Michael Marshall

A cartoon about dad jokes. In the centre is a huge yellow book titled "250 Dad Jokes by Dads". To the right, an older man has fallen on his back laughing. To the left, a sullen teenager is standing with her back to the book, wearing a hoodie and with one foot on a skateboard. Credit: Josie Ford

Feedback in @newscientist.com:

How can you find out how old a boat is? Look at its berth certificate.

Yes, it's the science of dad jokes.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26835701-500-who-finds-dad-jokes-funniest-the-answer-might-not-astonish-you/

And yet, exactly as expected 🤦🏻‍♂️

This is all John Roberts’ fault Trump owes his corrupt and abusive reign to one man.

John Roberts once promised to be like an umpire. He charmed both senators and the media, and for 20 years, was portrayed as a moderate institutionalist.

But today, it's become clear that the promise was a lie.

We are watching a rigged game, and Roberts set it up.

That should be “for @doctors-net-uk.bsky.social“

🚨 My first story for doctors.net.uk 🚨

The incredible rise in diagnoses of autism and ADHD has fuelled claims of overdiagnosis.

There might be some, but overall both conditions remain UNDERdiagnosed.

(hard paywall, don't @ me)

https://news.doctors.net.uk/analysis/IphM5DrXcdgCeCEErovcq

An illustration showing an envelope with a NASA logo on the left. Top-right is a stamp showing astronauts planting a US flag on the moon. The letter is addressed to Kim Kardashian in California (the address is redacted). Credit: Josie Ford

Space geeks: Feedback in @newscientist.com has figured out how to get invited to visit NASA. You just have to behave more like Kim Kardashian.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26835693-900-kim-kardashian-has-wrangled-an-invite-to-nasa-hq-can-we-get-one-too/

Photo showing people of the Karo tribe looking over the Omo River Valley in Ethiopia. There is a tree in the foreground with three thin trunks. The river is brown, a few metres across. Low vegetation on both banks. Credit: Michael Honegger / Alamy

Our Human Story, in @newscientist.com:

After 60 years of exploration, the Omo-Turkana basin is still yielding new secrets about human evolution.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2503899-cradle-of-humanity-is-still-revealing-new-insights-about-our-origins/

Yup, screaming.

It was a bad edit and needed correction, but you’d have to be a wilful idiot to think it made the overall programme misleading. Trump really did encourage January 6, for months.

Nobody needed to resign over that and it doesn’t mean BBC News is untrustworthy.

It’s a bad sign that I had to quickly look up the number of people killed in World War Two / the Holocaust, in order to get a bit of historical perspective on the harms caused by Donald Trump’s government.

It’s also never good when a government has a death count so large you have to model it.

A cartoon showing a robot arm holding an ice cream cone and waving it around, while a pair of human hands tries to grab the cone. Credit: Josie Ford

Feedback in @newscientist.com:

Some bright spark has built a robot that can pretend to serve you an ice cream, only to jerk it away at the last second.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26835684-200-is-a-robot-programmed-to-prank-you-annoying-yes/

Mark Zuckerberg Opened an Illegal School at His Palo Alto Compound. His Neighbors Revolted Neighbors complained about noise, security guards, and hordes of traffic. An unlicensed school named after the Zuckerbergs’ pet chicken tipped them over the edge.

Incredible reporting from @carolinehaskins.bsky.social about a school Mark Zuckerberg opened on his Palo Alto compound and operated for years with no permits, permissions, anything at all

A closeup photo of a person's eye. They are facing left to right. The eye is wide open and sunlight is reflecting off the lens.

Glaucoma remains one of the most common causes of avoidable blindness. So glaucoma patients and specialists came together to map out a better approach.

The result is a report, "The future of glaucoma", which I helped write and edit.

https://www.futureofglaucoma.co.uk

<sigh> Talented and hard-working journalist laid off by dumbass bosses, part 9994

Artwork showing palaeoanthropologist Christopher Bae: a middle-aged Korean man with glasses and black hair, wearing a blue shirt. In the background are coloured bubbles containing human bones and tools. Credit: Becki Gill

For @newscientist.com, I interviewed Christopher Bae: an anthropologist who has proposed two new ancient human species, Homo juluensis and Homo bodoensis.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2500833-does-the-family-tree-of-ancient-humans-need-a-drastic-rewrite/

A photo showing an artist's impression of a teenage girl who is the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father. She has black and ginger hair, a wide flag nose and red cheeks. Credit: John Bavaro Fine Art / Science Photo Library

New for @newscientist.com:

We have a second high-quality genome of a Denisovan: a group of ancient humans who lived in east Asia.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2502409-denisovans-may-have-interbred-with-mysterious-group-of-ancient-humans/

NEW from me:

Political hostility, high visa fees and (in the case of the UK) stagnant incomes are making the UK and US less attractive destinations for top international talent.

That steep decline in the appeal of moving to the US after 2016 is 👀

7 basic science discoveries that changed the world Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government.

Basic research is easily mocked because it can seem impractical, but, in fact, it is a major driver of economic growth. “The return on investment in basic research—the return to society—is very high, typically multiple dollars back per dollar invested.”

— @michael-marshall.bsky.social @Nature.com

A cartoon showing a scene from Minecraft. A Minecraft player is standing in the foreground, facing away from camera, looking at a large laptop made of Minecraft bricks with a complicated brown pattern on the screen. Credit: Josie Ford

Feedback in @newscientist.com:

Have you ever played Minecraft and thought "you know, I could build a miniature version of ChatGPT out of all these blocks"?

Well, someone did, and they followed through.

https://loom.ly/64_xhQg

New for @nature.com:

Here are seven examples of curiosity-driven research that had massive impacts on society.

This is what Donald Trump's gutting of the US science budget will destroy - and what Republicans in Congress could still save.

https://loom.ly/hmD43LU

New in @newscientist.com:

#Fibromyalgia causes #ChronicPain and we don't understand why. Now two big genetics studies have given us pointers to the real causes of the condition.

https://loom.ly/5LjQCQg

Cool: my story about lost prehistoric human groups is in the Dutch version of @newscientist.com ⬇️

Yay. Priceless. The right column at the right time. And a gleefully English two fingers to the haters.

Feedback in @newscientist.com:

Many scientists emphasise their achievements. And then there's the researcher who wrote: "Sometimes you just kinda phone it in for a year, you know?"

https://loom.ly/H5cEHTk

So much this. I reviewed Harari’s latest, Nexus, (negatively) and it was so difficult to critique it properly and convincingly without blowing the word count. I spent more time cutting for length than I did writing.

A photo taken from overhead, showing a teenage girl with long brown hair and wearing a camouflage green puffer jacket, placing a smartphone into a locker. Credit: Robin Utrecht / Shutterstock

New for @newscientist.com:

Banning phones in schools may make students a bit more lonely, rather than rescuing their mental health as is often claimed

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2500228-school-phone-bans-may-actually-harm-some-students-mental-health/

A cartoon showing a silhouetted man on the left, standing on a huge unspooling paper calendar with the years 2025, 2062 and 2339 marked. Credit: Josie Ford

Bad news, everyone: the human species will go extinct by the year 2339.

At least, so says one of the silliest scientific papers @newscientist.com's Feedback has ever encountered.

https://loom.ly/Y1dJ4wE

UK’s arm’s length public bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation Seven in ten Britons say it is important for top scientific institutions to be independent in exclusive new polling.

🧵🚨

The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news.

Today our report is published!
www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n...

1/11

Kemi Badenoch wants to end ‘rip-off degrees’ – but I wouldn’t have created Horrid Henry without mine | Francesca Simon I studied Old and Middle English. Although I didn’t know it, I couldn’t have chosen a better subject to train me to become a children’s author, says author Francesca Simon

Kemi Badenoch wants to end ‘rip-off degrees’ – but I wouldn’t have created Horrid Henry without mine | Francesca Simon

A painting showing a group of Homo heidelbergensis on the ancient banks of the river Thames in modern-day Swanscombe, UK. Credit: Natural History Museum, London / Science Photo Library.

New "Our Human Story" in @newscientist.com:

Who were the first ancient humans to reach the British Isles?

And why did it take them so long to get there?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2499788-who-were-the-first-humans-to-reach-the-british-isles/

New for BBC Future:

The foundations are being laid for the world's first commercial-scale liquid air energy storage facility.

If successful, it will help the electricity grid to handle more renewable energy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20251009-the-liquid-air-alternative-to-fossil-fuels