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davecl.bsky.social
Astrophysicist at Imperial College London. Works with space missions like Herschel and Planck, on extragalactic astronomy, observational cosmology and astrobiology. Ask about phosphine on Venus! Also writes science fiction. Not speaking for anybody
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ALL ABOARD! šŸš‚ šŸ“£SAVE LIVERPOOL STREET STATION! The planning application for partial demolition of the listed station in the City of London to build a tower over it is now LIVE!! Here's our guide to writing your objection by 4th July: bit.ly/3ZQRkk8 #heritage #cityoflondon

ICE started raiding the hotel they were staying in - interrogating cleaning ladies Good luck housing ICE agents in Los Angeles now

🚨BREAKING: Georgia Supreme Court STRIKES DOWN four State Election Board rules concerning certification and hand counting ballots last year. A big victory for GA voters and a stinging defeat for the RNC and election deniers. www.democracydocket.com/cases/georgi...

This is a crime.

Today I asked AI to summarise an academic paper. The actual results were the opposite to what was hypothesised (and to what others had shown). The AI summary assumed the study had found what everyone else had found. Hot tip: don’t use a stochastic parrot to summarise an outlier paper. #academicsky 🧪

Is Donald Trump a demented buffoon or a pathological liar?

Durbin to Bhattacharya: "I can't understand it. I disagree w/ this admin on so many things. But this is the one that really gets to me personally. To think this nation would walk away from medical research. For God's sake...cancer, your budget requests a 38% cut to the National Cancer Institute"

I’m sure he was hired on merit though (sarcasm).

SCOOP: The Trump administration is planning to dramatically ramp up its transfer of undocumented migrants to Guantanamo Bay. Some 9,000 people are being screened, including hundreds from European countries, according to documents. www.politico.com/news/2025/06...

NEW: A data broker owned by major airlines sold domestic US flight data to DHS, telling the dept. not to disclose that, according to records obtained by @404media.co—copublished in partnership with @wired.com. No paywall bc FOIA @josephcox.bsky.social w/ the scoop: www.wired.com/story/airlin...

New in PN: ABC is too cowed to state the obvious about Stephen Miller "Miller and Trump are hateful bigots. Independent journalists can still say that. Journalists at ABC can’t, because the president gets a veto over their coverage. That’s not democracy and it’s not a free press. It’s fascism."

It will come for all of us. Have you given serious thought to your final arrangements?

Sydneysiders - we have a new ferry named after #RadioAstronomy pioneer Ruby Payne-Scott! More information in this article with @monsoon0.bsky.social. www.science.org.au/news-and-eve...

@sellathechemist.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy, a @ucl.ac.uk chemistry professor, has returned his 2014 Michael Faraday Prize to protest the @royalsociety.org's failure to take more decisive (or any) action against Elon Musk for his attack on science. šŸ‘

Just throw it onto the pile of reasons (as detailed by @radleybalko.bsky.social) that Sen. Bill Cassidy should be shamed for the rest of his life for for his craven, tie-breaking vote in support of RFK Jr.

My comments with Bundle www.bundle.app/en/finance/m...

ā€œThis is an attempted authoritarian overthrow of the United States Constitution and the U.S. government.ā€ #Maddow

Downtown Los Angeles, 1937

In case you're wondering, authoritarians use this strategy of escalation to manufacture crisis, provoke outrage, then use the reaction to justify repression. It’s not about restoring order, it's about creating a spectacle of chaos they can claim only they can control.

Andrea’s principled stand reveals once again the failure of @royalsociety.org to stand by its own principles. They really have misjudged to moment – and the momentousness of Musk’s damage to the fabric of US science. on.ft.com/4dVzoef

This is something we haven't talked about enough. Modern white supremacist fascism is incredibly litigious. Bankrupting people with lawsuits is actually their primary weapon of choice.

Don’t go grabbing tear gas grenades. Some burn at over 750 C and you can’t tell just by looking

BREAKING: Federal agents in plain clothes and unmarked cars tried to snatch 1st graders from LA elementary schools—told staff they had ā€œparental consent.ā€ They lied. When pressed, they HID THEIR IDS. DHS admits they sent them. This wasn’t a welfare check. It was a test run for a police state.

RFK Jr.ā€˜s extreme anti-vax views — and his related conflicts of interest — were a huge problem during his confirmation process. So he promised not to change the vaccine advisory panel. Today, he fired every single expert on that panel. It's a public health disaster.

i understand the framing, which is about RFK jr lying to a senator to get senate approval but RFK jr also lied to the american public just completely unacceptable for a public official and senator bill cassidy is not the only one who should take action for being lied to

BBC's Arabic radio service in Lebanon closed after 85 years as part of a Ā£28.5m savings drive. 'Just months later, in October 2023, the Russian state-owned Sputnik news agency took over the frequency. Its news bulletin opened with ā€œThis is Moscowā€, replacing the previous ā€œThis is Londonā€ intro.' šŸ™„

Philly local tv station reporting that a man allegedly posed as an ICE agent in order to rob a car repair business office. How many other criminals might be getting this idea right now, given that actual ICE agents are refusing to show IDs, warrants, badges?

When did you ever hear the BBC stating that it must alter ā€œstory selectionā€ and ā€œother types of output, such as dramaā€, to win the trust of Green voters, or of unrepresented people on the left? All the shifts are in just one direction. bylinetimes.com/2025/06/09/b...

Alpine strawberries fresh from the garden!

I think it's important to continuously reiterate that federal science funding grants in the US (and elsewhere) are made because the government, with the input of panels of independent experts, have concluded that the work being done is IN THE INTEREST OF THE NATION.

🚨BREAKING: 300+ NIH employees call out the harm of censorship & politicized science in scathing email to Bhattacharya, demanding an end to political interference, a lift on funding freezes, & rehiring of fired staff whose work saves lives. This is historic - insiders are blowing the whistle. 🧵(1/5)

'Inadequate ventilation considered a risk factor for infection from airborne bioaerosols. CO2 concentration as a proxy for ventilation performance.' Lidia Morawska et al, operationalise CO2 monitoring for use by building operators as an infection risk reduction tool.' www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Important information from @aclu.org on your rights in protesting. Thanks, Sarah- please spread far and wide!

In case you missed it on Friday: my story about Trump's proposed NASA cuts & how, if they pass, they'd deal a massive blow to international collaboration. Europe's long-planned ExoMars rover could be a huge casualty. But Washington's reputation would be another. www.nature.com/articles/d41... šŸ§ŖšŸš€

It is completely unlawful for ICE to turn away members of Congress like this. The law could not be more clear; no member of Congress may be denied access to a facility where ICE is detaining someone, and they cannot be required to schedule in advance. Surprise inspections must be surprise.

Nice little meteor just blew up north of Tucson AZ. Bright skies under a near full moon. šŸ”­

Watch the slow motion: it appears to me that the officers discuss the photographer and reporter before the one on the end fires on them (it looks to me like he's aiming at the camera, not the reporter, but you decide)

The threat to astronomy - image of the sky from Mongolia showing dozens of trails from Starlink and other NEO satellites. Image credit: Xin Wang, Mongolia šŸ§ŖšŸ”­