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Flora Graham

@floragraham.bsky.social

5.4K followers 3.3K following 380 posts

I write the Nature Briefing, a daily email for Nature (@nature.com) about all the science, which I hope you will enjoy.

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · Sep 20

I'm just saying I will email you this newsletter for free 😘 (Should you wish to build bridges over the yawning trenches of the 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒)

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 1d

Wooo! bsky.app/profile/natu...

Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · Sep 8

Gonna restart my old Twitter thread about great immigrant and refugee scientists. Extra bonus in this one for those us who flunked a wee bit of physics here and there back in the day 😜 Rainer Weiss won the Nobel in 2017

Born in Berlin in 1932, Weiss came from an intellectual but unsettled family. His father, a Jewish communist doctor, and his mother, a Christian actress, fled Nazi Germany when Rai was still a child. The family escaped first to Prague and later to New York City, arriving in 1939. Weiss studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge but struggled, failing out in his junior year. He was rescued by nuclear physicist Jerrold Zacharias at MIT, who took him on as a laboratory technician and later a PhD student. Weiss never forgot the kindness and spent much of his career mentoring students in the same spirit.

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 1d

and forbidden liquorice allsort

Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 1d

Forbidden smartie

Nature @nature.com · 1d

An approach for making nanoscale high-entropy alloys using liquid metal provides much-needed control over the structure and composition of these remarkable materials.

go.nature.com/3IQDIAk

Sacrificial metal speeds up synthesis of nano-alloys from multiple elements

An approach for making nanoscale high-entropy alloys using liquid metal provides much-needed control over the structure and composition of these remarkable materials.

go.nature.com

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 1d

Imagine having Richard Robson as your 1st-year chem prof AND then he wins the Nobel 😁 www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/new...

Professor Robson was back at work hours after the announcement, taking a first-year chemistry tutorial.

Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 1d

Sorry to say I haven't got a great solution to contribute, myself 😟

Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 1d

The Taz looks awesome! Thanks for flagging it to me. But the model seems like it might require some very specific conditions to work (The Guardian does it, for example, but has a HUGE endowment) thefix.media/2025/03/17/n...

Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 1d

Ah, I have been involved in all of these options at various places, and unfortunately none come even close — not even CLOSE — to the amounts that are required to fund the fourth estate, as subcriptions from loyal subscribers do

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 1d

Since it took me ages to track it down, here's the original article in the FT in case of use to anyone else www.ft.com/content/a801...

Have humans passed peak brain power?

Data across countries and ages reveal a growing struggle to concentrate, and declining verbal and numerical reasoning

www.ft.com

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 1d

Genuinely curious about what you suggest are these better ways (asking for myself and not on behalf of my employer)

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 4d

The first exoplanet around a Sun-like star was discovered 30 years ago this month! Makes me think yet again of the AMAZING scrolly (published in 2013, pre-TESS spacecraft) by
@adambecker.bsky.social @peteraldhous.com & MacGregor Campbell at @newscientist.com freelanceastro.github.io/how-many-ear...

Looking up at the night sky, it's hard not to wonder how many other planets might be circling those pinpricks of light – and how many are home to beings gazing back at us.

Today, we are starting to get a handle on the number of roughly Earth-sized exoplanets that might be suitable for life.

Reposted by Flora Graham

Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 11d

I may have found my defining quote.

Pair this with my pinned post and you will see what I mean!

From a poster called “just shower thoughts“ reading: when people talk about traveling to the past, they worry about radically, changing the present by doing something small, barely anyone in the present to really thinks that they can radically change the future by doing something small.

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 7d

Tragically there have been fatal cases of people forgetting their baby was in the car. Do call 999 if you see this ❤️ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32202549/

[Forgotten Baby Syndrome: dimensions of the phenomenon and new research perspectives] - PubMed

Forgotten Baby Syndrome (FBS) defines the phenomenon of forgetting a child in a parked vehicle. FBS is in constant growth with significant repercussions for the parent, the family and society. Scienti...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Reposted by Flora Graham

Andy Carvin @acarv.in · 8d

The Saudi government murdered Jamal Khashoggi seven years ago today. His editor @karenattiah.bsky.social wrote this two years ago.

Opinion | The moment I knew the world would try to move on from Jamal Khashoggi

I could see it coming at Time’s 2018 Person of the Year celebration.

wapo.st

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Reposted by Flora Graham

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 8d

Some brief thoughts on the Anthropic settlement, and why I think most authors should claim their share of the settlement if they can, inadequate though I think it is:

whatever.scalzi.com/2025/10/02/a...

Authors, Time to Get That (Anthropic) Bag

To begin, for those of you who do not follow such things with intense interest, a little context about the “AI” company Anthropic being sued for stealing authors’ works and reachi…

whatever.scalzi.com

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 8d

WOW this interview by @maxkozlov.bsky.social is a banger

I am worried about the context that we’re placing on our public-health officials, who just want to help people. To contextualize it any other way is to do them such an extraordinary disservice.

How are we going to incentivize our best and our brightest to contribute to public health, which is thankless? And what happens if we don’t?

I have been in and around government now for 18 years — every administration from [Republican George W.] Bush till now. I’ve always been in a position where I’ve been able to make contributions. We were always marching steadily towards a better world.

I’m less naive now than I was.

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 9d

Powerful stuff, very interesting and moving

Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 11d

“I don’t think of writing as a craft that one repeats in order to perfect it, like blacksmithing or bread-baking. Writing is, rather, a practice that engages the writer in her whole capacity as a human: reading, thinking, feeling, choosing, and acting.” www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/702...

www.poetryfoundation.org

Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 12d

Wiki Wiki Bus namesake my beloved

The Wiki Wiki Shuttle (lit. 'Very Fast Shuttle') is a free shuttle bus service at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu, Hawaii. Shuttles run between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. local time, carrying people and baggage between the various terminals and gates.

Photo of Wiki Wiki Shuttle bus in 2022
In the Hawaiian language, the word "wiki" means quick. In 1994, the shuttle's name inspired American computer programmer Ward Cunningham to build the first ever user-editable website, WikiWikiWeb.[1] Although WikiWikiWeb is itself no longer user-editable, the word wiki for a user-editable website thus derives from the shuttle's name.

Reposted by Flora Graham

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 13d

The fantastic UK network of science and discovery centres needs your help to survive and thrive! Sign this letter urging the UKGov to stop excluding science from the financial support that is available for other museums, art galleries & theatres 🙏🧪🔭👩‍🔬🎢

👉✉️: www.sciencecentres.org.uk/openletter20...

Catherine having a laugh at the Aberdeen science centre with three girls playing with a powerful fan.

Catherine chatting to an interested girl in front of an arch they've just built.

Catherine and two kids looking earnestly at some marshmallows in a glass jar that is about to become a vacuum.

Catherine looking through a giant lens. She has a mask on.

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 14d

Hats off to the factcheckers who tackled this one! 👏https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/09/25/fact-checking-donald-trumps-europe-claims-in-un-speech

Fact-checking Donald Trump's Europe claims in UN speech

Trump's speech contained claims relating to immigration in Europe, the climate crisis and Russia's war in Ukraine. #EuroVerify

www.euronews.com

Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 14d

FYI

Trans Legal Clinic: free legal advice in the UK http://www.translegalclinic.com

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 15d

This story is very interesting, and this detail made me feel sick. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

According to the model, the phrases and words that were most likely to lead to cancellation included ‘gender-affirming care’, ‘assigned male at birth’, ‘affirming care’, ‘racial justice’, ‘LGBTQ’ and ‘hate speech’.

Reposted by Flora Graham

Cheryl in Nova Scotia 🇨🇦🍁🍁 @minibubbly.bsky.social · 15d

Gander Social is almost ready, if you have not signed up to Canada’s first social media platform, made in Canada, by Canadians, for Canadians, on Canadian servers, please do!

Gander Social @gandersocial.bsky.social · 21d

Join our Early Access Program to participate in co-design sessions, be the first to see feature previews, and get first dibs on beta invites by opting in to help us test the platform.

Closed Beta Intake form coming soon!

gandersocial.ca#early-access

Gander: The Social Media You Want, Built for Canada

Fun, private, and ethical. We're changing the way social media is done around here, all without your personal data taking an unexpected trip down south.

gandersocial.ca

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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 15d

What a treat to speak to scientists at @csh.ac.at in beautiful Vienna, where so much fascinating and relevant work is happening! Check out their spectacular visualizations page just for a start: csh.ac.at/visuals/

Complexity Science Hub @csh.ac.at · 16d

What matters in #science today? You might want to ask @floragraham.bsky.social, editor of Nature Briefing. Last week, Flora joined us to give our scientists a crash course in science communication. Thank you for sharing your expertise, Flora, and for sparking such thought-provoking discussions!

Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 23d

Yes the price is the issue!! Such a barrier. Good carbon choices should be made easy snd affordable and bad ones less so — voting and lobbying is how we make this happen x