Hiya!

In late September, I was voted in as President of the Science Journalists Association of Australia.

I'm taking over from the masterful, indefatigable, legendary, delightful Founding President Bianca Nogrady.

Bianca -- and all the founders and committee members over the years -- have done such an incredible job at building a community of science journalists since kicking this all off in 2019. I'm delighted she tapped me to carry the fire for SJAA through its next phase.

I have some big goals. I want to see science journalism in this country thrive by giving opportunities to young writers, creating pathways for people to make this amazing career their full-time job, helping improve the quality of an already outstanding field in this specialist beat in Oz and just building on that sense of community.

If you're a science journalist in Australia and you want to join up, you can sign up as a member at https://sjaa.org.au/

#sciencejournalism #science

The New York Times has done some very cool video games work recently but I'm kind of confused why people are suggesting they've like, gone all in on video games coverage?

It's almost as if this headline has been read as "we're leveling up the beat" when it's actually just a Q+A with reporters who work on the beat discussing how they do so???

Weird discourse.

I think readers deserve better with this kind of thing: We know full well this is a stunt and it's not a real alien. This is one of the worst possible headlines you can go with. And it's not "sceptics" who aren't convinced... it's experts in astronomy, astrobiology and more. These people aren't just sceptics... they are the most qualified to comment.

Carn.

Hello there. I have started at aunty as a science and tech reporter.

I really respect and admire this team's work across digital, audio and video and am so stoked to be a part of it for the next little while.

Interesting study this week on #climate #science

Sprinkle some volcano dust on farmland soil and draw down CO2.

Applying 10 tons of volcano dust per hectare of crop land could sequester up to 217 gigatons of carbon in 75 years. (We emit about 35-37 gigatons a year right now)

“Although we still have things to learn from a basic science perspective, there is promise, and we need to focus on what we can do from market and finance perspectives,” said Noah Planavsky, a geochemist at Yale University who co-authored the study.

Paper > https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023EF003698

Google's Genesis AI can, reportedly, take current events and write news articles about it.

This is incredibly bad. Very bad. I don't believe this technology should be used, ever, because I can truly see very little benefit and extremely substantial risk.

These huge publications who are seeing the demo should, immediately, push back and prevent this from being possible. #AI