iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

BEHOLD: the first-ever glowing cuttlefish! 🧪🦑🧪🦑 It's the first successful insertion of a gene into a cephalopod, opening up new ways of studying them. It took @tessamontague.bsky.social years—and 1000s of tries—to pull it off. @sarareardon.bsky.social has the story: www.science.org/content/arti...

Glowing red cuttlefish on a black background

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

An update @koppenburg.ch! A week and a half in, and the arXiv is humming with theoretical takes on LZ230616.

Chart showing cumulative arXiv preprints mentioning "LUX-ZEPLIN," by original submission date. Light blue curve begins in bottom left on October 7, 2013, the first preprint submission date, and curves to the top right to a count of 130 total preprints by July 27, 2026. A solid black diamond at coordinates (9/1/2026, 131) denotes the announcement date of LZ230613, the candidate dark matter detection event. From September 1, 2026, to September 10, 2026 inclusive, an additional 44 preprints mentioning LUX-ZEPLIN have been posted, nearly all of which are dark matter theory papers.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

A wild, unfortunate story. As a magazine journalist with a soft spot for musical theatre, I simply must listen to "The Sound of America."

Mr. Lane is now focusing on his own projects. In 2023, he co-founded the National Thoroughbred League, a competitive horseracing association. And this summer, he mounted a rock musical he wrote about Benjamin Franklin titled “The Sound of America” in Philadelphia that cast the founding father as “America’s first rock star.” It finished its debut run this month.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

To keep myself honest, here's the Google Trends data for US searches for "Artemis" November 2022 to today. Data for this week are incomplete, but we're looking at at least a ~12.5x bump over the Artemis I launch in November 2022. trends.google.com/trends/explo...

Screenshot of Google Trends search interest over time for "artemis" in the US, November 1, 2022, to April 2, 2026. The y-axis of the chart goes from 0 to 100. On the left side of the chart, a blue line creates a short peak topping out at 8. The line flatlines through 2023-2025, with minor jitters, and then spikes at the right end of the chart—this week—all the way to 100. However, the spike is a dotted line because the data are preliminary and incomplete for this week.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Today is the launch of Artemis II. It's a mission defined by expanding possibilities, including sending the first Black person, the first woman, and the first non-U.S. citizen beyond low Earth orbit. It also comes at a challenging time back on terra firma. I wrote about this tension back in 2023:

Whether this vision will really yield a sustained human presence on the moon, let alone Mars- bound astronauts, is an open question. Artemis is still in its early days. Starship’s first full test flight exploded minutes into launch in April. There’s also public support to consider. Since 2019, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, multiple polls have found that less than a quarter of Americans thought that sending people to the moon should be a top NASA priority. Even during Apollo’s days, human spaceflight attracted criticism for spending billions that could address earthbound concerns. Now we’re returning to the moon at a time of climate and biodiversity crises, rising political extremism, glaring racial inequalities, and war between Russia and Ukraine.

Against this grim backdrop, NASA astronauts are acutely aware that they’re not just public figures but also inspirational symbols: of explo- ration, of science, of the national spirit. Koch has wrestled with how to handle these expectations. For 328 days, she lived and worked aboard the ISS, setting a record for the longest spaceflight by a woman. Her impulse was to downplay the milestone. Then a former colleague reminded her that her achievement might give people a sense of greater possibilities.

There’s nothing inevitable about us venturing beyond Earth’s atmosphere, let alone going to the moon. In microgravity our blood breaks down. Our bones get brittle. Our eyesight worsens. Without constant vigilance, we can perish in an instant. Overcoming our biological limits, hundreds of thousands of people have dreamed, planned, and built for decades to make the journey outward not only possible but routine. If Artemis’s vision is realized, that could extend all the way to the moon—and maybe even farther. As Koch sees it, these launches are hard-won victories, with setback after setback giving way to one of the purest of human emotions: joy at surpassing our limits.

“How awesome it is that as a species, as…

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

A random aside: This is borne out quite well in the actual data, specifically the annual Google search volume in the US related to Survivor. trends.google.com/explore?q=%2...

Chart showing total annual US Google search volume related to Survivor TV series in the US from 2004 to 2025. Interest is at its highest in 2004 and then declines by about half. After bottoming out in 2014-2015 at about a third of the 2004 search volume, interest has risen again over the past decade to about 55% of the 2004 search volume.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

I edited @humbertobasilio.bsky.social’s recent story on how Venezuela’s scientists are faring after the US capture of Maduro. A few of them made an important observation: Science is downstream of basic human needs and freedoms. Research cannot thrive when fundamental rights are under attack.

González, who helped create Venezuela’s research funding framework in the 1980s, says the only way to promote national development—and to encourage emigré scientists to return—is to reinvest money into research. Any deal with U.S. oil companies, he adds, should include that requirement. “We cannot leave everything in the hands of foreign companies.”

Scharifker, who witnessed firsthand the rise and collapse of Venezuela’s scientific system, adds that money alone won’t restore it. “Until there are basic freedoms in the country, there is no way science will flourish again.”

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

The drawing in question, "Holy Child," is disputed. Some say Leonardo did it. Others instead attribute it to one of the polymath's students. Now the drawing is the focus of the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project, a group of scientists on a decade-long odyssey to track down Leonardo's DNA.

"Holy Child," a sketch rendered in red chalk on paper of young boy’s head inclined slightly to the side, his features sketched with feathery strokes. The drawing's creator is disputed, with some attributing it to Leonardo da Vinci and others attributing it to a student of Leonardo's.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

🧪🧵 In the Epstein documents released today, there's a "radical breakthrough" email Epstein sent himself in 2018, containing musings such as the idea that beards "are meant to catch and hold smells." Then he replied to himself with an unusual list of people including Donald Trump ("donalad trup").

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: jeffrey E. <jeevacation@gmail.com <mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com> >
Date: Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 2:19 PM
Subject: Fwd: radical breakthrough
To: jeffrey epstein <jeevacation@gmail.com <mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com> >

1 beards and long hair , are meant to catch and hold smells. ?

2. visiual system cohernant image. . fft . equivament. . for sound. making a coherentt sound. . ? does it make a coeherent concept.?

3. a mental object ie mobject. . action on mental objects. . ?

4. hope opposite of despair. . bias internal system . accesing reserves. .

5. writing is unnatural. assymentrc speed. . not good for eveeryone. linear. slow. rule based. .
6. nose test. telepathy. .

. 7 skin as part of brain? . memebrane. ?

8. ideas or brain connections as knots. slices. tangles links loops. is space knottted. and the speed of light simply mean one time around . obviously a constant.

9 . . intelltignce on surface , needs larger surface area. hence replication. .

10. does the eye tranmsit information.

11/ fear is pain in the future. .

12. music is horizontal and vertical inforamtion ? melody prosgy harmony , all amials. can it be looked at to reengineer the brain. harmony FFT. symphonic learning.

13 individulal vs the group ? ?

14. all senses act in a narrow band. survival. fitness. .

15. drive motivation. goal?

$16. deception and its role in biollogy. 17 power. financail. physical mental. . 18. power lawws and probabality. gravity.? 19. plants. communication. surface area. similairy tohumnas. . do we get plant diseases. ? 20. biolgy , np complete? 21 sense calculation matrix. , sound receiver and transionni . gesture. . . tounch . temp.pressure. location. . sight. frequnecey. ( temp_. location. movement. , smell. transmit. recieve. . volatile. amplitude. . disgust? is location a sense. near food? direction. to food. ? 22 . derivation of the power llaws. 23 power of words . 24. questions = AI to the minus 1 25. belief , survival. meachinsim for some. . placebo. . 26. taste? food? kissing? 27 . mortaltiy tables. why. points on the distribution. wittegenstein. . . 26. money. agreements. debt . pwer. value wealth. cost. 27 dreaming all day long 28 only 6 senses? 29. micro bioome anti biotics. recall smell. ? psyche. memory etc. 30 / eye transmission 31. numbers , not good for many things 32. luck what is it . mortality tables 33 signal processing. . noise. excription gromov deepak. church. martin. hopkins.danny, joscha watson, chomsky. . . thiel.hoffman, sinofsky . . terje. ehud. bannon. barrak. ruemmler. reid. karp. . woody, blaine. cavett. sultan jabor raafat. anas . joi, reid. wolf. lang. . \ deepakbarnaby ben masha. , melz eva mosc. bernie. rony , merill. attia, chen, farkas leon . membrane computing. FFT. energy to deconstruct. . harmony. . . knots. . the explainer. ( survival ) . matrix algebra, - senses. face /image recogniton. / focus, accupnutre presure massage. pain. placebo illusions, visula aurel. . honest signals. evolution. resource. rate of loss. . payoff matrix. . cooperation. stochastic games.$

From: jeevacation@gmail.com
To: jeffrey epstein jeevacation@gmail.com;
Subject: Fwd: radical breakthrough
Sent: 1/8/2018 7:47:20 PM

kashoggi, bunker hunt. george mitchell . wayne owens. prince andrew. princess mette . princes sophie, princess alexandra princess melusine. . bill richardson. bill clinton. hamad bun jasem. donalad trup. gov mapp. governoe young. governoe king. . woody allen . morgain fairchild. mike ovitz. . marvin davis, herb segal. jimmy cyane, jes staleyk , rothchild. agnelli. . karim. prince mbs, mbr, sultan. anas. . jabor, general clarke. , watson minsky church , hillis. . ramascharn, golenbrg, hauser, kosslym, dan gilbert. larry summers. henry rosvsky, steven j gould, . murray gemman, gerffrey west. . haley berry, joan severane. , tom pritzker, leon balck, m.. woody allen, jacuwe lang. , miro.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: jeffrey E. <jeevacation@gmail.com <mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com> >
Date: Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 2:19 PM
Subject: Fwd: radical breakthrough
To: jeffrey epstein <jeevacation@gmail.com <mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com> >

1 beards and long hair , are meant to catch and hold smells. ?

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Terrific reporting here from @sarareardon.bsky.social that very clearly lays out the stakes. A lot of these grants focus on HIV/AIDS—about 13% of South Africans live w/ HIV, more than anywhere else in the world—and tuberculosis (of interest to @johngreensbluesky.bsky.social?).

Gandhi says cutting clinical trials for HIV and tuberculosis would have ripple effects outside of Africa. She is most concerned that abruptly stopping treatment will allow HIV and the mycobacteria that causes tuberculosis to develop resistance to existing medicines. Even if funding is eventually restored, she says, “I don’t know if we can ever get back to where we are.”

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

If I've got the orientation right, I don't think that #IM2 will be able to deploy either its rover or its hopper. This is my very rough working model of IM2's orientation on the lunar surface, looking from what should be the top of IM2 down toward its legs.

Simplified digram of IM2's possible orientation on the lunar surface. IM2 has a hexagonal cross-section, so the six sides of IM2 are represented here by a simple hexagon. The PRIME-1 instrument appears to be on top of the sideways lander.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Intuitive Machines has released a high-resolution picture from its #IM2 lander. And this does not look good for PRIME-1...which is the instrument that's on top of the sideways lander. Very hard to drill into lunar regolith when the drill lies parallel to the moon's surface.

Image from the IM2 robotic lunar lander, taken toward the lunar horizon. Foreground is a lunar lander tipped onto its side, with two legs visibly pointing upward. The sunlit lunar landscape is in the background, with a half-Earth visible in the darkness of space beyond.

Detail from the first image from the IM2 robotic lunar lander, with a yellow outline around the PRIME-1 instrument.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

It's my understanding that as Society leadership saw things, the Fox deal was a unique opportunity to shore up the Society's long-term financial health. And they had a point: "Membership dues" (magazine subscriptions) and associated ad revenue had been in decline for 25 years by that point.

Chart showing historical subscriptions to National Geographic from 1900 to 2024. Subscriptions slowly grew from 1900 and reached 1 million in the mid-1920s. They then stayed more or less flat until the mid-1940s and quickly grew to 2 million by the early 1950s. From the early 1960s to the early 1980s, subscriptions grew at a roughly constant, meteoric rate, from 2.2 million in 1957 to more than 10 million by the early 1980s. Print subscriptions then start to decline from approximately 10 million in 1990 to fewer than 1 million today. From 1990 to today, newsstand sales and estimated digital subscriptions also grow, but not enough to offset long-term print declines. Total circulation (newsstand sales, print subscriptions, and digital subscriptions) is less than 2 million.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Like, if you actually break down NASA's spending, the bulk of the agency's budget is paid out to contractors, not to staff. www.usaspending.gov/explorer/age...

Chart showing breakdown of NASA's spending. 76% is "contractual services and supplies," 14.2% is "personnel compensation and benefits," 5% is "grants and fixed charges," and 4.8% is "acquisition of assets."

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

As it turns out, Otte Ventures is a shareholder of NextVision Media UG, along with a Munich resident named Matthias Binder and an Augsburg resident named Marcel Kuhn.

Table readout from German government document describing Otte Ventures GmbH's 33.33% stake in NextVision Media UG.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

The CEO and cofounder of Animals Around the Globe is a German fellow named Jan Otte, who seems keen to invest in a variety of online publishing and media firms through his company Otte Ventures GmbH. www.linkedin.com/in/janotte21...

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

The website's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/climatecosmos) says that it is controlled by an outfit called Animals Around the Globe GmBh, which is a publication all its own: www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com

Screenshot of Facebook page for a publication called Climate Cosmos, with 51,000 likes and 50,000 followers. "Animals Around the Globe GmbH" is the entity responsible for the page.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

CDC’s data subdomain, data.cdc.gov, is now fully “temporarily offline,” as the CDC assesses CDC data products’ alignment with Trump executive orders.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

🧪 NEW: Minutes ago, the National Science Foundation (NSF) sent out an email update on its hold on funding, as the NSF conducts a compliance review with Trump's anti-DEI executive orders. Funds are still held up, and the ACM$ web portal is still down: www.research.gov/acms-web/

Email from NSF, the beginning of which reads: Our top priority is resuming our funding actions and services to the research community and our stakeholders. We are working expeditiously to conduct a comprehensive review of our projects, programs and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

🧪 The situation is particularly acute for postdoctoral research fellows who are directly funded by NSF, as they depend on funds for their literal living expenses. The web portal used to access NSF funds is still shut down: www.research.gov/acms-web/

Web page of the National Science Foundation’s Award Cash Management Service that reads: Our top priority is resuming our funding actions and services to the research community and our stakeholders. We are working expeditiously to conduct a comprehensive review of our projects, programs and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders.

NSF has created an Executive Order Implementation webpage to ensure the widest dissemination of information and updates.We will continue to communicate with you as we receive additional guidance.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

If we zoom out to terriers, Wofford College puts in a respectable performance

College sports mascot depicting the head and neck of a growling black and white terrier dog, with a brownish (or gold) collar studded with six black spikes

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

I’m at NASA headquarters today for @sciam.bsky.social to cover a major NASA update on the Artemis program. I won’t be live-skeeting but will provide updates as I can.

NASA officials sitting at a table for a press conference, with “Artemis” behind them on a projection

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Roger that. Here's a sketch I drew today of my dog Luna.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

These days especially, I’m trying to find moments of joy. Here’s a sketch of my dog Luna I made from observation this afternoon.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Thanks for the follows! To reintroduce myself: I’m a science journalist and ex-Nat Geo staff writer who covers paleontology, space, physics, archaeology, and much more for Science, Nature, SciAm, NYT, WaPo, etc. Sign up for my newsletter: deviations.ghost.io

Man wearing blue shirt, backpack and head scarf standing in the Moroccan desert holding a dinosaur tooth

Man standing in front of a large rocket launch pad with the Space Launch System rocket atop it

Man in waders and a sweatshirt standing in front of a 19th-century statue of a dinosaur that resembles an iguana. Foreground is mossy.

Man and woman wearing event lanyards standing in front of a sign that reads “FISM Quebec 2022”

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

One of the fun things about Deviations (deviations.ghost.io), my personal newsletter, is that I set myself a goal of writing a complex anagram for the kicker of every edition. Here's the closing anagram for today's send:

"Rolling three dice does an impressively good job at illustrating how global warming skews the chances of heat extremes over land." is an anagram of "At the climate casino, bad-luck rolls mean the world is overwhelmingly hot. Express grief, rage; the goal—job—is to save ending wonders."

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Dice rolls approximate normal distributions; adding extra numbers to those sums has the effect of shifting the distribution to the right. Which is exactly what climate change is doing to temperatures over land. (The chart at the right: www.giss.nasa.gov/research/bri...)

Chart showing bell curve of the probabilities of rolling different three-dice sums.

Chart showing shifting decade-by-decade distributions of Northern Hemisphere land temperatures during summer months.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

These simple rules do a remarkably good job of replicating the IPCC's estimates of how much more frequent these two kinds of heat extremes will get under 1-4°C of global warming.

Chart showing correspondence between the probabilities of 10-year heat events under different amounts of warming and the probabilities of rolling a three-dice sum of at least 15 when adding extra numbers.

Chart showing correspondence between the probabilities of 50-year heat events under different amounts of warming and the probabilities of rolling a three-dice sum of at least 17 when adding extra numbers.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

In 2021-2023, the IPCC published its Sixth Assessment Report, an enormous global summary of what we know about climate change. www.ipcc.ch/assessment-r... A summary of the science of climate change, published in 2021, included this fascinating look at heat extremes over land:

Chart showing how under different amounts of climate change, once-in-a-decade and once-every-50-year heat extremes become much more common as global warming increases.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 20/03/2024

All these companies appear to be closely linked. Link.Builders is a "Golden Mile Ltd Company." Golden Mile Ltd, a Maltese company, is partially owned by Red Earth Ltd (see screenshot). Some of the Digital Superstars Ltd players, such as Noremo, appear to have ties to Red Earth.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 20/03/2024

I am suspicious of GamblingTimes.com's staff. Andrew Brown, the publication's reputed editor-in-chief, has practically no online footprint, his headshot looks AI-generated, and his clips are... well: www.gamblingtimes.com/blog/author/...

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 20/03/2024

Building on @ernie.tedium.co's work, I've made a break in the case of who bought Deadspin. An XML file buried deep in the code of lineup-publishing.com reveals a Wordpress author named "maxnoremo." lineup-publishing.com/wp-json/oemb...

Portion of XML file from lineup-publishing.com Contains an author URL with a username "maxnoremo."

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 19/10/2023

Whether Arrakis or Mars, there’s no doubt that the Moroccan Sahara can look like an alien world. I have to say, a stillsuit would have been nice.

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Michael Greshko @michaelgreshko.bsky.social · 18/10/2023

Hello! Paleoecology-trained science journalist here, formerly of National Geographic. Now writing for Science, The Washington Post, etc. I specialize in paleontology, planetary science, physics, biology, and whatever needs writing!

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