Davide Castelvecchi
@castelvecchi.bsky.social
Writer at Nature magazine, covering physical sciences, technology, mathematics, and energy. DMs are disabled courtesy of the UK's so-called Online Safety Act
This morning's First Edition is about how a vocal minority of climate skeptics is responding to intense heat and trying to convince politicians that climate action isn't popular (it is) www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...
Tuesday briefing: Inside the right’s heated climate-denial debate
In today’s newsletter: A small chorus of right-leaning critics are trying to convince politicians that climate action is deeply unpopular, downplaying its seriousness in the process
theguardian.com
The diarrhea lettuce company, Taylor Farms, uses slave labor contracted from the Arizona Dept. of Corrections. The backbreaking labor is often performed by imprisoned Mexican nationals who would be otherwise ineligble to work in the US. They are paid $1.50 an hour.
The Diarrhea Lettuce Company Has Been Linked to Forced Labor
The lettuce-producing Taylor Farms was linked to the widespread use of prison labor before its involvement in a cyclospora outbreak.
futurism.com
“ There were 78 ICE flights yesterday. Every single one of them was dangerous because the people were shackled.” – Independent journalist and former flight attendant @gillianbrockell.com on ICE’s brutal removal flights: on-the-media.visitlink.me/ndp8ea
On the Media
The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger examine threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.
on-the-media.visitlink.me
No mention of climate change in this piece, or what "net zero" actually means and why it matters
Adam Schwarz@adamjschwarz.bsky.social · 2w agoWhen the story of why humanity didn't stop climate change is written, it will feature front pages like this. Even as the skies blacken with climate change-induced wildfires, right wing media continue their relentless crusade against measures to tackle it.
Also see @nature.com ‘s editorial www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Mathematicians are developing rules for AI use — other fields should follow
The mathematics community is right to call for transparency, integrity and fairness to be protected when AI tools are used. Researchers in other disciplines could learn from this approach.
nature.com
Timnit Gebru@timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 2w agoWeeks ago, @chanda.blacksky.app sent me this declaration, written and signed by a bunch of mathematicians. But I only had time to read it yesterday, which ended up being right on time given a new round of hype falling exactly under the patterns this document notes.🧵 leidendeclaration.ai
I am glad your tweet clarified that the headline was referring to the team, not the city. (These days, you never know)
Rowan Hooper@rowhoop.bsky.social · 2w agoWhen I wrote HOW TO SPEND A TRILLION DOLLARS the idea was to spend it on projects for the benefit of humanity, not to twat around buying football clubs. www.theguardian.com/football/202...
It's hard to know yourself from the inside. Astronomers are still figuring out what our home galaxy looks like; a new study reveals updated locations for the Milky Way's spiral arms. This is where we are. 🧪🔭 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
Faramarz S Gard, a researcher at Argentina’s Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica (CNEA), describes the first-hand impact of funding cuts and job losses in the country’s scientific system. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/letter-fro...
Letter from Argentina: 'an empty desk and an idle electron microscope signal the erosion of the country's science' – Physics World
Faramarz S Gard laments the decline of Argentine science
physicsworld.com
Nature interviewed five artists from a variety of backgrounds about how to create engaging images that accurately convey scientific/medical concepts, & how they see the future, in light of AI developments. Insightful nuanced piece, with beautiful visuals from talented real-life human illustrators. 🧪
‘Good design takes mastery’: scientific illustrators sketch out AI’s future
Nature talks to five artists about their approaches to communicating science visually.
nature.com
Zero VAT on electricity in the UK from October. The real story isn’t the £45 off bills, it’s the gas-electricity price gap. We’ve loaded taxes onto electricity while gas gets off lighter, which discourages heat pumps. Cutting VAT narrows that gap.
This is not about national security. This is about not liking factual news coverage. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/b...
Hello friends. I'm starting a new job today reporting for @nature.com on all things climate and Earth science, energy, and beyond.🌍Please get in touch if you're a researcher/gov staffer/startup with results/projects that deserve attention--or are facing problems we should know about. Contact in bio.
"The government is aggressively seeking the confidential sources of Times reporters who wrote about the president’s new Air Force One. The Times has asked a judge to quash the subpoenas." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/b...
U.S. Sought Phone Records of Times Journalists and Their Relatives
nytimes.com
Kings Cross is increasingly awash with AI firms & London's taking a leading role in AI safety. But a caveat: it's mainly the kind of safety that cares about models from being used in cyberattacks or going rogue, not societal impacts like inequality or AI psychosis www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A global capital for AI safety is emerging — and it's not in Silicon Valley
The United Kingdom is gaining influence through its growing AI-safety ecosystem.
nature.com
Oh come on. Dude financed a series of lawsuits designed to literally bankrupt and shut down critical media sites.
Gil Durán@gilduran.com · 3w agoAxel Springer, the company that owns Politico, awards its top prize to...Antichrist lecturer Peter Thiel. No mention of the $50 million Thiel gave the son of Axel Springer's CEO to start a venture capital fund. But the CEO lauds Thiel's "courage and non-conformity." www.welt.de/wirtschaft/a...
It's great to see this spelled out so clearly. Also, the best sci-fi is not about predicting the future but creating imagined worlds to explore the anxieties of the present. Silicon Valley totally fails to get this.
Aeon Magazine@aeon.co · 3w agoTech billionaires like to claim their work is inspired by science fiction, but in truth, they are using its ‘chrome-plated aesthetic’ as a fig leaf to further what the social theorist Ali Rıza Taşkale labels ‘reactionary futurism’
My latest, on four techs I've been wanting to write about: sea-bottom mantle mapping, drilling to the Moho, hydrophone tsunami alerts, and internet-cable seismology www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The race to explore the deep ocean: four technologies transforming research
Deep-sea drilling ships, sea-floor sensors and repurposed Internet cables are helping scientists to study the last unmapped area on Earth.
nature.com
Yesterday the Telegraph reported on my comments about air conditioning. The comment section is quite something. I have apparently become a hero of the anti net zero crowd by saying something what I think is sensible about air con. Allow me to point out three ironies in this 🧵
Did not even last a week. The fact that this made it out the door means the privacy department now works in a basement with no computers and a single stapler. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/t...
Meta Removes A.I. Feature on Instagram After Days of Backlash
Users and Hollywood agencies raised privacy and copyright concerns about the new tool, Muse Image.
nytimes.com
Kashmir Hill@kashhill.bsky.social · 4w agoOpenAI's ill-fated Sora allowed people to make AI-generated videos with other people's likenesses, but those people had to opt in to letting their likenesses being used. Meta is taking a different path, reports @thiccreese.bsky.social: www.wired.com/story/meta-n...
Scientists have caught Earth in the action of splitting apart at the seams, witnessing fresh oceanic crust forming in real time. Very cool 🧪 by @castelvecchi.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Ocean floor witnessed splitting apart for the first time — releasing lava
Scientists observed a mid-ocean ridge widen in real time, recording several metres of sea-floor motion and huge lava outflows.
nature.com
Two climate experts "worked through the data produced by the government’s Climate Change Committee, which was scattered across different spreadsheets, and discovered that the projected cost of the full CCS programme between now and 2050 is £264bn." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The great carbon capture con: behold the wasted billions Burnham could claw back | George Monbiot
There are far better ways to tackle climate breakdown, but successive governments have chosen to listen to the fossil fuel companies instead, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
theguardian.com
After days of scrutiny, Springer Nature has restored two papers by Planck, who won the Nobel for Physics in 1918, reversing a 2011 decision to retract the articles for “copyright violations.”
Springer Nature un-retracts Planck papers, citing “human error”
Max Planck Today the Retraction Watch list of Nobelists who have retracted papers bids Verabschiedung to Max Planck. After days of scrutiny, Springer Nature has restored two papers by Planck, who w…
retractionwatch.com
For the @nytimes.com Magazine, I wrote about the increasingly fervent native plant movement; its esteemed guru, the entomologist and bestselling author Douglas Tallamy; and the complexities of ecologically responsible gardening in our modern era. Gift link 🎁 : www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/m...
I Wanted an Ecologically Responsible Garden. It Was Harder Than I Thought.
nytimes.com
Rice plants have found a way to resist heatwaves go.nature.com/4wpm75C
Plant membranes shuffle lipids around to stay firm under heat stress
High temperatures make cell membranes weak and leaky. Rice plants rapidly counteract this effect by adjusting membrane lipid content, enabling them to resist heatwaves.
go.nature.com
How did a heating law become Germany's most divisive political story? We analysed all 333 BILD articles on the Heizungshammer. Habeck named 839 times. "Heating ban" in 800 articles, for a law that banned no heating. New paper + the story in Bright Spots: janrosenow.substack.com/p/the-tabloi...
The tabloid murder of a heating law
What 333 tabloid articles reveal about the fragility of climate policy.
janrosenow.substack.com
