“London hits 'historic' clean air milestone 184 years early…a 'truly remarkable turnaround for the city's air quality.” Quite a leadership achievement for @london.gov.uk’s government! While nations talk, (some) cities act. And get results.

A new study shows that receiving an updated COVID vaccine reduced people’s risk of severe disease and death in all age groups, regardless of immunity from prior infection or vaccination

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

Gonna be thinking about this lede for a minute.

Earlier this week Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — a public-private partnership that does more than any other organization to get vaccines to people in poor countries — reported that its vaccines saved a record-breaking 1.7 million people in 2024. That’s 400,000 more lives saved than in 2023.

Really interesting video by @tibees.bsky.social. Exam really about critical thinking & how Sagan thought this was key to unlock humanity's potential. Quote from his book "The Demon Haunted World" at around 15.30 shows tremendous prescience of the West's current descent to "superstition & darkness"🧪⚛️

Couple key points here opaque to me. Takeaway, however: "The same genetic changes that shaped human intelligence and creativity also contributed to neurodiversity. Autism can therefore be seen as an intrinsic byproduct of human brain evolution rather than a disorder alone." #Autism #Neurodiversity

@joanbaxter.bsky.social wrote about this about a year ago in the @halifaxexaminer.ca www.halifaxexaminer.ca/transportati...

In honor of National Poetry Day, the greatest parody rewrite of all time:

October is here, which means horror is everywhere on streaming. Here's what's arriving during peak Halloween season:

And don't forget just how often AI constructs - Siri, Alexa, Cortana, the "Tilly" character - are presented as young and female by default. Submissive. Compliant. Always helpful and attentive.

#ScienceMatters 🧪🧬🥼🦠❤️

Mark Zuckerberg has a vision for how A.I. could be used in Meta's universe. But the actor and filmmaker Joseph Gordon-Levitt is here to point out a flaw in the technology: an apparent lack of guardrails around how the company's chatbot interacts with underage users. nyti.ms/3ILwCNo

This episode made me think about how telling parents to monitor kids screen time is another example of expecting individuals to solve a societal problem - if we want to get kids off their phones we have to build a world where they have other options.

Reposting for the morning crowd. My new blog post on a tech device that decreases dementia risk.

Coal is dead

A new report traces the life cycle of fossil fuels — from exploration and extraction to combustion and decommissioning — and found stark consequences at each stage for the health of people and the planet alike.

I'm looking for #horror movie recs. Anything released after 2000. Bonus points if it's currently on Shudder or Netflix. 🔪🩸🎬 Thanks in advance! 🖤

# of paragraphs for news orgs to mention there's no discernable need to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon The Guardian: 1st paragraph BBC: 4th paragraph AP: 5th paragraph Time: 6th paragraph Politico: 8th paragraph NPR: 9th paragraph CNN: 10th paragraph NBC: 12th paragraph Fox News: never mentions

1/ I’m Till Eckert, a ProPublica reporter. For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been going to the same NY immigration courthouse. Nearly every time, I see ICE agents arresting immigrants. Today, a woman was slammed to the ground after begging officials not to take her husband away. Thread 👇

“According to the new report, 84% of kids with influenza-associated encephalopathy whose vaccination status was known weren’t vaccinated. The finding comes as the nation logged 280 pediatric flu deaths last year, the deadliest ever aside from the 2009-10 H1N1 pandemic” @jackiantonovich.bsky.social

Whew The US has truly checked out of global health Time for all other nations to keep at it www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/h...

How do billionaire team owners not only pay a lower tax rate than some of their superstar players, but also a lower rate than the people who sell concessions at the games? ➡️ Revisit our 2021 story: https://propub.li/47ZbFJ3

The daughter of an English professor and a teacher, Ms. Vincent received a master’s in public health while battling addiction. That year she helped start the North Carolina Survivors Union, among the first organizations in the country to offer safety rails for addicts who were struggling to quit.

Do not underestimate the soft spoken, the kind, the gentle. It takes strength to be those things, sometimes more than you will ever know. If you look closely at someone who conducts themselves honorably, you will find something fierce inside.

Life After Cars is kicking up your feet and relaxing on a hammock in the middle of a busy city on a street that’s been closed to automobiles and opened up to people.

Powerful image from @thewhiteline.bsky.social, especially when considering how many of these large SUVs are being driven around kids near schools and in neighborhoods

In a meeting that devolved into confusion and near chaos, federal advisers on Thursday voted 8 to 3 against vaccinating children under four years old with a combination shot that protects against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/h...

I just killed a spotted lantern fly *on my kitchen counter.* This is not cool. This has gone far enough. #DC #NOVA

8 of the top 10 (13 of the top 20) are now in China. The US is in decline, and that includes our basic and applied science, scientific publications, and knowledge mobilization. 🧪

“There are risks to having these large natural gas storage facilities close to major urban populations,” said Michael Jerrett, principal investigator of the UCLA Aliso Canyon Disaster Health Research Study team. via @laist.com

Wait, you have not read this classic? www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/its...

A school-age child in Los Angeles has died of a rare complication from measles, years after being infected with the virus.

“Fax numbers were wrong. Key records that included the billing codes and denial reasons that she needed for her appeals were no longer available online. The insurer wouldn’t even give her access to her husband’s medical records, though he had signed a release granting her permission.”

Maybe y’all don’t recognize this form factor, but I do. This is a reporter’s notebook. www.theverge.com/news/769005/...

Tried and failed to schedule a #Covid vaccine with Kaiser Permanente. Zero reason given. No matter if one is high risk. “It’s not available to members, will let you know when it is.” #medsky

I think the Trader Joe’s people always ask you if you found everything you needed so that you are not endlessly looking for things that have been cut off, like vegan feta. I feel for them having to deliver the blow time and again.

New research shows that filtration systems that remove PFAS can also get rid of other harmful substances. Whether they'll actually be introduced is a different matter entirely. www.wired.com/story/we-can...

love it

🌫️ Air pollution and mental health A new study found that PM2.5 and NO2 are causally linked to psychiatric disorders, partly through brain changes. 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #SciComm #MentalHealth #AirQuality 🧪

Thanks to AI, there's a new way to take away women's control over their bodies and identities

Here's what the third day of elementary school looked like in Mount Pleasant, Washington DC.

Meanwhile, in conservation reality and #whales - A good article by Sue Arnold in Independent Australia on the population crash of Western Pacific gray whales. "The latest estimate of 13,000 animals is less than half of the 27,000 population ten years ago." 🐳🌍🦑🧪 1/3

cost based rent FTW i gave a talk on this coop (le bled) for AIA seattle's transformative housing symposium in june fun thread here bsky.app/profile/holz...

"The Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden Administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat." www.seattletimes.com/business/usd...

An immediate 40 percent drop in pediatric asthma ER visits (!) People will look back at our fossil era and wonder at why it was allowed to last insideclimatenews.org/news/0508202...

Another $13,000 per Texas household to be put into roads, roads, evermore roads.

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Some incredibly good news: One year ago this week, The Onion returned to print. In that one year, we’ve grown to the 13th largest print newspaper in the United States, just ahead of the Boston Globe, and growing fast. In short, it’s working. So… thank you. Thank you for helping save this thing.

15 years of radio observations yielded this amazing view down the throat of a black hole. We're looking into a jet of plasma shooting out from a supermassive black hole, called PKS 1424+240. The lines depict intense magnetic fields threaded through the jet. 🧪🔭 www.mpg.de/25171297/eye...