Phil

I'm just a science reporter begging scientists and space agencies to stop capitalizing random letters in the middle of words and calling it an acronym. This heartfelt plea brought to you by the European Space maTerIal deMisability dATabasE and the letters O, H, N, and O.

Global change research in the observational era

Leuzinger and Medlyn

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."

There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

Right... there must be *someone* out there who actually had their birthday read out by the hopping puppet menace on Gus Honeybun's Magic Birthdays. If you did, then let's hear all about it and exactly how much of a short-term local celebrity it made you...

timworthington.org/2024/05/28/l...

Global Carbon Budget 2025 Abstract. Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to bette...

Published today in Earth System Science Data: The Global Carbon Budget 2025
essd.copernicus.org/preprints/es...

The Womble and The Clanger in the style of The Omen and The Exorcist

🧵I've posted them before, but here's my thread of horror/kids' TV double-bill cinema posters. Happy Halloween...
#halloween #cinema #graphicdesign #poster

The official home of the Python Programming Language

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-...
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Cover of The State of Wildfires 2024-2025 report

Infographic with ten points titled Unpacking the wildfire season

Flames continuing to burn in charred remains of buildings

🔥 Human-driven global warming made recent wildfires in South America & Southern California much larger & more destructive, the latest State of Wildfires report reveals.

🔸 LA wildfires 25× larger, 2× as likely
🔸 Pantanal–Chiquitano fires 35× larger
🔸 Global CO₂ from fires >8 bn tonnes

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I hate it when people compare the amount of heat the ocean has absorbed to the power of atomic bombs dropped on Japan. It’s gruesome and not relatable. As my Japanese PhD student said when he heard the comparison, “It’s not a good memory for us.”

Right now, this is an extreme minority magnified by a social media that sends extremes viral. If nobody has the courage to say that’s what it is - & that normal people, even if worried about immigration, spend their Saturdays in Tesco or taking the kids to football - it won’t stay extreme for long.

Astonishing human emotions from Tim Cook.

There were no education events at Reform conference. Their only policies appear to be giving private schools their tax breaks back and changing the history curriculum to trumpet the benefits of empire.

🎧😎 Ready for a new podcast this summer?

Try Counting the Earth — our series exploring nature through numbers – from the zero in net zero, all the way to 50 trillion – the estimated number of earthworms in the UK 🪱😲

Discover it here: audioboom.com/channels/512...

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Can't unsee Jon Pertwee for that one

“Tinderbox Britain” is such an artificial idea. Immigration is only of real salience to Reform and (to a lesser extent) Tory supporters. Panic over migrant hotels is a small subset of an existing subset, largely radicalised by Twitter/Telegraph. Alarm over Gaza is a *much* more mainstream view.

Columbia Agrees to $200 Million Fine to Settle Fight With Trump

Can someone smarter than the New York Times explain to me what exactly the $200M fine that Columbia is paying is *for*?

Because in my naiveté and with $400M in grant funding canceled, this is indistinguishable from a protection racket.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/n...

Come on Laura - stop letting Farage get away with grotesque lies on #climate - the green economy is growing 3 times faster than rest of the economy. The green transition is in our *economic interests* & it’s Farage who’ll de-industrialise the UK, not green policy #bbclaurak

Still trying with GPTo3. I asked it to help me confirm and find a half-remembered anecdote from philosopher Jonathan Glover probably his brilliant book "Humanity".
GPT found it, gave me page refs in 2 editions, and listed other sources. Impressive! Only problem: the story is not in the book.

Just to accurately lay out the course of events, people were yelling at him because his auto-responding robot that was trained on Twitter’s userbase still displayed — against all odds — a modicum of empathy. He then made the robot speak like him and within hours it was calling itself Mechahitler.

I would go so far as to say they are the greatest book covers of all time & its unlikely they'll ever be surpassed. The magic of seeing them appear in the bookshop back in the day is indescribable

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Four years ago this week, Hobbes suddenly appeared in "Bloom County" and if that wasn't Watterson drawing his moments, I don't know what to think. I just remember this catching me in the bits of me that get *really* sentimental and emotional.

British multiculturalism - day to day, on the ground - is a successful experiment. The UK enjoys a shared set of political facts, as represented by the non-tribal backlash over Partygate/Truss. The British obsession with irony & suspicion of sincerity provides some protection against demagoguery.

Mainly several Corn chamomile (Anthemis arvensis) and a single poppy

🌼🐝 Which plants are best to sow in gardens and parks to support pollinators like bees and hoverflies?

A new study offers evidence-based guidance on which annual seed mixes work best in horticultural plots — for both wildlife and people.

🔗 www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-med... 🧪

🧵1/ #gardens #pollinators

Ceci ne pas un subtweet

Traditional breadmaking in Uzbekistan

The quote from this article: "We have a bonus scheme to protect our most precious resource, which is the senior management team" from the chair of Thames Water is what I'd write on the guillotine if I was that way inclined.

A headline on the i newspaper saying "Labour hopes immigration crackdown can halt Reform UK"

Reform has narratives, not policies. When will other parties fucking learn that the way to beat them is by offering counter-narratives, not turning these ones into policies that are cruel, beneficial to nobody, + mightily hypocritical of UK which has treated the rest of the world like a holiday home

Two woman walking and embracing each other in front of an ICE detention center. The woman on the left is wearing a black dress and heels. The woman on the right is smiling and wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. Members of the press are in the background.

Two women standing, smiling, and embracing each other with grass, water, and the sky in the background. The woman on the left is wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. The woman on the right is wearing a black dress.

Two woman stand next to each other and hold onto one another. The woman on the left is wearing a black dress. The woman on the right is smiling and wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. In the background is the fence of an ICE detention center.

Today, our client Rümeysa Öztürk was released on bail from ICE detention in Louisiana, and she will return to New England to continue her studies.

📸 Giancarlo D’Agostaro