Not just water governance. My bosses want science based on old, simple, well-established methods. Novelty might get you published, but it also might mean the results are less likely to impact policy or practice outside academia.

this is such a classic villain quote

This Upton Sinclair quote never misses “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

We do NOT have 8 maids-a-milking but we do have a linguist who could probably tell us why it's 'a-milking' - Sean Wren from @taranhunt.bsky.social 's THE KYSTROM CHRONICLES! Open to US/CAN/UK & IE only. Like, follow, repost & drop a ☄️in the comments to enter! Ends 11th Jan 2026 23:59 GMT🪐📚💙

I feel this is probably quite important information. You wouldn't want to get it wrong.

I've waited 3 years to make this post

You probably heard the US admin is threatening to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research: but did you know they already froze funding for the 9 regional Climate Science Adaptation Centers? From tracking invasives to helping tribes with drought, here's why the CASCs matter ⬇️

Knives Out rickroll

AI is about as accurate as someone who sounds smart because they are good at improv that sounds like it could be true. But because truth is often stranger than fiction, that person is often wrong. Like this type of person, the system is rewarded by popularity, not accuracy.

Perhaps this dates me, but I remember listening to that show when I was a graduate student.

My entire existence has been summed up in a t-shirt . . .

To my office, practising arithmetique alone and making an end of last night’s book with great content, and so home to supper and to bed.

Merry Holidays and Happy #InverteFest !! Hope everyone is having a tentalicious time today ✨🐙 #inverts 🦐🐞

Day 25 of my 2025 Favorites: the most festive of boys Phidippus cardinalis. Just a lovely little velvet ant mimic lad. That red is so striking in the sandy scrub. ❤️ #EmotionalSupportSpood #InverteFest Merry Whatever-The-Hell-You're-Doing-Today Day to you all

I can relate, Murderbot. I can relate. #murderbot #slyart

There is an unfortunate error in this newly published @globalchangebio.bsky.social paper. The caption for this image reads "upper panel with dragon icon symbolising all tetrapod" but this is incorrect. That is either a wyvern (with two wings and two legs) or it is not a tetrapod (6 limbs).

As in South Africa, also in Michigan. I have had these same arguments in favor of savanna preservation and restoration over tree planting in what were incorrectly classified as "understocked forests."

Long thread on energy policy, and well worth the 49 posts.

There is a west Michigan vs east Michigan rivalry, an MSU vs UM rivalry. On both counts, I enjoy laughing at Ann Arbor. This is priceless. The comments.

Am I going to comfort watch The Big Short? No, I am not. Do I find much needed comfort in that last line of the essay? Yes, yes, I do.

Cooperation is a universal feature of complex systems, from the origins of life and microbiomes to societies. What universal patterns can be found in these systems? Here's our new @pnas.org paper. @jordipinero.bsky.social @artemyte.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Me, submerged headfirst in Brie: Shu’ up, ’s medishinal.

Going with number 3 movie for that year. Looks like 2026 will be another year of doomscrolling... or maybe another re-watch of the Loki 2 series.

Join us on this #BugBanterPodcast, to hear from two incredible artists behind the studio Ink Dwell, Jane Kim & Thayer Walker, about how they use their art to connect people with conservation! 🦋🖌️ Audio & transcript 📻 xerces.org/bug-banter/w... Video w/ captions 📺 www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRB0...

this was a huge project - i interviewed dozens of americans who feared the worst from the start of the trump era, i wanted to understand why it was obvious to some, but not others i'd like to thank everyone who participated newrepublic.com/article/2042...

In this article, just out, I argue that scientists have a crucial role in the science-policy interface: keep making questions, especially those whose answers decision-makers don't know they want to know, or know they do not want to know. Here's the link: journals.plos.org/sustainabili...

What infuriates me too is all those silly "anti-woke" science people screeching about Lysenko because of, you know, pronouns, who will be silent on this. (The piece below was in response to one of those.) pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/12/imme... @drkarenlord.bsky.social @annaleen.bsky.social

shot and chaser: marcusolang.substack.com/p/it-started...

I have read, blurbed, reviewed quite a lot of science books this year. Here are some I have particularly enjoyed, in no particular order. @matthewcobb.bsky.social's long awaited biography of Francis Crick did not disappoint. Authoritative and highly readable. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

We need to move beyond optimism and pessimism. We need to celebrate policy progress AND increase urgency based on recent science about climate sensitivity, feedbacks, and nonlinearities.

Happy 100th birthday to Dick Van Dyke who starred in one of my favorite childhood movies, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I still remember the lyrics to most of the songs. #DickVanDyke

Just how much does BlueSky love swiss theremin rescue stories?

** (Shout-out to @jimchines.com's "Slayers of Old" which I read and very much enjoyed recently, and "Pretty Pretty Please I Don't Want To Be A Magical Girl" by @kianamai.bsky.social .) **

The thing is... many of us have limits, boundaries, places we won't go, and that allows us to imagine that others have limits, boundaries, places they won't go. But they don't--not this administration. So normalizing *anything* just means having to normalize a bleeding edge farther out at some point

Dragons. Cooperative game. Kickstarter.

How likely are you to invest in a new business? Ask your partner to marry you? Move to a new country? A new model by SFI External Professor Paul Smaldino and colleagues explains how wealth, experience, and environment shape our risk tolerance — and how those effects persist across generations.

Happy to share a new article with practical advice for interdisciplinary biodiversity research, co-authored with Fred Harris and Tasman Crowe: conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @ipbes.net @ucdsustainability.bsky.social

Every time I turn around, someone is pointing out the critical importance of vapor pressure deficit or VPD in a changing climate.

I think we have a sequel to Alice's Restaurant, or at least a scene in a sequel. Where are our humorous folk singer songwriters?

The "pint at Oxford" is a good hook, but the new tech (or rather the innovative application if existing tech) does answer a nagging problem I hear from my colleagues in Michigan's Dept of Ag and Rural Development. How to define regenerative ag in a way that can be measured.

"Now that we’ve experienced a global pandemic and various Constitutional crises, maybe it’s time to put dystopian fiction behind us for a little while. This anthology of fiction and nonfiction asks sci-fi authors [...] to write about their vision for “realistic, progressive social change”"

Over on Whatever, I'm doing a series on movies I consider "Comfort Watches" - not the greatest movies of all time, necessarily, but some of the most rewatchable. I'm starting the series with easily the most rewatchable movie of 2025: K-Pop Demon Hunters! whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/01/t...

The posts and actions this week of the administration have me thinking about the future. What are the best ways to ensure accountability, justice, and discourage future bad behavior.

"Afraid of appearing partisan, the Obama administration looked the other way when it came to prosecuting war criminals and torturers. The lack of confrontation is coming back to haunt us." True in 2018, even more true in 2025 after a second Dem admin took office, slow-rolled prosecution, lost

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you've seen in the wild: Great Lakes Piping Plover Karner Blue Butterfly Eastern Massasuaga Rattlesnake Copperbelly Water Snake Canada lynx

“Choosing to write is also choosing to make meaning. Studies suggest that having a sense of agency is both a prerequisite for, and an outcome of, writing.” ChatGPT isn’t mentioned once in this article but it’s impossible not to read it as a powerful critique.

I am a big fan of the ugly and obscure biodiversity, but this guy's selfie charisma is fantastic.

Uh oh. This could go poorly.