Years ago, a friend got us a Christmas moth squishmallow for our daughter. Years later, our hound took it, used it, and eventually shredded it. This Christmas, we stocked up on Crimbo Moths for years to come. Please, enjoy this face that says “I will definitely not destroy this expensive ass moth”

It’s wild so many people are willing to go to bat for prisons as a reserve for rural jobs when universities are better in every aspect for such a role.

I took a deep dive into Meta’s “Hyperion” data center in Richland Parish, LA. The story of a tech behemoth coming bearing billions to a poor community like Richland Parish is complex and worthy of scrutiny. 🧵 1/7 sherwood.news/tech/hyperion/

In what might be the crowning achievement of my life, I’ve complained so much to the city that they’re putting in a crosswalk in front of my house

A lot of our *colleagues* don’t understand that

Currently resisting the temptation to eat all the good tinned fish while everyone else sleeps. But, like, barely.

Pizza heals a lot of wounds tho

I’ll miss the dog park the most. My pictures don’t do justice to how nice this view is.

Woke up knowing I need to be a prickly woman today youtu.be/HnQ89jZvZD0?...

Took an Lyft home rather than walking, to be on the safe side in a tight timetable. Ended up missing my daughter’s choir concert because the driver turned off a low-traffic side street onto a gridlock highway Lesson in that for me

So how’s bsky this morning

From @semianalysis.com.web.brid.gy, Nvidia $NVDA acquires SchedMD, makers of SLURM, a widely used open source workload scheduler. Many AI companies such as Mistral, Thinking Machines, parts of Meta's FAIR division, university academic labs use SLURM.

Forgotten feeling of running somewhere with an actual winter: your pigtails freezing to your shirt just over your shoulder blades. Hell yeah, winter.

❗

I heard there were some secret jaws That snowflakes had in their open maws But you don’t really care for eel bones do ya?

It’s “free up fridge space by keeping the beer on the porch” season for all who celebrate.

This is dramatically awful. I watched friends and colleagues hustle so hard against this devastating choice, to try and save their students and colleagues.

Latest preprint with @hairyllama.bsky.social and @evol-molly.bsky.social This is a program that helps calculate several phylogenetic support measures.

Out late for #FossilFriday, it's our invited @annualreviews.bsky.social paper with @sarahlsheffield.bsky.social and @bigfacecats.bsky.social on why Phylogenetic Paleoecology is useful and how to do it. doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Springer-Nature statement “Whilst the details of peer review are confidential, we can confirm that the article underwent two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers, supporting an accept decision.” How am I now expected to believe that two people looked at the paper twice and DGAF?

Well, why shouldn’t I have stuffing for breakfast?

TIL that JOP has a really interesting replication policy.

Imagine watching all year for the robot litter box you want to go in Black Friday, getting it set up, and going to celebrate your bougie accomplishment with a drink Then looking down and realizing you’re wearing long underwear as pants

So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth! #protistsonsky 🧵

when we say we want more streets to be pedestrianized, this is what we mean

I will add the following: our students lack the research skills required to audit an LLM essay for errors. They don’t arrive on campus with these skills; we teach it to them over four long years. So throwing freshmen in the deep end and saying “swim your way to a shore of rectitude” is folly.

A cop just yelled at my kids to stop climbing trees in the park, and he’s just jealous.

You know what? Tinned fish picnic is the perfect dinner. Unfortunately, we’re at a Christmas tree lighting, and the tree is not yet lit, so it was impossible to photograph. Chili crisp tuna, yellow curry mackerel, fresh bread, a salad, and hot chocolate

MAMDANI: And I just think that there are barriers, barricades, to helping Americans that we can break down TRUMP: Uh huh MAMDANI: And breaking down barriers? Reminds me of a certain Broadway show *smiling widely* where they worked together to break a barricade? TRUMP: *sitting bolt upright* Phantom

Walking to my kids’ school. Saw an eagle go overhead. Maybe 90 seconds later, it comes back with a rabbit This is the stuff you just don’t notice when you have to drive. Walkable communities forever.

Just finished this last night after having been on the library waitlist for ages. Wonderful book. Very fresh take on magic, and insightful on academia. Definitely recommend if you’ve got complicated family feelings with the upcoming holidays.

A running playlist, but it’s just Wayne June’s critical hit narrations from @darkestdungeon.bsky.social

For the first time, scientists have documented an unusual defense: Some species of arachnids build giant doppelgängers on their webs, creating a frightening deception that scares off would-be killers. https://scim.ag/487Myn0

Really fun to be developing this project at the same time Davey and Melanie were developing theirs (see Davey’s 2nd skeet). Trilobites and dicynodonts are really different animals. But some commonalities emerge from this pair of studies, namely that these data sources have divergent signal

Interested in using continuous traits for phylogenetic estimation? We took a hard look at this in a well-studied clade. There’s a lot of promise to these data, but still much work to do to be able to make full use of them doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

I didn’t see the northern lights. But I did spend a moment enjoying the stars on a crisp autumn night.

Is it bad that I immediately knew what meeting must be this week?

PhD position available in evolutionary genomics/bioinformatics (hoehnalab.github.io/job_adverts/...). Topic: analyzing gene expression evolution across several firefly species and linking expression changes to genomic architecture. The position is jointly supervised with @anaevolcatalan.bsky.social

Looking for a PhD opportunity? I'm hoping to recruit someone to my group at Durham University to work on a project combining fieldwork and labwork to study speciation in rubyspot damselflies: iapetus.ac.uk/studentships... Get in touch if you want to chat!

As one of those federal employees, I couldn’t agree more. “Preventing authoritarian consolidation is the most harm-reducing move.”

Really cool of you to close your voice mail box before announcing this. Afraid of your constituents?

Legit thought this was crawfish with potatoes and corn from across the street

Glad to have this one out! As some of you might remember, I'd kicked around the idea for some time, but the inestimable @wrightam.bsky.social got it all pulled together properly. It's a first step - we still need to include likelihoods of stasis between first & … www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

My kids school was under a desegregation order. Guess which teacher was moved first when it was lifted?

Contact did not acquit itself as well. Engaging, interesting, but didn’t stick the landing as well

BREAKING: NBC News projects: Abigail Spanberger (D) wins Virginia Governor. Democrat Gain.

!!!!!! www.thebookseller.com/rights/picad...

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...

arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month. Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.