My look back at a year of claims about deextinction that didn't live up to the hype. No, the dire wolf is not back from the dead 🧪
Featuring @toriherridge.bsky.social @devoevomed.bsky.social @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social and @grenyer.bsky.social
www.newscientist.com/article/2505...
“It’s like claiming to have brought Napoleon back from the dead by asking a short French man to wear his hat.”
A short piece in The Conversation by me on why “de-extinction” is nothing of the sort, and bad, bad conservation.
theconversation.com/why-de-extin...
resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
New paper - England’s Biodiversity Net Gain policy could easily and inadvertently harm invertebrate populations because it doesn’t value habitats, condition, connectivity, or scale in ways that invertebrate populations respond positively to.
I’ll happily die on the hill of academic freedom of speech. But I’m damned if I’m sharing it with the Oxford Union who have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Just breaking my own Twitter embargo to congratulate @johnmittermeier and colleagues on refinding Otidiphaps insularis after 146 years, and also on outrunning pirates. We need to adjust the postgraduate research skills training accordingly :) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-63672501
Wow. Your mastodon account has a pure RSS output built in. https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/109288881064018003
My use of Twitter is paused pending future statements by the company about changes its policies on disinformation and promotion of violence on the platform. Please use email as I won’t see DMs.🤞
This isn’t a new government. That seems like a strategic error.
The perfect time for the government to spend a zombie month while the Brexit ultras try a last power grab and we all pay. “…my lifeless two-year-old wasn't enough of an emergency to get the help of the ambulances. The cuts to the NHS are just so scary.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-633256
Quick check of the ne… oh.
and this isn’t doomscrolling, particularly - it’s just scrolling. So maybe it’s time to save the brain and reduce input and output to biogeography only? It might be.
The brain - mine at least - is just not meant to experience so many different and intense emotions in such quick succession. A few weeks or months away show you this dopamine buffet and its consequences - it becomes an affective version of Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex.
In three sequential clicks, it gave me this absolutely raw article from @robdelaney on child loss www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-heaviest-pai... then the evil government banality of “a return to austerity” and then finally a tweet contain...
Everyone knows ML boosts clicks, and the consequent outrage it amplifies and divides with. But even without, a few thousand sources of content becomes a high-pressure hose of experience, and I just don’t think I’m (and by proxy, anyone) is designed to deal with the consequences.
I spent the summer off Twitter, pretty much. I’ve returned to it this week. And honestly, I think I need to fundamentally rethink whether and how I use it. I’ve curated my feed intensively, and professionally and politically it tells me a lot of things I want and need to know.
Amazing-looking paper in Nature on the new @IUCN ecosystem typology. It’s a hugely ambitious idea, with profound and quite hard-to-predict consequences for monitoring: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05318-4 It’s also got an eye-opening (presumed) response to a reviewer…
Yes, a screenshot of a retweet. But the UN just retweeted to the world a warning from major conservation bodies about the Conservatives’ plan to destroy three fundamental legislative pillars of nature protection in the U.K. without clear replacement. It’s bad on a global scale.
One of the saddest things about the ongoing attempt to pack the council of the @nationaltrust with conservative fundamentalists is that the great West Country work of @TheRestoreTrust and indeed their whole hard-won public image is being stolen. If there’s a trademark lawyer…
For anyone wondering how all their water got onto the ring road last week - I don’t think they’re meant to look like this normally.
Good run down of NAO modelling and outlook for this winter, as well as consequent gas demand and consequences thereof. In short - 🤞😬thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/will-a-col...
Those notorious Jacobins, the National Trust. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/press-release/our-respon...
“Events, dear boy, events.”
Helpful context if the new government’s gamble isn’t making much sense. www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/inflation-slows-ene...
This seems appropriate today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3f-vypUPPs
Really quite a contribution to ecology by New Road, North Ascot…
I’m not particularly skilled at presentational politics, but I can’t help thinking that “Shall I publicly associate myself with pumping actual human shit onto beaches and rivers in August?” only has one answer, and it isn’t yes. inews.co.uk/news/politics/sewage-vot...
A new strain of avian flu is decimating wild birds. Humans should worry https://on.ft.com/3QTFUWa “Good” summary article if you need one for non-technical types. I wish it was clearer on was the need for mitigating other threats, especially food supply, during recovery.
