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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈

@joshlukedavis.com

11K followers 790 following 3.3K posts

Science writer, editor and author @ the Natural History Museum, London | Queer animals, birds and embroidery | he/him | ✏️🏛🦦 | joshlukedavis.com

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · Nov 8

I guess it's probably time to re-introduce myself!

Hi everyone! I'm Josh, and I work at the Natural History Museum, London 🎉 where I write about natural history and badger curators into letting me nose about their collections.

I also wrote an entire book on ✨queer✨ nature! 🙌🌈🦆

A picture of me stood behind a bench. I'm staring at the camera smiling, with one arm out to the side in a relaxed pose. I'm wearing glasses and a sweater with a stags head on it. In front of me are various animal eye balls in jars.

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 1h

yeah they're a huge, very well funded organisation, but if you search for 'African Parks + Baka people' you'll get a bunch of news reports

Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 1h

for those who might not know, African Parks is a somewhat, uh, controversial conservation org who basically persuade African nations to sign over large bits of land in a public-private partnership and have been accused of some, ah, Very Serious crimes

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 2h

innnnteresting news today about African Parks, in which the government of Chad has terminated their contract to run three national parks in the country only 6 months after it was renewed 👀

Screen grab from a Time article that reads: "In a statement announcing the end of the 15-year partnership “with immediate effect”, Hassan Bakhit Djamous, Chad’s environment minister, said the charity, African Parks, had displayed a “recurring, indelicate and disrespectful attitude towards the government”.

Over four pages, the ministry alleged grave breaches of contract and financial irregularities, accusing the charity of keeping unaudited accounts and not being transparent over how funds were raised, managed and spent.

It alleged that the charity illegally collected tourism revenues, used tax-haven bank accounts in the Isle of Man and transferred capital and foreign exchange abroad “to the detriment of Chad and in flagrant violation of national banking and tax regulations”. The ministry also claimed African Parks had prioritised tourism over conservation, banned Chadians from certain sites and failed to invest in essential equipment for rangers as poaching surged across its parks."

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Janet Hill @saskajanet.bsky.social · 16h

Look at her go!
#invertebrates 🌿

Screen shot of Project Monarch app map of progress of a monarch butterfly from southern Ontario to Oklahoma.

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 21h

All these people really want is to pay no taxes and be treated with floor scraping deference. Everything else is just bullshit in pursuit of that goal.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 23h

Party donor Nick Candy says "I cherish the values we grew up with here in the West. But today you are more likely to find the values we grew up with in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.’

Via Sam Leith in the Spectator
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 1d

god I love natural history

A screen grab of a scientistic article with the title "The rectum of Oxaea flavescens (Andrenidae) has a specialized structure among bees."

Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 1d

of course @nhcooper123.bsky.social turned everything into graphs what did we all expect???

The Perfect Specimen @perfect-specimen.bsky.social · 1d

Who ❤️ data? Our 36 specimens (31 animal, 5 plant) so far represent 8/31 (25%) animal and 2/14 (14%) plant phyla/divisions. Chordata/mammals are winning (but many of these appeared in OVERRATED). @joshlukedavis.com and @nhcooper123.bsky.social have done OK so far but there's more diversity to cover!

Barchart showing distribution of specimens across animal phyla. Chordata = 15, Arthropoda = 8, Mollusca = 3, Annelida, Cnidaria, Echinodermata, Nemertea and Onychophora = 1. Chordata is coloured to show that we have most mammals (7) then fishes/reptiles (3), then birds/tunicates (1).

Bar chart showing that 4 plant specimens were angiosperms and 1 was a bryophyte

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Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈

The Perfect Specimen @perfect-specimen.bsky.social · 1d

See we did actually answer your Qs!

The Perfect Specimen @perfect-specimen.bsky.social · 9d

Here’s the Q and A. Fixing @nhcooper123.bsky.social terrible error in NOXIOUS (among other things) m.youtube.com/watch?v=T0ji...

Natalie gets schooled on tentacles | The 'Perfect' Specimen Ep10

YouTube video by Natural History Museum

m.youtube.com

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National Trust @nationaltrust.org.uk · 1d

This is the official return of a native species lost for over a century.

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 1d

oh yes I love this, what a brilliant idea! 🙌🏻

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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 1d

THE SECRET PROJECT I'VE BEEN WORKING ON FOR THE PAST FEW MONTHS IS FINALLY LIVE

CHECK IT OUT

outsidersartsclub.com

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Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈

James Wright @jpwarchaeology.bsky.social · 1d

Does anyone have any intel on reasonably priced city centre spaces which seat approximately 50-people located in...

1) Nottingham

2) Norwich

3) London

Historic building preferred but not essential.

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Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈

Adam Vaughan @adamvaughan.bsky.social · 1d

Renewables have overtaken coal in the global electricity mix for the first time, @ember-energy.org has found
www.linkedin.com/pulse/renewa...

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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 1d

I agree with every word Zelda Williams says. And this at the end from OpenAI makes me want to go full Ned Ludd. Creators can’t have a blanket opt-out on copyright infringement of their work and have to fill out a form appealing to OpenAI’s mercy every time? Fuck off into the sun

OpenAI told the Guardian that content owners can flag copyright infringement using a “copyright disputes form” but that individual artists or studios cannot have a blanket opt-out. Varun Shetty, OpenAI’s head of media partnerships, said: “We’ll work with rights holders to block characters from Sora at their request and respond to takedown requests.”

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 1d

I don't know, I think Winnie the Pooh stuck in the hole was quite fun

Reposted by Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈

Dolly Jørgensen @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social · 2d

It’s real!!
I just got my first copy of Ghosts Behind Glass and it is beautiful. You all really need to order your copies. You will not regret it. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Double page spread with a photo of diorama

Chapter 3 Cursed treasures on left, lion on right

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 1d

I want to know what happened to make them put this sign up

A sign on a wall which reads "warning vacuum flooding system 1) never flush toilet whilst sitting on it - serious injury may result".

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 2d

fun day out on a big boat!

I got to hold some Antarctica ice and I rang the ship's bell, which I think means I'm the captain now? 🫡

A picture of the RSS David Attenborough ship.

A picture looking down through a window in the floor of the bridge, with waves below.

A tiny piece of Antarctica ice melting in my hand.

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Josh Sternberg @joshsternberg.com · 2d

You work hard as a journalist. You lead with empathy, and you sweat details. You operate in good faith. You believe in honesty and truth. You get yelled at by the president of the United States. You worry that you'll get laid off. Again and again.

And then you see this. www.wsj.com/business/med...

Paramount Buys Bari Weiss’s the Free Press for $150 Million

Weiss, who once said she was done with legacy media, is to take control of CBS News’s editorial vision, aiming for “news that reflects reality.”

www.wsj.com

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Keith Stuart @keefstuart.bsky.social · 4d

Doing some book research into the mid-90s internet - this is a glossary from The Internet For Beginners, Usborne, 1997. It has made me feel very nostalgic

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Dr Delyth Badder @folklorewales.com · 3d

Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet.

After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 3d

also, saw the hand of King Saint Stephen I of Hungary which is bit fun

A zoomed in picture of the reliquary showing an old mummified hand.

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 3d

It's a very impressive city!

Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 3d

I think one of the worst things about social media is someone making a joke, and then someone else coming in to over explain the same joke 🫠

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 4d

Do I know anyone at Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales?

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