What's more fun than writing this paper is the brilliant minds of @plosbiology.org @roliroberts.bsky.social coming up with ways to deal with BlueSky's censorship. Men with surfboards, could this paper be anymore aussie? @ceb-uwa.bsky.social @monashbiol.bsky.social @biologyanu.bsky.social

More azhdarchid action at the TetZooTowers_collection TikTok... www.tiktok.com/@tetzootower...

⏳📚💙 Doctor John Hall was a noted Stratford-upon-Avon physician (1611–35), who treated nosebleeds by inserting a cloth “tent” dipped in frogspawn, tying ligatures around the upper arms. Please don’t try this at home! #history #KU #medicine #frogspawn #medicalhistory

I am not in any group chats! Phew! #booksky

Some thoughts on Celia Fremlin's The Long Shadow. Ignore the Christmassy cover, this is a fantastic read at any time of year. Apologies that it's a little less detailed than usual - I read the book over a month ago and am only just starting to catch up! ⚡️📚

Loving some queer historical fiction in The New Life by Tom Crewe. Also obsessed with the cover design. #litfic #booksky #currentlyreading

www.sciencenorway.no/nature-psych... Optimism reduced inflammation in people's bodies. Here are the researcher’s tips for thinking more positively “This isn’t new knowledge. But perhaps it should be used in the doctor's office,” says researcher. 🧪

This [downloadable] Radio 4 Start the Week will be of especial interest to those of us into Science & Literature #lablit #booksky 💡📚 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

2026 #9 A tiny book that packs in a lot of story, a slow starter but it gets better as it goes and the ending is...🫢 Another Matsumoto whodunnit that explores the flaws and failings of Japan's criminal justice system and also it's media. There's an outline in the alt text as usual. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 🖋️📚 #booksky

2026 #8 An excellent work of medieval history recounting the rise and fall of the first truly French royal family, the Capetians. From their rise in the 10th century to their eventual demise in the 14th, Justine Firnhaber-Baker tells their story eloquently. Blurb is in the alt text. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 💡📚 #booksky

book collector flex 😏😌 I am finally the proud owner of both the penguin little black classics AND penguin modern classics sets #booksky #litfic #classiclit #classicliterature #penguin #bookhaul

What do you do to combat a slump? Haven’t had much luck with the last few books. Changing it up with some classics and v dependable writers. Also, switching to physical over digital to boost enthusiasm. 💙📚 #BookSky #Books #SecondHandBooks #Library #LitFic #Classics #Literature #AmReading

Not spotted any new #labit for some weeks - I really need to sit & trawl the interweb for a morning this week! however if you spotted any - realistic scientist(s) in [non-scifi] novels, esp. 2025/6, do share! #booksky

2026 books read

Right - off to Lonnon for a day & a bit...

My child has declared this Elephant Bird Awareness Day and wants me to tell some people. Were you aware of elephant birds? You are now.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/a... Authors share books that ignited their love of reading To mark the National Year of Reading, some of our best-known authors have been telling us which book ignited or reignited their love of reading. #booksky

If you have a chat message for us, contact @jennyrohn.bsky.social as I am unable to see them

There was an interesting item on radio 4 Today this am in the last hour, about how the brain has a much different process reading as opposed to listening www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

I made a full edition of my alfalfa leafcutting bee (Megachile rotundata) cutting a leaf. The alfalfa leafcutting bee is a solitary bee originally from Europe which has been spread to all continents but Antartica for agriculture. 🐡🧪🐝 🧵 #linocut #printmaking #Megachile #solitaryBee #pollinator

Large-Scale Isotopic Data Reveal Gendered Migration into Early Medieval England c ad 400–1100 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... "These results underscore the need to move away from ethnic classifications, offering a more nuanced understanding of identity and migration during this period"

"our multiproxy approach indicates that Beachy Head Woman was of local British ancestry."

Drought worsened in small pockets across the US, particularly in East TX and AR, with small areas of improvement in the Upper Midwest and Northeast. Drought expanded to cover 44.01% of the continental US, an uptick of 1.46 points. #drought #DroughtMonitor 🧪 droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/S...

Beachy Head Woman: clarifying her origins using a multiproxy anthropological and biomolecular approach www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪

8 / 23 But NSC.36 was extremely well preserved, as was a range of other organism in the chert surrounding it, including fungi and plants, making this specimen uniquely suited for our analyses.

1 / 23 Prototaxites is known from some very large fossils, including columns over 8m tall. These fossils date from the end of the Silurian to the Late Devonian (425–365 million years ago). This makes Prototaxites the largest organism on the Earth’s surface before the appearance of tall trees.

The world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy” that is harming billions of people, per a UN report. The overuse and pollution of water must be tackled urgently bc no one knew when the whole system could collapse. #water www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Winter's First Half Dried Out Much of the Mississippi Basin As we approach the midpoint of the 2025-26 meteorological winter season (Dec-Jan-Feb), the drying influence from a warm December is showing up in the greater Mississippi River basin. #MississippiRiver 🧪 www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/...

Went looking for the white ghost of Stella, MO yesterday — we currently have a very rare white bald eagle here in Missouri. My encounter was very very far away and I normally wouldn't take or keep these photos but this eagle is special and wanted to share 🪶 #birds #rareeagle #BlueSkyPhotography

Tree bark has a total surface area similar to all of the land area on Earth. It is home to a wide range of microbial species unknown to science, and they can either take up or emit gases that have a warming effect on the climate

I read 130 books last year, so picking only 10 favourites wasn't easy. However, I think I managed to pull together a pretty good list! These are my 10 favourite books of 2025 #booktube #booksky youtu.be/gg8r2OAZ4Gw

One of the most exciting emerging paradigms, in my view, is the absolute shitshow that pathogens can exert on the host, via inflammatory response, a lot of which we had absolutely no idea about even a decade ago #IDSky

Northern Lights from Phoenix Park now. #SpeirGorm

“Hey Pam, you gonna put more seeds out? Be a shame if I had to chew another hole in your screen.”

I just had an email from a 'lost' friend in Utah - I don't mean she is lost in Utah, though it is quite big so I expect easy to get lost in, but she lives there but we lost touch due to C19 & the library I worked in getting closed & me redundant all at the same time! 👍

I’ve seen librarians argue that sci-fi is a subset of fantasy. As a hard SF fan, I’m skeptical but admit that their point of Not Real Right Now has merit. There are so many books where the boundaries between SF & fantasy blur - after all, magic is science we do not yet understand. (AC Clarke)

Day 187 of showing the internet that (jumping) spiders aren't scary 😮 Pepper answers that question perfectly today. When jumping spiders feel safe enough to rest, they hunker down... front legs tucked in, movements slow, eyes soft. This is trust And it’s one of the sweetest things to witness 🥹

Bookmarked to read - too many on my pile! Looks intriguing #sepsis #infection

This month it's 'The Ditchingham Chicken Roundabout'

More join the Gaza Peace Board.

...but I suspect there are naming conventions out there I haven't seen yet, and certainly book feeds I'm unaware of so if anyone wants to add a feed or combination to the list LMK and I'll get it on the next release (in a few weeks since posting this spams everything in it.)

Back to Earth next week, hearing about the Mississippi's fragile projection into the Gulf of Mexico, the Bird's Foot Delta, 150km S of NOLA - #MissDelta; Lessons of Katrina 20yrs on; Seeing under Greenland's ice Oldest Antarctic ice #COLDEX & Stains of oldest life. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

I'm back briefly on Discovery with interviews from #AGU2025 This week a focus on space science - with prospects of a 2032 lunar impact by asteroid 2024YR4 @asrivkin.bsky.social; new views of solar-earth connections inc NASA's all-round PUNCH (below); & lunar seismology www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

Investors Put More Than $55 Billion Behind Space Startups Last Year

“Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men's desires, but by the removal of desire.” – Epictetus #stoic #philosophy #wisdom

So at the moment it's mix of whatever feeds are running to find that content, and ad-hoc standards of whatever seems to make sense or is getting adopted. I'd think any emoji combinations used by a feed will tend toward common use as there's a feedback loop there.

That's a fair point that frequently comes up. The 📚🪐 gets picked up by a feed that does both (there's been talk of splitting it) as do: 🌈📚📚🪐 & 🌈🚀💫 📚 ⚔️ - Fantasy doesn't have a feed (or it may, I JDK) So for just SF I'd think: 📚🚀 ...if people want to use it? Sapphic SF currently uses the 🚀

I can recommend Kelly & Zach Weinersmith's [non-fiction] A City on Mars, as an antidote to unrealistic hype over space ravel & the prospects of anything more than a small number of people living off Earth, at least for a considerable period. The recent evacuation of crew from the ISS is illustrative

Not a definitive forecast but I’d say it’s shifting that way. Next week is looking predominately unsettled and on milder side, but then increasing cold by end of next weekend from east with chance of snow anywhere. #ukweather