A major part of our future health & prosperity lies in medical research. There are billions of available dollars that can be used for vital medical science. Please join the campaign for our government to act urgently to fully disperse these funds: aamri.org.au/mrff/ www.theage.com.au/politics/fed...

Every week, Nature publishes yet another breathless puff piece about some AI startup, based only unpublished claims from the company and interviewing only those who work there. How can the leading scientific journal publish piece after piece that would make Kevin Roose blush? I think it's that...

林間さん

anyway here's my attempted synthesis, VNO really seems to be wrapped in by a weird bone cage that sits above the bone of the roof of the mouth

Never ceases to amaze me - debris from Mercury is pushed by the solar wind into a tail which emits yellow light from trace amounts of sodium. I haven't seen it photographed this well.

Another blow for the “brain lights up” believers - www.tum.de/en/news-and-...

That’s the good stuff!

In my case, this painstaking labor in the process through which the science gets done. Science isn't measuring stuff in a lab. It's thinking deeply, extracting the heart of idea from the soup of thoughts running through my mind, molding it, and finding a way to communicate that idea to others.

Yup. Some of us want students who can think for themselves and do research for themselves.

I didn’t vote for the social media ban; the real issue has always been tech companies allowing harmful behaviour to run rampant on their platforms. But with the ban in place, the Govt mustn’t forget to ensure social media platforms also clean up their act. #auspol #politas

Nothing like the joy of crows riding a southern squall.

I know it’s like shouting into a hurricane, but this is a sobering read. The grotesque expediency of leaning into “AI” in the climate of “universit[ies] that no longer ask what education is for, only what it can earn.” www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

Can all the folk who just got reminded that they’ve listened to a tonne of music on streaming this year, have a look at the music they heard and buy some on bandcamp today? 🫡🙏🏼

I’m keeping this one for the next time someone asks what harm it could do using “AI” to get started on some research.

Here’s my Spotify Wrapped 🎵✨

Your periodic reminder that science is not done by a few selected "stars scientists". Science is done by hundred of thousands. Siloed money mean a few flashy discoveries and a lot of waste. Want to change things? Make funding accessible and stop funding calls with less than 2% success rate.

What a great idea. www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/artic...

Embarrassing, tone-deaf and unethical; reminds me of another recent failure from @royalsociety.org

Who better to sing the blazing soul of Horses than @jennpelly.bsky.social? Nobody, that’s who. pitchfork.com/reviews/albu...

Amid squabbles, bombast and competing interests, what can Cop30 achieve? - by @fionaharvey.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Fascinating piece sifting the historical evidence to reinstate Franklin’s status as a co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, not the less-insightful also-ran portrayed in Watson’s popular history.

Well that's $1.5 million worth of integrity right there

The dark truth behind FormatMyPaper.com

Unauthorised earthworks and land clearing by a cement company in northern Tasmania has damaged the known habitat of endangered freshwater crayfish and snails, smothering creek beds with silt. #politas tasmanianinquirer.com.au/news/cement-...

New paper out! It was an honor to collaborate with the legend Leah Krubitzer on this review to show that paleontologists and neurobiologists working together can only improve our understanding of brain evolution 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s44... Full access to the paper: rdcu.be/eK167

Nobody asked me, but I’m dismayed to see echo-chamber / clickbait outrage beginning to dominate Bluesky. For me the point of getting off Twitter was to leave the culture war being algorithmically stoked for profit. This polarisation fractures society and makes it impossible to find common ground.

Report on Australian Higher Education finds: 🔹️ Council members have no lived experience of universities 🔹️ Council members have COIs with consultancy firms 🔹️ Council meetings are closed affairs that lack transparency 🔹️ Leaders' exorbitant salaries could not be justified

I know they won the Nobel Prize and all, but I still think the discovery of how spatial awareness is assembled in vertebrate brains is underrated - the most exciting thing in neuroscience in the last 50 years. Literally seeing the brain build a map and use it to navigate, the basis of all behaviour.

Fantastic, essential piece of scientific history, key work from an unheralded pioneer. We’ve only known that the stars are hydrogen and helium for a hundred years.

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

POKEMON ‎🤍

We’re looking for Australian clinicians working with people who are seeking help with their substance use to share the stories of their wins. Find out more and complete the brief, confidential survey here: bit.ly/3GpQTXP

A point which I never see raised is that the cost of the stadium would be borne by all taxpayers, whereas the profits and economic benefits would accrue to businesses catering to the resulting traffic, and the AFL. Seems like a massive expenditure of public money to benefit the private sector.

Mars Valles Marineris from EMM - From Jason Major (jpmajor.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2pqhbFq

🐬 Four dolphins died at Huon Aquaculture #salmon farms during first half of 2025. Total number of dolphin deaths over the past two years is now seven, adding to a wildlife toll that includes 108 seals killed on salmon leases since 2018. #politas #auspol ▶️ tasmanianinquirer.com.au/news/huon-aq...

✨Nervous about development? Don’t be! 🧠 E13.5 🐁 embryo showing nerves (🩵) and endothelial cells (💙) weaving together in the developing pup 🔬 image by Nathan Burns 🧪 #FluorescenceFriday #DevBio #MouseEmbryo

I had no idea Brooks Otterlake was here - had been periodically searching the full name for a couple of years now.

Quelle surprise

"Because these programs cannot themselves be concerned with truth, and because they are designed to produce text that looks truth-apt without any actual concern for truth, it seems appropriate to call their outputs bullshit." This cannot be said enough. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

This delights me for some reason - a comparative anatomical framework for the brains of 26 carnivore species!

MFer COOKED here

Due to a generous invitation from the #ANZLAA (Aus/NZ Lab Animal Association) national conference I got to talk about these ideas to a larger audience, and explore how our ideas about animal minds affect neuroscience researchers who work with animal models. clems.eventsair.com/anzlaa-confe...

Worldwide! Looking for living experts on substance use to tell us what makes a drug great or something to avoid! head to: tinyurl.com/bettermeasure for info. #drugs #druguse

Never again. www.asahi.com/ajw/articles...

So happy to see people taking this issue seriously. I wrote about this months ago on Synergies. synergies.substack.com/p/the-potent...

I’m hoping there is sufficient political will to avoid this catastrophic loss - theconversation.com/the-giant-cu...

A favourite #neuroanatomy study: Lewis Weed making paper cutouts of brainstem sections, stacking them in register, then drawn by Max Brödel. Over a century old but still fresh! Weed LH. A reconstruction of the nuclear masses in the lower portion of the human brain-stem. Carnegie Inst. Wash., 1914.

Did not expect to see a barrelfield in the morning sky here #neuroanatomy #cortex

Straight from the master