I was variously amused and appalled by "More Everything Forever", the new book by @adambecker

In it, he dissects the visions of the future being proposed by Silicon Valley billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

I think most of us now realise that these people's ideas are dangerous and authoritarian: Adam shows that they're also just plain stupid and often shockingly ill-informed.

Strongly recommended.

Meta stole my book. This does not make me special: apparently they stole pretty much everyone's. Specifically, Meta used the Library Genesis (LibGen) dataset, which is full of pirated works, to train their AI.

I call on META to #DoTheWriteThing - authors must be asked first before their works are used, and we must be fairly compensated.

As a member of the Society of Authors I support all their demands: https://societyofauthors.org/2025/04/01/soa-day-of-action-following-allegations-of-metas-mass-theft-of-authors-work/

Authors: find out if your book was stolen https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/

Everything's a bit rubbish now, so get a bit of perspective / find an escape (delete as appropriate) with Our Human Story, my newsletter on human evolution for New Scientist

https://www.newscientist.com/article-topic/our-human-story/

To quote David Lynch: It is happening again.

Last year I wrote a story for BBC Future about iceberg A-68, a massive chunk of ice that broke off Antarctica and threatened to collide with the fragile ecosystems of South Georgia.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241025-how-mega-icebergs-change-the-ocean

Now BBC News reports that iceberg A-23a is... on course for South Georgia, "potentially putting penguins and seals in danger".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd64vvg4z6go

Fancy playing a card game that simulates the experience of being an overworked, cash-strapped researcher? New Scientist's nameless Feedback columnist has you covered.

Bonus content: nine paragraphs making fun of Meta.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26535261-200-fancy-publishing-nonsense-and-sabotaging-your-fellow-scientists/

Volcanoes are scary and supervolcanoes are even more so - but has an eruption ever wiped out a human species?

You might well have been told so, but in this piece for New Scientist I argue it's probably not true.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2463680-has-a-volcanic-eruption-ever-wiped-out-a-species-of-hominins/

Bye bye 2024, in many ways you were not great, but here are the 12 stories I'm most proud of having written despite everything.

Featuring: extraterrestrial life, the truth about screen time, and a deep dive into the wonderful world of cannibalism.

https://www.michaelcmarshall.com/blog/belatedly-my-favourite-stories-of-2024

David Lodge has died. His campus novels were favourites when I was younger: they combined broad comedy and even farce with literary criticism and academic thoughtfulness, all shot through with romantic yearning.

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/novelist-and-academic-david-lodge-dies-at-89

The Feedback columnist at New Scientist will be glad of their continued anonymity this week, because they've written about their experience of trying to read the new book by Jordan Peterson

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26435202-600-unpacking-the-new-jordan-peterson-book-with-much-exhaustion/

This week the still-somehow-anonymous Feedback columnist in New Scientist pores over a gloriously grumpy bit of academic sniping, and makes some "life on Uranus" jokes for good measure

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26435181-100-is-this-the-pettiest-it-is-possible-to-be-in-an-academic-article/