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Wilson da Silva

@wilsondasilva.bsky.social
510 followers 592 following 62 posts

Science journalist | Co-founder, COSMOS magazine | Former President, World Federation of Science Journalists | www.wilsondasilva.com Sydney, Australia 🌏 🇵🇹🇧🇷

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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
So true. Without a solution, AI will kill the golden goose it depends upon. “The future not just of journalism but of responsible AI too depends on preserving incentives for humans to produce the creative works on which a healthy society depends.” arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
arstechnica.com
Microsoft exec called AI scraping the “largest theft of labor in human history”
Microsoft, OpenAI emails reveal fear of AI “doom loop” killing news orgs.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Great quote in the Musk/Open AI legal feud: ”We are about to witness the landing of the Hindenburg on the deck of the Titanic; we know it’s going to be crazy and nasty.”
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Holy cow! More than 10,000 PhDs in science have left the field since Trump took office – that’s 14% of American STEM PhDs in one year! www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office
A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Louise Adler: “Writers and writing matters, even when they are presenting ideas that discomfort and challenge us …AWW is the canary in the coalmine. Friends and colleagues in the arts, beware of the future.” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
I cannot be party to silencing writers, which is why I am resigning as director of Adelaide Writers’ Week | Louise Adler
Cancelling the Australian Palestinian author Randa Abdel-Fattah weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Did you know Australia quietly built one of the earliest digital computers ever? Meet CSIRAC, a 2.5-tonne vacuum-tube behemoth that went live on this day 76 years ago. Dive into its forgotten story. 🔗 bit.ly/48jgawN #ComputingHistory #Australia #TechHeritage
bit.ly
The Trailblazing First Generation Computer the World Forgot
At the dawn of the computer age, Australians developed a 2.5 tonne behemoth named CSIRAC — now recognised as one of the grandfathers of…
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
What happens when you refuse to accept the status quo? Happy 158th birthday to Marie Curie: the first person ever to win 2 Nobel Prizes, who discovered radium & polonium, and risked everything in the name of science. #NobelPrize #WomenInScience #ScienceHistory
medium.com
Radiance: The Brilliant Career of Marie Curie
Marie Curie was an undisputed scientific giant and the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. But her research also eventually claimed her…
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Remarkable scenes at the IAC 2025 press conference with 10 astronauts from around the world. The room was overwhelmed by a diverse sea of young faces who hung on almost every word. It’s the generation that will live and work in space, and they can’t wait. #IAC2025 #space #astronauts
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
Delightful to catch up with Sophia Casanova, whom I profiled in a feature for Australian Geographic in 2020. She was then a UNSW PhD student on space mining. Now, she's designing missions to prospect for, and mine, water ice on the Moon at ispace Europe! Go Sophia! #IAC2025 #space is.gd/alrONt
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
Having a blast at my first International Astronautical Congress. Plenty of opportunity for maximum space geek out. Per passionem ad astra.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
Sometimes you forget that Sydney is a very pretty city.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Just a reminder: Science save lives 😊
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Interesting: “It’s no longer about left & right, it’s about online & offline. The greatest division is now between those of us who have become radicalised online …and those of us who continue to cling to the old ways of doing politics, which still prize moderation, compromise & consensus-building.”
smh.com.au
Left or right, the real source of extremism is right in front of our faces
America’s epidemic of radicalisation and political violence should be a wake-up call for Australia to address the disastrous impact of the growing online-offline divide.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
You just don’t expect random philosophical questions at the supermarket.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
If you're in Sydney Oct 16: Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, discoverer of the first radio pulsars in 1967, will be giving the 2025 Stibbs Lecture at the University of Sydney, recalling the chain of events that led to her discovery. www.sydney.edu.au/science/news...
sydney.edu.au
Stibbs Lecture
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Very sad to hear of the passing of John Manrtinus, a foreign correspondent par excellence. A lucid and impassioned journalist committed to the craft and to telling stories the world ignored. Recall fondly the many delightful conversations we had over beers in East Timor.
smh.com.au
‘He went where others weren’t’: War correspondent John Martinkus dies
The Melbourne-born war correspondent made his name reporting on East Timor.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
On this day 39 years ago, I began my career as a journalist on The Sydney Morning Herald. It gave me a taste for big-city newspaper journalism, its proud traditions and odd quirks. I met outstanding colleagues and had some fabulous experiences. Thank you, @sydmorningherald.bsky.social #journalism
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
Here’s an idea: any company that can afford to pay a CEO more than 30 times as much as the average full-time worker, needs to pay a higher tax rate.
smh.com.au
How much more do CEOs earn than you? Most Australians get it wrong
Asked how much top executives rake in, we are “astronomically off the mark”, a new study shows.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
How to protect yourself in the zombie apocalypse.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
Highly-advanced stealth technology update.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Beautiful requiem to the passing of my beloved creation, COSMOS magazine, by the indomitable @jacksonwryan.com in The Monthly. It's been 20 years since its founding, but it too has surrendered to gravity. Ironically, COSMOS is outlived in the depths of space. www.themonthly.com.au/july-2025/na...
themonthly.com.au
Into the void
The end of Cosmos after 20 years is a blow to Australian science journalism, at a time when we desperately need its insights to counter misinformation
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Who would have thought?
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 01/06/2025
How global online scammers in Myanmar rely on Starlink for their operations. #scammers #Starlink #Musk
smh.com.au
How Elon Musk’s Starlink enables a multibillion-dollar online scam industry
Looking across the Moei River from Thailand, you can see them on the distant Myanmar rooftops – dozens of white rectangles, arranged in clusters. They’re a warning sign for what could be lurking under...
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
“In Trumpian circles, many people ostentatiously identify as Christians but don’t talk about Jesus very much; they have crosses on their chest but Nietzsche in their heart—or, to be more precise, a high-school sophomore’s version of Nietzsche.” David Brooks in The Atlantic.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
Evolution at work.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
May the fourth be with you.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
Election day in Australia: hot dogs, pastry stands and local craft stalls. My ballot includes one Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister. Voting is mandatory, and ranked choice. Nice to live in a proper democracy. 🙂🗳️
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Forrest wonderland in Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain National Park 😊
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Meanwhile, on Heard Island …
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
It took abandonment by the USA and the threat of Russia to wake central Europe’s sleeping giant. I wouldn’t be surprised if America’s leading scientists end up across The Atlantic.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
Yeah sure, he’s playing fourth dimensional chess.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
"When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become king, the palace becomes a circus,"
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Five Failures in the Oval Office (video) open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...
open.substack.com
Five Failures in the Oval Office (video)
America hurt itself badly today.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
“I know it’s psychologically difficult for us, having lived through eight decades of comparative peace and democracy, to accept that the disasters of fascism and global war could possibly return, but the future comes with no guarantees – all it provides is lessons.” Very true.
smh.com.au
Echoes of 1930s Europe grow ever louder. We ignore them at our peril
The far right is on the march again in Germany. The parallels with the rise of Hitler almost a century ago are everywhere.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
🙂
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Large piece Space junk lands in a village in Kenya. “We’ve reached this point in our exploration and use of space where this isn’t just something that happens once in a blue moon. It is now almost every month or two.”
nytimes.com
A Half-Ton Piece of Space Junk Falls Onto a Village in Kenya
No one was hurt by the object, believed to be part of a launch rocket. Experts say the frequency of such incidents is increasing as the amount of debris in orbit around the Earth grows dramatically.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
Morning world. Lovely view from my cabin.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Wild: Google Street View captures a man in northern Spain stuffing a white body-sized bag into the trunk of a car. Police said it helped them solve a missing-person case, and arrests followed.
nytimes.com
Google Street View Captures a Man Loading a Bag Into a Trunk. Arrests Follow.
The image, from northern Spain, showed a man with a white bag in the trunk of a car. The National Police said it helped them solve a missing-person case.
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Reposted by Wilson da Silva
Hoodlum 🇺🇸 @nothoodlum.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
“But the eggs were just so expensive.”
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Waleed Aly nails it on ICC, Israel and Hamas: “Who said anything about equivalence? The warrant is dead simple: that the court, having considered the evidence before it, has found reasonable grounds to believe these people committed specified war crimes and should face trial for them.”
smh.com.au
The ICC’s warrant for Netanyahu is about one thing only
What Joe Biden and others are seemingly outraged by is the whole point of international law, and indeed of law itself.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Nicely summoning up the West’s reaction to Ukraine so far: “the Kremlin’s successful strategy of forcing the West to see the conflict on Russia’s terms, confusing each fresh attempt by Ukraine to resist Russian aggression as a major ‘escalation.’”
cnn.com
What the term ‘escalation’ gets wrong about Ukraine striking Russia | CNN
Over 1,000 days of war, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned Kyiv’s Western allies of dire – potentially nuclear – consequences if they “escalate” the war by giving Ukraine the weapo...
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Thought this was worth sharing. From 1tireddoctor on Threads.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
A first step in reducing price gouging by supermarkets: Australia introduces bill imposing huge fines - up to 10% of annual turnover - against shady practices by the country’s supermarket oligopoly.
reuters.com
Australia introduces bill imposing big fines for supermarket misconduct
The Australian government on Wednesday introduced a bill into parliament that would impose potentially billion-dollar fines on big supermarket chains that fail to comply with an industry code of conduct ensuring they do not mistreat suppliers.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
An ode to the Manneken Pis (Brussels’ Little Pissing Man)? Banskyesque, if not Banksy. Suggested titles? “Trickle Down Economics” “A Little Wee Boy” “Number One” I do love the irreverent humour of street art. Allegedly in Lyon, France.
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Wilson da Silva @wilsondasilva.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Hello good people of Bluesky. Been here a few days, and found it pleasant – a bit like innocent Twitter of old. I'm a science journalist and editor in Australia and I look forward to seeing what the sane world is talking about – as well as the occasional irreverent gag or punchy meme.
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