Final version of record here: elifesciences.org/articles/107... Enjoy tracking

A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

More context on this #Artemis II image:

* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right

* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕

I think all these soulless “I use AI to write and there’s nothing wrong with that” pieces carry the same energy as a 10 year old saying “I want to play in the NFL but I’m going to use a forklift to do my weight room workouts because lifting weights is hard”

Skateboard stop-motion

My Clean Up Politics Act 👇

Time to end the lobbying protection racket The number of lobbyists seeking to influence the federal government has soared, yet they’re bound by secrecy that stifles honest business.

Politicians are outnumbered by lobbyists in Parliament House 15 to one; on sitting days hundreds of lobbyists roam the halls in Canberra, meeting with Ministers to influence government policies.

My Clean Up Politics Act would shine a light on lobbyists’ activities.

Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes!

"Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

Really nice work Narges and Yihong!

Propagation through a barrier: Numerical analysis of a reaction-diffusion model with free boundary We try to better understand how a spatial barrier may affect the spreading of an invading species via numerical analysis of some variations of a free …

Some new work from me with PhD student Narges Shabgard and her supervisor, Professor Yihong Du:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We examine the ability of an invasive population to traverse hostile environments of differing widths and adversity, under different models for population growth.

Just noting that ARC is still on X/Twitter. Despite it now being clear that that platform produces child exploitation materials, they remain active there.

If you interact with ARC staff, I really think they need to answer this question. It's moved being simply "disconnected from researchers" to … 🤢

How Much Did it Cost to Beat 100 Levels of Gauntlet in 1985? | Arcade Economy YouTube video by Mass Replay

The most requested Arcade Economy game has been Gauntlet. So... We're finally jumping in to see how much it cost to beat 100 levels of the dungeon crawler.

youtu.be/62l2rrNwT7Y?...

If we lived in a just media landscape, this would now be a trilogy.

new yorker cartoon by bernstein. watercolor of a middle aged white dad holding a cord up from the cord box in a heavenly light in triumph. title reads THE BEST DAY OF MY FATHER'S LIFE. caption reads “Did you say you needed a six-pin-to-eight-pin FireWire for a 2006 MacBook?"

this is the greatest feeling, when the cord box proves its utility to a family member

The Commodore 64 Ultimate lovingly recreates the best-selling personal computer of all time with smart modern tweaks and pixel-perfect 8-bit joy.

Our review: https://bit.ly/4aZHVgu

New postdoc position advertised in geometric analysis (and/or math-GR) with me in the frozen wastelands of the north (Luleå, Sweden)

web103.reachmee.com/ext/I003/583...

Associate Professor in Zoology with focus on ecology and evolution Department of Zoology  at Stockholm University includes ca. 80 employees counting researchers, PhD students, and administrative staff. Research and education at the department occurs in an internatio

We're looking for a new colleague at Asssoc Prof level! Come join us in the Zoology Department at Stockholm University. A teaching profile in ecology, faunistics and/or physiology is beneficial. Find the full job advertisemnt here: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

More on ARC job cuts & restructure:

ARC’s spending $374k on consultants for organisational “review” & “planning & development”.

They’re also spending $765k on “risk management”.

That’s $1.1 million on consultants being spent over 1 year.

Un. Believable.

Slow clap, ARC.

Academic achievement unlocked: asked to peer review a paper that I’ve co-authored.

The first Christmas special is up at RASalvaStore.com.

We’re offering the deluxe “The Demon Awakens” from the Wraithmarked Kickstarter.

Microsoft's head of AI doesn't understand why people don't like AI, and I don't understand why he doesn't understand because it's pretty obvious Is it really "mindblowing" that people are skeptical of software that consistently doesn't do the things we're told it can do?

www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/...

Infographic with AI slop published in Nature Scientific Reports

"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

The government is playing down the impact of the CSIRO job cuts The prime minister, when in opposition, accused the Coalition of "hollowing out" the CSIRO.

The prime minister, when in opposition, accused the Coalition of "hollowing out" the CSIRO.

Save the CSIRO

Our national science & research agency is now facing more job cuts than under Tony Abbott

Call on the Albanese Govt to fund the scientists & research we need to tackle big issues we face from climate to food security and everything in between

www.davidpocock.com.au/save_our_csiro

As do books by @kitkerr.bsky.social

Hi @rasalvatore.bsky.social — many of your books appear in the database noted below!

CSIRO needs urgent support CSIRO is under attack. Sign the petition calling on the Albanese Government to act now to secure the future of CSIRO’s world-leading science and research.

actionnetwork.org/petitions/cs...

As an English speaking country (with nice beaches to boot) for the cost of a small tax on fossil fuel exports or high incomes Australia could invest in science, recruit researchers fleeing the US and become the knowledge powerhouse of the 21st Century. Instead we're doing this.

Chinese national interested in a PhD using fish?

Fully-funded scholarships @bristolbiosci.bsky.social from the China Scholarship Council-University of Bristol

Success rates are high, check out the details here and get in touch:
www.bristol.ac.uk/students/sup...

Please circulate widely!

Cutting a ghost 🔪👻

Forrest-backed study links Woodside mega-project to hundreds of deaths The research, conducted by academics at ANU, suggests the massive offshore gas project off the coast of Western Australia will cause warming of 0.00039 degrees.

A new study published in Nature Climate Action finds Woodside’s Scarborough gas project could cause 100s of heat-related deaths & exposed 500k people to unprecedented heat.

Govt can’t claim climate leadership while approving projects like this.
www.afr.com//policy/ener...