"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom."
London
- Tweets 145,322
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- Followers 1,877
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… so it’s the nature of the *act of support* - which makes some sense 🤷🤔
Here, @andyburnham suggests that people arrested for holding paper signs are on one end of the Palestine Action “spectrum”, while people spraying paint on military planes thought to be used to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza are on the “extreme” end…
Neither act is terrorism.
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Julien Burcher retweeted
Everybody should read this, and sit with it for a while.
This shouldn’t happen in a liberal democracy. To anybody. Ever.
And if you have urge to react to it with *any* comment about the benighted sliver of land between the Jordan and the Med: you are part of the problem.
I’ve written about the grim trend of people asking @JewishNewsUK to remove their names from old articles because they no longer want to be publicly identifiable as Jewish.
This morning was the saddest yet. The children of a remarkable man, honoured by the late Queen, asked us to remove his obituary because it mentions them.
Britain has been enriched for generations by stalwarts of our community who were proud to put their names to what they built, created and contributed. Now their children are asking for those names to disappear.
The question is no longer whether British Jewish life is in retreat. It is how much of it will soon be left. This is not a country where my children can build their lives.
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Peacekeepers maintain a visible presence by patrolling, monitoring developments, and clearing routes throughout UNIFIL’s area of operations. They identify & safely neutralize explosive hazards, helping make routes safer for peacekeepers to carry out their tasks & reducing risks.
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Well worth a follow imo🤷👏🏻❤️
We're honored to be the subject of a new paper: "[R]etraction Watch remains an illustrative case, a distinct digital‐age organisation that stands as a significant example of the long‐anticipated, but little‐realised, idea of watchdog science journalism."
cogitatiopress.com/mediaandc…
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Julien Burcher retweeted
It is a great honour to have been elected as Vice-President Elect of The Society of Legal Scholars from 1st October, and to serve as President in 2028-29. Thank you to the colleagues who voted for me - I shall take this responsibility seriously & work enthusiastically for members
🎉Congratulations to Professor James Lee on being elected Vice-President Elect of the Society of Legal Scholars, the learned society for legal academics in the UK and Ireland.
Read⬇️
kcl.ac.uk/news/professor-jam…
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Julien Burcher retweeted
New in Hydrobiologia: Crucian #carp (Carassius gibelio) destabilizes the clearwater state but does not influence greenhouse gas emissions in shallow lakes restored by #macrophyte transplantation: a short-term mesocosm study doi.org/10.1007/s10750-026-0…
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🤔🤷
These tech orgs are fascinating. GIFCT, designed to mitigate terrorist risk from platforms, has just suffered series of neuter-fearing resignations as reported by Wired: wired.com/story/independent-…. Many of very same tech orgs are also members of NetChoice which frequently takes legal cases to strike down US state-level regulation that might mitigate terrorism: netchoice.org. This could suggest that some tech orgs are just theatre. On the other hand, some voluntary or ‘morally binding’ (theguardian.com/us-news/2026…) collaboration about risks, however imperfect, may be all there is.
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Julien Burcher retweeted
Cormorants: convenient scapegoats for Ireland’s salmon crisis
The Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) is a much misunderstood bird which has been persecuted for centuries - just because it eats fish. These stunning and vulnerable birds are currently subject to hate campaigns by fishing groups calling for culls. However, there is no scientific evidence that culls would solve conflicts or replenish fish stocks. We need to stop blaming natural predators and address the real problems facing our aquatic ecosystems.
Cormorants are native to Ireland, and their presence on rivers and lakes is entirely normal. It is a myth that they are a non-native invasive species that should not be here. The Irish names for cormorant are Broigheall or Cailleach dhubh. These birds have shared our rivers and lakes with salmon long before humans began managing them as fisheries. Both subspecies that occur in Ireland (P. c. carbo and P. c. sinensis) are native.
These protected birds are part of our coastal and freshwater ecosystems, with as much right to inhabit a river as the salmon swimming beneath them.
The idea that cormorants are seabirds that have invaded freshwater because the sea has run out of fish is also a myth. They naturally use both environments and are more accurately described as waterbirds. Cormorants were intensively persecuted in the past, while pesticide pollution further damaged their populations. Legal protection and reduced pesticide contamination allowed depleted populations to recover from the 1970s onwards. Recovery is a conservation success, not evidence that a native species has become an invader.
Cormorants do indeed eat fish, including young salmon. But seeing a bird swallow a fish does not establish that it is driving a population decline. Predation is a natural and ecologically important process alongside which salmon have evolved.
Native predators like cormorants are not a key factor in the decline of salmon populations. The major pressures on salmon include deteriorating water quality, habitat loss and degradation, dams and other barriers, salmon farming, and changing conditions in the North Atlantic. Overfishing has also contributed historically, and salmon bycatch in other fisheries remains a problem.
However, it is easier to blame cormorants than to address the real issues. They are conspicuous, their feeding is visible, and killing them offers a tangible action. Addressing sewage discharges, reducing agricultural runoff, removing dams, and confronting aquaculture interests are far more challenging. A dead bird can be presented as progress while the conditions responsible for declining fish populations remain unchanged.
Predation can matter locally, particularly where fish are concentrated, for example below a weir or dam. But this is a fish passage issue, and the solution should be restoring fish passage. When we channelise our rivers and remove all the riparian trees, then stock these rivers with hatchery-reared fish, we should expect problems from predators. The solution here is river restoration.
The hostility and prejudice against cormorants have deep roots, and they have been unfairly hated for centuries. Milton used the cormorant to symbolise ultimate deception and malice when Satan disguises himself as a cormorant to sneak into the Garden of Eden. Even today, some anglers still refer to them as the “black death” and the “devil bird” and consider them to be key cause of the decline of fish like salmon in our rivers. But these claims are not supported by science, and cormorants can actually bring ecological benefits including controlling non-native invasive fish species.
The fact that cormorants nearly went extinct in the mid-20th century should remind us how vulnerable they are. Their restricted breeding distribution makes them particularly vulnerable to persecution. Culling cormorants will not clean polluted water, restore damaged habitats, or remove the dams blocking salmon migration. Reducing cormorant numbers is not a practical or sustainable option, and it will not solve local conflicts or replenish fish stocks.
A river is an ecosystem, not simply a supply of fish for people to catch. Native predators are part of its food web, and their right to exist should not depend on whether anglers welcome them.
Protecting salmon means restoring the conditions that allow wild populations to thrive alongside their natural predators. Every debate that ends with blaming cormorants, while leaving those conditions unaddressed, lets the real causes of decline off the hook.
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H/t @colmocinneide ❤️
After Kristallnacht, in November 1938, a horrified Hubert Butler left his family estate, Maidenhall, in Bennettsbridge, Co. Kilkenny and travelled to Vienna. Himself a committed member of the Church of Ireland (and remained so his whole life), Butler volunteered with Quaker International Relief which was one of the last international aid agencies to have an office in the Nazi occupied city.
In his role with Quakers, Butler amazingly spent months negotiating directly inside Gestapo headquarters to secure exit permits for Jewish families to Ireland. With Ireland maintaining strict refugee quotas at the time, Butler raised private funds, personally underwrote financial guarantees, and secured temporary landing visas to bypass state bureaucracy.
Accordingly, most of Butler's refugees stayed only temporarily in Ireland before moving on to other countries such as the US and Canada. Indeed, Butler and his wife, Peggy, temporarily housed families at his Bennettsbridge estate. Some, however stayed in Ireland permanently such as the Strunz family, who made their permanent home in Ardmore, Co. Waterford.
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H/t @HCGQC 🤷😔
Antisemitism isn't just bad for Jews, it is deeply harmful for Britain as a whole. This is just one example why.
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Julien Burcher retweeted
BBC report about today’s AI and willingness to provide dangerous info (re bioweapons) = useful corrective to exclusive focus on superintelligence doom: bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmre…. I recommend this excellent ISD paper on compliance rates, and note that some closed weight models are surprisingly effective at detecting malicious prompts: isdglobal.org/wp-content/upl…
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Julien Burcher retweeted
'Maybe nursing attracts serial killers. But it’s just possible a fashion has developed for blaming nurses when deaths appear to be unexpected and unexplained?': Stephen Phelps on Lucy Letby and the 'angel of death' phenomenon thejusticegap.com/too-conven…
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Nature
Old hearts age backwards: transplanted organs adjust to host’s biological age
nature.com/articles/d41586-0…
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Julien Burcher retweeted
Appalling reports from Myanmar's Rakhine State. An airstrike on a market in Kyauktaw has reportedly killed and injured dozens.
Civilians must be protected.
International humanitarian law must be respected.
Humanitarians are staying and delivering despite the danger.
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Julien Burcher retweeted
Researcher says academia will fall due to “[p]erverse incentives” that “sustained the publishing industry as we know it and blew up the bubble. AI is now pushing that trend into Weimar territory, and papers will be worth nothing.”
giorgio.gilest.ro/the-weimar…
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