M 4.6 - 2 km ESE of Berkeley, CA Link: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc75240492

God that was a big one. #quake

Fun to see my photo of this extraordinary mountain chicken from Peru featured on iNat 😍

New funding opportunity for Wikimedia-related research! Grants up to $150K available. Apply by April 16th: meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:...

Big news: we are setting up a new non-profit organization to run bioRxiv and medRxiv. It's called openRxiv [no it's not a new preprint server; it's dedicated organization to oversee the servers] openrxiv.org 1/n

Today marks the beginning of OpenRxiv, which replaces bioRxiv and medRxiv, the world's largest preprint platform for life and medical science openrxiv.org/introducing-... @openrxiv.bsky.social

We did a thing

I wish there was a citation for this stat - this is mind blowing to me - "Already, a mere 10 percent of reviewers are responsible for 50 percent of all reviews." Not only is this not sustainable but has to lead to a very narrow perspective on the research. Wow.

We’re witnessing a Brexit-level instance of completely unnecessary economic destruction. A country that’s not hit by any shock, but simply chooses policy self-harm.

18F, the federal government’s technology shop, was just demolished by Musk’s team. It was a cost-recoverable org, charging agencies for their expertise, using a consulting model. Its cost to government was negligible, its benefits huge. My team there once saved DoD $500 million. A thread about 18F:

18f were a bunch of badasses who actually *did* make government more efficient in a way that actually worked. And they did it while also being good people who cared deeply for the work, for each other, and for the people that used it.

This hit so hard today. These are jobs the private sector just can’t replace, these are people whose intimate knowledge of places and ecosystems, accumulated through years and years of service, just can’t be rebuilt. We’re collectively losing so much when they’re gone.

lovely

Great day today: uploading Data on Commons for one of the most iconic books in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social : The Birds of America! commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Categor... + a selection of nice birds 1/7 - green dots show images with species reconciled to Wikidata (via Flickr tags)

I have a piece half-done on the entire world of indirect costs. It's too big an endeavor to finish now, in the middle of the night, when this problem *that was always a live grenade with a half-pulled pin* is suddenly a topic du jour. Shit of a thing. Here are some highlights.

Southern Crag-Martin (Ptyonoprogne fuligula fuligula). Western Cape, South Africa

Duolingo right now:

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%. I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

The entire archive of all CDC datasets uploaded before January 28th, 2025 has been backed up on Internet Archive. Incredible work everyone. Science will never be silenced!

SciScore and @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social Launch New Key Resource Tables for Preprints, Pioneering a New Era of Reproducibility and Transparency in Life Science Research world.einnews.com/article/7829... cc @chanzuckerberg.bsky.social

Some sunbirds for these darker times. Amethyst sunbird (Chalcomitra amethystina)

⭐ Funding opportunity ⭐ ORCA is offering grants for future-looking projects promoting open scholarship, open science, inclusivity, and innovation. 📌 Details: Award Amt: Up to $15k USD Eligibility: U.S. non-R1 and under-resourced institutions Deadline: 3/15/25 Apply here: www.orcaopen.org/work/cap

The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...

This: x.com/yishan/statu... (via @timoreilly.bsky.social)

ORCID is the only thing that works properly and doesn’t make life worse. Bonus to be able to use it as a login for some things!

AI is transforming science. But can it be leveraged to also expand the adoption of open research practices? Excited to announce eight new grants to answer that question, as a partnership between CZI and Sloan Foundation led by @k8hert.bsky.social. Read more: cziscience.medium.com/pathways-to-...

Congrats Lenny, Emma, and team on hitting this big milestone!

RIP David Lynch. We lost a giant today (still haunting me since college movie nights).

📣 New funding opportunity in open science from ORCA just announced. Check it out:

My New Year’s resolution? More birds.

What

Researchers spend approximately 45% of their time on administrative activities related to #grants rather than actual #research. The current #competition in research #funding has significant drawbacks; evidence-based improvements of the funding system are required: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

“According to Nature, the study is the highest-cited paper on Covid-19 to be retracted, as well as the second-most-cited retracted paper overall.” www.theguardian.com/world/2024/d...

What did the Gray Silky-flycatcher whisper in the Lark Sparrow's hear to make him blush? Tepotztlán, Morelos. November, 2025.

A female Elegant Euphonia (Chlorophonia elegantissima elegantissima). Morelos, Mexico.

You know the "🔹AI Overview" you get on Google Search? I discovered today that it's repeating as fact something I made up 7 years ago as a joke. "Kyloren syndrome" is a fictional disease I invented as part of a sting operation to prove that you can publish any nonsense in predatory journals...

Content I came back for:

Hello, world! 👋 For folks who don't know me: I am a recovering behavioral x computational scientist who spent 15 years or so working on initiatives to accelerate the adoption of open practices in science. This STAT piece is a good summary of some of our recent work (thanks @joshmoore.bsky.social!)