apropos james watson’s death i had an idle thought today about how stupid race/iq stuff sounds. “buh if your skin is darker you are biologically less smart” is a thing only a dumbass can believe

Insect people! Does anyone know what this is? (Seen in Madagascar.)

The end of an era: the Tree of Life Web Project is going dark after 3 decades. Anyone interested in communicating phylogeny online should read David's account of goals, history, and future. @bembidion.bsky.social subulatepalpomere.com/2025/11/02/t...

An amazing collection below of long form writing on climate science. Worth reading as we approach #COP30!

“It’s like dealing with the Mob“ - How the U.S. derailed global talks on reducing carbon emissions from shipping on.ft.com/4hAl1xy

The Guardian is hiring for a graphics reporter and data reporter to cover how the US government is deleting and altering important datasets. If you like the work we do, come join us! Data: workwithus.theguardian.com/job-search/e... Graphics: workwithus.theguardian.com/job-search/e...

More than 5 million people face an increased cancer risk because they live near a type of industrial plant that would have been subject to rules put forward by the Biden. The Trump administration is rolling them back By the inimitable @lisalsong.bsky.social www.propublica.org/article/epa-...

Finally someone bold enough to ask, is new york ready for a mayor who opposes slavery? www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/u...

From the nine-inch pygmy shark to a whale shark, the largest living fish, all sharks have the same surface area to volume ratio: a metric that might be a universal proportion across the natural world. www.quantamagazine.org/shark-data-s...

"Children make up half of Gaza’s population. They will suffer the consequences [of starvation] their whole life.” www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

I was interviewed for this great piece about sea level rise. Solid reporting here on the scientific controversy, but I like that Evan ended with my bigger picture quote that a lot of the controversy doesn't really matter because by 2100, we will be talking about a radically different coastline.

yes I love the masters students who intern and write for me but .. don’t go!! reading TON was part of what I did instead www.theopennotebook.com

"Is there a timeline, a regulatory environment, in which the internet does not turn into a highly efficient manufacturer of niche suicide cults? I find it hard to imagine." harpers.org/archive/2025...

🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨 Many things are changing before our eyes. Others are harder to see Like the US economy Americans are spending more 💲 recovering from disasters and preparing for the next one. 36% of US GDP growth since 2000 is related to climate disasters. Welcome to the Disaster Industrial Complex 🎁🔗

It's a very calculated psychic attack. The White House is a metonym for the presidency. A visual representation of his efforts to fundamentally and irreversibly change the presidency.

ICE just escalated NYC enforcement in the most visible possible way: sweeping in and arresting immigrant vendors on Canal Street, where tourists have forever flocked to buy knockoff designer handbags.

Oh good, it's been too long since I was scared absolutely shitless.

As the neurological underpinnings of transitional sleep states come to light, scientists are gaining a better understanding about what is going on after dark — specifically in the brains of people who have trouble sleeping. www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-brai...

Okay, for the folks who asked: here's the majority AI view, writing up the reasonable, thoughtful view on AI that the vast majority of people in tech hold, that gets overshadowed by the bluster and hype of the tycoons trying to shill their nonsense. anildash.com/2025/10/17/t... Please share!

A famous graphic, now updated, compares locomotion in the animal kingdom

Months before catastrophic floods swept through an Alaska Native village on Sunday, the Trump administration canceled a $20 million grant meant to protect the community from extreme flooding. At the time, the EPA administrator said he was eliminating "wasteful DEI and Environmental Justice grants."

Other planetary tipping points will follow. "Surging temperatures worldwide have pushed coral reef ecosystems into a state of widespread decline, marking the first time the planet has reached a climate ‘tipping point’, researchers announced today." #ClimateSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Reporting this story from Maricopa county hurt my heart because every single heat death is preventable Americans are dying from extreme heat. Autopsy reports don’t show the full truth www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Rare moment of journalist solidarity as major news outlets, including WaPo, NYT, CNN, Newsmax, The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Reuters and the Guardian, along with the trade publications Task & Purpose and Breaking Defense, all reject new Pentagon reporting rules (no word from Fox yet)

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to lay off about 550 workers reut.rs/4302N2L

"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” ― Hannah Arendt,

That England has had its three worst harvests on record inside the past five years really should be being treated as a much bigger cause for concern than is currently the case. www.businessgreen.com/news/4520171...

In case you missed it: we are hard at work on a deep dive into how the Trump Administration's policies are affecting biodiversity. bioGraphic's news editor, @colinschultz.bsky.social, wants to know: what do you, our readers, want to know more about this topic? What questions do you have?

New on Heat Death! I caught up with folklorist and historian Adrienne Mayor to talk about her new compendium of “geomythology,” the warnings encoded in folklore, and the oral tradition of the future. Super fun conversation.

NEW: A buyout program is coming for homeowners in The Hole, a NYC neighborhood unlike any other. It’s the first time the city pursues this climate adaptation strategy proactively, instead of after a disaster, and with a focus on inland (not coastal) flooding. www.thecity.nyc/2025/10/03/f...

BREAKING: Our client Mario Guevara, an Emmy-winning journalist detained by ICE in retaliation for livestreaming law enforcement activity, will be deported tomorrow to El Salvador. Mario and his family are being punished for his reporting. This cruelty is meant to stifle our free press.

It sure was fun speaking with Owen and Quentin Reiser about “Listers,” the most entertaining birding media I’ve encountered. www.audubon.org/magazine/get...

🚨📢JOB ALERT📢🚨 @seattletimes.com is hiring a Climate Reporter to cover the connections between climate change and the region’s biggest and most influential businesses. seattletimes.applytojob.com/apply/apstHy...

Now at Wired - @dsamorod.bsky.social’s Quanta explainer on thirst

A leading Democrat in the Senate just released an important report documenting how NASA has been working to implement the president's proposed budget, not Congressionally approved funds, in slashing missions. Read more ⬇️

U.S. Dept. of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy banned from using words like "climate change" or "emissions"...you know, phrases that have nothing to do with things like energy efficiency or renewable energy 🤦‍♂️ www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

George Monbiot: "Israel’s ecocide in Gaza sends this message: even if we stopped dropping bombs, you couldn’t live here. Consider the annihilation of agricultural land alongside the genocide – and grasp the chilling totality of this attempt to eliminate all life" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

For some reading, or just an exploration of exemplary science communication, check out the @quantamagazine.bsky.social series "How We Came to Know Earth" and its presentation. Really really good stuff. www.quantamagazine.org/how-we-came-...

He truly is Chance the Gardener from Being There. www.kgw.com/article/news...

More than 1800 detainees who were interned in Trump's shuttered Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp have now disappeared without a trace. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

*The AI boom = one of the costliest building sprees in world history * Past 3 years' commitments are greater than the cost of building the U.S. interstate highway system * Consumers must spend $800 billion on AI within a few years, to justify investment from 2023-24 www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-b...

Love this evolutionary perspective on how AI learning and training works in this interview with Naomi Saphra @nsaphra.bsky.social by Ben Brubaker @benbenbrubaker.bsky.social www.quantamagazine.org/to-understan...

Folks! We're hiring a Social Media and Digital Content Creator @climatecentral.org — a great role for someone early in their career, with a passion for climate comms and experience creating visual/video content across platforms. Please spread the word! www.climatecentral.org/open-positio...

the post office is a public service. it doesn’t need to make money. public transit doesn’t need to make money. the library doesn’t need to make money. some things exist for the public good and we desperately need lawmakers to stop thinking about them in terms of capitalism. these are not businesses.

This is excellent, peeps. Well worth your time (and you can sip it in parts, no need to read all at once)

ONE POINT TWO BILLION!

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

Hii! Last week Quanta published a project I've been working on all year — a special issue about climate science, or what research into climate change is revealing about how our planet works www.quantamagazine.org/how-we-came-...

22-year-old Ward Sakeik, a Palestinian woman who has lived in Texas since she was 9, says her experience in federal detainment could only be identified as “human trafficking.” And she’s not staying quiet about the women she was forced to leave behind. thebarbedwire.com/2025/09/22/w...

We just published pretty much the greatest collection of bird photos you could ask for. 🪶https://www.audubon.org/magazine/2025-audubon-photography-awards-top-100