Dessy Pontikos
mouseinlondon.bsky.social
Dessy Pontikos
@mouseinlondon.bsky.social
76 followers 200 following 18 posts
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Perhaps the Beeb needs a proofreader.
Or as Charles Darwin said, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”.
Reposted by Dessy Pontikos
At this exact time and date — 14:19 Eastern US time on September 22, 2025 — the center of the Sun is directly over Earth's equator (in technical terms, it has a declination of 0°), marking the moment of the September equinox.

Happy equinox!
Reposted by Dessy Pontikos
In one of our archive strong rooms there is a shelf. The shelf does not contain the most exciting or interesting item in the archive but it does contain something amazing.

Read this short thread to find out more. 🧵👇
Reposted by Dessy Pontikos
The Trump admin declares open season for imperialist conquest. Conquer as much as you can and you can keep your loot if you promise to stop.
NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on Ukraine's territorial concessions: "No big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield."
Reposted by Dessy Pontikos
Open this photo up and look for the small, white dot just left of centre.

It looks like Venus, shining brightly in the twilight sky.

But it's us.

It's Earth.

From Mars.
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American journalist, historian, and author Anne Applebaum on the West's biggest mistake in Russia's war against #Ukraine:

"The West doesn't understand the extremism of Putinism. They keep imagining that there's a deal to be done, that if we just give Crimea to Russia, then he'll stop fighting.⤵️
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1 in 3 doctors were born overseas.

1 in 2 builders were born overseas.

1 in 6 nurses were born overseas.

1 in 4 transport workers were born overseas.

1 in 7 UK business founders were born overseas.

1 in 5 university academics were born overseas.

The UK would be screwed without them.
Fwiw, loved them all but Creation did indeed change life, my universe and everything. Looking forward to the next one.

PS: Was recently listening to WAYRF? while having a lumbar puncture and was laughing out loud throughout.
Interesting. And rather cute.

“Maybe with more examples we'll get a better understanding of how dinosaurs really sounded.”
‘Despite what the movies tell us, dinosaurs probably didn't roar at their prey. It's more likely that they chirped like birds, based on a well-preserved new fossil with an intact voice box’ www.sciencealert.com/ancient-voic...
Ancient Voice Box Finally Reveals How Dinosaurs May Have Sounded
Despite what the movies tell us, dinosaurs probably didn't roar at their prey.
www.sciencealert.com
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If you time it right during a Partridge Island Beach tour you can see the bubbling tide and learn the Mi’Kmaq legend of Glooscap Grandmother's cooking pot. This is Fundy Geological Museum’s Regan Maloney.
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Scientists don’t say this.

Finding molecules in space that are biomolecules in living organisms only shows that the universe finds chemistry much easier to do than biochemists.
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😂 "Russian aircraft were not destroyed, but damaged in the attack - they will be restored," - Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergei Ryabkov
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You’re allowed to argue that black people and women are genetically inferior. But you’re NOT allowed to argue they are NOT inferior because that’s divisive. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/u...
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I so enjoyed talking to Nasa and the ESA for this story on reinventing the wheel for the moon and Mars.

If journalists like me don’t write stories about space, schoolkids won’t want to grow up to be astronauts. And what a very sad world that would be.

www.bbc.com/news/article...
Moon missions: How to avoid a puncture on the Moon
Giant tyre firms are testing tyres that can survive conditions on the Moon and Mars.
www.bbc.com
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russia won't give up its goal of taking control of Ukr any time soon whtr this war ends or not. For that, they need deimperialization and there's no sign anyone in Ru wants to pursue it. This means the "root of the conflict " which Pu talked abt can't be solved. Ru can only be stopped not satisfied
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Please share this fact sheet on Ukraine with anyone who needs it

understandingwar.org/backgrounder...
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Watching 'Brief Encounter' (1945) again, one of my favourite films of all time.
I found this little clip to be both comforting and depressing at the same time.
So some of you may need it.
Enjoy... sort of, ish.
Reposted by Dessy Pontikos
Do yourself a favour and open up this photo.

Indulge in the absurd beauty of comets.

This is Comet C/2021 A1 Leonard, photographed by Michael Jäger in 2021. The tail, millions of km long, shows a region of greater density from when part of the comet nucleus disintegrated about 10 days before.
There is an expression in Greek, “ειρωνεία της τύχης”, which means irony of fortune. I think it would be ironic if it rained on your wedding day in August in Famagusta but not ironic in monsoon season in Mumbai. You reasonably expected one thing and your luck laughed you.
Reposted by Dessy Pontikos
Bilingualism is associated with a bigger brain. Similar to other cognitively demanding skills, it leads to dynamic subcortical structural adaptations which can be nonlinear, in line with expansion-renormalisation models of experience-dependent neuroplasticity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Dynamic effects of bilingualism on brain structure map onto general principles of experience-based neuroplasticity - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Dynamic effects of bilingualism on brain structure map onto general principles of experience-based neuroplasticity
www.nature.com
“Tweaks in DNA caused by somatic mutations mean that we have not just one genome, perfectly replicated in every cell of our body. […] we each have closer to 30 trillion genomes, dispersed across our many cells.”
www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...
Doctors Thought They Knew What a Genetic Disease Is. They Were Wrong.
Mutations that happen throughout a person’s life may contribute to disease more than we realized.
www.theatlantic.com