It wouldn't be science without some jargon :P

Basically, a new mechanism has been found - low nitrogen influences the signalling of a plant hormone to reduce the number of branches. Particularly pertinent to cereal crops and could help lower the need for nitrogen fertilisers!

Hearing this for the first time was insane. Definitely curious to see where they go from here.

If you've got a baby in the family, please ensure that you've had a booster in the last 5-10 years. It's also really important to get the pregnancy vaccine for pertussis to protect newborns. We desperately need to get this epidemic under control.

Hope it stays open source going forward, especially given how it's built on the back of decades of hard work in x-ray crystallography.

Referendums generally fail, people don't like changing the constitution full stop. I know quite a few left-leaning people that voted no because they wanted the voice to he legislated but not constitutionally enshrined.

I thought a labor supermajority would be able to actually be slightly progressive without the fear of being voted out. Just goes to show how far they've drifted from their roots.

I've visited Carnac, it's true that these snakes are surprisingly placid! Such an interesting population - iirc David Attenborough filmed a segment about them about 20 years ago.

Amazing effort from Brisbane, well deserved!! First quarter was great as a neutral too.

Anyone but Geelong (dear god please)

Rhipidura leucophrys :)

He/she came right up to me! I was having lunch by the river and the little fella just ran up to me and started singing. They eat bugs and don't really scavenge off people so I don't think he was even after my food. He even hopped on my foot briefly!

Trees. Please, please, please... trees.

Right?? It's so tone deaf. The only people I've seen in support of live exports are farmers... the one group with a vested financial interest in maintaining these exports.

So, the government's picking up the funding slack... right?

... right?

Nothing escapes, not even light... awesome song, everything Arjen touches is gold.

I don't know what to think about housing anymore, I'm just so tired. The new builds around my parents house look shoddy and just plain ugly, not to mention first thing developers do is remove any and all trees and put concrete over the entire block. "Nimby" has become such a buzzword and a scapegoat but like, it's hard not to have a bit of empathy, and anecdotally lots of people would be supportive of these new developments if they weren't all shit. These concrete jungle suburbs will be around for decades at least. But also, the housing crisis is real and developers are saying that red tape around building quality is slowing them down. I desperately want a place to live, nothing fancy but at least safe and liveable. Is it genuinely impossible to have density and build quality?

Been meaning to get into these guys. Album artwork is sick, awesome growls, and cool mastodon vibes in the music too. Will definitely listen to some more!

I think we agree here in the sense that MSO are within their rights to dismiss him. But I think that the public backlash is very predictable outcome, and the public are right to feel outraged at the MSO for this. I can understand they're in a tough position but cancelling the soloist's performance was really the nuclear option. The cancellation is a much bigger political statement than the soloists comments (which were ultimately about the composition anyway), and if that's the statement the MSO wants to make they're free to do so but they need to accept they're being perceived as not only silencing their own artists, but also defending war crimes (whether that was their intention or not). Just terrible management of the situation.

Concert security is getting really stringent atm. With the government raising the terrorism threat to probable, large events are increasing security measures. Given how much publicity this has gotten, how controversial it is, plus how intensely passionate people are about the palestine/israel conflict, I can see why they wouldn't want to go ahead with this. Someone was stabbed at a world music concert at the Perth concert hall last sunday too!

Eh, they played the ukranian national anthem before concerts in 2022. I could see where you're coming from if the soloist actually said something controversial but his statement was literally along the lines of "war crimes are bad" - cancelling his performance for that is a much more inflammatory political statement (hence the huge backlash) than what he said in the first place imo.