Now that our daughter is 31, in accordance with family traditions I explained to her about the monstrous transformations - mental as well as physical - that afflict our people as we approach the end of our first century of life. She has met her Uncle Trevor so none of this came as a great surprise.

www.aimos2026.org AIMOS 2026 will be in Wellington this year on 30 Nov to 2 Dec. Abstracts due 15 Aug. This is a very fun and very interactive metascience conference. Come along and hang out!

AIMOS_2026 | Metascience Conference – Register Today

Join the AIMOS 2026 Conference n Wellington, New Zealand, for three days of interdisciplinary meta-research, keynote speakers, workshops, and networking to improve research practices.

aimos2026.org

Monastic disorders.

Claire Willett@clairewillett.bsky.social · 2w ago

exCUSE me??????????? I take a week off and there’s a KIDNAPPING?!!?!????????

Whenever someone writes "they can't hybridise", Nature says "Hold my beer".

Rosewind@rosewind.bsky.social · 2w ago

We have a beautiful mandarin (known as Mandy or Rin) who comes and hangs out with our mallards on the canal He seems to prefer mallard company to that of other mandarins This means we don’t get baby mandarins (they can’t hybridise) but he is much loved by tow path denizens

"The rest of the long first paragraph lists all the qualities Catherine Morland does not possess: she is declared to be not an orphan, not poor, not mistreated, not beleaguered by ill-health, not beautiful, not feminine (i.e., not physically weak), not sensitive, not exceptionally gifted,..."

Courtney Milan@courtneymilan.com · 2w ago

One of the things I love about Jane Austen is that everyone knows what these characters look like, people almost universally agree on what that is, and the text itself NEVER PROVIDES DESCRIPTIONS beyond bare bones things like "tall," "very tall," and "exceedingly tall."

"The depths of scientific stupidity are always expanding…" Deep is the well of stupidity. Should we not call it bottomless?

Sholto David@sholtodavid.bsky.social · 2w ago

Today I'm posting a blog about another ridiculous antibody blunder. Dozens of papers in the senescence and ageing field have mistakenly used an antibody for E. coli β-galactosidase when trying to stain for the human protein with the same name. forbetterscience.com/2026/07/21/d...

"It's my thing!" I say, to explain the almost inchoate black entity from some other plane of existence that always accompanies me, always behind and on the left, somehow protectively yet slightly closer every day

LurkyMcLurk@lurkymclurk.bsky.social · 2w ago

“its my thing!!” I say, dragging a dead deer through a conference hall

My use of a pseudonym when sciencing is inviting lots of research questions already answered by my use of a pseudonym. journals.openedition.org/regardssocio...

They call it 'addictive manufacturing' but I CAN STOP ANY TIME.

peer-reviewed-slop.bsky.social@peer-reviewed-slop.bsky.social · 3w ago

Yeshiwas, T.A., Tiruneh, A.B. & Sisay, M.A. A review article on the assessment of additive manufacturing. J Mater. Sci: Mater Eng. 20, 85 (2025). doi.org/10.1186/s407... Journal Impact Factor 4.3

A single upvote is not enough for this.

Dr. Hilary Rose Dawson@hilaryrosed.bsky.social · 3w ago

Absolutely agreed. I spent so long crafting that abstract to summarise the paper I spent even longer writing and analysing. Contempt is the right word for the cutting feeling that my craft as a scientist and writer doesn’t matter.

TIL that drinking pearls has many health benefits. www.frontiersin.org/journals/pha... I grieve to report that the authors of this TCM fiddlefaddle failed to cite the Cleopatra case-study. penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/jou...)

We owe it to Sam to continue to fight for the protection of Central Otago from the mining vultures that NZ First starring Shame Jones is desperate to hand over to. Let’s make that a thing in the name of our own #SamNeill ✊

Academic publishing Gen-AI slop of the day (courtesy of a colleague who finds them with Image Search. Hungry now.

Why are so many butterflies named after stock characters from Edwardian detective novels?

Matt Berry@matthewberry.bsky.social · 3w ago

A male Lesser Fiery Copper (Lycaena thersamon).

"What should we call our ML architecture based on the Transformer model?" "I have an idea..."

Wiley join other publishers by enshittifying their previously-functioning website.

"Solar mobileular". pubpeer.com/publications...

Pro-tip: edit out your prompts from the dialog with the LLM before copy-pasting it into the text.

🚨MAJOR EXPOSÉ: We reveal the bizarre sexual preferences of the Science Guardians™, as shown in their disturbing comments on PornHub. (This is definitely the people behind the Science Guardians™ Twitter/X account. No way could someone just create an account with their name to defame them!)

If you notice a problem in a paper in the @rsc.org journal Applied Interfaces, don't bother pointing it out to the Editor-in-Chief; he'll just call you a snitch. A paragon of research ethics.

Leonid Schneider@forbetterscience.bsky.social · 4w ago

An Italian male professor Federico Rosei questions Mu Yang who appointed her as "vigilante" and "snitch" . Doubles down to accuse her of "distasteful" behaviour. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Smut [at right]. On a good day.

#psychiatry “Some of those terms were very easily misunderstood and so I do regret that,” he said - i.e. colleagues who questioned his publications were stupid... Also: why does an academic with so many controversial & "unhelpful" ideas still lead Cambridge's Autism Research Centre?

Simon Baron-Cohen and Autism: A Toxic Legacy

Why Simon Baron-Cohen's empathy and 'extreme male brain' theories harmed autistic people — and what 40 years of this science got wrong.

giancarlocristea.com

The Guardian@theguardian.com · last mo.

Pioneer of ‘extreme male brain’ theory of autism now says phrase unhelpful

The hounds should never have been in custody. They were framed. The charges were fabricated and all the evidence was planted.

Old Sam@pdfmerchant.bsky.social · last mo.

oh you're going to "release the hounds"? ok, well. that's fine actually. i love hounds

Today in Serious Scientific Publishing.

You know that you are not living life to the fullest when it dawns on you that you have no adventures in London, with little money and no luggage except an owl in a basket, to tell to a Radnorshire clergyman.

Tom Cox@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · last mo.

Is there a more instantly tantalising beginning to a book than the first page of the diaries of the Radnorshire clergyman Francis Kilvert, from the 1870s?

In memory of Michael Garbarino (Big Bad Bald Bastard), 4 years gone. Always missed youtu.be/on6DxBgfsDY?...

Suspect Device

YouTube video by Stiff Little Fingers - Topic

youtu.be

If I had a pale horse, I would get a dog and call it "Hell", so people could say "And Hell followed with him".

Tag yourself! I'm mesocortical motniation.

I pledge that when I am World Crazy Emperor, and my reflecting pool turns green, I will just issue a proclamation that "By the powers invested in me as World Crazy Emperor, it is St Patrick's Day whenever I say it is."

Luxon "constantly underwhelmed" by low purchases of tulips among NZ investors.

RNZ News Feeds@rnzrss.bsky.social · last mo.

Luxon 'constantly underwhelmed' by slow AI uptake in NZ businesses