Joined May 2008
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Mar 19
It's been 11 days since I came back to X/Tw***er to post about sciencey things - and you've all (ok, *mostly*😄) been extremely kind and welcoming. Thank you! 🙏
Here's a round-up of my threads so far:
(a) New research on one of the greatest of all known floods!
Mar 8
A while back, I learned something mindblowing about the geological history of the Mediterranean Sea, and I just can't get it out of my head.
Now I'm going to make it *your* problem too. Sorry.
Hang onto your hat. This gets wild.
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Jun 11
🎶 OVERVIEWS KILLED THE INDY BLOG STAR… 🎶
For all speculation on how AI might decimate the job market: hey, it already did!
Specifically: the independent writers or online business owners relying on search engine traffic.
Let's use the word "betrayed". It's apt.
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Jun 11
All the folk who spent decades putting their trust in Google, only for that rug to be pulled out from under them.
This *already happened*. Many no longer have those careers! (I know because some are my friends.)
Let's include this in the discussions, please? It matters.
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Jun 11
Longer thoughts on all this here, framed around some classic wizardry:
everythingisamazing.substack…
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Jun 5
As everyone knows, human noses are pathetic.
Dogs have roughly 40x the olfactory receptors we have.
Meanwhile, we’re stuck with a measly nasal “vocabulary” of about 10,000 different smells.
At least, that’s what researchers believed until they actually started to TEST it.
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Jun 5
A quote from one study’s co-author, neurobiologist Leslie Vosshall:
"Knowing we have these capabilities, I hope people...start saying, 'Hey, I can smell all these things.' Maybe companies that make scented products will start making greater use of [our] human capacity."
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Jun 5
What we laughably refer to as the "normal human body" is absolutely AMAZING - and I recently wrote about that, starting with the tale of how one Frenchman successfully digested an entire bicycle:
--> everythingisamazing.substack…
Thanks for reading! 🙏
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Mike Sowden retweeted
Jun 3
Here it is: my 2026 manifesto for the #Makerfield By-Election. Makerfield Great Again! #VoteBinface #MakeYourVoteCount
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Mike Sowden retweeted
May 26
PICARD: Data, shields up
DATA: Brilliant! Shields can reduce damage we sustain. Not immunity. Not hubris. Just prudence. It's not precaution—it's strategy.
[camera shakes]
WORF: HULL BREACHES ON NINE DECKS
DATA: Here's what happened: you told me to raise shields, and I didn't
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Mar 14
A while back I wrote about the science of PAREIDOLIA, the "you can't unsee this face in this inanimate thing" bias - & all the examples I found are delightful, ludicrous & worrying!
(It's amazing how completely it hijacks our mind.)
I dare you to unsee the following...
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Mar 15
Mar 15
Thanks to the incredible power of pareidolia, good luck with unseeing this fossil, fellow meatbags!
(It's not teeth, but of rows of ancient marine invertebrates called crinoids - discovered by fossil hunter Christine Clark during a Boxing Day walk on Holy Island.)
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May 25
FURTHER UPDATE: well, here's someone who didn't learn about pareidolia, I guess. 😄 x.com/ABridgen/status/205868…
May 24
NASA posted a picture of “Mars“ online.... Zoom in and see the rat!!! 😂
Please watch and share !
I wonder how they will explain that ? Those rodents get everywhere.
Source: Secrets of Civilizations
Community note
The 'rat' is a rock formation shaped by erosion, not an animal; it is an example of pareidolia, the tendency to see familiar shapes in random images. csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0… nbcnews.com/id/wbna52114321
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Mike Sowden retweeted
May 22
The longest line of sight ever captured in the world was between the mountains Karagöl in Turkey and Shkhara on the Georgia-Russia border, 15th December 2024.
At a distance of 493 km (306.4 miles), it’s the equivalent of seeing Ben Nevis from the hills of central Wales!
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Mike Sowden retweeted
May 22
On the 12th June 2023, a BBC Weatherwatcher sent in a photo of Ben Nevis being struck by lightning. The next day a local guide went to the top and found the exact point where it had hit. If there’d been a group of walkers there it would have resulted in multiple fatalities.
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Mike Sowden retweeted
May 20
This sounds nice, but it's a great way to undermine the welfare state.
The strongest welfare states in the world (the Nordics) tax everyone, including nurses. And they give everyone universal healthcare, childcare, pensions, education in return.
When the middle class has skin in the game, they defend the system. When welfare is 'just for the poor', it becomes a poor program: stigmatized, underfunded, easy to gut.
That's why billionaires keep pushing this idea. The real scandal isn't that this nurse pays $12k.
It's that Jeff Bezos pays $0.
May 20
Jeff Bezos said the bottom half of Americans should pay zero federal income tax.
He cited a nurse in Queens making ~$75K and paying ~$12K in taxes saying “we shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington.”
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May 21
Oh, this is shabby. I've read enough sci-fi to imagine a pipeline:
--->bottom 50% told they won't pay tax
---> certain rich folk undermining democracy: "what do you people matter? You don't even pay income tax"
--> stripping of civil rights for bottom 50%/non tax-payers.
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May 21
If a man worth $272 Billion feels bad that his employees are paying tax, maybe up their wages? As that Forbes article notes: "The average hourly pay for Amazon delivery drivers is $19, compared to $35 for unionized UPS drivers."
Also: nelp.org/new-report-finds-am…
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May 21
Also, ProPublica recently investigated Bezos's personal income and found he was paying - wait for it - around 1% in taxes:
bbc.co.uk/news/business-5738…
Vile.
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Mike Sowden retweeted
May 20
But wait! A new neural-net analysis of faint stars observed by TESS just identified another 10,090 potential planets.
When they're confirmed (and most of them probably will be), they will more than double the number of known worlds beyond Earth.
eos.org/research-and-develop…
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