I'm all in for analog too, which is why I so excited to be teaching this summer at the UM Biological Station in Northern Michigan. This video of Marjorie Weber's UMBS class "Insights from Trees" gives a sense of what learning is like there. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNOB...

Bluebird posting will continue until morale improves 🪶

I heard a reporter from Axios interviewed on NPR the other day (Marketplace Tech, I think) talking about how the tech companies are putting out new models every 6 months to 1 year and how each model is more "powerful" than the previous. 🧵>>

This amazing white flower is found on the Franklinia tree. Franklinia is beautiful and extinct. It can no longer be found in our forests to which it was once native. Read about it here, and let us know in the story comments if you have seen this tree. Story is open to everyone.

An exciting astronomy milestone was hit last night, as DESI completed its original 5-year survey mapping 40 million galaxies in the night sky! DESI continues operation, now aiming for an 8-year survey and ~60 million galaxies. 🔭🧪 #cosmology newscenter.lbl.gov/2026/04/15/d...

We'll be at the Michigan Lakes and Streams Association conference May 1-2... will you? We'll have an informational booth! Many of us will be providing MiCorps Cooperative Lakes Monitoring Program training, and Dr. Jeremy Hartsock will be speaking about aquatic plants. mymlsa.org/mlsa-events/...

The KhanTED Institute rolls up "many earlier nonrevolutions (MOOCs, competency-based education, disaggregated institutions) into a pitch for an AI-driven future, pushed by the corporations that most stand to benefit from these futures by locking people into their education and employment ecosystem."

Annaliese Paulson, Kevin Stange, and Allyson Flaster showed these "high enrollment despite lower majors" patterns nicely with College and Beyond II data. scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=e...

The story of ed tech is a repeated loop of massive hype and massive disappointment See MOOCs, and now AI Evidence can interrupt this unproductive cycle The Stanford SCALE Initiative, led by rock star Prof Susanna Loeb, brings evidence to the conversation scale.stanford.edu/sites/defaul...

Colson Whithead on how important it is to do "the freaking work." If you leave it to the gooch, you're cooked. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...

Alright Gulf Coast, South Carolina, southern Oklahoma and Arkansas, it's go time for y'all now! Start of the approximately 3 week long peak migration period BirdCast is predicting we'll have 133 million birds above the continental US tonight and they're especially headed your way Lights out!

Remarkable tropical katydid, newly described 🧪 If you loved the lichen version shared below, how about hot pink? 🩷 @mongabay.com reports this species changes to a pastel pink & then to green, mimicking how many tree leaves develop in Panama, more details here: news.mongabay.com/short-articl...

Welcome home, Pippin! 🤍🟢 Our beloved Pippin has returned. Many will remember he departed last summer with something tangled around his foot. We feared the worst. Pippin has returned to us with his right foot missing and a limp but otherwise appears well. 📸:Liam Francis Shanley

Once again, Rebecca Solnit helps us to focus on important things. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Making tenure count, for MSNOW I wrote about my employer, The University of Iowa, creating a center for intellectual freedom. It's a reactionary project built on decades of conservative propaganda about higher ed.

Closing these forest service labs is such a terrible mistake, so deliberately destructive. We have already lost more than 10,000 government scientists, a cadre of public servants that will take decades to restore. We cannot protect our public lands without committed experts.

Spring is HAPPENING!

Please share this story far and wide, not just on this platform, especially if you live in an area with an outbreak right now (like ours in Southest Michigan where there is an official #publichealth department recommendation for early MMR vaccination for babies 6-11 months old right now)

Week 14 of my stitch-the-news daily news diary included: A Waffle House A Pope hat A devil's pitchfork A Michigan logo A white flag A Polymarket app A penguin

After disappearing from the Milwaukee River in the early 20th century due to overfishing and habitat loss, the new discovery of an adult sturgeon 20 miles upstream from Lake Michigan is a milestone in a massive restoration project that’s been underway for 20 years www.wuwm.com/lake-sturgeo...

Eight flowers on one small Echinopsis cactus plant - just opened this morning on my patio. They will only last one day 🌵

A male Pileated Woodpecker using his sticky tongue to lap up carpenter ants.

So pleased to see my treasured @umich.edu colleague Shelly Schreier receive this lifetime recognition! www.mlive.com/news/ann-arb...

"More than 70 years after his encounter with HUAC, Davis is still setting a standard for a principled defense of academic freedom." Thank you @counterpunchmedia.bsky.social for highlighting Disobedience Press's "In the Spirit of H. Chandler Davis!" Read more: buff.ly/UnFj490

My one-hour special “Rick Steves Iran: Yesterday and Today,” which helps humanize 90 million Iranian people, is streaming free and ad-free at www.ricksteves.com/watch-iran.

Here in Illinois, you might not think about the US Forest Service having much of a presence, but the agency manages important places like Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and Shawnee National Forest - learn more about what they do from @extension.illinois.edu: aces.illinois.edu/news/illinoi...

"You want to feel safe now, you turn to the sun"

there's still so much fecundity and enduring beauty in the nonhuman world. let's preserve and treasure it.

#A2Council, Did you know that nearly 1/7 residents in Ann Arbor play the Summer Game? As Board President, I am a proud supporter of this incredible program that reached 17,000 players last year. Huge thanks to the staff who make it possible; it truly wouldn’t happen without their hard work!

Never forget, a 13-year study found that protected bike-lanes led to a drastic decline in fatalities for all road users. ALL ROAD USERS. What about painted bike-lanes? No safety improvement at all. For sharrows, it’s actually safer to NOT have them. Via @usa.streetsblog.org @nyc.streetsblog.org

Proof again that who owns the media matters. The @inquirer.com is one of the few major American papers meeting the moment. They don’t shy away from being honest about what Trump is doing and how unhinged he is. share.inquirer.com/oTwgKn

Your only source for archiving vintage tile floors. #804, The Chicago Athletic Assoc.

Still early spring here, and the pollinators were super happy to find this willow in bloom.

Nice essay on "How AI English and human English differ – and how to decide when to use artificial language" from U-M's Laura Aull. A tiny preview of her upcoming book with Cambridge University Press. theconversation.com/how-ai-engli...

We were not expecting this on our day-off walk yesterday. A full carpet of bluebells stretching in all directions. A haze of blue. Beautiful scent in the air. What a way to welcome April.

The great Roz Chast

Since the headline is a bit confusing, the NYT is reporting that on the same day we hit the girl's school in Minab, we also sent a missile full of tungsten steel pellets at a girl's volleyball tournament hundreds of miles away in Lamerd. Twenty one dead. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/w...

People do not appreciate what a vast, fundamental sea change batteries are bringing to the electrical system.

If you're in Detroit, from Detroit, or connected to Detroit, I would love to personally invite you to this event and to suggest communities to personally invite. We also want to support a Detroit-based bookseller, so if you have any suggestions, let us know. #blacksky #detroit #michigan

I finished @adambecker.bsky.social’s More Everything Forever yesterday and it hasn’t left my mind all day (and I’m usually too scatterbrained for that). You should read it if you haven’t already! Mini review below: 1/n

This book is a beautifully harsh discussion about the politics of identity, journalism, power, resistance and the self interest/complacency of western liberalism, among many other things. It’s an essential read.

Human banner at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, as part of Saturday’s nationwide “No Kings” protests
 🎥 Adam Pardee/for SFGATE

Great turnout at Ann Arbor No Kings!

There are #NoKings in Ann Arbor today.

Early, early spring, but the Cornelian Cherry Dogwood and the first flocks of birders are blooming in the Nichol's Arboretum.

Happy birthday to the Washington Metro, which opened 50 years ago today with service on 4.6 mi of Red Line between Rhode Is. Ave & Farragut N. System now serves 130 mi. The DC Metro shows that, with good planning & enough investment, the public sector can succeed & build something extraordinary.

I don't think people fully appreciate how apocalyptic things are for US science. I haven't had any new funding since 2024, but I'm still ok since typical grants are for three years. This means next year I will be completely out of funding and will have to fire everyone in the lab. It's not great.

Hang it in the Louvre. Or the home, office or classroom. artologica.etsy.com