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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 1d

"consuming AI art is like eating styrofoam"

The always brilliant The Oatmeal on the emptiness and sadness of AI art

theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

A screenshot of the Oatmeal comic, featuring a colorful meal on a plate with emojis around it, the text reads: "Someone once told me that art is like emotional nutriton. That made sense to me. Art feeds my feelings (accompanied by a smiley face and sad face emoji). And if thats the case, consuming AI art is like eating styrofoam"

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 3d

I’ve known both David Adler and Zukiswa Wanner for many years and I’m truly saddened to receive news of their unjust detention in Israel. Both of them sailed with the Global Sumud Flotilla to demand an end to the blockade on Gaza and are being unjustly detained with no contact for four days.

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Autistic Book🇨🇦 🍁🇺🇦 @autisticbook.bsky.social · 3d

An RFK jr. Antivax cottage industry by the pathological homeopathic quacks. Parents tell the guy which vaccine they gave the child.The guy will formulates a detox based on the info 250.00 a treatment.
This is not medicine or truth.
Austistic kids dont need to be detoxed.
Vaccines are safe.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam @thirugeneva.bsky.social · 4d

43 years ago on 5 Oct 1982, the New York Times published this piece on this fun piece on WIPO negotiations: "An international patent conference opened today that pits the Reagan Administration against the third world and some Western allies." @profseanflynn.bsky.social @roneilll.bsky.social

U.S. AND THE THIRD WORLD AT ODDS OVER PATENTS (Published 1982)

www.nytimes.com

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Jannis J Grimm @jannisgrimm.bsky.social · 5d

Criticism of biased media coverage of Gaza is often discarded as baseless..

so we set out to study the coverage of Palestinian and Israeli victims by German press systematically!

The resulting study 'Hierarchies in Death' was just published #OA by Peacebuilding www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

www.tandfonline.com

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Galaxy Project @galaxyproject.bsky.social · 8d

On Day 1 of European Galaxy Days, Mina Hojat Ansari presented FAIRYMAGS: A Galaxy Workflow for MAG Recovery Applied to Termite Microbiomes.
Read more: https://elixir-europe.org/how-we-work/scientific-programme/commissioned-services/science/bfsp/fairymags

##termite ##EGD2025 ##microbiomes (1/2)

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rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 9d

Hey remember when the CDC dropped 6 of the 8 foodborne illnesses from the nationwide monitoring system in July and one of them was listeria? Mentioning for no particular reason www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

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Peter van Heusden (he/him) 🗿 @pvanheus.bsky.social · 9d

I feel like they add this kind of stuff because they think the devastating impact on people in Kenya isn't enough to get their readers interested. I hope they underestimate their readers.

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Dorottya Nagy @dotnagy.bsky.social · 10d

To summarise our recent pre-print: Autocycler, the automated consensus assembler, when used with Nanopore long-read only Enterobacterales assemblies, produces more complete chromosomes and plasmids, with an accuracy comparable to hybrid assemblies.

Figure 2 from my recently pre-printed manuscript on the completeness and accuracy of Nanopore long-read only bacterial genome assembly for Enterobacterales. a) tile plot of chromosome circularisation, with assembler on the x-axis and sample on the y-axis, shows that the consensus long-read only assembler, Autocycler, circularised more chromosomes at 95% (87/92) than any other long-read or hybrid assembler. b) complex upset plot of plasmid reconstruction, showing that the best plasmid reconstruction was achieved by long-read assemblers incorporating the separate plasmid assembly tool, Plassembler, namely Autocycler and Hybracter, reconstructing >96% of plasmids.

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GroundUp News @groundup.org.za · 14d

In a new book, local cartographer Peter Slingsby explains that vernacular place names are a crucial part of human heritage, and why it’s been so rewarding for him to map place names in the Cederberg.

Read groundup.org.za/article/hund... by John Yeld

Hundreds of unique Cederberg place names rescued from potential extinction

Names like Slangbosfontein, Katstertdrif, Pendoornkraal, Sterrebosbank, Vogelgesang, Haasvlakte, and Jakkalskop

groundup.org.za

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 10d

Random, but I’m still looking for stable employment (research/analysis/writing/teaching) and I’m happy to send along my CV in English/French. Job has to be in the UK, Canada or online.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 10d

"But that’s why we must commit to a fuller vision of democracy: to reclaim power in the workplace and daily life, and set an economic agenda that will actually make...lives better. The most effective counterforce to resist authoritarianism is our class solidarity."

labornotes.org/blogs/2025/0...

We Who Believe in Democracy Must Fight to Make It Real

We wake daily to new spectacles of violence and humiliation: kidnappings in broad daylight, attacks on unions, LGBTQ people, women, and immigrants, the erosion of long-cherished rights. It’s no longer...

labornotes.org

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The People's Fabric @peoplesfabric.com · 10d

I’m out, I'm sore. I'll have more later, but right now I have to say a couple of things. First, walking out of there to learn about the kindness, support, and quick action from so many of you all has meant the world to me, my wife, and co-founder, Raven. Thank you.

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Sarah Tuttle @niais.bsky.social · 11d

This is the most excellent local headline writing.

"DID YOU GIVE WATER TO A BAT NEAR THE ARBORETUM? IT HAD RABIES."

(this is explicitly for @andreagrimes.com )

Did you give water to a bat near the Arboretum? It had rabies

A rabid bat was found in Seattle near the Washington Park Arboretum. Here's what to know, and what to do if you think you might have been exposed.

www.seattletimes.com

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Peter van Heusden (he/him) 🗿 @pvanheus.bsky.social · 11d

Isn't this fear of obsolescence exactly fuel to their fire? Btw from the underlying research: "People with no religious affiliation [..] were the only category aside from Muslims that grew as a percentage of the world’s population" (and now are the 3rd biggest group worldwide)

Peter van Heusden (he/him) 🗿 @pvanheus.bsky.social · 11d

So very much reminds me of the Niger Delta (see e.g. the documentary The Drilling Fields). Terrible

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Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 11d

In 2005 I spent 5 months in Ecuador investigating oil extraction.

Around then German bank WestLB funded a new Andes pipeline despite past spills.

What I saw was shocking and mostly unseen. This 2022 video shows just one example of repeated spills poisoning rivers and communities.

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Christos Lynteris @visualplague.bsky.social · 12d

This term's event programme by the new Research Network @crasshlive.bsky.social "Decolonising Plant Knowledge: Voices from Subverted Plant Worlds" is now live with registration opening soon for the opening event on October 15 www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/research/net...

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Zecharias Zelalem @zekuzelalem.bsky.social · 11d

THREAD: this investigation took up over half my year, but it's here in @thecontinent.org:
A Djiboutian drone strike in January was depicted as a army operation targeting rebels. It was actually a massacre of civilians. The bloodshed & coverup implicating Ethiopia, Djibouti, France & Turkiye.
#OSINT

The Continent 27 SEPTEMBER 2025 | ISSUE 215
15
INVESTIGATION
The Djiboutian massacre
Ethiopia won’t acknowledge
Djibouti drones killed eight people on the other side of its
border with Ethiopia. Djibouti claimed they were terrorists.
Ethiopia said nothing. This investigation found that some of
the dead were Ethiopians, revealing another episode in Addis’s
tendency to let its neighbours kill its citizens with impunity.
Crossing the line: Djibouti’s bombs landed inside Ethiopia, killing civilians – not armed fighters.
zecharias zelalem
On 30 January this year, a drone manned
from Djibouti dropped a bomb on a
funeral gathering in Siyaru, a remote,
semi-arid village near the Ethiopia
Djibouti border. As rescuers rushed in, a
second bomb dropped. And then a third.
At least eight people were killed,
including three children. Several
others were injured. Given the village’s
remoteness, the incident might have
gone unreported if graphic images of
the dead hadn’t spread across Ethiopian
social media.
A statement from the Djibouti’s
defence ministry said the drone struck
rebel fighters from the Front for the

Restoration of Unity and Democracy
(Frud), a Djiboutian political party with
a military wing. It has been fighting for
Afar interests in Djibouti since the 1990s.
The Afar are a community split by the
colonial border separating Ethiopia,
Djibouti, and Eritrea.
“Eight terrorists were neutralised on
site,” said a Djibouti military statement.
“Unfortunately, collateral damage
among Djiboutian civilians in the area
has been documented.”
International media, including Voice
of America, Agence France Presse, and
Radio France Internationale reported
this version of events.
Now, new findings from an open
In recovery: Mariam Mohammed Abdullah was
injured in the drone strike.
source investigation by The Continent
reveal a different reality.
The bombs landed inside Ethiopia,
not in Djibouti, and civilians – not armed
fighters – were killed. That distinction
matters. It shows Ethiopia is once again
tolerating a foreign military targeting its
own citizens, as it did with Eritrea during
the Tigray conflict.
A transparent lie
Even before the ink could dry on the
Djiboutian military’s statement, The
Addis Standard and human rights groups
in Djibouti were emphatic that the strike
had actually occurred inside Ethiopia’s
Afar region. But Alexis Mohamed, an
adviser to Djiboutian President Ismaïl
Omar Guelleh, rubbished these reports
in now-deleted social media posts.
The Continent got to work to figure out
what really happened. Over the course
of eight months, we collected eyewitness
testimonies, interviewed human rights
activists in Ethiopia and Djibouti, and
examined images and footage from the
strike. Our findings align with those of
Djiboutian activists, who pinpointed
Siyaru in Ethiopia’s Afar region as the
site of the strike.
The ammunition residue found on the
night of the strike confirms the bomb
was manufactured by Roketsan, a state
run weapons manufacturer in Türkiye.
Former US army explosives expert
Trevor Ball identified t…

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Edward Nirenberg @enirenberg.bsky.social · 11d

Neat study—following 320 healthcare workers for almost a year, with 152 of them being infected, the authors examined whether or not COVID-19 associates with more upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs). It didn't (yay!).

But, having a kid <5 associated with a 74% increase in the risk of URTIs.

Is COVID-19 Associated With an Increased Risk of Subsequent Upper Respiratory Tract Infections in Adults? A Prospective Cohort Study

AbstractBackground. In Autumn 2022, a surge in upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) was observed worldwide. Individuals anecdotally reported increase

academic.oup.com

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Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · 11d

Five years ago, @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social and I did a story about rural Oregon's fever dream that Antifa was coming to their town from Portland.

Hundreds showed up armed downtown because they heard on Facebook that "Antifa buses" were coming.

No buses came so they said Antifa "retreated."

In Klamath Falls, Oregon, victory declared over antifa, which never showed up

Towns from Washington state to Indiana have seen armed groups begin patrolling the streets after rumors spread on social media about an antifa invasion.

www.nbcnews.com

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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 12d

Re: the male loneliness epidemic, there is *still* not enough emphasis on how many heterosexual girls and women are staying single out of self-preservation, because the sexual norms that many heterosexual boys and men have adopted are exceptionally dangerous.

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The Continent @thecontinent.org · 12d

📰 We’ll be back on 18 Oct — with a new member of the family.

The Continent is launching a South Africa–focused sibling. We need your help choosing its name. Cast your vote here 👇

Help us name a new SA newspaper.

South Africa needs a new national newspaper. Help us name it.

tally.so

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Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 12d

“Our study has lessons for public figures and institutions. They, especially politicians, must lead in curbing misinformation, as their misleading statements are quickly amplified by the public”.

This was the conclusion of a study of online misinformation, as the U.S. government lies to us daily.

Facebook data reveal the devastating real-world harms caused by the spread of misinformation

New research reveals misinformation’s real-world impact, including poor health outcomes, falling public trust, and significant societal harm.

theconversation.com

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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 13d

for years when academics warned about the problems with letting media consolidate at the hands of one of two companies people yawned, now every day there's another vivid example of why they were right

Sinclair joins the Trump administration’s much-criticized attempt to link Tylenol use during pregnancy to autism

www.mediamatters.org

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