your science briefing for 05.13.2025

Ruining online communities with bots, bacteria that conduct electricity, the Trump administration list of science "wrongthink," and more...

Reddit is one of the few places on the web that are still for real people instead of the now typical firehose of AI slop which is helping to destroy the internet and its utility in an act of late stage capitalo-canibalism. Or, at least it was supposed to be. In a lapse of research ethics, a team of researchers that refuses to identify itself and how it did what it did, infested a popular Reddit community with bots to argue, debate, and try to persuade the humans who run and frequent it. Obviously, everyone is livid, but the researchers only seem concerned about bad PR rather than feel any remorse, and at this point, haven’t acknowledged that their actions were wrong… (The Atlantic)

Look, a lot of people still view crypto as a sort of weird arcade token you trade for all sorts of horrible things on the dark web, or weird magic internet money used by their co-workers in IT, specifically the type no one wants to talk to willingly. But to an awful lot of people, crypto is serious business. So much so that we now have kidnappings, mutilations, and notes specifically demanding crypto ransoms. Forget viruses locking your computers, crypto powered crime is now in meatspace… (Ars Technica)

It sounds like science fiction, but there are actually bacterial colonies able to conduct electricity as part of their metabolic processes. And the newest species discovered to possess this ability, an electrothrix, seems to be the most efficient at it. Don’t get too excited, we’re not about the replace our electrical infrastructure with bacteria. But its ability to reliable conduct electricity could open up new frontiers for implants and low energy environmental cleanup… (ScienceAlert)

Pseudo-profound bullshit is everywhere. Some of the longest running and profitable internet scams thrive on it. A perfect example is a phrase like “the truth will often hide in plain sight.” Does it really? Why? But some people think this is brilliant insight. And you probably won’t be too stunned to learn that they don’t do as well on cognitive and logical tests as those who tend to scratch their brow at attempts to sound like a sage doling out hidden wisdom with purple prose and buzzwords… (PsyPost)

It’s not exactly a secret that the Trump administration is waging a war on science the same way most authoritarian regimes of the past did, with their number one interest being silencing academic “wrongthink” by first and foremost defunding research that has the potential to prove their ideology wrong, or support policies and ideas of which they personally do not approve. That means no more research into vaccines, COVID, partnerships with Chinese scientists, or climate change, and anything related to more meritocratic ways of running organizations and societies, or learning more about gay, trans, bisexual, or queer people is strictly verboten… (Mother Jones)