Elise Cutts

For much more coherent thoughts and a lot less terrible jokes (look the nonsense filter breaks when I'm tired and I wrote this after arriving back at my apartment after a flight at 10:50 pm)... check out this thread from study author @edogia.bsky.social:

A tiny scrap of the genetic molecule RNA can *almost* copy itself. Here's what it means for the origin of life

I had a whole different post prepared but it fell through for reasons outside my control at the last minute so...

Here's my sleep-deprived, post-airplane attempt to summarize a very cool recent paper on a small RNA strip that can copy RNA.

Because... the post schedule must be upheld I guess? 🧪

Trains are actually weirdly good working spots, but I usually end up just wanting to look out the window and zone out haha

I... kind of dislike travel? And tourism? Like 99/100 times I would just rather stay home?

Is this... okay?

I can work at either:

a) my desk, or

b) literally any coffee shop

those really are the only options if I am actually going to work efficiently 😵‍💫

Thank you so much for this perspective, Elise...it's exciting to see lipids getting a little time in the spotlight!! 🤩 #lipidtime @elisecutts.bsky.social

It took all of 2 warmer days for my allergies to be like: yes, spring is here 😅

I get that cross-border VAT is annoying but other businesses in Europe — including itty bitty ones with way less cash for tax accounting etc. than big airlines — has to deal with it anyways. There are systems for this within the EU.

The 0% VAT on flights thing seems a bit absurd to me.

VAT on trains within Austria is 10%, so a little lower. Why isn't it 0% like for international flights?

The international flights being 0% is, I assume, part of why riding trains is often more expensive than flying -.-

Why are flights within Austria given a discounted VAT rate of 13% instead of the normal 20%? And why are cross-border flights discounted to 0%?

Censorship and safety concerns cloud China’s plans to host science journalism conference Organizers of the 2029 World Conference of Science Journalists defend Beijing meeting as opportunity to connect with Chinese scientists

🧪Significant debate in science journalism right -- will the World Conference in Beijing be safe and independent? My quotes up top here are pointed, but this is a critical point in time for journalism and science. We must be clear-eyed about what this means.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Announcing the Retraction Watch Research Accountability Reporting Fellowship - The Open Notebook The Open Notebook and Retraction Watch are thrilled to announce a new fellowship program funded by The Center for Scientific Integrity. This six-month program will equip up to six reporters and editor...

We and @theopennotebook.bsky.social are thrilled to announce The Retraction Watch Research Accountability Reporting Fellowship!

-- $7,500 in funding to support reporting
-- One-to-one mentoring support
-- Four virtual trainings

Find out more here:

This is kind of what I was getting at in the section titled "Less is Different" — for the reasons I get into there, I think it probably most accurate to say complex systems are "different than the sum of their parts."

Announcing the Retraction Watch Research Accountability Reporting Fellowship - The Open Notebook The Open Notebook and Retraction Watch are thrilled to announce a new fellowship program funded by The Center for Scientific Integrity. This six-month program will equip up to six reporters and editor...

@theopennotebook.bsky.social has partnered with @retractionwatch.com to launch a new fellowship program for local reporters!

Spread the word 📣

I think we have this colloquial notion of patterns somehow being complicated or ornate, probably because we are chaos creatures of the 2nd law of thermodynamics that are better at making nonsense than patterns.

But patterns are simple, not complicated. They're (literally?) a shorthand for nature.

Complexity is less than the sum of its parts, not more Patterns are a shorthand for reality

Please guys can we stop calling complex systems "more than the sum of their parts?"

I'm guilty of this word crime myself, but I did my time by writing this post. 🧪

YouTube video by Austriankiwi If an Austrian doesn’t drink alcohol

Ok but actually this is so real lol. Never before moving to Austria did doctors compliment me on my "beautiful" liver function literally every time I went in for a blood test 😅😂

It's amazing to see some real consequences!!! And then at the same time I'm almost more horrified by all of the people in academia who must have known about what was going on and said nothing.

Have also been noticing this. When and why did we all start using their gross language?

If I'm ever rich enough to have a secretary, I'm going to 1) hire a man just to buck the female secretary stereotype, 2) pay him a good wage, and 3) acknowledge him in all of my work because I wouldn't want people to think I was somehow being super productive without loads of help.

And then here I am feeling totally overwhelmed by scheduling meetings, arranging calls, planning trips, doing taxes, etc. — and worse, feeling like I'm not "working hard enough" because admin takes time from my "real" work

Actually that admin *is* work. Powerful people can just pay to outsource it

Reading the Epstein files I was struck by this realization that all these gross, powerful men have like literal armies of (female) secretaries managing their whole lives for them 😵‍💫

This includes like... professors. So not even crazy rich people. Just "important" ones.

The U.S. Has Pulled Out of the WHO. Here’s What That Means for Public Health As the U.S.’s withdrawal from the WHO becomes official, the consequences for the world’s health could be serious.

Right?

"One of the first things that could change for U.S. scientists is their access to databases that are important for monitoring infectious diseases like influenza, as well as emerging threats that could affect the health of Americans, such as COVID."

This reminds me of a chat I had yesterday with a scientist who studies zoonotic (animal --> human) diseases. She mentioned that we really should be keeping an eye on bird flu.

That's a totally different virus than this one.

So... it seems like a great time for the US to leave the WHO, right?

A little-known flu virus is sickening cattle around the world. Are humans next? Features of recently identified influenza D point to possible pandemic threat

Not now, little-known flu virus!

I hooked a DSLR I had lying around and wasn't using much up to my computer with a capture card to be a webcam and HOLY MOLY is it an upgrade.

Who'd have thought a camera would be a good camera

Thank you!

Reviewer 2 Feedback Form

I'm experimenting with this new format to share short science news (which I was asked for in my reader survey) in a form that's both more attention-grabbing and useful (footnotes with stats!) than newspaper-style short news.

Let me know what you think by yelling at me here or in my reader survey:

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

This is a science news story about a Nature paper in disguise as a clickbaity essay... because attention economy.

Sorry I don't make the rules, you and your clicking habits do ;)

The post is short and sweet, about 500 words long, in the form of an opinion sandwich: opinion, hard facts, opinion.

Elon Musk wasn't stupid to buy Twitter The science is in: X's algorithm makes users more right-wing

Ah, 2022. Back when you could *maybe* still think Elon Musk was a business bro and not a wannabe horseman of the apocalypse.

Back then, there was Discourse about how buying Twitter was stupid. It wasn't. It was a political investment, not a financial one.

New research shows the dark dividends: 🧪