! More details about the position here: aasnova.org/2026/04/08/a... 🔭

Exclusive: The National Science Foundation is trimming this year’s budgets for hundreds of its traditional basic science programs by roughly 20% to 30%, even though its overall budget is down just 3%. https://scim.ag/4xY2KCm

My newsletter is back, with a new focus! I'm covering the systems, instincts, and incentives that shape what's discovered, what's believed, and what happens when science hits the real world. Subscribe so you don't miss the first new edition on Monday! 🧪

I feel like there's a growing gap in perception between people who use LLMs to code or do code-adjacent things and people who only evaluate LLMs on their ability to write prose. This might be a stretched analogy but it reminds me of the different "worlds" of the polarized US media environment.

It would sure be nice if websites would stop killing their own RSS feeds

After 18 months of R&D with a team of specialist academics, I'm VERY excited to say that @carbonbrief.org has just launched 'Project Cosmos'... ...the world's largest database of climate research Our hope is this becomes a major new resource interactive.carbonbrief.org/cosmos/index...

If I learned anything about UK politics today, it is that Larry the cat is apparently the most reliable political figure in the country.

I do love it when news makes something I just posted about more topical. Austria's science minister wants to slash the legal exception that allows universities to employ researchers on chains of short-term contracts... but there's no plan for what'd replace the status quo yet. 🧪

Hard to shake a sneaking suspicion that all the centrists who went along with condemning the Illiberal Left as the real threat to free inquiry might just have been thought of, in certain circles, as useful pawns in a very different game.

Finally finished @philipcball.bsky.social's wonderful "How Life Works"! When I hit the part on the 2nd Law felt compelled to share my comic on Entropy from a few years back, bits of which I'm expanding on in the new work (& one reason I read this brilliant book!) spinweaveandcut.com/sketching-en...

Who can I follow here to get inspired and learn about data visualization?

These assholes back down when we push back. We should push back more often. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/c...

My first art credit! 💅 Art director Samuel Velasco and I wanted a new visual metaphor for the genome — not a code or a sequence, but its tangled, twisted physical form. More cool yarn sculptures inside! Also it's a great piece by @philipcball.bsky.social that will change the way you think about DNA

the thing about geologists saying a thing is coming soon is they mean it could be tomorrow or sometime in the next 3000 years

Precarious employment is a problem for academics basically everywhere. But it seems REALLY bad in Germany and Austria. In Austria, the vast majority (~75%) of researchers are on short-term contracts — often under conditions that would be illegal for workers not employed at universities. 🧪

"Lawyers defend, scientists open their belly up to get ripped apart and find out what's inside" has to be a contender for most @hankgreen.bsky.social quote ever. The video is about the paper not being the final form of how scientists share results. What do you think could replace papers? 🧪

Most of what I see on LinkedIn makes me want to scream into my pillow.

It's amazing how the people who are destroying American science keep parroting "gold standard science."

Me: Mom can we have the Illuminati? Mom: No, we have the Illuminati at home. The Illuminati at home:

We are so f'ing cooked. reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news...

I'm planning to do a weekly links and commentary post series when I re-launch my newsletter and I'm looking for a punny sciencecy name for it. The current contenders: Citation Needed Lit Review Minor Revision Unsystematic Review Thoughts? For context, my newsletter is called "Reviewer, too"

"What’s going on is nothing short of a generational change in how the U.S. organizes its scientific enterprise." In the new issue, @jetjocko.bsky.social shows how it came to this. www.scientificamerican.com/article/amer...

I'm preparing for the re-launch of my newsletter and writing the About page has been very helpful for turning my spaghetti bowl of vague ideas into a reasonably concise description and sharpening my focus... ... it also ended up producing "vibes" as a core coverage area. Lol.

Sorry to say this, but it does seem @statnews.com runs AI-generated text in its 'First Opinion' columns w/o disclosure, contrary to their policy. www.statnews.com/2026/06/15/a... comes up 100% AI-generated in Pangram. www.statnews.com/2026/06/16/a... also 100% is Pangram wrong here, @statnews.com ?

english isn't for cowards. if you're not saying 'torpify,' that's a skill issue. there's no Académie Française telling you what to do. if you try to type 'pallific' and freak out when you see a little red underline, maybe you're not ready to roll with the big dogs.