Matt Broadhead

@stmassoc.bsky.social hi STM, is there still a cloudflare webinar today? I couldn't find a start time. Thanks.

Web-scraping AI bots cause disruption for scientific databases and journals Automated programs gathering training data for artificial-intelligence tools are overwhelming academic websites.

Please keep your bot on a lead: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The rise of a new form of germ theory denial But did they have any underlying conditions?

"Getting enough cardio and greens is not going to stop bird flu." @kmpanthagani.bsky.social writes a much needed refresher on the reality of germ theory; because some of our "public health officials" need a reminder on basic science. yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-rise-o...

José ‘Pepe’ Mujica, former guerrilla and ex-president of Uruguay, dies aged 89 In a final interview, Mujica said: ‘We are too focused on wealth and not on happiness … Before you know it, life has passed you by’

Pepe Mujica, the anarchist guerilla who became president of Uruguay, has passed on. He leaves behind as good a legacy as it's possible to leave.

So it goes.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

An over-exposed photo of a stone wall, showing a pigeon's egg in a dark niche

This isn't a great photo, I had to over-expose it, but it's not every day you see a pigeon's egg.

This might be the greatest attempt to cover up "Why I was googling 'CHEST Journal'" in history.

The Trump regime is now using US Attorneys to intimidate academic journals by sending them letters demanding they explain how they ensure ‘viewpoint diversity.’ Journal editors should be public about this and coordinate to refuse to comply with these fascist tactics.

Somehow, the future is both going to be a dystopian techno sci-fi hellscape AND we're gonna have coal and measles and robber barons and a permanent underclass.

Philip K. Dickens

AI Bot traffic - a real problem, right now. We have been experiencing some disruption at BMJ due to actions needed to protect against AI bot traffic. After reading this post by eric Hellman https://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2025/03/ai-bots-are-destroying-open-access.html I wanted to share some of our experiences. The issue is a real one. To quote one of my team “Unfortunately, ...

Bloop bloop beep beep - bot problems.

Not that we in the library wish to encourage profanity, but if you want to get rid of these AI-search summaries (which are often absolute nonsense), just swear in your search terms.

It really works.

If you use this custom string as your search engine in Chrome settings, you get classic search results without the "AI" summary.

"https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14"

From the #Turkey protests - this must be one of the best protest signs ever!

For all my math peeps out there: 2025 is pretty amazing mathematical arrangement.

1. 2025 is a perfect square (45×45=2025)

2. 2025 is the sum of digits of cubes from 1 to 9 (1³ + 2³ + 3³ + ... + 9³ = 2025)

3. 2025 is the first square year after 1936

(Cont…)

alt text alternatives Alt Text - What is to be done? What should be done? A number of accessibility requirements are coming in to law over the next year that are going to pose some unique challenges for scholarly publishers. The European Union: European Accessibility Act (EAA) and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). While there are many accessibly requir...

Some thoughts about alt text.

Several books and articles state that #giraffes cannot swim. I became interested in testing this contention. I knew that Don Henderson had produced a digital model of a giraffe and was able to test the buoyancy and swimming abilities of his models via digital simulation... 1/n

An Excel sheet showing the formula TODAY() giving the result 45678

Big day for Excel geeks.

Geometriphylogenetics xkcd.com/3010

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #1,679,166!

Pay researchers to spot errors in published papers Borrowing the idea of ‘bug bounties’ from the technology industry could provide a systematic way to detect and correct the errors that litter the scientific literature. Borrowing the idea of ‘bug boun...

I rather like the idea of trying out a 'bug bounty' for those who find errors in published papers. Might it reverse the tendency to keep quiet about errors found, and reward professional error spotters? www.nature.com/articles/d41... #ScientificPublishing #ScienceCommunication