This is a fun album to work to: patrickbelaga2.bandcamp.com/album/solar-... Feels like the sounds of neurons firing.

Solar Calf, by Patrick Belaga

9 track album

patrickbelaga2.bandcamp.com

Striking before/afters showing what the heat waves did to UK vegetation www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

UK heatwaves: Satellite images show how UK landscape has changed

BBC Verify's analysis indicates “vegetation stress” in many areas, which may affect wildlife and farming.

bbc.co.uk

Medical scientist 1: so how's the research going? Medical scientist 2: we're just titling our paper Medical scientist 1: it's not another pop culture thing is it? Medical scientist 2:

ATLANTA (AP) — US surpasses 2025’s record-breaking tally for measles cases, with 2,318 cases and 5 more months left in the year.

My new piece is finished! I'm really happy with how the artwork turned out. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it! 😉 #Illustration #CommentPls #RTpls

Solar power made up 12.9% of US electricity this May, a new record high that's up from 11% last year Over the last twelve months, solar has made up 9% of US electricity, another record high!

Official monthly data is in today, and US solar power generation hit a new record high, up 21% compared to this time last year!

I really want to go looking for four leaf clovers now. 🍀 Another delightful rabbit hole video. m.youtube.com/watch?v=XfUF...

How rare is a four-leaf clover, really?

YouTube video by Rabbit Hole

m.youtube.com

Could Excel be conscious? We surveyed more than Jan 1 1900 people to find out.

very very excited to be launching Wrong Number with my buds @christinezhang.bsky.social and @jdharden.bsky.social! It’s a newsletter dedicated to all of our weird data obsessions: our first posts cover Law & Order, trees, and theme park accidents wrongnumber.beehiiv.com/p/about-wron...

About ‘Wrong Number’

What this newsletter is, who we are, and why we named it that.

wrongnumber.beehiiv.com

NEW: The Trump admin finalized a regulation which makes the largest changes to the student visa process in 50 years, along with changes to rules for exchange visitors and international journalists. 🧵on some of the most consequential changes set to go into effect in September.

AILA@aila.org · 3w ago

DHS has published its Final Rule to eliminate "duration of status" for F, J & I nonimmigrants. One of the most significant changes to international student, exchange visitor & foreign media programs in decades, it will be costly, cause chaos, and cut legal immigration.

Time Change xkcd.com/3272/

More signs of resurging HIV after USAID’s closure. African Neonatal Network reported at IMNCH (a global health conference): HIV+ pregnant women ↑50% & those not on antiretrovirals ↑>300%, year-on-year, across 22 hospitals in 5 nations. @vtoxfordnetwork.bsky.social

I'm been wondering if it would come to this and apparently it has. huge move from cloudflare, which hosts a fifth of all websites on earth.

Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search

The nuclear option is gaining traction as web traffic collapses and Google refuses to negotiate with content creators

adweek.com

Students have long been given the idea that the goal of taking classes is to get good grades, learning is just a side effect. Now it’s not even a side effect.

Mike Boylan-Kolchin@mbkplus.bsky.social · 4w ago

This is so depressing. The models have incredible power and good use cases but I’m becoming more convinced we need to structure assessments around not being able to use LLMs. They are good for doing certain tasks, not knowledge or understanding, and we are not in the business of task mastering.

GET HEARING AIDS ❤️ stop worrying if they're cool they're like glasses just get them and wear them this one's for the dads out there (except my dad, he's cool and wears his aids)

"Our real duty as teachers has always been challenging students to think. The task now is finding ways to engage them in the painful, essential work of critical thinking in a world where machines are willing to do it for them." www.science.org/content/arti...

Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

“I used AI daily—how could I expect my students to avoid it entirely?” this computer scientist writes

science.org

Two years ago we made >25 offers and had a class of 17.... This past year we offered a gut wrenching 8 offers and got a class of 5... SO many talented and deserving students did not get offers that normally would have. not sure how to fix it but i hope we do sooner rather than later

Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD@prasad.bsky.social · last mo.

www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u... an ominous trend: graduate admissions are down 15 percent from last year, on top of an 11 percent decrease from the previous year we are destroying our seed corn

Enjoyed this sentence: "That cliff is the matrix confessing that, although it is technically full of numbers, its real content lives in only a few directions." stillthinking.net/posts/connec...

Please help me finish my thesis so I can finally be free of academia 🫶✨ aidetectionsurvey.carrd.co

In every World Cup host city, on the nights of nearly every match and even for the high-stakes games in the coming weeks ... hotel prices are dropping (sometimes by a lot!) www.nytimes.com/athletic/int...

Beautiful visual essay about the statue of liberty that brings together art, history and engineering. Recommend reading this on a large screen.

The Most Iconic American Artwork Is the Hardest to See (Gift Article)

The Statue of Liberty is caught between the sublime and the souvenir, our critic Jason Farago explains. Look again: She’s much stranger than you think.

nytimes.com

Beautiful and revelatory map:

An American Mosaic

This map shows how people in the United States identify their ancestry or family origin. Explore the many ways we describe our heritage and ourselves.

nytimes.com

"Organizers promise 850,000 fireworks in roughly 40 minutes over the National Mall this Saturday. I did what a mathematician does with a big number: I divided." Excellent piece: chadtopaz.com/essays/firew...

Three Hundred Fifty-Four Fireworks per Second — Chad M. Topaz

Organizers promise 850,000 fireworks in roughly 40 minutes over the National Mall this Saturday. I did what a mathematician does with a big number: I divided. It did not make the show look better.

chadtopaz.com

Scientists created a synthetic cell that feeds, grows and reproduces. We did this quick piece with some animations to show you how it works tinyurl.com/muhecan5 (gift link)

This is a gorgeous piece. There is simple beauty around you that we cannot yet show. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of seeing flameback woodpeckers for the first time. They are an intense, luminous gold - framed in red, black and white - that I couldn't believe existed in real life.

Ryan Moulton@moultano.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I spent the last month obsessed with finding colors that can't be displayed on a conventional screen. This is what I found. moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/w...

For all you birdwatchers, here's an interactive plot showing species whose colours cannot be accurately shown on screens. Courtesy @moultano.bsky.social , who very kindly shared his data compilation. www.mridulkthomas.com/undisplayabl...

Undisplayable birds

Mridul K. Thomas

mridulkthomas.com

Mridul K. Thomas@mridulkthomas.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is a gorgeous piece. There is simple beauty around you that we cannot yet show. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of seeing flameback woodpeckers for the first time. They are an intense, luminous gold - framed in red, black and white - that I couldn't believe existed in real life.

Incredible—and turns out it's a "philosophical treatise on ethics." scrollprize.org/firstscroll

An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

PHerc. 1667, sealed since the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, has been virtually unwrapped and read from beginning to end — without ever being opened.

scrollprize.org

Today is my last day at Scientific American, which has been sold to LabX media group. For three decades I've led the magazine's coverage of human origins, archaeology, paleontology, animal behavior, ecology, BIRDS. End of an era. Anyway this feels weird to say, but I'm now available for assignments!