Flora Graham

@floragraham.bsky.social

5678 Followers 3417 Following

I write the Nature Briefing, a daily email for Nature (@nature.com) about all the science, which I hope you will enjoy.

Home-sewn awnings shade the top windows of a Victorian semi in London
Dear Mr. Burgess, Herr Wenner has forwarded your useless letter from Rome to the National Affairs Desk for my examination and/or reply. Unfortunately, we have no International Gibberish Desk, or it would have ended up there. What kind of lame, half-mad bullshit are you trying to sneak over on us? When Rolling Stone asks for “a thinkpiece”, goddamnit, we want a fucking Thinkpiece… and don’t try to weasel out with any of your limey bullshit about a “50,000 word novella about the condition humaine, etc…” Do you take us for a gang of brainless lizards? Rich hoodlums? Dilettante thugs? You lazy cocksucker. I want that Thinkpiece on my desk by Labor Day. And I want it ready for press. The time has come & gone when cheapjack scum like you can get away with the kind of scams you got rich from in the past. Get your worthless ass out of the piazza and back to the typewriter. Your type is a dime a dozen around here, Burgess, and I’m fucked if I’m going to stand for it any longer. Sincerely, Hunter S Thompson
Email from my dad saying he likes the newsletter :)
Hearing loss is a significant risk factor for dementia
Globe and Mail headline 'After putting on a perfectly adequate World Cup, Canada can put its feet up' https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/soccer/article-after-putting-on-a-perfectly-adequate-world-cup-canada-can-put-its/
Ticket website for Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum has 46,326 people ahead of me
infographic summarises findings from a large dual-site randomised crossover trial conducted by the Heat and Health Research Centre at the University of Sydney and the Université de Montréal assessing older adults, including many with coronary artery disease. The findings lend support to a simple public health message: Avoid fan use above ~40°C.
Men's pond lots of tickets but NOTHING FOR THE LADIES
All night trains running in 2026 on one map by Back-on-Track.eu
'Open the window', scientists advise This article is more than 22 years old Donald MacLeod Wed 6 Aug 2003 16.15 BST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google Tips ranging from the proper use of sash windows to taking a late lunch are amongst advice from scientists at Imperial College London on how to keep cool in the heatwave. "Many of us have forgotten how to correctly use the sash windows so carefully installed by the Edwardians and Victorians to maximise airflow," explains Dr Gary Hunt, of the department of civil and environmental engineering, who is leading research at Imperial on the fluid mechanics of natural ventilation. "The trick to getting the maximum flow of air through the window is to slide the sashes so the window is open equally at the top and bottom. By separating the in-flow and out-flow, cooler incoming air efficiently flushes the warm air out of the room. The warm air inside the room tumbles out of the top opening and the cooler air from the outside comes in through the lower opening," he adds.
Nyberg and Parmitano stand around a fire in a snowy wood and appear to be keeping it very real
Copilot suggests an AI Agent with the tagline 'Create a Word document using just your words'
Many donated items were old or in disrepair. Magazines in particular were worn, with pieces or whole pages torn out. In response to inadequate funding and such high demand for books, librarians tried to avoid throwing anything away. Rather, they salvaged unusable items by creating scrapbooks. Because these volumes were assembled by the librarians themselves, the content could be curated to include what was most valued or requested by their patrons. A manual written for WPA Pack Horse Library projects by Philip R. Blodgett says of the scrapbooks, “Make them according to demand, always trying to answer the questions most frequently asked.”
It was too late for the cod but it is not too late for us. Most of us can still feel the difference between someone who loves us and a machine performing love. We still know what it means to be seen by another person; to be challenged and loved imperfectly by someone who needs us back; to be part of a community that needs us too. The question is whether we will protect that knowing before it fades. Whether we will choose the harder, slower thing – the human thing – even when the easier path is there.
Staring at firelight, which flickers at around 2.4 hertz, increases the power spectrum of delta brainwaves in the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s executive control centre.
Tour operator's description begins with "Please note that Newfoundland and New Brunswick are different places"
Two astronauts on moon looking at dead astronaut with helmet on hat rack. Caption: "I told him the hat rack is decorative."
As former NASA astronauts, we have benefited from the opportunities made possible by American constitutional democracy. We are grateful to have grown up in a country where opportunity made it possible to reach farther than we imagined, and we want that same opportunity to endure for the next 250 years and beyond. Over the past several decades, public trust in government has declined, and confidence in foundational constitutional principles—including the consent of the governed, the separation of powers, and due process—has been tested. Over time, partisan polarization has placed increasing strain on our constitutional democracy. Democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires vigilance and the steady work of building a more perfect union. We will work to bridge divisions in our country, strengthen a balanced and functional government, and uphold the constitutional principles and rule of law on which the United States was founded, so that all Americans can realize the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We will work to strengthen public understanding of constitutional principles and civic responsibility.
Grumbling about the health of democracy can sound abstract. But its decline shows up in wars, coups, contested elections and curbs on civil liberties across the world. EIU, our sister organisation, has tracked that slide since 2006. But the latest update to its democracy index suggests a modest break in the trend: the scores of nearly three-quarters of countries held steady or improved over the past year, and the global index rose by 0.02 points—one of the biggest increases since 2012.
Top four trending topics are all about Artemis II
Canadian flags everywhere in space yo
Image Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman
Screenshot of livestream around 11:22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3kR2KK8TEs
Porridge
Curry in a wok
Scottish smoked salmon on a Carrs water biscuit with cream cheese and capers
Artemis pilot Victor Glover gets loaded up with snacks
A maple leaf cream cookie floating on the International Space Station during the 2012-13 mission of Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield. (Image credit: Chris Hadfield/CSA/X)
Note: The information provided on this page is for information purposes only. Any mention of an organization or its product should not be construed as an endorsement of that organization or its product by the Canadian Space Agency or the Government of Canada. Jeremy Hansen and his Artemis II crewmates aboard the Orion spacecraft Company Location Product Name Format Goldy's Etobicoke, ON Strawberry lavender superseed cereal Rehydratable meal Turkey Hill Sugarbush Ltd. Granby, QC Maple cream cookies Natural form Happy Yak Cowansville, QC Shrimp curry with rice Rehydratable meal SeaChange Seafoods Heriot Bay, BC Natural wild keta salmon bites Thermostabilized (flexible pouch) Citadelle Maple Syrup Producers' Cooperative Plessisville, QC CAMP 100% pure maple syrup, single serve Natural form
Chocolate slime mould (Stemonitis splendens) photographed by entomologist Nelson Milano
Screencap showing two events from day 7 with text revealing the winners
The limestone object, about 21 centimetres wide and shown here with stone counters, caught archaeoludologist Walter Crist’s eye in the Het Romeins Museum in Heerlen. To crack its rules, Crist and his colleagues applied an AI-powered game system that contains the mechanics of thousands of games, past and present, from around the globe.
Flora Graham, Senior Editor of the Nature Briefing, delves into the value of trust in science during an unprecedented era of misinformation.
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/1554408c-c630-4f92-bf48-220ed518f91f?countryCode=GBR&multistepRegForm=multistep The glut far exceeded the sector’s processing capacity, leaving the potatoes piling up in storage and farmers desperate to unload the spuds as prices collapsed. Despite being perfectly edible, much of it has ended up in biogas plants or used as animal feed. A farmer who sent 400 tonnes of his potatoes to be incinerated told the German tabloid Bild: “It breaks my heart. We grow food — and in the end, we destroy it.”
screenshot: The plan reflected Maddox’s journalistic instincts: print more papers, publish more frequently, move faster, perhaps even toward a “daily Nature” that functioned like a scientific newspaper.
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Short video of box of Lego Enterprise set
Still from 'How much exercise do you really need?' shows reporter Lizzy Gibney being helped out by SCIENCE
Quote of the day “Wild nature is not a crop but a cathedral, and a single old-growth forest is a databank containing more info than any legions of supercomputers could hold.” Environmental author Rick Bass writes that mature forests of the United States, such as in his beloved corner of Montana, are essential carbon sinks — not “just crops of fibre that could be farmed like corn”. (High Country News | 8 min read)
2027 TdF in UK
Steamy windows on the top deck of the bus
Completed jigsaw
The eyewatering cost to own a monkey in West Oxfordshire revealed
Unsanctioned roadway barriers installed in the dark of night on Gabriola Island, B.C.
Clipping about the Spanish king being brought low by "a combination of financial, sex and elephant-hunting scandals"
Flora Graham speaking at the D-Fuse Nine Earths Summit in front of a slide saying 'Climate activism and protest: what works'
In this century, the émigré fraction of U.S. Nobels in physics, chemistry and medicine now stands at 40 percent
Weller said other countries that removed low denomination coins, like Canada, Australia and Switzerland, had guidance for afterwards. Not so in the United States.
Text version of this data: https://www.nature.com/immersive/content/gender-gap-report/appendix/index.html#section-Fig-7-error-bar-SlfL2nlj4H:~:text=reviewers%20across%20disciplines-,Discipline,-Error%20bar%20%2D%20women
Cover with photo showing penguin approaching a huge ship. Image: NAPA/Alamy. Cover design: Alex Whitworth
Woodblock from 1856 showing a Chinese alchemical furnace.Credit: Wellcome Collection, London (PDM)
Professor Robson was back at work hours after the announcement, taking a first-year chemistry tutorial.