Nicolas Balcom Raleigh

#econsky Is #AIAdoption Making #Teamwork Worse? BetterUp/Stanford surveyed 1,000+ US workers: asking AI instead of colleagues can weaken trust. Separately, 40% got AI workslop; each took nearly 2h to fix. My take: if one employee saves time but the team pays to fix it, what did AI save?

Google has insulted Finland by terrorizing our forests for its new AI server sprawl. Infuriating! That living nature is far more collectively intelligent than those servers will ever be. Obey Finland laws: no more tree cutting until you have permission!!!

A fine review of a book worth reading. Too few contemporary scientists take account their own possible replication of colonial injustice.

Worth observing!

Visualization of the day!

EEA at CBD #COP17: from biodiversity knowledge to action From 19 to 30 October, we will take part in the UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia. Over the coming weeks, we will share more from our experts, events & partnerships in Yerevan. 👉 cop17yerevan.am/en

Good piece on the limits of recovery after climate disasters, the emotional and social losses that rarely can be made whole even when homes are rebuilt. Much worse is coming as brittleness drains the resources vulnerable places need to prepare for the next times. www.forbes.com/sites/monica...

It is time for all nations who signed the Rome Statute which established the ICC to stand up for it now. Funding plus replacement finance systems are needed. See:

Spread the word. Good news too today!

Holy shit FOUR members of the ethics committee in Denmark that gave the green light to allow the widely-condemned RFK Jr-funded trial to proceed in Guinea-Bissau have now resigned in protest This quote is 🔥 Great reporting by @melodyschreiber.com www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

It's finally here! Are you ready to join us in kicking off #BannedBooksWeek?! This year's event is too big for just one piece of art, so we have THREE! #LetBooksBe bannedbooksweek.org

Physicist Dr. Ursula Franklin helped invent archaeometry--the application of materials science to analyze archaeological artifacts. She used modern physics tools to date/determine the compositions of ancient metals & ceramics to uncover how ancient peoples lived/worked. Born #OTD 1921. #WomenInSTEM

Rising seas could displace 1.2B people by 2050. In the Maldives—an archipelago in the Indian Ocean—researchers are growing beaches by using AI, satellite, and ocean current data to predict coastal erosion and creating submerged structures that harness currents to coax the beach back (see alt text).

Some strong and important arguments raised here. Empire-building is soooo 1750-1900s. Not futuristic at all! : www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/...

May I interest you in some philosophy?? The application window for Spring is open. There's never been a better time to engage in philosophical reflection about the world & our place in it. We offer courses in English & in Swedish, and welcome students from all backgrounds. www.su.se/utbildning/u...

🇫🇷 Copernicus Sentinel-3C launched Sept 15, 2026 from Kourou. It ensures vital continuity for monitoring climate, oceans, and land, capturing data on vegetation, temperatures, and sea levels. 📍 Unknown 📸 European Union

The latest Policy Brief by the Scientific and Technical Review Panel (STRP) of the Convention on Wetlands outlines how to assess wetland carbon sequestration and emissions for national greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting purposes. Details: www.ramsar.org/sites/defaul...

A geologist in California who was surveying a San Mateo County creek stumbled upon a preserved Pacific mastodon molar estimated to be at least 10,000 years old. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/u...

It is no longer enough for a material to be capable of being produced in a climate-neutral way ‘in theory in the future’; it must be low-carbon or carbon-negative right now. THREAD

Nancy Grace Roman - honoured by the newest telescope in space - spearheaded a pioneering programme as NASA’s first chief astronomer, says Robert W. Smith go.nature.com/4h1LNz9

🚢 Soon to be frozen in space and time, this alien-looking vessel is beginning its first mission. 🧊 For 8 months, a crew of 12 won't leave the drifting ice in the Arctic to study how how life adapts to isolation & extremes in a region very sensitive to climate change. www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...

In 1995, ~50% of Americans lived in counties where the heat index (temperature + humidity) exceeded 90°F an average of 25 days or more; in 2025, ~70% of Americans did. (Get your county stats in article.) Summer 2026 will likely be hottest & most humid in the US Lower 48 since records began in 1895.

1/ Time for an update on this thread. If you've come across people who claim that Cleveland's MLB team was formerly called "Indians" as an honor to Louis Sockalexis, the record shows that this is a polite fiction made up after the fact. Let's look at the contemporary historical evidence.

RESEARCH: Acknowledgement of Indigenous and Tribal roots in Ohio. Co-authored by Dr. Sara Cannon @surlyscientist.bsky.social. academic.oup.com/fisheries/ad...

You know what this #LakeAmerica thing actually is? It’s Indigenous erasure. Ontari’io is a Wendat name. The Wendat suffered colonial displacement and erasure, as all our nations have. Your ignorant jokes are just furthering and normalizing erasure.

As Europe’s solar revolution matures countries need to strike a balance between generating capacity and storage. Romania looks like a model

Also, one of the deaths was an infant. The exact age was not given, but they likely were too young to have even received their first dose yet. This is why herd immunity matters, to protest the most vulnerable who cannot get the vaccine or who are too young to have been vaccinated

Today's @xkcd.com

Accretionary Arc xkcd.com/3285/

After a major flashflood struck the Rasuwa district in #Nepal, our teams have arrived in Nepal to assess people’s immediate needs. Hundreds of people are feared to have died with many people still missing: www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/nepal-msf-as...

Rescue teams searched Thursday for hundreds of missing people along the Nepal-China border, where a deadly torrent of water and mud several stories high swept through communities a day earlier following a glacier collapse. https://to.pbs.org/4guUy4s

RIP Yayoi Kusama

"Such a radical shakeup in learning has never happened before, as far as I know. Is there even a way to learn about whether or not something has happened before? A method or tradition for studying prior events? No, that’s impossible. That’s not in the modules." buff.ly/AGaHs7b

How quickly “shared human heritage” becomes “just a rock” once somebody shows up with explosives and an unfathomably large budget. ✨🔭🧪🐡 #SpaceEthics #Moon #Cartoon

Hello Bluesky! Space is astonishing. So is our ability to encounter something astonishing and immediately ask how we can use it. I’m an astrophysicist. Cosmic Fine Print is my cartoon account for the issues that tend to get left out of the press releases and tech assessments. ✨🔭🧪

#PPOD: NASA’s JWST captured this striking new view of NGC 2392, nicknamed the Lion Nebula, using its near- and mid-infrared instruments. At its heart lies the remnant of a dying star, surrounded by material the star shed as it reached the final stages of its life. 🧪 🔭

Before Europeans arrived, these were some of the names for The Great Lakes: Superior: gichi-gami (great sea) Erie: erielhonan (long tail) Michigan: michigami (long body of water) Ontario: Ontarí'io\kanadario (great lake\beautiful water) Huron: karegnondi (fresh water sea)

hey this is fun

Before last year, there were no US measles deaths in a decade, and now we have had 5 deaths in two years. Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, but will lose that status this year. This is an abject failure of public health leadership.

Epidemiology deals in numbers. With measles, they go like this: With 1,000 cases, about 200 children will require hospitalization, 50 will develop pneumonia, and one to three will die. The numbers have caught up to Pennsylvania. Ages not released. www.pa.gov/agencies/hea...

Wild that this shit is still going on -- university administrators just plowing money into AI, with no particular vision or goal, against the wishes of most professors & students, even as money is desperately needed for other things.

The world produces enough food, yet billions lack access to healthy & sustainable diets. A new EAT–Lancet report presents a science-based approach to improve health, safeguard our environment & provide for a projected 9.6 billion people by 2050. 🔗 bit.ly/3W7rxlP

An older, hotter planet www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

8/13/1933 — b. Joycelyn Elders, American government official, public health administrator, physician, pediatrician. The first African-American U.S. Surgeon General; vice admiral, Public Health Service Commissioned Corps #womenshistory #WomenInSTEM #MedSky #HistMed #PedSky #woc #gov #publichealth

A striking climate-model result suggests AMOC may have a rate-induced tipping point. 👉 Slow CO₂ increase: AMOC stable to +5.5°C 👉 Faster increase: collapse around +2°C Same climate system. Very different outcome. The rate of warming matters. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The first of two side events at the UN Biodiversity SBSTTA in Nairobi is focused on the Business & Biodiversity Assessment: Knowledge to inform implementation of KMGBF. 👉 Register for our second side event: https://www.cbd.int/side-events/6866

The ocean is full of surprises 🌊 >500 million newly discovered deep-sea genes expand our view of life's diversity. @uk.theconversation.com 

Weekend fact about birds 🐦🐦‍⬛🦜 #DYK that just as humans have regional accents, some bird species develop distinct, area-specific dialects? 🤔 Listen to birds from all regions and more here: https://xeno-canto.org/

The 9-year-old who coins ‘AI should stand for Artificial Idiot’ may not even know how wise and profound a comment this is. With stealth land grabs near nuke-power sites and a trillion spent on water guzzling server farms, we humans are idiots about planetary boundaries www.wired.com/story/some-k...