iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

*BREAKING UPDATE* INSIDER REPORTS THAT SEALS ARE APPARENTLY PREPARING TO LAUNCH NEW TYPE OF SEAL MORE ON THE HOUR.

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Reposted by Mike Sowden

Working theory: 1. Good news needs help to spread in a way bad news rarely does (negativity bias, we're become news extremophiles, etc) . 2. Social media is optimized for HIGH EMOTION. 3. Therefore it is not hard to get people ANGRY. 4. The cost of that is anxiety, cynicism, despair. But...

Fake news chyron saying "BREAKING NEWS: OH WHAT THE FUCK. NOW"

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Something I learned from posting this thread: that across the Atlantic, the term "jab" has been hijacked by MAGA & antivaxxers! Here in the UK it's everyday slang for a vaccination, with (as far as I know) zero snark associated with it, hence the BBC using it so openly in this article.

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Reposted by Mike Sowden

To anyone claiming that science is "boring", I would point them towards this award-winning study from 1939 showing that repeatedly exploding paper bags next to a cat that was standing on the back of a cow caused that cow to produce less milk than normal: academic.oup.com/jas/article-... 1/

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I know there is a hell of a lot going on right now. But not all of it is bad. Some is astonishingly good - like the results of this study from June. Cervical cancer is a terribly cruel thing. This might, at long last, be the beginning of the end of it. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

BBC News headline "Young women now have 'close to zero' risk of cervical cancer death after HPV jab"

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Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer @kitwhitfield.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

“I often wonder what it must be like to be so strong, Infallible, articulate, self-confident and wrong.” Pam Ayres ripping the piss out of mansplaining before it was cool. youtu.be/qIxg0QE2GxQ?...

youtu.be

Pam Ayres - They Should Have Asked My Husband

YouTube video by Pam Ayres MBE

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Reposted by Mike Sowden

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 27/09/2026

Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the news that Anthropic discovered new virus genes for making DNA. He says he’s been studying them for years—and feeding his data to Anthropic’s AI as part of his own research. Coincidence? Here’s my story. nyti.ms/3VSWayc

nyti.ms

Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own? (Gift Article)

An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.

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Reposted by Mike Sowden

Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Once again, I gotta say: you cannot treat anything you’re feeding into an AI as anonymous. There are enormous ethics implications for, e.g. referees who are clearly uploading others’ unpublished papers without consent, let alone health care professionals or law enforcement

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

Doggerland must have seemed like a paradise compared to the starker uplands: food from the coast, food from rivers, deer, wild boar, berries, birds, otters, beavers... Sure, the sea seemed to be creeping inland a bit more ever year, but hey - let future folk sort it out! 9/

Two maps side by side showing the proposed changes in the shape of Doggerland as the sea levels rose - on the right, after the sea had come in, it's reduced the vast plains of Doggerland to a few scattered islands out in what's now the North Sea.

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uosdwis r dewoh @thulcandrian.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I enjoyed reading this today and learned something new, as I didn’t realize that colors reflect a certain angle from Red (42 degrees) to Violet (40 degrees). I’ve seen a circle rainbow from an airplane in the winter when it looked like a sun dog formed a full circle.

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Since the "boat-shaped" Durupınar site in Turkey is one again doing the rounds as "proof" of the final resting-place of Noah's Ark: Here are two "boat-shaped" features at the bottom of the English Channel. They're what happens to rock when MASSIVE quantities of water suddenly tear through. 1/

Teardrop or even "boat-shaped" features at the bottom of the English Channel showing the ancient passage of huge amounts of water, now believed to be the signs of the ancient megafloods that carved Britain away from the European continent.

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Ed Wilson @eddwilson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Prehistory and more band names

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

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Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

An ancient and magical amber bear 🐻 ✨ Carved some 10,000 years ago, it washed up on a beach at Fanø in Denmark from a submerged Mesolithic settlement under the North Sea. National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen 📷 by me #Archaeology

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It's been 4 months and I can't believe (most) people kept following me on here after I posted this. If Bluesky ever gets Community Notes I'm in real trouble.

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Oh my god. THIS IS MY CARTOON. (It isn't, it's @tomgauld.bsky.social's, but - you know what I mean.) MY PATHETIC EGO THANKS YOU, TOM. (Although I'm worried about the x-axis being "writing ability", hence all the other points are my fellow science newsletter writers laughing at me.)

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Because this is already semi-deranged, a further ludicrous analogy: What if the e-m spectrum is like dial-up, & beyond a certain point every civilization switches to dark energy/matter "broadband", and we just haven't got there yet? Somebody who understands real science needs to stop me here.

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Maybe idiotic idea about the Fermi paradox: 1) What if advanced civilizations communicate using the 95% of the universe that's made of dark matter & dark energy, neither of which we have yet detected except indirectly? And... 2) ...we're also far too young to have been e/m-detected by them yet?

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Reposted by Mike Sowden

Yesterday I went mildly viral on Twitter/“X” for the first time in a long while - and my god, so many men on there are deeply Not Okay. I'm 99% off Twitter, but kept my account to stop the username being stolen. Then I posted that thread about Mars. What happened next will not surprise you. 1/

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I never want problematic men to stop describing themselves as Alphas, because then I wouldn't be able to reply "maybe one day you'll reach v1.0"! It's not my joke, I don't own it, but please, nobody take it away from me. Thanks. - Mike (in beta).

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Contrary to some reports, you don't have two brains

UPDATE! It's actually good science mangled by a wrong-end-of-the-stick press release. John Timmer at @arstechnica.com does a great job of respectfully debunking it, pointing out what the research *actually* suggests: arstechnica.com/science/2026... (hat-tip @tommyblanchard.bsky.social)

arstechnica.com

A bad press release makes a good excuse to look at how developmental biology works.

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Reposted by Mike Sowden

Jeannie (Jay) Marschall 🍇🫐🍏🍋🍊🍓 @jeanniemarschall.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Hubby's novel manuscript happens to be about that, as it happens .. 🙂 just in case any SciFi pub'er happens to see this hehe

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Well, this went bonkers. Thanks to everyone who leapt into the comments to teach me something! Honestly, that's why I post these things - it's as an enthusiastic student, learning as I go. And, as usual, a tiny but noisy minority arrived to tell me I'm a ****ing ****. Enthusiastically blocked. 😁

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In all the grandiose discussion about colonising Mars, I don't see much about how the soil is poisonous to us. This was only discovered in 2008. It contains perchlorates, which are environmental toxins here on Earth. Any human contact with Mars dust? Super-bad news in the long run. 1/

NASA image from the surface of Mars, showing its red dusty surface with rover tire-tracks running across it.

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Ira Hyman @irahyman.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

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Reposted by Mike Sowden

My latest blog post. Based on some researchers who put googly eyes on a takeout food box to see if that would discourage seagulls from stealing your lunch. There's serious work on how animals track eyes and on trying to stop animals from taking food. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ment...

psychologytoday.com

Seagulls Versus Googly Eyes

Have you ever had your lunch stolen by a gull or some other bird? In the battle to save your lunch, scientists may have discovered a secret weapon: googly eyes.

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This is beautifully said & incredibly important. Meeting people where they are with the very, very specific problems they face every day, especially the "small stuff" (which never is small, when summed up), and offering concrete action on them, should be politics at least as much as everything else.

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UPDATE: Holy shit, I don't think I'm wrong actually.

Clouds above Ayrshire forming what *might* be a Kelvin-Helmholtz "wave".

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

You know, these clouds at my nearest beach this morning are starting to look a bit Kelvin-helmholtz-y. Just a bit. Come on lads, give it more welly. 🙏 (Second pic: the real thing, in Wyoming in 2022.)

Clouds in a line above the Ayrshire coast, Scotland.

Kelvin-helmholtz clouds above Wyoming, showing the classic "breaking wave" shape.

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Reposted by Mike Sowden

Rainbows are actually full circles if you get high enough (as in height, not...uh, anyway). Here's a mind-blowing photo by Lukas Moesch that illustrates this beautifully. (Via bigthink.com/starts-with-... and Kottke.org)

bigthink.com

Rainbows are actually full circles. A physicist explains

Most of us only ever see a fraction of a full rainbow: an arc. But optically, a full rainbow makes a complete circle. Physics explains why.

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Jo Hunter @futurshox.net · 22/09/2026

Follow me, and I will show you sciencey stuff that will make you go "WOW!" It may not be useful. It may not be startlingly relevant to any of your problems. It probably won't change your life. But, just for a second, I reckon I can make you look & feel like this. Follow me if you want that. 👍

Keanu Reeves in The Matrix muttering "woah" with a look of pure astonishment.

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Reposted by Mike Sowden

Follow this guy. Get on his newsletter. It’s science and curiosity gold.

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