Davide Castelvecchi

Last week, for the first time in 20 years, a man died from a treatable snake bite on my home island of Martinique. He had asked chatGPT what to do instead of going the hospital. He missed the 6 hours treatable window.

The surprising vaccine side effects that can improve long-term health People often focus on the bad side effects of vaccines, but they can have some great side effects too, says columnist Michael Le Page. They don’t just protect us from contagious diseases but can also ...

Yes, vaccines 💉 can have adverse side effects, tho these are much lower than the risks of the diseases they protect against

What we tend to overlook is that vaccines can also have beneficial side effects, which can be surprisingly large 🧪

www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

Israel responsible for two-thirds of record 129 press killings in 2025, says CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists report says Israel also to blame for 81% of ‘intentionally targeted’ journalist killings * The deadly toll on journalists in the Gaza war A record 129 journalists and media workers were killed in the course of their work in 2025, two-thirds of them by Israeli forces, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). It was the second consecutive year in which killings of members of the press reached unprecedented levels, and the second year running in which Israel was responsible for roughly two-thirds of the total, the New York-based independent organisation, which documents attacks on journalists worldwide, said in its annual report published on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Israel responsible for two-thirds of record 129 press killings in 2025, says CPJ

I mean yeah, but it's all a part of the narrative these guys push about us being basically just like AI, or vice versa. It is scientifically illiterate, but many people buy it.

Whistle while you whinny: researchers identify two sounds straight from the horse’s mouth The ability to make two distinct sounds at once is shared with human beat boxers and throat singers.

Until now, scientists didn't understand how horses whinny

go.nature.com/46oQejb

I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day | Anonymous Objectification, hate, rape threats: the politicians debating online abuse mean well, but to truly understand, they need to see what I see

This is one of the most heart-breaking & important articles I have ever read - from someone whose voices are so rarely heard, a teenaged girl.

If you want to understand online misogyny in all its devastating impact, please read this shattering piece.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Or you could see them as multiple-valued functions — perhaps showing a splitting into parallel universes

The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.

Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.

This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

Mia Valentina Paz Faria A 7-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Austin, Texas Detained for 70 days “I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

UPDATE: Staff at the ICE concentration camp in Dilley, Texas have begun raiding the dormitories of kids and their parents to confiscate and destroy letters from the children. This is in response to the ace reporting by @micarosenberg et al for ProPublica:

“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

- 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas.

Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children.

www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

An interesting graphic indeed, showing some lines going backwards in time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Email blunder exposes $90bn Russian oil smuggling ring Apparent network of companies using same server includes little-known group that has become country’s largest oil exporter

The FT has identified 48 seemingly independent companies working from different physical addresses that appear to be operating together to disguise the origin of Russian oil, particularly from Kremlin-controlled Rosneft.

www.ft.com/content/4310...

The strategy conflates application and development. These two things need different kinds of support.
Hard to square this kind of stated ambition with the scaling down of disciplines that fuel AI innovation and talent.

‘An AlphaFold 4’ – scientists marvel at DeepMind drug spin-off’s exclusive new AI Isomorphic Lab’s proprietary drug-discovery model is a major advance, but scientists developing open-source tools are left guessing how to achieve similar results.

“It’s a major advance, on the scale of an AlphaFold4. The problem, of course, is that we know nothing of the details.”

Isomorphic Lab’s proprietary drug-discovery model is a major advance
go.nature.com/3Mm2ZnQ

(Those of us who used to watch the old Colbert Report — which was a parody of Fox News — will shudder, because that was literally what he would always say)

U.S. news media used to have an unwritten rule that allowed them to clean up quotes from anyone — except presidents, who were to be quoted verbatim. They must have given that up because in the present environment, reporting reality for what it is gets you billed as having a “liberal bias”

The NYTimes often doesn't quote Trump at all, instead reframing his words with a summary falsely suggesting coherent thought, in contrast to the gibberish he actually said. They also don't mention how he routinely mumbles and slurs even prepared remarks, like here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zsd...

I've been cranking numbers. Full year 2025, it looks like nuclear power just about kept its nose ahead of wind and solar. But in H2 2025, while wind didn't quite overtake nuclear, solar did. In 2026 nuclear will drop to third place in the production of clean electricity.

Hoorah for @jomarchant.bsky.social launching her new book In Search of Now (which looks fabulous) last night in Kensington. Lovely to see my friends and colleagues including @wanderinggaia.bsky.social @helenpearson.bsky.social @castelvecchi.bsky.social @mpshanahan.bsky.social, Marnie Chesterton...

Why are all the US media using words like "revoke" and repeal"? They mean nothing in this context. Why not "refuse to accept", "deny", or "lie about"?

US repeals key ‘endangerment finding’ that climate change is a public threat Overturning the 2009 decision means billions of extra tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions over the next three decades.

Today’s action “is a rejection of the most basic laws of physics”, says #climate scientist Friederike Otto.

I report on the EPA revoking its own ruling on the danger of greenhouse gases:

www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Loss of green smelter highlights Kentucky’s need for clean electricity Century Aluminum chose Oklahoma, not Kentucky, for a new smelter. Some say it’s a "wake-up call" for the Bluegrass State to modernize – and decarbonize –…

A giant aluminum smelter recently decided to locate in Oklahoma rather than Kentucky. Why?

OK has cheap wind power. KY is stuck with increasingly expensive fossil power.

OTD 10 years ago, LIGO detected gravitational waves for the first time.

Here's how @castelvecchi.bsky.social reported on it: www.nature.com/articles/530...

Dozens of researchers will move to France from US following high-profile bid to lure talent Large proportion worked at Columbia University, which had its grants cut and frozen by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

"France announced late last week that it would be awarding funds to 46 scientists as part of a high-profile initiative to recruit foreign researchers to the country with the promise of greater academic freedom. Almost all of them were previously at US institutions."

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I am the guy in the orange sweater, second row on the right, who stands up to ask a question at around 44’30”

Breaking: Washington Post gutting its climate team Clean energy dies in darkness. Courtesy of Jeff Bezos.

I'm told the catastrophic Washington Post layoffs today include at least 14 climate journalists. Totally gutting. Details: www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/washington...

A lot going on here and all ugly, but one thing I still can't get my head around is how any British government can do business with Thiel at this point.

The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI. Search through them here.

Important.
www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Bari Weiss’s new CBS hires include ‘germ theory denialist’ doctor Dr Mark Hyman, who claimed he reduced his biological age by 20 years, brought on as a contributor

"Among the hires at CBS News announced by Weiss is a doctor who claims he reduced his biological age by 20 years with cold plunges; that cod liver oil treats autism; and that Alzheimer’s and dementia can be reversed with supplements he sells on his online store."

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Person: say, i am alive. Computer: I am alive. Person: oh my god.