Simon Cook

The scientific exodus from Nazi Germany Beginning in 1933, hundreds of physicists and other academics fled the country, transforming their lives and the global scientific landscape.

Fascism in Europe destroyed the then greatest university system in the world. Fascism in the US well on the way to replicating the original.

*list above (apart from Fermi) from pubs.aip.org/physicstoday...

Boris Johnson breached rules designed to stop abuse of contacts made in public office, watchdog finds Johnson found to have breached rules after refusing to answer specific questions about allegations published by the Guardian

Honestly. Does this surprise anyone?!!!
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

More than half of world’s bird species in decline, as leaders meet on extinction crisis Biodiversity losses are growing, the IUCN reports as summit opens, but green turtle’s recovery ‘reminds us conservation works’ More than half of all bird species are in decline, according to a new global assessment, with deforestation driving sharp falls in populations across the planet. On the eve of a key biodiversity summit in the UAE, scientists have issued a fresh warning about the health of bird populations, with 61% of assessed species now recording declines in their numbers. Continue reading...

More than half of world’s bird species in decline, as leaders meet on extinction crisis

UK universities offered to monitor students’ social media for arms firms, emails show Loughborough, Heriot-Watt and Glasgow corresponded with companies concerned about campus protests

This is deeply disturbing www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Sad to hear of the death of John Gurdon this morning, aged 92.

Always loved Frances MacDonald's work. In discussions of Glasgow art she is often overlooked in favour of Charles Rennie Mackintosh but her work is fabulous

Journalist Edward R. Murrow used his platform on CBS to criticize the witch hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.

This is what real journalism should do — hold power to account, not capitulate to it.

Photo looking down on four petri dishes, neatly arranged, with what resembles bacteria and mould growing inside created with crochet and embroidery

Elin Thomas, UK textile artist who uses embroidery/crochet to create unique work resembling petri dishes and bacteria spores #womensart

Jane Goodall said she would launch Trump and Musk on one-way trip into space Primatologist said in interview released after her death she would also put Putin, Xi and Netanyahu on that spaceship

Jane Goodall has only increased in my estimation!! www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Well this sounds pretty cool

Not what I predicted, but an important discovery that Brunkow and Ramsdell worked on while at a UK biotech company (Celltech Chiroscience)

BrewDog sells Lost Forest after series of tree-planting controversies Brewdog has announced it has sold its “Lost Forest” after 250,000 of the trees it planted on the Scottish estate died ...

This complete shambles is a useful reminder of why companies who say "Don't worry about the carbon, we're planting trees for that" should be treated with scepticism.

No matter what Pete Hegseth says, his tattoos are anything but typical symbols of Christianity In the months leading up to the presidential election, Trump frequently used the phrase “the enemy within” to describe those in opposition to his political ideologies.

substack.com/@fathernatha...

Or, to put it another way, as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness— for so long as they are unable to walk out of this most monstrous of traps-they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipulated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of-and justify—as a racial war. They will never, so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their country, their children, or their fate. They will perish (as we once put it in our black church) in their sins—that is, in their delusions. And this is happening, needless to say, already, all around us.

James Baldwin to Angela Davis in 1970, discussing white Americans:

Spot on.

Kemi Badenoch vows to repeal Climate Change Act Tory leader says she would replace it with ‘cheap energy’ strategy, ending decades-long consensus on climate

Tory party’s long journey away from science, reason, responsibility, common sense and truth is complete

When I first became interested in poetry, at the age of 16, it was thanks to John Clare, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, John Betjeman … and this book which I read ragged … thank you so much Brian Patten – rest in peace

@michaelrosenyes.bsky.social

I’m sad to hear the news that the wonderful Jane Goodall is no longer in the world. Her work with chimpanzees at Gombe in Tanzania taught us to look at other apes - and ourselves - differently. I was privileged to meet her later in life and tell her what an inspiration she was to me.

AI reveals vast ‘ghost forests’ along U.S. coast Machine learning method counts nearly 12 million dead trees, many likely killed by rising seas

I joined a team of ecologists wading through the muck of the Carolina coast in search of "ghost forests" killed by rising seas for @science.org. We were guided by a a new map that reveals millions of dead trees standing along the East Coast, marking an overlooked consequence of climate change...

What the hell happened circa 2012?

Compelling and quite disturbing...

My hero Jane Goodall. Text reads 1934-2025.

Jane Goodall comforts a frightened chimpanzee, early in her career, in Gombe National Park.

At a time when we need more of her and less of the rest, it is our great loss.

Eternally grateful for the kindness with which she lived by example, her revolutionary study of chimpanzees that shifted scientific understanding of animals and nature, and decades of advocating for a humane world.

And put quite simply. Science is under attack and Musk is manipulating and using that for his own ends. incompatible with RS

And all too often has been used for just that -doing nothing

Agree. Conduct so very obviously discredits the RS

'An extraordinary legacy': Tributes after chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall dies age 91 - follow live The primatologist was a

Saddened to read of the passing of Jane Goodall. Before my head was turned by Biochemistry and Cell Biology I read ‘In the Shadow of Man’ in one day as an enthusiastic teenager and wanted to follow in her shadow. A remarkable woman www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9...

Not moving in those circles I can only imagine that the RS are somehow trying to tread the difficult ‘not being “political“‘ line. But this is not politics. It is morals and ethics and he has neither.

No. No arguments pro
He brings RS into disrepute

London Ulez reduced nitrogen dioxide to legal limit, mayor says The mayor of London says the fall in airborne toxins is due to the Ultra low emission zone expansion.

184 years earlier than predicted, London has met the legal limits for toxic NO2 for the first time.

This historic milestone proves that bold action like expanding ULEZ works, protecting children’s health and giving millions cleaner air to breathe.

We now have two v prominent advocates of Reform - both Matthew Goodwin and Isabel Oakeshott - arguing that Shabana Mahmood (so Rishi Sunak and Paul Ince) can't be English.

That was a settled question long before this match in 1998. This kind of radicalisation by online racists would harm Reform