Absolutely fucking tremendous from the FT.

"Marco Rubio, we salute you!" A real thing that was said by the CBS Evening News anchor tonight.

This is a thread of major media outlets falsely anthropomorphising the "Grok" chatbot program and in doing so, actively and directly removing responsibility and accountability from individual people working at X who created a child pornography generator (Elon Musk, Nikita Bier etc) #1: Reuters

Please journalists read this

Never gets old.

A piece on the research trying to fill the very, very large gap between life-support systems and terraforming www.economist.com/science-and-...

The earliest confirmed evidence of an adult cremation pyre has been discovered in Malawi! 🔥 theconversation.com/oldest-known...

(I posted this online some 10 years ago and was reminded of it by one of these irritating algorithms, but nonetheless... still amusing)

The Sundiver mission will show how thin solar sails could accelerate spacecraft to the Sun’s focus, beyond the Solar System. https://scim.ag/4pUlnmf

Here’s the highest-quality upload of the 60 minutes CECOT segment I’ve found so far: www.dailymotion.com/video/x9w8gyi

In the 1960s, a group of New Jersey teenagers helped make computing personal... (An excerpt from my new book in IEEE Spectrum) spectrum.ieee.org/teenage-hack... #HistSci #computing #History 🗃️

On this darkest solstice day of the year, my heart has dimmed, waking up to learn of the loss of dear colleague and mentor, Yannick Mellier. Yannick will be known to most as the lead of the amazing Euclid Space Telescope which will revolutionise our understanding of the Dark Universe 🧵🔭

Scientists have 3D printed a Christmas tree out of ice, showing off a technique that could find practical applications in areas such as tissue engineering.

This is interesting ... I don't receive @cern.bsky.social 's press releases anymore, perhaps because I reported on many physicists' opposition to this project

Here's our reporting on the proposed dismantling of the jewel of US atmospheric science, @ncar-ucar.bsky.social. The plan is to break NCAR apart and disburse some parts to other locations (like the research aircraft fleet) and eliminate others. www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪 #AGU25 #climate

Seems to be a losing battle to make people understand that Wheeler's "It from Bit" does not mean "reality is made of information" (it was about defending an epistemic view of quantum mechanics, where the wave function isn't real, only measurement outcomes are), and likewise...

"They needed less than $20 mil to fund lifesaving health programs, including cholera response efforts, for 3 months — an eighth of what Trump recently approved to buy private jets for one cabinet secretary." Awful, important story by @annamaria.bsky.social www.propublica.org/article/usai...

In addition to duct tape innovation, collaboration is key to the MacGyver spirit, session organizers say. The ethos is less do-it-yourself and more do-it-together. 🧪 eos.org/articles/cel...

The uncritical reverence policymakers (including, it pains me to say, Obama) and journalists have always given to Daniel Yergin and Vaclav Smil will never cease to puzzle me

ICE snatched a human rights hero. Guan Heng risked his life to capture video of Uyghur concentration camps. After escaping to the U.S., Guan was in hiding for years, not knowing his work had been crucial to substantiating China's mass detention practices. On Monday, he has an asylum hearing in NY.

No surprise: new analysis shows that heat pumps can deliver excellent performance even in older buildings with no meaningful correlation between building age & heat pump efficiency. This is in line with my own experience of having a heat pump in a 1880 Victorian home with only modest insulation.

$170,000 a minute: Why Saudi Arabia is the biggest blocker of climate action The desert kingdom depends on oil dollars but its people already face a climate ‘at the verge of livability’. What’s going on? #COP30 #climatecrisis Story by me 1/7 www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

🚨 NEW: We’ve dug into the people behind the far-right research unit we exposed last month, and the picture is grim. This follow-up uncovers the extreme histories of the individuals building a database of progressives across the UK. hopenothate.org.uk/2025/12/04/r...

ICE is kidnapping and locking up little kids, denying them medical care, and feeding them contaminated food. They aren’t going after criminals, they are going after Black and brown people, because this isn’t about immigration, it’s about white supremacy.

Quelle surprise. We are talking about a person who wrote a book called How to feed the world that completely ignored climate change. Making it completely irrelevant. And it's theme was also that we can't do anything different

EVs beat petrol cars on lifetime emissions — even on “dirty” grids. Battery production is carbon-intensive, but EVs quickly repay that debt and end up 21–71% cleaner over 250,000 km. We can’t wait for perfect grids: electrify transport and clean the grid now.

has Four Seasons Total Landscaping announced the recipient of their Peace Prize yet

Amnesty International released findings from its investigation into the Everglades Concentration Camp (Alligator Alcatraz), which was built by the Florida Division of Emergency Management. They found evidence of torture, among other human rights violations. www.amnesty.org/en/documents...

If Albert Einstein had done social media...

Very excited to be at my first World Conference of Science Journalists in Tshwane, South Africa, today to talk about covering quantum technology. Many thanks to the Unesco International Year of Quantum Science and Technology which sponsored this event @wcsj2025.bsky.social

A sad story worth reading

The New York Times' story about Trump calling for the execution of members of Congress ran on Page 16 today, with an itty-bitty promo on the front about halfway down the page. No wonder Trump thinks he can get away with anything.

UN secretary-general António Guterres has identified Saudi Arabia as leading moves to block key outcomes at the #Cop30 climate summit, the Financial Times has reported - he also identified some developed countries’ opposition to adaptation funding pledges #climatecrisis www.ft.com/content/edf7...

My latest. Perhaps quantum spin effects in the retina aren't necessary to explain birds' compass sense after all... instead, birds might use electromagnetic induction — as in AC voltage transformers — to sense magnetic fields via electric fields. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I wrote this short piece www.economist.com/science-and-... about this interesting paper www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: A machine-learning breakthrough in detecting ancient biomolecules could lift the veil on Earth’s early history—and supercharge the search for alien life. www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-u...

First electric cars and buses, now trucks: in the past we were often told that electric trucks would not be feasible. But the market is picking up speed and electric trucks have become a reality. Expectations are for significant market expansion in the coming years.

It's hard to believe this is real, but I think it is. And most depressingly: Tyler does not say "What the fuck are you even talking about Sam, and why are you in this job?"

#WCSJ2025 Let's have more people from the UK, Ireland and Europe attending the World Conference of Science Journalism 2025, Pretoria, 1–5 Dec Discounts for ABSW & WFSJ members (~£375 / £175 students) Register → zurl.co/Ot9ws @wcsj2025.bsky.social @wfsj25.bsky.social @istja.ie#WCSJ2025 @eurofsj

Bill Gates astounded climate advocates by publishing a manifesto arguing that the climate crisis is less urgent than other major problems that humanity faces go.nature.com/4qXJDEO

If you're interested in AI, where it's heading, and the people behind the wheel, perhaps you'll give our new feature a look www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

In the global electrification race China is marching ahead. The US and Europe risk falling behind clinging on to yesterday's technologies.

Yoshua Bengio talks about the dangers to humanity that he believes AI could represent. go.nature.com/3K4IUB7

No excuse for this

New: Google has chosen a side in Trump's mass deportation campaign. Google is hosting a CBP facial recognition app to hunt immigrants; no indication Google will remove. At same time Google takes down apps for reporting ICE sightings “Big tech has made their choice” www.404media.co/google-has-c...