Andrew Curry

Only 15 percent of Germans trust the US — just a notch above Russia.

The red socialist one?

😬 Get off the tram now

Thousands buried in 17th century Italian crypt reveal lives of working poor Remains recovered from beneath a Milan hospital shed light on health, diet, and drug habits during the 1600s

Original @science.org story (in English) here: www.science.org/content/arti...

It was fun to get @internazionale.it's translation of my @science.org story on the Ca'Granda crypt in Milan in the mail this week.

Researchers receiving a media request they're too busy for:

Tired – Ignore e-mail, hope reporter gives up and goes away

Wired – "I'm super busy right now and don't have the bandwidth for this, but you should try my colleagues X and Y"

I stayed healthy through 4 months of Berlin winter only to come down with a mean cold the first week it's been consistently sunny and warm. The universe isn't fair.

Download advice on feeding newborns to teens

Reminds me of Swift’s Modest Proposal.

Also bicycles.

Race, ethnicity don’t match genetic ancestry, according to a large U.S. study Data from the All of Us program confirm what many geneticists have long promoted

In case anyone needs a reminder, "geneticists have long established that race and ethnicity are sociocultural constructs and not good proxies to describe genetic differences in disease risks and traits among groups." www.science.org/content/arti... @science.org @rpocisv.bsky.social

"By 2019, the life of the average U.S. resident would be almost four years shorter than the life of the average resident of ... comparable nations (78.8 vs. 82.7 years)."

Nearing a decade @science.org, this is a point I should stress more. It's only $25/year to support one of the largest science-focused newsrooms in the world. Independent and nonprofit.

The sun is out in Berlin and I just had a client pay me within THREE DAYS of submitting my invoice, which is an all-time record.

When my kid started taking Latin the class learned vocab for the household – mater, pater, servus...
"What does "servus" mean?" I asked (having never taken Latin).
"Um, it's sort of like 'servant'?"
"Is it ... 'slave'?"
"Yeah, it's pretty much 'slave.'"
I am also looking forward to reading this.

Gaming laptop with 4499 euro price tag and "Surreale Welt" on the screen.

I know I will sound like an official Old Person when I say this, but holyfuckingshit, this is a $5,303 LAPTOP. I had no idea. "Surreale Welt" indeed.

Rear derailleur and wheel of a road bike.

Changed my chain and brake pads this morning after my first real ride outside in weeks. I go to a mechanic for the really complicated stuff but it feels good to be able to do the basics on my bikes.

(And yes, I should have changed them BEFORE my ride, but sometimes you don't notice till too late.)

I was in Krakow and Warsaw last week for the first time in 5 years – so many Żabki!

Ancient mass grave in Serbia seen as a grisly show of power Women and children were executed in an elaborate prehistoric ritual

When archaeologists found the bodies of 77 women and children in an Iron Age grave, they pinned it on a prehistoric plague outbreak. A new analysis reveals it was actually a mass execution. Most bizarre? @mireniraorb.bsky.social's look at their genes shows the victims weren't related. @science.org

A while ago I put together a short movie for @archaeologymag.bsky.social about experiments with stone axes like this – remarkably effective, although clearing a forest would have been a lot of work. www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5U-...

Especially frightening is how often these incidents are explained as "reinforcing group identity," which is totally believable but also horrible.

A large mass grave from the Early Iron Age indicates selective violence towards women and children in the Carpathian Basin - Nature Human Behaviour In this analysis of biomolecular and archaeological data from a ninth-century BCE mass grave in the Carpathian Basin, Fibiger et al. find evidence for the targeted killing of mostly unrelated women an...

For more, here's the @nathumbehav.nature.com paper by @bitesizedna.bsky.social, @mireniraorb.bsky.social, @hringbauer.bsky.social & more: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ancient mass grave in Serbia seen as a grisly show of power Women and children were executed in an elaborate prehistoric ritual

When archaeologists found the bodies of 77 women and children in an Iron Age grave, they pinned it on a prehistoric plague outbreak. A new analysis reveals it was actually a mass execution. Most bizarre? @mireniraorb.bsky.social's look at their genes shows the victims weren't related. @science.org

"Apocalypse," by my @science.org colleague @lizziewade.bsky.social. It looks at the way societies in the past have ended, and how people create something new out of the ashes. A great mix of research and imagination.

I can't get over this number: in 2007, there were 360,000 newspaper jobs. Now, there are 80,000. "My local paper sucked!" Sure. What sucks even more? The void. "I get all my news from the Guardian!" No, the Guardian doesn't report on your town council, your school board, local cops.

A split screen: on the left is a crested Roman helmet in the foreground with a tunic of scale armour (lorica squamata) in the background. On the right is a close up of the tunic and the scales are practically indistinguishable from the scales of a pangolin (but there again we're on our third coffee).

We're marking World Pangolin Day by remembering that Roman soldiers would routinely dress as pangolins before going into battle.

Looking for sources for a Nature.com story about dealing with predatory 'pay-to-publish' magazines.

They try to convince PhDs/academics to write for their high-impact magazine (read by business people, politicians etc), charging them thousands to do so.

DMs open! #academicsky 🧪

Whoa.

I ordered a used copy of "Fahrenheit 451" online and ... it turns out "Fahrenheit 451" is also the title in French. I guess it'll be good practice...

So cool: There is an Amesbury Archer elementary school. Are there any other schools out there named for archaeological finds?

SCIENCE IRL: SciComm mini-grant 2026 Skype a Scientist is offering $300-$1,000 mini-grants to support boots-on-the-ground science communication. The Science IRL mini-grants will support projects that put either 1) important science mess...

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Attention science communicators!
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The 2026 Science IRL mini-grant application is NOW OPEN!

Submit your creative ideas for connecting people with actionable science information *offline*.

The deadline for this round of grants is March 23, 2026.

Apply here!
forms.gle/4emvpRPddmEt...