Don't get distracted by seizing the Panama Canal or annexing Greenland. While Donald Trump says crazy shit, he's actually working on the complete dismantling of consumer protection laws and rigging the U.S. tax code to further enrich himself and his rich friends.

2.1m views and 14k likes for @sam_bidwell's twee thread about England here. He works for the Adam Smith Institute, whose reputation for intellectual rigour takes a bit of a knock. As a lot of it is just plain wrong. 🧵👇

Abstract deadline for the Young Systematits' Forum approaches (again!) Send your abstracts in by 23:59 this Saturday (OCT 26) forms.gle/yy2us9QRXK6Hqg1q8 We look forward to see all your systematics/phylogenetics/taxonomy talks on NOV 15

Very few people realise that the vast majority of hospice and palliative care is provided by charity - not by the NHS. I think this is a national scandal. Please RT if you do too 🙏

MSPs at Holyrood have overwhelmingly voted to oppose the Westminster Labour government's cuts to the Winter Fuel Payment. The motion passed with 99 votes. Only 14 MSPs opposed it. Remember their names.

Pilgrimage to the starvation wall near the summit of Ben Dearg yesterday. Built by hungry crofters in return for oats during the potato famine. Landowners worried about the alleged moral hazard of welfare without work. Oddly no such concern about inherited income sources.

The solutions to nearly all the problems on this planet are obvious. They're just not profitable.

Single worst piece of software ever invented

Ecologist speaking calmly: if you pump groundwater from a drinking water aquifer for cooling data center shit and it evaporates, becomes a cloud, drifts away, and rains into the sea, you have in effect USED UP WATER. Begging everyone to learn the water cycle taught in 7th grade.

What has the ECHR ever done for us?

'Net Zero extremists'... Does he mean climate scientists, or the 75% of the voting public who support Net Zero by 2050?

Third pass on my #RedSquirrel in the Mistletoe Icon. These beautiful delicate creatures are so scarce now. They are the treasures we should be protecting,one of our native species so under threat. If they spent our taxes on this rather than culling the poor old badgers

You haven't seen complexity in art until you've seen this 600-year-old painting. It's so detailed that modern medicine has been able to diagnose this man's exact type of blindness. And that's where things get mind-bendingly strange — this whole thing is an illusion... 🧵

Here’s a comprehensive (48-page) review of DNA extraction methods developed for point-of-need DNA-based testing that could be useful for DNA testing practitioners, students of PCR, fieldwork researchers, and anyone interested in DNA extraction chemistry. 👇 The authors, Lee et al. (2023), review methods suitable for use outside of conventional laboratories, ranging from quick and dirty extractions to affordable and easy-to-use extraction testing devices for mass distribution, such as lab-on-a-chip devices. They also dive into the chemistry and processes behind each extraction option with referenced examples, comprehensive tables, and some great illustrations of the different methods. So this is a great learning/teaching/lookup reference even if all of your work is lab-based. Importantly, the authors examine recent DNA extraction methods devices in the context of the World Health Organisation’s REASSURED criteria for point-of-need testing, and assess their usefulness for users within this framework. You can read the article here: Lee et al. (2023). Chemical Trends in Sample Preparation for Nucleic Acid Amplification Testing (NAAT): A Review. Biosensors, 13(11), 980. mdpi.com/2079-6374/13/11/980

Reminder! Join us for the 1st #BGE-@erga_biodiv Genome Applications Symposium! 🌍🧬 📅 Sept 30 & Oct 1, 2024 🕘 9:00-16:45 CEST No registration needed, the event will be openly transmitted via Zoom! ▶️ Zoom links, programme and more: biodiversitygenomics.eu/2024… @REA_research

My Dad ran a big social security office - decades ago. Fraud he said was a tiny problem dwarfed by a much bigger one - all the people scared to apply for their entitlements because of right wing MPs screaming about “scroungers.” And here we are - Labour doing it all over again.

The things you find under your desk at the Botanics... a stack of silica gel-dried Marchantia thalli from around the world that we were storing in mini-petris.

How on Earth does resource-poor England have, 5 Oil refineries, yet produce very little oil? 5 subsea renewable energy cables flowing south from Scotland? 225 nuclear warheads stored in Scotland? Scotch Whisky that leaves from English ports? Is Scotland a resource-rich cash cow?