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Catherine Sheard

@sheardcat.bsky.social
2K followers 830 following 2K posts

Lecturer & Interdisciplinary Fellow @ University of Aberdeen. Professionally: macroevolution, especially birds & languages. Personally: drinks too much coffee, plays too much D&D. she/her

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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 10h
One of the most harrowing things about academia, when you're a grad student, is how vulnerable you are to how you're perceived by more senior researchers. Your career advancement depends on confidential letters of reference & private discussions amongst faculty. You have no information or control.
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Jolyon Troscianko @jtroscianko.bsky.social · 14h
🦋 Butterfly wing patterns create motion illusions that protect them from predators! Our new study (8 years in the making) is out in Nature today doi.org/10.1038/s415... @grahancock.bsky.social @esbriolat.bsky.social @scienceanna.bsky.social @lauraakelley.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Steve Brusatte @stevebrusatte.bsky.social · 17h
🚨Postdoc job alert: Come work with my paleontology & evolution group in Edinburgh! Researcher in Cognitive Evolution Over Deep Time. You'll study how brains & neurons have evolved over time, and predict neuron count in extinct species! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DTC355/p...
jobs.ac.uk
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cognitive Evolution over Deep Time at The University of Edinburgh
Apply for the Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cognitive Evolution over Deep Time role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 18h
The Magnus Archives skepticism about macroecology (episode 121, for the curious) is such a jump-scare my god 😂😂😂
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Department of Biology, Lund University @biologylu.bsky.social · 23h
Climate change is reshaping butterfly ranges worldwide. A global study found that 80% of 1,758 species in its dataset had expanded their ranges. @larspett.bsky.social and colleagues combined 6,182 reports from 105 countries. doi.org/10.1038/s415... #Biodiversity #ClimateChange #Ecology
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I've been hopping in and out of the Zoom version of today's BOU conference, and the talk this afternoon about this project was excellent. Across 25 years, population change in the birds of North Carolina can be predicted by their traits & environmental niches. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...
ecoevorxiv.org
Species Traits Predict Local Population Change Above and Beyond Regional Trend
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I absolutely love this paper -- Menezes & Podos in Evolution demonstrate that loudness is linked to body size and gap width, but apparently not to habitat or mating system, across 123 Brazilian & US species. academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...
academic.oup.com
Evolutionary drivers of vocal amplitude in birds
Birds can surpass all other terrestrial vertebrates in vocal amplitude, yet why some birds sing louder than others remains unclear. Using calibrated field
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Levayer Lab @levayerr.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Here it is...by delegating decision to non transparent AI models we generate an incentive for grant applicants to use AI writing to tweak system and the vicious/absurd feedback loop is set (which all started by an overload of grant application driven by AI writing). www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
U.K. funder uses ‘AI triage’ to reject grant proposals—leaving researchers dismayed
The AI-based assessment, which wasn’t explicitly described in the funding call, has raised privacy and fairness concerns
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
nick @unionnick.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
On the *same day* the Cornell Seven drugged and raped Jane Doe, Cornell banned four students (including the President of Cornell JVP) from campus for three years for nonviolent, pro-Palestine protests. The same Cornell officials let the rapists off with apology essays.
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Professor John R. Hutchinson @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
New paper! Brandon Kilbourne conducted a huge data collection effort for the limb muscle architecture (masses, fascicle lengths, pennation angles; thereby PCSAs) of mustelid mammals. We found conspicuous relationships with morphology and locomotor mode. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Muscle architecture in mustelid mammals: anatomical proxies for muscle function and their relation to locomotor habit - BMC Ecology and Evolution
Background Though skeletal adaptations for locomotion in mammals are well documented, possible limb adaptations in terms of muscle architecture have received far less study. Examining mustelid mammals...
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Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Please pass along: I’m recruiting PhD students to join our Macroecology Lab. We study physical ecology, macroecology, and biodiversity — spanning scaling, trait-based ecology, theory, comparative biology & ecoinformatics. Several avenues for funding. Please reach out if interested 🧪🌐🌾
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The obvious conclusion (to me): if you have proprietary research & you upload it into the Plagiarism Nexus, it's not YOUR proprietary research anymore. Behave accordingly.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Hey. Hey, UKRI. HEY UKRI. When some of us are Big Mad that you use genAI to review our grants? This is why.
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Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I've talked to a few journal editors who are concerned about similar problems re: anonymous reviewers. If a peer reviewer wants a little help & feeds your unpublished submission into an AI system, they've just shared your proprietary work & broken confidentiality. A nightmare to think about
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Robin Hayward 🌳 🏳️‍⚧️ @canopyrobin.com · 25/09/2026
We're publishing new guidance to support trans people who do fieldwork (any work outside the office)! Now we need your help to get them seen so please share! inclusivefieldwork.leeds.ac.uk/trans/
a cartoon of three fieldworkers. One has a small trans flag. The logos of the university of leeds, research england, and canopy robin are shown, as well as the URL: InclusiveFieldwork (dot) Leeds (dot) AC (dot) UK (slash) trans
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I am *begging* those who analyse UKHE survey results to learn some basic stats. "X group is happier than Y group!" Mate, X group has an 88% satisfaction rate and Y group has an 87% satisfaction rate, across relatively small sample sizes. Yo.
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
John Stott @jpsastro.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky
I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful.

Review process

As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking. 

This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review.  Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it.

Feedback on your application

Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage.  To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I cannot even begin to stress how important mentors have been for my career thus far, especially informal and/or peer mentorship. Sometimes mentoring is from your supervisor, or a formal programme, but more often it's a diffuse network of people in your corner. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Successful early-career scientists rely on network of mentors
Large networks are particularly beneficial to researchers in under-represented groups.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This thread is some incredible storytelling.
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
What's behind this tidal wave of epidemics? In the largest study ever conducted on emerging infectious diseases, we show that the popular explanation - "our relationship with nature is out of balance" - doesn't hold up. Out now in Nature, after half a decade of work: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The anthropogenic fingerprint on emerging infectious diseases - Nature
Emerging infectious disease outbreak risks are ubiquitous worldwide, and highest in landscapes where people, livestock and fragmented natural ecosystems coexist, but detection and data ...
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Gotta love a (genuine) email from my employer than begins "Hello, Sheard" 🫠
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Claudia Wascher @wascherclaudia.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The scientific impact of gender in behaviour, ecology and evolution: authorship and citation performance @marinapapa.bsky.social & Afruni: 20 years on, male-dominated author teams still prevail and solo female authorship remains rare www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
The scientific impact of gender in behaviour, ecology and evolution: authorship and citation performance
Over the last few decades, gender bias across scientific disciplines has been revealed in the form of skewed gender ratios among invited speakers in c…
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Natalie Cooper @nhcooper123.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Our update to the BES Data Management Guide is now live! assets.britishecologicalsociety.org/2026/09/2110... Huge thanks to the incredibly talented ECRs who contributed sections. It's an excellent resource that I've already used with my PhD students. ❤️
Cover image of the Data Management guide. Blue cover with a puffin on it! Also features the BES logo, Better Science Guides and our mission Through science we can.
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Dr. Emma E. Bird @dremmabird.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A number of 🚨Science & Museum Jobs🚨 available at different levels right now for the Distributed System of Scientific Collections UK programme 🪩 #DiSSCo 🪩 fab if you're into 🌳science digitisation🌳 #ScienceJobs #MuseumJobs jobs.nhm.ac.uk/internal/Job...
jobs.nhm.ac.uk
DiSSCo UK Digitiser:South Kensington
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Lizzy Steell @lizzysteell.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
🚨 New bird paper! 🚨 Take a look at our review paper that Juan Benito and I put together about avian systematics and the bird fossil record along with what we think are important future directions in the field 🐦 🦴 🦜🦅🦤 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
A bird’s eye view of the fossil record: perspectives on avian systematics
Recent decades have witnessed an unprecedented rise in avian fossil discoveries that directly inform our understanding of bird origins and evolution, the stepwise assemblage of the avian body plan,...
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Current layer of hell: they oversold my flight and bumped me to a flight nine hours later. They now won't let me check in for that flight because I don't have an ETA. *I am travelling on a British passport* But apparently they can't do a document check until two hours before my new flight??? 🫠
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 19/09/2026
When we talk about the costs that LLMs impose on society we should not forget the fact that nothing works anymore because everyone is so scared of getting their shit scraped. I can't even use google scholar from my university or starlink because they send too much traffic.
Google	
Sorry...
We're sorry...

... but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.
See Google Help for more information.
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences @pnas.org · 18/09/2026
How local is local adaptation? Researchers transplanted more than 700 lab-raised stickleback fish among lake and stream environments, finding that adaptation to specific sites can outweigh adaptation to broader habitat differences. In PNAS: ow.ly/yTOk50ZP97o
Two threespine stickleback fish. Image credit: Marius Roesti.
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Robert Mahon @bedform.org · 19/09/2026
there is no ethical use of LLMs/genAI.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Additional salient detail: most of these were solo-authored. If, like, a middle author former student can only describe their own contribution and not the overall picture, so be it. But that ain't what's happening here.
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Alexander Lees @alexanderlees.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Our new paper led by @ollie333.bsky.social highlights poor performance of global bird classifier models (Perch and Birdnet) for Amazonian species identification, but shows they can be used as data-derived acoustic indices capturing species richness #Ornithology 🌎🧪🪶📊 doi.org/10.1016/j.ec...
Maximum F1 score mapped onto an avian phylogeny for 122 species with at least 10 manual annotations, at window (A) and site (B) scale. Inner and outer rings show BirdNET and Perch scores respectively, coloured by maximum F1 across all confidence thresholds. Phylogenetic structuring of performance increased from window to site scale.
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Dmitri Petrov @petrovadmitri.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
We are searching for an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology! Looking for colleagues asking fundamental questions relating to evolutionary processes and drivers of evolutionary patterns. If you think it is you, please do apply! And please repost. facultypositions.stanford.edu/jobs/assista...
facultypositions.stanford.edu
Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology - Stanford University, California, United States
The Department of Biology at Stanford University seeks applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology. A successful candidate will conduct research that asks fundamental que...
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I'm currently doing my uni's annual fire safety training (snore), and one particular gem is the claim that "windows won't be open anyway due to widespread air conditioning". 1) What aircon. 2) It's *northeast Scotland*. What even need is there for aircon???
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
The pet trade puts reptiles and amphibians at risk: close legal gaps now
Patchy legislation means that animals are routinely taken from their natural habitats and sold in other countries. Fresh national and international measures could help to stop this exploitation.
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iDiv Biodiversity Research @idiv-research.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
🌍 iDiv and the @uni-jena.de are hiring a Postdoctoral Researcher (f/m/d) in Macroevolution & Macroecology. 🕒 Full-time (40h/week) or part-time (minimum 75%) 📅 Start: 1 Dec 2026 💼 Fixed-term: 3 years 💶 Salary: up to E13 (TV‑L) ⏳ Deadline: 30 Sept 2026 www.idiv.de/career/job-o...
idiv.de
Job Openings
Explore exciting career opportunities at iDiv. Join a modern, international, and innovative research centre in the heart of Germany.
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Cultural Evolution Society @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
ACE Research Grant Alert 🚨! CES will give out two awards of up to $3000 each to support early career research projects in cultural evolution. The award is open to applicants worldwide, with an application deadline of October 9th 2026, 9:00 AM AoE. Applications: forms.gle/dsLdKQuNBH4W...
forms.gle
ACE Early Career Research Grants
CES will give out two awards of up to $3000 each to support research projects in cultural evolution. To learn more about the Advancing Cultural Evolution (ACE) initiative, see here. Deadline: Appli...
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Sal Keith (she/her) @salkeith.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
ONE WEEK LEFT to join our team! Senior Research Associate in AI-Enabled Behavioural Ecology for Conservation UKRI-funded; coral reefs/UK waters; 2yrs9mth No prior knowledge of AI required, willingness to learn essential! sallykeith.weebly.com/team.html @lec-reefs.bsky.social
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BTO | British Trust for Ornithology @btobirds.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
We're looking for our next Editor of BTO News! Find out more about the role and apply here➡️ www.bto.org/jobs 😀 📅 Full time, Permanent. 📝 £38,710.00 per annum. 📍 Thetford, Norfolk (Hybrid). Deadline for applications: 30 September 2026. #Ornithology
A bird called a Redstart perches on top of a post, showing its bright orange-red underparts, grey upperparts and black face and bill. Wording above reads: We're hiring! Science Communications Manager.
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Ben-Gurion University of the Negev @bengurionuniv.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
How can understanding people help us better protect nature? Prof. Uri Roll (@uriroll.bsky.social) of BGU’s Conservation Biology and Biodiversity Lab combines traditional ecological research with data from
jpost.com
Searching for hope in an age of extinction | The Jerusalem Post
Conservation scientists understand that very rarely extinction is not always the final chapter
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Sal Keith (she/her) @salkeith.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Excited to share our new paper on Fundamental and Realised Behaviours - a new way to think about assemblage-level behavioural variation through space (+time) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Out today in @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social
sciencedirect.com
Fundamental and realised behaviours structure geographic variation in ecological assemblages
Animal behaviours shape ecological dynamics, from species distributions to ecosystem function. These dynamics emerge from the behaviours of multiple i…
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I've managed to have my first nightmare about organising BES Macro 2027. Hoo boy. (For some context, I have nightmares just about every night, including about very mundane things. But still.)
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Susanne Fritz, who is great, is advertising a macroevolution/macroecology/biogeography postdoc at iDiv in Leipzig: jobs.uni-jena.de/jobposting/c...
jobs.uni-jena.de
Postdoctoral Researcher in Macroevolution and Macroecology
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Something about the hike that I did this past week has wrecked the outer coating of my glasses -- yes, the extremely goofy ones, which have been LIFE-CHANGING for my photophobia. I'm so upset.
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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Roland Pierik @roleo.eurosky.social · 08/09/2026
The number of cases of cervical cancer reported in Scotland among women given the HPV vaccine at 12-13 years of age is now zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
No cervical cancer cases in fully HPV-vaccinated women in Scotland
A study published by Public Health Scotland finds that the HPV vaccine is "highly effective".
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Eos @eos.org · 09/09/2026
80% of survey participants reported experiencing at least one harmful fieldwork interaction, such as aggression, harassment, stereotyping, and privacy violations. 🧪 New research in @aguadvances.bsky.social eos.org/research-spo...
eos.org
Four in Five Researchers Report Harmful Interactions During Geoscience Fieldwork. A New Survey Suggests a Path Forward. - Eos
A new survey documents the prevalence of harmful interactions that occur during fieldwork. Many instances go officially unreported.
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Nico Mongiardino Koch @nmkphylo.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The PROGressive PHYLOgenetics LAB is now officially open and I'm looking to hire at all levels!! If you are interested in phylogenetics and macroevolution, and enjoy any/all of the following: fossils, morphology, genomics, simulations, or method development, please reach out to me :)
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
So I'm currently on a hiking holiday, specifically a very popular trail, and omfg what is it that makes men think they are entitled to make comments about my body (and/or act all weird about the fact that I'm a woman hiking alone). Just leave me the fuck alone.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Crikey.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
This entire thread of fun facts is excellent.
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Daniel Moser @dmoser.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Pollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.
Map showing Lower Pollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.
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