ALT: An infographic titled "Common MythConceptions: World's most contagious falsehoods" debunks popular myths. Examples include: Napoleon wasn't short; sharks can get cancer; bulls don't hate red; bananas grow on plants, not trees; bats aren't blind; goldfish have more than a 3-second memory; and MSG doesn't cause headaches. Each myth is represented by an icon and a brief explanation. Bubbles vary in size based on the myth's popularity. Created by David McCandless from the "Information is Beautiful" project.

World's most contagious falsehoods

See all 70
bit.ly/IIB-Mythconc...

data & sources
bit.ly/KIB_Mythconception

‘I asked him to stop’: Father adds daughter’s name to over 100 preprints without her permission Anja/Pixabay An author in China with nearly 500 preprints has continued to add his daughter’s name to papers – despite her insistence she was not involved.  Shifa Liu, whose papers list affili…

An author in China with nearly 500 preprints has continued to add his daughter’s name to papers – despite her insistence she was not involved.

NASA just dropped the closest image ever taken of Jupiter...

Chinook salmon are hatching in Upper Klamath for first time in a century The Klamath Tribes are celebrating evidence of Chinook salmon spawning in Klamath River tributary.

Following completion of the largest dam removal in US history in 2024, the Upper Klamath River saw its first naturally hatched Chinook salmon this year - a promising sign of recovery for both the fish and the tribes that historically relied on them www.ijpr.org/wildlife/202...

Mosquitoes reach Iceland for the first time as the Arctic heats up In what is possibly another sign of climate change, mosquitoes have landed in Iceland for the first time. For many years, the island was the only Arctic country that could claim to be mosquito-free. B...

phys.org/news/2026-04...

This is another great example of a rule that resonates with me:

When someone asks you to send more time consuming/interacting with material than was spent creating it, it is

🫩SOUL CRUSHING🫩

A handmade poster on electrosensation in fishes. Beautiful sketches of channel catfish, hammerhead shark, paddlefish and electric eel

A handmade poster on vision in fishes

A handmade poster on chemoreception in fishes. Three sections are titled Chemoreception, Olfaction, and Gustation

A student presenting a poster on chemoreception and several others listening enraptured.

Students in my ichthyology class made these posters on sensory systems in fishes. Rather happy with most of these.

Great news. Just yesterday, I tried fitting some of the models on the vignette pages, but the package didn’t have those models. I was perplexed, but this makes sense.

The mathematically correct way to slice a pizza The intermediate value theorem shows us how to find an even center on an irregular shape

The intermediate value theorem shows us how to find an even center on an irregular shape

Thousands of small fish defy gravity to climb Congo waterfall A species of small fish has been observed by the thousands climbing a vertical waterfall 15 metres (50 feet) tall in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a behaviour ​that illustrates the surprising and ingenious ways animals can adapt to extreme environments.

Thousands of small fish defy gravity to climb Congo waterfall reut.rs/4tx89gs

This is how I learned that lme4 now has ar1(). How did I miss this awesome update?

Claude is amazing. Just two years ago, my youngest was crying all the time and acting like a baby. But then Claude came out and now she’s crying less and acting more like a toddler.

You ask: "Where's my flying car?"

I ask: "Where's my omnibus p53 cancer drug?"

Nautilus – Art by Danielle Navarro

Decided that the time has come to wrap up the series of #rstats art pieces I've been posting recently. As usual, the pieces themselves are released under CC-BY licence, and the source code is linked to from the gallery page

Kids in High School: “I don’t understand why I have to take basic science classes. When I am ever going to use this stuff in my life?!” As adults: “Vaccines cause autism, GMOs are unsafe, climate change is a lie, and the earth is flat. I’ve done my research. If you disagree with me, you’re sheep!”

@simonmaechling.bsky.social
#medsky

a four page comic in which a student traces his interest in dragon ball and other manga properties back to a common origin in superman...

a three page comic in which the student looks at the different aspects of superheroes that can apply to their life, and then how it helps them see the superhero inside

a four page comic about working for the public good with community service and organizing and politics and how there are limitations, but how superheroes don't have those limitations

a comic about how superheroes can inspire when we feel powerless

Students wrestle w/Why Superheroes Matter (to them)? Some fantastic responses – comics, videos, songs. Some of the strongest ones, saying a lot in rather short comics (if hard to share format-wise here). I struggled to define this project, but these really sang! spinweaveandcut.com/superhero-cl...

An emerald bowfin

Happy St. Patrick’s Day 🍀 from the emerald bowfin!

It’s not easy being green! How does it do it? We don’t know for sure, but suspect it is biliverdin. More research in the works… 🧪

#EndlessFishMostBeautiful

Data Graphics Need a Memory How Michael Friendly gave charts a history.

Every field needs someone who keeps it from forgetting itself. @datavisfriendly.bsky.social has spent decades doing just that: giving data graphics a memory.

My latest for CHARTOGRAPHY: www.chartography.net/p/data-graph...

Another day, another stupid Excel chart.

How does habitat loss affect sharks and rays? - Save Our Seas Foundation When an area of ocean or coastline is changed or degraded beyond the point that it can serve as a home for the species that live there, or is even destroyed entirely, that’s habitat loss.

The #1 threat to sharks and rays, by far, is unsustainable fishing practices (not just shark finning).

But the #2 threat is habitat loss.

Learn more about it: saveourseas.com/worldofshark...

Saloni Dattani believes anyone can love science — if they can understand it. A communicator and researcher focused on medical innovation, she works to build trust in science and celebrate those tackling the biggest problems in global health. She is a cofounder, editor and writer at Works in Progress magazine, which publishes long reads on ideas to improve the world, and she advises the philanthropy Coefficient Giving on clinical trial reform. She cohosts (with Jacob Trefethen) the Hard Drugs podcast, discussing how AI and other breakthroughs are improving healthcare.

I'm speaking at TED2026

This still sounds kind of crazy to me, but I'll be speaking at the TED Conference this year.

They have written a very nice bio of me.

Published📖

Validating a low-cost alternative to body surface area estimation: Implications for energy budgets and scaling relationships of ectotherms 🦎 🐍

🔎 Read more:

Kids' willpower is no match for fast food and screens. Try this instead For decades, parents were told to help children build willpower like a muscle, to resist things like junk food and too much time on their screens. But new research suggests a better strategy.

For decades, parents were told to help children build willpower like a muscle, to resist things like junk food and too much time on their screens. But new research suggests a better strategy. n.pr/40g9n3g

One and a half million people are killed by animals every year. Almost one million by other animals, and more than half a million from direct conflict among ourselves.

Almost all of these deaths from other animals are caused by just two types: mosquitoes and snakes.

I started making this R package 6 years ago. I finally have it in a state I'm happy with, thanks to Claude Code #Rstats github.com/MattCowgill/...

"Wait, R can do that?"
Yes!
Vector data, raster analysis, interactive maps, spatial queries. All reproducible, all documented.

📢Sign up for our training course now
Intro to mapping & spatial analysis with R
📅25–29 May📍Copenhagen

⏰Deadline 30 March
www.ices.dk/events/Train...

This year, in my home country, a politician was found to have big trash bags full of money in his house. He later claimed the video was AI generated.

A man working a plow in a field - carried by a small elephant. This detail is from Sebastian Münster's Cosmographiae uniuersalis, vol. 6, 1550.

In 1550, one Elephant Power (EP) was the equivalent of 10 Horse Power (HP).

A wooden table with two books stacked on top of each other. The bottom book is the hardback edition of Discovering Statistiocs using R and RStudio by Andy Field, on top of it is the paperback edition. the hardback has a blue cover with plain text, the paperback has a he§xagonal pattern and a graphic-novel style female space pirate weirlding a futuristic gun out of which smoke forms the capital letter R.

Publication date looms ever closer ... physical copies exist (at the @sagepub.com London office, I await my own copy with excitement).