#rstats RIP, John Fox @yihui.org just published this lovely tribute to John Fox and his work yihui.org/en/2026/02/j...

What do we want? Fossil databases! 🐚🦕 When do we want them? Forever! 🗓️ Nice new paper highlighting how academic funding systems and digital architecture need to change, to ensure we can protect and sustain our precious fossil data 📚 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In 2014, New York City lowered its citywide default speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph. In the year that followed: - Traffic fatalities fell by more than 22 percent - Pedestrian fatalities fell by more than 25 percent transalt.org/reports-list...

This kind of smart, walkable, mixed-use urbanism is illegal to build in most American cities.

And now my turn in the hot seat. Hex is still mad about the vet and sleeping in the Hate Perch.

We dig into what “recovery” really means : species return, ecosystem structure, and function. If you love palaeobiology or biodiversity, this perspective offers fresh ways to think about life rebounding after crisis. Read it open access! 🌊💡 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I hate the vet, so I’m hiding in the trash

Coming to #evol2026 this summer? The SSB Early Career Travel Funds competition is now live! Apply by February 27 for this years’ Tri-Society meeting. More info: www.systbio.org/early-career...

New paper with @peterjwagner3.bsky.social, @wrightam.bsky.social, Jen Bauer, and Maggie Limbeck! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Summer camp registrations open tomorrow at 11 am (on a delay due to snowcrete). I've queued my submissions. I've updated my card on file. Nothing is left to do.

If you have developed outreach/education resources and want to get the word out— @sse-evolution.bsky.social has a deadline coming up for funding to present at an education focused session/conference. Grad students and Postdocs are very welcome to apply! evolutionsociety.org/index.php?mo...

Everything is quite bad, but it’s still fun to run past a long line of cars. Doubly so in ice spikes. And snow fetch remains undefeated.

This was a little disappointing. Very good insights on the mentality of tech billionaires. But struggles a bit with the balance of being about billionaires or about how billionaires twist science to serve their aims. So the synthesis feels a bit light. Still enjoyed; worth reading.

We got her a new perch from which to hate him

And then we had to put the dog down A moment’s fuckin’ break would be great, eh?

Rented the first Hobbit film for my son, since we recently finished the Hobbit and the Fellowship and saw the Fellowship in theaters. He is not amused and has settled in to watch my old Fellowship DVD.

The National Science Foundation sign on our Eisenhower Av building is now gone. The NSF mural in the foyer is removed and torn off in sheets. We were supposed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the agency in May 2025. That never happened.

This is correct. Today was a bit cold. Next week will be pretty cold, the week after looks actually cold.

I feel like there’s a special insult to being asked for a 2FA code after getting logged out while still active in the editorial manager software

Courage. I have tenure. It is crucial that we support the people doing brave things, and do them ourselves. We must support courage.

I think this is an incredibly important point this doesn't mean that you have to keep doing the exact kind of work you did as a student/postdoc for the rest of your career but it does mean you have to keep learning, pushing through the discomfort of not being good at something right away

We cannot be more clear. Leave us the fuck alone.

Home again youtu.be/Sl3nixOJSqg?...

MPR playing an eye witness account right now of ICE shooting directly through the windshield at her face and not giving her medical care for 10 minutes.

The Washington Post acquired documents that indicate an immigration center for 9,000 people is planned for Hammond, La. — but local Hammond officials are in the dark about it. (Gov. Jeff Landry's office didn't comment, so not clear what he knows.) #lalege www.nola.com/news/northsh...

Just me, quietly putting a big collapsible bag to hold multiple king cakes as my carryon home from #ssb2026

I read this a few days ago and keep coming back to it. Very interesting and thought-provoking work by @tomopfuku.bsky.social.

Please stop, or I will be forced to stop you in your thesis document

My daughter’s cat hates our other cat, and will sometimes sit watching him sleep from behind my office door

New preprint modeling biogeo diversification of Hawaiian Kadua 🌱🏝️🌋 w/ @ca-naturalist.bsky.social @sswiston.bsky.social @fabiology.bsky.social @phylogeny.bsky.social Warren Wagner, Bruce Baldwin, Ken Wood @ninaronsted.bsky.social @fzapata.bsky.social biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.16.694722

Now that I’ve recovered from this book overnight: I originally read its predecessor a couple years ago, bought because the cover was cool. It ended up being a mid-aughts alternative history of first contact with aliens. Normally not a alt history person, but it’s very sharply observed

I am absolutely undone. This was fantastic.

I recently had my first “AI-enabled” CS interns. It was not a good situation, and I think the most distressing thing was the lack of soft skill. When to ask for help. How to know you’re chasing a dead end. This will not build sustainable career pipelines.

Where do senior coders come from?

I read a book nearly every week this year, a fact I attribute to Fairfax County libraries being bomb as hell.

Listening to my son trying to explain the plot of Lord of the Rings while food-drunk after hot pot. I would watch a Wizard People, Dear Reader style overdub of this.

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.