#wikimedia #openscience #foss #nodejs #entomology #evolution #freespeech #digitalrights #womenshealth #mum Personal account. Tweets are my own. 🫐
Joined March 2011
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Whenever I happen to mention my library charges fees to reserve books, people always want to know where I live because their library doesn't.
Anyway I sicced Gemini on it and it made this interactive map so you can see which libraries in England charge. libraries.mvolz.com/uk_libra…
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I think AGY is going to be very competitive for research because Google has access to the open web through their crawler in the way that other tools do not, and in fact are increasingly getting blocked.
(See also: theatlantic.com/technology/2… )
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For the zillionth time, a food's level of processing is not a good proxy for badness!
Yes, most processed foods are crap! But so are most non-processed foods.
It's because those are the foods we buy.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/…
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The answer to bad industrial agriculture isn't non-industrial ag, it's better industrial ag.
Yet the good-food movement has been all in on non-industrial, influenced by 2 people who are excellent writers & good men: Wendell Berry & Michael Pollan.
wapo.st/47sistr
The irony of MAHA of championing all-neurodivergence-is- cerebral-folate-defienciecy (which it is not) is that it's caused ultimately by dairy milk consumption, which MAHA is also championing.
Cerebral folate deficiency is very, very rare.
And it's not caused by folic acid intake, it's actually a very rare cross reactivity reaction to dairy milk. Nothing to do with folic acid intake, it's the transport protein into the brain that gets attacked, not the vitamin.
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Folic acid is having a moment.
A moment where people are protesting the fact that it's added to flour - a decision that has reduced fetal neural tube defects dramatically.
It's nuts. Here's @cjsnowdon on why.
thecritic.co.uk/why-we-forti…
This is the problem with lay midwifery being allowed in the US.
In the UK she would be working in a hospital and she wouldn't have to wonder, she'd get actual experience instead of casting about wild aspersions.
Lay midwifery gives midwifery as a whole a bad name.
Whenever I read dramatic birth stories where the hospital saved everyone's lives and they all clapped afterwards l'm always like I love this for you and I'm glad everyone is OK but in the back of my mind: was it really that bad or did they exaggerate/exacerbate & gaslight you?
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i'm a dual national so i'm allowed to say this.
ALT Meme titled "Vitamin B9: UK vs US edition." On the left, under a UK flag, a speech bubble says "OMG they're adding small amounts to the flour, everyone panic!!!" above a bag of flour marked "+B9" and "90 µg/day." On the right, under a US flag, a bubble says "Absolutely massive doses will cure all the autism!" above a capsule labelled "B9 MEGA" and "40,000 µg/day."
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Let’s hope that it doesn’t turn out that there’s a condition that closely resembles this, to the point where it could easily be mistaken for it, while actually being quite different.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo…
Extremely disappointed by this email my MP @LaylaMoran sent me.
A social media ban will mean 16 year-olds will be forced, along with adults, to give up their privacy by sending their IDs to social media companies.
This does not protect our children, it endangers them.
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Oh man, this story is so UPLIFTING (without being corny). It's one of the best stories I've read in a very long time -- and a welcome break from AI.
Enjoy the free article!
nytimes.com/2026/09/06/scien…
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I am very fond of going to the dentist, knowing what the alternative is.
Any response, @OED ?
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If opposite sex people can be excluded from single-sex bathrooms, how are parents supposed to take their opposite sex kids to the bathroom?
This is NOT women and child friendly.
reuters.com/world/uk/britain…
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In combination with the building code that went into effect last year requiring single sex bathrooms and not counting unisex single stall bathrooms towards bathroom quotas, this will make the UK much less family friendly.
materialsource.co.uk/are-you…
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HBD! Bassel Khartabil would be 45 today. Open‑hardware pioneer, Wikimedia contributor, and co‑founder of New Palmyra — with unreleased letters, drives and notes that could still reshape heritage preservation and open tech. Honor him: edit, share, build.
basselkhartabil.org/2026/05/…
I entirely reject the framing of "real" food versus fake food. All food sold in a grocery store is real food.
That said, it's pretty ironic that the way some interpret "real" food is whatever buzzword is printed on the package.
I believe you that you can't more cheaply get four packs of "A Dozen Cousins Classic Chicken Bone Broth Rice, 8 OZ", but what people who are trying to save money do is buy plain rice and then cook it in chicken broth, for ~$1.
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Fun fact: factory farmed chickens have the lowest environmental footprint, grass-fed beef the highest. leap.ox.ac.uk/environmental-…
However in terms of welfare, grass-fed beef has the highest and factor farmed chickens probably the lowest.
They're in direct conflict! Enjoy!
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