Eloquent Science (Prof. David Schultz)

China just had their warmest winter on record. 🔥🔥🔥

Fare dodgers targeted as train ticket refund rules are tightened In a bid to clamp down on ticket fraud that costs the railways millions each year, the government has quietly changed the rules on claiming refunds for unused train tickets.

DON'T BUY TRAIN TICKETS IN ADVANCE!
On 1 April, the government is quietly changing the rules.
Off-Peak & Anytime tickets become non-refundable after 23:59 the day BEFORE you travel.
If you wake up & find your event cancelled, NO REFUNDS, even on £100+ tickets.
www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/far...

All lined up…

Cover van Time magazine uit 2006 met Person of the Year over the titel van het blad en daarop een oude iMac met een oude YouTube videospeler met daarin het woord "You." Eronder staat de tekst. Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.

AI: Hold my beer.

V. interesting
Advait Palival the dipshit desi techbro behind Einstein AI has changed the text on his website (what is in the post Im quoting below is what it looked like a day ago), after giving a very defensive interview to Futurism.
The truth is AI bros do not care what harm they cause.

Mine in this week’s @newyorker.com

9,600 redundancies at just 24 universities. Imagine what the picture is for the sector as a whole. This is the other half of the student loan scandal picture, which has been national news lately. Nothing at all from the government on a key sector effectively in freefall…

The dispute stems from Anthropic’s refusal to allow its AI model, Claude, to be used for two specific purposes: mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapon systems. Hegseth wants the Pentagon to have the ability to monitor American citizens en masse while employing lethal tactics that operate with zero human oversight.

It's literally like the plot of an 80's B-movie

This is the biggest act of cultural and political vandalism in the UK in recent history. It will lead to unprecedented damage. Unnecessarily but ideologically committed against one of the few sectors in which UK remained world leading. Labour have deliberately allowed this to happen.

Top earners increase at Russell Group universities despite cuts About 9,400 staff paid at least £100,000 a year across research-intensive institutions, analysis of financial accounts shows

'Roughly a third of the group’s members posted deficits last year. The University of Nottingham, which recorded a loss of over £85 million, increased its number of top earners significantly from 207 to 294. And there were 185 at the cash-strapped Cardiff University.'

Ask and ye shall receive

So this not only will enable students to cheat... it could also build a database of course lectures, potentially taking a professor's words, thoughts, voice, image and likeness for free. Some ed tech could pool enough course lectures together to create and sell AI-generated e-learning

Map of CoCoRaHS 24-hour snowfall observations on the morning of February 23, 2026, around New Jersey/NY/CT. It shows several observations of over 20" of snow.

The same map, highlighting one of the observations on Long Island that says "Gauge is buried under snow drift. Can’t get to it. Average depth of snow 19” "

storms like this are where CoCoRaHS observers really shine. There's truly no other way to get this density, quality, and richness of snowfall data!

Browse yourself at maps.cocorahs.org?maptype=snow...

#damejudidench #quintessentiallybond #jamesbond #charityauction | York Against Cancer Win a ride in Sean Connery's iconic Aston Martin, ascend the O2 like Pierce Brosnan or bid on some of the original props and artefacts used in the James Bond Films in the Quintessentially Bond Auction...

Queen Judi Dench, aka M, for York Against Cancer—a James Bond fundraiser ❤️🎗️
www.linkedin.com/posts/york-a...

An advertisement from https://companion.ai/einstein that has a picture of Albert Einstein and text reading, "Meet Einstein. Einstein is an AI with a computer. He logs into Canvas every day, watches lectures, reads essays, writes papers, participates in discussions, and submits your homework — automatically. Get started."

Not sure the real Einstein would be out there cheating for some college kid. He probably had better things to think about.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think this is an appropriate use of the word "nationality". "Nation" or "country" would have worked better.
@cnn.com

Next year Göttingen will celebrate his 250th birthday with a year full of exhibitions and events at the original sites where Gauß lived and worked. So 2027 may be a good year to consider a trip.

O'Neill was previously CEO of the Thiel Foundation, managing director at Thiel Capital, managing director of Clarium Capital, a hedge fund led by Peter Thiel, and managing director of Mithril Capital Management, a VC fund founded by Peter Thiel that funds Palantir. He co-founded the Thiel Fellowship

Artificial Weather: Mining the Language and Visual Culture of Weather and Climate Modification (CreativeAI Studentship) at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Artificial Weather: Mining the Language and Visual Culture of Weather and Climate Modification (CreativeAI Studentship) at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD.com

PhD studentship:

Artificial Weather: Mining the Language and Visual Culture of Weather and Climate Modification

Use computational methods (e.g., natural language processing, computer vision) to understand how interventions play out in cultural/social imagination.

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

BBC bosses don't seem to care
their right-wing bias is getting
dangerously close to election criminality

"The Green Party have slated the BBC after it handed Reform UK their third Question Time slot in a row the week before a crucial by-election in England"
via The National Newspaper

Putin’s megaphone: Orbán’s far-right push into UK universities is fuelled by Russian oil Good Law Project has uncovered a network funded by Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán, that uses profits from refining Russian oil to platform far right and anti-trans campaigners in the UK

Putin’s megaphone: Orbán’s far-right push into UK universities is fuelled by Russian oil goodlawproject.org/putins-megap...

PRESSURE - Official Trailer [HD] - Only In Theaters May 29 YouTube video by Focus Features

The D-Day weather forecast turned into a movie (based on the stage play): Pressure.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdM4...

"Countries that do not buy the product sold by the company that pays my exorbitant salary could be left behind"

Published in @theguardian.com which also has a partnership with said company

That’s funny because countries that embraced George Osborne have been left behind.

I get the strong impression that many of the physical scientists on here are not paying attention to what's happening with their colleagues in the biological sciences.

NIH has some unique problems at the moment, but the broader form of issues does look applicable to NSF, NASA, etc. funding.

We are living through dark, disturbing and dangerous times, but do not despair — the cavalry is coming! Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band will be taking the stage this spring from Minneapolis to California to Texas to Washington, D.C. for the Land of Hope And Dreams American Tour.

The full text of this screenshot from LinkedIn reads: Zhonghua Zheng Co-Lead for Environmental Data Science & AI at Manchester Environmental Research Institute | Editor of the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP)Co-Lead for Environmental Data Science & AI at Manchester Environmental Research Institute | Editor of the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP) 2 hours ago 🚨 New Review: Sources & Fate of Atmospheric Micro- and Nanoplastics (AMNPs) 🌍 Excited to share our latest review on AMNPs, focusing on their emission sources and environmental fate, and how these insights can improve global modelling 🌐. 💡 Why it matters? 1. Current emission estimates vary by up to 4 orders of magnitude ⚠️ 2. Huge gaps remain in understanding transport & deposition 🌬️ 3. better data + better models + global coordination = more accurate models = better policies 🗺️ This study was funded by the Manchester–Melbourne–Toronto (MMT) Research Fund. @The University of Manchester 🤝 Thanks to the first author, my PhD student Fei Jiang, my collaborator Prof. Arthur Chan (MMT Fund University of Toronto Lead), and all co-authors for their contributions.

A new study led by @zhonghuazheng.bsky.social calls for the creation of a global network of air monitoring stations to track the movement of airborne #plasticpollution.

DOI: 10.1007/s40726-025-00375-5 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Backed by Manchester-Melbourne-Toronto (MMT) research fund.

Map showing above average groundwater over much of the UK in January 2026

Map showing above average precipitation over much of UK in January 2026 apart from western Scotland and northwest England and Wales

Map showing some exceptionally high river flows in eastern Scotland, Northern Ireland & southern England during January 2026

Map showing variable soil moisture over UK in January 2026

Very wet January 2026 over many UK regions with flooding & some exceptionally high river flows in eastern Scotland, Northern Ireland & southern England plus rising groundwater & reservoir stocks so elevated flood risk in @ukceh.bsky.social hydrological outlook 🌧️💦 nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/sites/defaul...