I went through Schipol from/to UK week before last (UK passport). About 5 minutes each time, including first registration on the system on way out.

One for the polar climate crowd - new paper from the MOSAiC meteorology team on radiative states of the Arctic atmosphere and their impact on the surface energy budget of sea ice: online.ucpress.edu/elementa/art...

Dangerously undemocratic

Said it before: we need to make that Cambridge computer scientist the prime minister

Bloody hell. Researchers invented a disease, published two fake papers to see if LLM’s would ingest them and kick them up as fact — and then it broke containment and all the major AI’s bought in. Information pollution.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

lovely and sunny all day!

Good recommendation, thanks.

me too...don't think I've ever used anything else. Suspect the issue here is we're not 'real' badminton players.

A whole museum for currywurst seems a bit excessive and rather niche, I expect there is rather more scope with disgusting food. Though maybe not a larger audience for it?

we'll make a meteorologist of you yet! 😁

Photo of front of The Disgusting Food Museum

Look for a dinner spot in Berlin...not sure about this one.

I have most of next Saturday free in Berlin - anyone got recommendations for galleries/museums/whatever I ought to see?

Suddenly wondering if it's really a good use of my time to accept a request to review a paper for a (different) Nature journal.

get my book The Gathering Cloud (on the environmental impact of cloud storage) direct from the intrepid @uniformbooks.bsky.social here: www.uniformbooks.co.uk/thegathering...

If you're working in the climate science space, please sign and share this open letter calling out the insanity of exploiting more oil & gas when we need to eradicate dangerous fossil fuels.

Letter here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Sign here: forms.gle/DexNszLJjaRe...

Pls share far & wide!

Why LLMs Ruin Everything Reading, Writing: feat. Matt Goodwin, Alex Preston and the Bookpocalypse

I wrote on AI trashing literary life, and spoke to Alex Preston about the NYT book review scandal

Screenshot of text that says: "Important Notice (3/24/2026): NOAA NWS/NCEP has terminated the NCEP/NCAR R1 reanalysis as of March 18th, 2026. NCEP/NCAR R1 has been used as the atmospheric forcing data in the PIOMAS reanalysis . We had not been aware of this change in service which was apparently formally announced Feb 13. 2026. This means that we will have to find alternatives and generate a replacement. It will take considerable effort and time to update data streams, re-calibrate the model and generate updated time series. We don’t yet have a good sense if that’s possible with available funds and if so, when we will be able to resume production of a new PIOMAS time series. While a replacement of the NCAR/NCEP R1 as the forcing product makes ultimate sense, we would have wished for a longer time period to facilitate the transition. We are sorry what this means to our many users. PIOMAS has been in production since March 2010 and we rarely missed updates by more than a couple of weeks (except for government shutdowns). This will be longer. Check back here for updates! "

I had a feeling this was going to happen. Sad news, especially given the poor state of sea ice after this winter.

Looks like we won't be getting any more data for Arctic sea-ice thickness and volume for a while from PIOMAS. See: psc.apl.uw.edu/research/pro...

It's a lovely place. I taught on a couple of polar science graduate schools there, but in March/April when the lake was still frozen and you could walk out to the island. Enjoy!

river poems and mudlarking finds. today and tomorrow. 1pm.

I don't think people fully appreciate how apocalyptic things are for US science. I haven't had any new funding since 2024, but I'm still ok since typical grants are for three years. This means next year I will be completely out of funding and will have to fire everyone in the lab. It's not great.

Since we don't buy this stuff, our mice have made a special effort to poop in every single Tupperware container in the kitchen cupboard.

Man I bought this was only a US problem! 😲
Our brilliant local library had a table where you could borrow books banned in other countries: looks like it needs a boost!

Don't think I'm gonna make this - sorry. But I *did* already buy a copy! 😁

book cover, brown background with blue river design. title: pause, by J. R. Carpenter

good citizens of West Yorkshire. there will be a book launch event for my new poetry collection p a u s e. @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social this evening 5pm in the School of English foyer, University of Leeds, FREE all are welcome. also available online: www.ticketsource.co.uk/university-o...

Arctic sea-ice ridges are biomass hotspots harboring diverse microbial communities - Communications Earth & Environment Arctic sea-ice ridges support distinct microbial and algal communities and hold up to 80% of summer ice algal biomass, transitioning from winter repositories to summer hotspots, based on seasonal surv...

New study in @commsearth.nature.com highlights how #Arctic sea-ice ridges are biological hotspots in summer. Nearly 80% of ice algae biomass could then be in ridges. They've largely gone undetected because ridges are very seldom studied. Data was collected during the @awi.de MOSAiC expedition.

I'm a sucker for really good interactive science visualizations.

Check out this one that lets you explore a map of the known universe. It's beautiful, engaging, and very well done.

mapoftheuniverse.net

"How can one well-meaning scientist counter scientific misinformation? Or even a million? The other side is bankrolled by dead-eyed billionaires."

My latest blog post #AcademicSky

occamstypewriter.org/mindthegap/2...

Are we falling out of love with nonfiction? In the early 2020s, readers flocked to books to explain political turbulence. But is the world now too grim to read about – and are podcasters taking the place of authors?

If we learned nothing else from 2025, it’s that we shouldn’t take for granted that what we love will continue to be funded

If people and libraries don’t buy a certain kind of book, publishers will stop investing in them

That’s also one reason the library book bans are so scary