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gordonwells.bsky.social @gordonwells.bsky.social · 2d

Melvyn ordered coffee!

John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · Jul 2

Tomorrow (Thursday) morning at 9am on BBC Radio 4 — In Our Time discusses civility with Teresa Bejan (@tmbejan.bsky.social), Phil Withington, and me! Listen live or after broadcast at the link below.

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Civility: talking with those who disagree with you

On the value of keeping conversations going with opponents, from the Reformation onwards

www.bbc.co.uk

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 3d

A Chemistry Nobel that many had anticipated: metal-organic frameworks! Writeup coming on the blog later this morning:

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 was awarded jointly to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi "for the development of metal–organic frameworks"

www.nobelprize.org

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gordonwells.bsky.social @gordonwells.bsky.social · 4d

We should try to find good 3D human tissue models. But we also want to discover drugs for our farm animals and pets. And even with 3D models for them, you ultimately have to test in the final organism.

tomwellborn3rd @patriotprogressive.bsky.social · 5d

RFK Jr. insanely moves MAHA to end animal testing, with NIH securing $87M for a center shifting to 3D tissue models. An 80% poll backs the phaseout. PETA applauds. A research group warns of risks. Grants can fund the rehoming of lab animals.

RFK Jr.’s MAHA movement focuses on animal welfare

Last week, the National Institutes of Health announced it had secured $87 million for a new research center.

www.newsnationnow.com

gordonwells.bsky.social @gordonwells.bsky.social · 4d

Learning new things about how the world works included. The kind that makes you sweat at night because you know someone else could find out completely independently of you.

Minority view I know.

"We live in base reality, and in nature there is no such thing as plot armor." -- Samuel Hammond

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 5d

My quote of the day

All of my remaining realisable assets are to be disbursed … to constitute a fund, the interest on which is to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.

Alfred Nobel

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Itai Yanai @itaiyanai.bsky.social · 5d

Congratulations to Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It also demonstrates the fairness of the prize, as Mary Brunkow is a Senior Program Manager (not a professor) at the @isbscience.org
hood.isbscience.org/people/mary-...

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gordonwells.bsky.social @gordonwells.bsky.social · 6d

Remember when you could fired for a tweet? Or writing a mild-mannered memo?

How many of this lot were quite happy to see people denied employment or grants because they didn't recite the correct political pablum, or have a portfolio of "good works for social justice"?

Kevin M. King @kevinmking.bsky.social · 6d

Every time someone wants to decide something on merit alone

Angry goose chasing someone while asking "How do you define merit?"

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OκULTRA XP🧿, writer for The Economist @0kultra.bsky.social · 7d

He definitely is unwell but I struggle to believe dems being that clever

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 7d

I have sometimes wondered if there are prominent Democrat insiders who believe that Trump has some illness or medical condition which means he shall soon die, and that they are holding off on going full attack mode until that happens because they expect the Republicans to be thrown into disarray.

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Jerry Coyne @evolutionistrue.bsky.social · 8d

Anthropic, which produces AI programs, has just settled for $1.5 billion because they trained their programs on millions of copyrighted works downloaded illegally from pirated-book websites. If you or someone you know has a book with a U.S. copyright, refer them to this piece.

bit.ly/48e9K3y

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gordonwells.bsky.social @gordonwells.bsky.social · 8d

Ok, this one's nicer than the Lisa Gerard one:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoaE...

Gorecki – Symphonia No 3, Beth Gibbons & Polish National Radio Symphony con subt

YouTube video by Ricardo Moreno

www.youtube.com

gordonwells.bsky.social @gordonwells.bsky.social · 8d

10 ya when many were tweeting about Galileo's Middle Finger, Razib Khan warned this might happen: www.gnxp.com/WordPress/20...

It was fine to ruin someone's career, grants, job prospects etc for not parroting the right woke pablum. Did they really think they'd hold the sword forever?

The ending of the liberal interregnum

The above talk is from Alice Dreger, author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice. I don’t know Dreger personally, but she seems li…

www.gnxp.com

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Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · 8d

Friday Papers Club! 🍿In light of Pubmed going down, the collapse of social media, and my recent success at getting recommendations for interesting papers from those still around, I am starting a new tradition! - Recommend a good scientific manuscript! 👇

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The Wicker Dan (1973) @danlehner.bsky.social · 8d

Jack Gleeson, the actor who played Joffrey, kinda now looks like if Jeff Foxworthy was a Fremen

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gordonwells.bsky.social @gordonwells.bsky.social · 8d

"Lived Experience". As opposed to all the other kinds of experience.

Such a moronic phrase.

gordonwells.bsky.social @gordonwells.bsky.social · 8d

Erik Hoel taught his two year old to read: www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/how-to-tea...

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 10d

Much of the public, and apparently White House, doesn't know that many of the US military's general and flag officers are intellectuals. Study history and theory, get that war, politics, economics, and culture intertwine, etc.

Or maybe the White House does, and that's what they're trying to change.

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gordonwells.bsky.social @gordonwells.bsky.social · 11d

Cheap solar is partly thanks to Chinese coal. Solar does not yet power it's own mining and manufacture. It might never do.

gordonwells.bsky.social @gordonwells.bsky.social · 12d

Diversity is a silly alter to worship at.

How many flat earthers do you want working at your space agency or weather forecasting service?

There's no law of nature that says more diversity is good or bad. It matters when it matters.

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 13d

3/3

Chemerinsky said it would be a First Amendment violation to put schools at a disadvantage in competing for funding if they profess a belief in diversity, for example, because government is not allowed to discriminate based on viewpoint. He said it “would be very troubling” if the White House proposal deviates from the standards that have been used in awarding grants based on the quality and importance of the science, peer review and merit, and uses ideology as the judgment standard instead.

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 13d

It seems unbelievable that some journals still keep digitized versions of journal articles from over a hundred years ago *paywalled*!

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John Hawks @johnhawks.net · 15d

Could there be a connection between a squashed million-year-old skull and the Denisovans? I look at whether a provocative new study can be squared with what we already know from ancient genomes. I think there's a way.

www.johnhawks.net/p/the-proble...