DON HERTZFELDT, in this the year of our oversized spoon 2026, has uploaded a HD version of Rejected to his YT channel?!?!?! OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS I'M SO HAPPY HIIIIII

the hungry observatory

I assigned random gender/ethnicity labels to scientific abstracts from the literature and then asked Claude to do a thematic analysis. Claude identified a clinical versus computational split for female/male authors and a DEI focus for Black/URM authors. All in completely random data.

This is why you can miss me forever with the idea that the Nordics are somehow superior or enlightened. Just people, and just as liable to be small-minded xenophobes as anyone else. A real test of anyone's true politics is if they believe people should be able to live where they want - or not.

"An email from NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to research-center grantees, seen by Science, requires their institutions to promise that U.S. authors of papers NIH has flagged because of foreign co-authors will not collaborate with them in the future."

Well that's a thorough summary. One of the best articulations of university governance for a public audience that I've seen in a while.

Today is the last day to comment to the FCC that LGBTQIA2S+ names, stories, identities don't need a warning label. This new potential rulemaking is an attempt at criminalizing the mere fact of being trans or otherwise queer, in the name of discrimination, bigotry, and persecution. Tell them no, now.

Washington & Hawaii Planned Parenthoods are now providing abortion pills in advance so folks can have them on their shelf if needed for the future. This is a great way to lessen the impact of future MAGA attacks on our reproductive freedoms, buy us time to fight back, and will save lives.

A NEW TWIST in Africa's soaring solar story: It's now manufacturing its own panels. The factories use imported Chinese cells, which are 40% of the value of panels, keeping much of the value domestically. 9 GW of cells+wafers in Mar/Apr alone🧵

Babe are you okay? You've hardly looked at your Bradford Exchange official Precious Moments (TM) Jaws figurine.

Waterhen by Ohara Koson (1877-1945), Japan

one other side of this is something that I try to emphasize to my students: "what does freedom actually mean" is not a 21stC issue anachronistically read backwards into the 18thC. The US, French, and Haitian Revolutions happened at more or less the same time, with an overlapping cast of characters

SCOOP: Markwayne Mullin met with airline and travel executives at DHS last week and told them he's serious about plan to pressure sanctuary cities by cutting CBP screening at intl airports after World Cup. Execs have warned economic impact would be "devastating" www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU THERE'S VIDEO OF THESE TWO!!!! 🐣 🪶

A thread of really good examples of how people who live with a car at home are riding a very different transit system than people who don't. (THIS IS NOT A CRITICISM OF OP. It is a criticism of our infrastructure.)

Oh this is delightful. Let's start with SpaceX's violation of 17 CFR § 229.504 (Item 504). Their "use of proceeds" neglects to mention they are contractually obligated to use the first $20 billion from it to pay off a bridge loan. This is also while their quarterly cash burn exceeds $8 billion. /1

We pretend that polling is objective and context independent, but a lot of it is just word association. People say they want to moderate because moderation has been sold as an objectively good thing our entire lives. It often has no relation to actual preferences.

Fox News doing a whole primetime segment about how Republicans aren't evil and why you should be friends with them even as a non conservative is super interesting to me because of the role Fox plays in its viewers lives.

One of the most helpful things about having a set of obsequious AI agents who praise your every utterance as blindingly insightful, and who hurry off to perform every pointless task you ask of them, is that you start realising why billionaires go so weird so quickly.

I love this project. I hope to get out to see the exhibit before May 29 -UW students resurrect Seattle cityscape that I-5 erased www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-m...

And then the most powerful and influential venture capital firm in the country hired the murderer who killed my neighbor solely and specifically because he was a Black man, which means every person in tech who wants to work in the startup ecosystem has to be complicit with this kind of depravity.

When people say: “Democrats abandoned the working class” they are saying several things but not what they intend. A 🧵 First, the message is “working class” == White. All the Black people I know work. All of them. So these terms are a big choice that conservatives AND leftists repeatedly make.

holy shit...??? legendary animator John Ripa just posted a long lost pencil test from the very first version of Tangled, where it was a cute romcom and Jack Black was the main love interest, omg. we were robbed TWICE #animation #tangled

“The restoration of "the natural order" – in which the dominance of white people in America is preserved and protected – requires ruining the economy.” 1000x’s this.

we are locked in a battle between "I can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" and "we can stay solvent longer than you can stay irrational"

Today in marine invertebrates 📸: FroyAgta - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?...

The failure of Trump’s 2020 election subversion plot turned in part on the willingness of a small group of Republican officials to defy him — almost all of whom have since been purged from power.

The Trump $1.776 billion slush fund is not mere corruption. Trump is giving his brownshirts money for recruiting, logistics, AR-15's and tactical gear. Nobody in the national media seems to be talking about this, or about how the Paycheck Protection Program played a central role in funding Jan 6

Behave accordingly

Wait what

Agami Heron (Agami agami). Mexico & the Amazon Basin. Stealth predators, they crouch motionless on branches or tree roots overhanging water for hours at a time. #birds #nature #wildlife #photo #biology #conservation

These were on display in city hall when I went to vote. The artist is from a sr in high school. The hours spent on these amazing works. I am so in love with them.

🐸 [Id 1 to 4 : A wood carved plump, grumpy rainfrog on a workbench, next to a carving knife. Its eyes are painted with black, burnt yellow, grey and white paint. It has buttcheeks.]

This brought me joy.

"Our admiration and fondness for Judge Kavanaugh run deep." Apparently, there is a guy running in the 46th District named Will Dreher who clerked for Brett Kavanaugh and endorsed his nomination to the Supreme Court. www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-re...

If you're reading this, my cat and I have boarded a one-way flight out of the United States. The Trump administration wrongfully denied my work permit renewal; after months of demanding that they follow the law, we have run out of legal recourse, and I have no choice but to leave the country. (🧵)

Sunset of Cockatiel 🌤️ #birdart #cockatiel #digitalart #fantasyart #creatureart

Aphid nearly done. Solid 925 sterling silver, pre-patina (and eyes, and honeydew) 🛠️ #sciart #bugsky

Gerontocracy is how I still occasionally see people talk about AOC being too "young" and "inexperienced" for a presidential run despite the fact that in 2028 she will be 39 and have spent a quarter of that life as a US congressional member sitting on 5 different oversight and finance committees.

That's right. Our single member districts are another anachronism that was, at the time it was introduced, a wholesome innovation. Congress forced states to use them starting in the mid-1800s to end the unfair practice of states allocating all seats to the party who controlled the state legislature.

Guys, guys. The water slug I designed for Subnautica 2.

Megatron, hunter of minnows, destroyer of food pellets, absolute drama queen, is 144 grams today. 42 days until she is released back to her native waters in the Chesapeake Bay.

if you curate your Internet experience correctly you will be drowning in the idle thoughts of shitposting phds with the same autism as you and it is so much easier here than just about anywhere else

This is both true and without question one of the greatest things about the United States.

Many people have a vested interest in pretending otherwise, but the US research university is globally dominant to an almost unbelievable degree. The typical state university is a football team stapled to a R&D lab with a budget bigger than the entire nation of Belgium.

Rhododendron update (from the Bellevue Botanical Garden): 🌱

32 House Democrats joined the GOP to vote to criminalize bail funds. clerk.house.gov/Votes/2026169

One week of having the pea puffers tomorrow 🤩. They have put on a lot of condition. Feeding super well. This is my pinky finger for scale. #aquarium #aquascape #fish

A friend in an alleyway