Don Osborn

"Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." ~U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, 1971. Image: Library of Congress.

While oil is known to float, new research finds that over time it can permeate even extremely deep marine habitats, with animal populations declining by as much as 80 percent.

AI Commentators: "OMG, they just cloned Adobe/Autocad/Office - this CHANGES EVERYTHING" Meanwhile - open source projects that have existed for DECADES are sitting there asking "What am I, chopped liver?" My dudes: Libre Office FreeCad Gimp Inkscape etc. etc. This isn't difficult.

"Well-written" reviews are not necessarily useful reviews. Personally some of the most useful, sharp critical reviews I received for my paper were not polished. they were often written more casually, a bit like "thinking out loud", but very insightful.

Enormous news. A melanoma vaccine, one of the most deadly cancers out there. Science is good and helpful and there should be more of it. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...

www.pv-magazine.com/2026/10/21/c... Cheapest form of electricity generation in history is not done yet.

It’s the International Day of Action on #BigBadBiomass. Today people are taking action because burning trees for electricity is a false solution that causes real destruction to communities, human health, wildlife, and the climate. Join us! environmentalpaper.org/IDoA cutcarbonnotforests.org

Immigrants have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000 nfap.com/research/new...

BREAKING: Guinea-Bissau did not approve the controversial hepatitis B vaccine trial to move forward, the country's health minister says: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

URGENT ACTION ALERT! An irreplaceable grove of 200 blight-surviving, wild American chestnut trees is scheduled to be bulldozed for an Anthropic data center! The 200 wild American chestnuts are located in Mason County, WV. Find more and take action: gjep.substack.com/p/urgent-act...

I dropped off my absentee ballot this morning at one of the East Lansing ballot boxes. As I finished, an elderly couple walked up to deposit their ballots… Beautiful day for early voting!

Pakistan's solar boom is really two booms. One is 6.1 GW of net-metered solar where the grid works and tariffs bite. The other is hidden: ~40 GW of modules imported, much of it off-grid where outages hit 8–10 hrs/day. Our new paper summarised here: www.pv-magazine.com/2026/10/09/p...

New 2CV is terrific. Hope the production car is as minimal. Its quite refreshing. AND the top still comes off… www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/ele...

“Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.” ― Jacques-Yves Cousteau

One of the historically important aspects of immigration to the US over the years is how so many humble people, some refugees, arrived and added so much to society and the economy. They, and their descendants. It never was just talented or rich people.

#FunFact: Yes, it's now possible to drive a standard, mainstream EV from New York to Los Angeles in a reasonable amount of time without getting stranded with a dead battery and WITHOUT having to use a Tesla station!

I often see people claim that because clean energy sources like solar, wind, or nuclear are manufactured using fossil fuels their emissions are high. But thats absolutely not the case: even accounting for full lifecycle emissions they are vastly better than burning coal or gas:

Africa’s effort to make most of its own vaccines by 2040 faces significant headwinds | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

This has to do with the University of Minnesota, but it illustrates the stark scenarios faced by much of higher education in the US currently.

Farmers try to bring back Syrian bees Syria was once home to one of the largest populations of bees in the Middle East but they were eliminated Now only a fraction remain theworld.org/stories/2026...

Happy birthday CERN! 🎉 #OnThisDay 72 years ago, CERN officially came into being, bringing together 12 founding Member States with a shared vision for science and international collaboration. Discover the story behind 72 years of science: home.cern/about/who-we...

Please sign Petition to help South Africa save the Pangolins A Million Pangolins Were Trafficked in a Decade. South Africa Is Fighting It Nearly Alone. Eight pangolin species are now threatened with extinction and four are critically endangered. www.thepetitionsite.com/707/705/767/...

"America had wiped out measles. Now babies are infected at birth. Congenital measles has rarely been seen in the U.S. That’s changing as vaccination declines and more pregnant women become infected." www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

The Sahara is one of the most dynamic zones of interaction in human history. In 1600 BC, the Hyksos introduced the horse-drawn chariot to Egypt, from where it spread southward to the kingdom of Kerma (Kush in Sudan) and westward across the Sahara www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/the-wheel-...

I don’t buy wine, cocktails, or stadium beer. I have 1 car that needs repairs. I financed my phone through my carrier plan. I’ve never owned $800 shoes, I gave up TV years ago,and while I think a well-made latte is one of the finer things in life, I’d never pay $14. Do I still have to pay the $4.50?

"A republic, if you can keep it." ~Attributed to Benjamin Franklin 239 years ago today-9/17/1787-upon being asked if new US government would be a monarchy or a republic. The founders signed the Constitution OTD in 1787, so happy Constitution Day to all! Let's keep it. Image: National Archives.

Good discussion on surveillance tech, privacy, & current public reaction by @karaswisher.bsky.social, with Jason Koebler, @safiyanoble.bsky.social, & Victoria Song. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

On The Climate Brink: The Atmosphere Just Set a Water Vapor Record. Aug. 2026 probably had more water vapor in the atmosphere than any month in the last few thousand years, if not a 100,000 years. www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-atmosp...

mackenzie scott really seems like the only billionaire to figure out that you can be a literal hero to millions with a relative pittance

A personal retrospective on 9/11 as experienced while living in Niger. (Written on the 15th anniversary in 2016) donosborn.org/blog/2016/se...

9/11 is a day I’ll never forget. Rather than sharing the horrific photos, I’d rather share an image in memory of what once was. 🙏

8 years ago, I tweeted side-by-side maps from NASA GISS showing global temperatures in 1976 and 2018 – both hot summers in the UK. It subsequently went viral and was printed in the Daily Mail! The 2026 version is stark. Two locally extreme summers separated by 50 years of global climate change.

Interesting: Massachusetts has ordered all new data centers above 25MW to procure clean power.

“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.” Albert Einstein 🧪

More than 11,000 people have been sickened in a Cyclospora outbreak linked to lettuce. Meanwhile, FDA inspections of foreign food facilities have fallen nearly 35% since 2019. Public health work is often invisible...until it isn’t. Cuts have consequences.

The story linked above involves LLM-assisted work in which the LLM presented an argument developed by someone else as its own. If a human researcher did that, it would be straightforward misconduct and there could be career consequences. We need a process for addressing this now; we don’t have one.

Here's some public health good news 🎊 Congratulations to Thailand for eliminating rubella as a public health problem! Learn more: bit.ly/4ynibTR #StandWithScience

This was pretty much inevitable. For years, recruitment and hiring have been using ever more sophisticated tech, while applicants are stuck with basically late 20th century tools. And then AI is used for the interviews…

Saul Steinberg on identity, property, and action. saulsteinbergfoundation.org/artwork/unti...

The U.S. now has more measles cases than we’ve seen in 35+ years. Measles didn’t suddenly become harder to prevent. What changed is our relationship with vaccines, public health and expertise. Diseases we once had largely under control can come back.