I often think about how the government hounded Aaron Swartz to death for scraping Jstor, yet all these AI companies scraped almost literally all of human knowledge (and continue to do so even when they're told to stop) and have had no criminal consequences.

Lunule and umbo are both going on the list of words I have to remember to use to annoy people when playing Scrabble :)

Iykyk

Moment of silence for all the cat owners who didn't survive the time change today

Happy Halloween and spooky Samhain, butterflies! We're back with #FossilFriday and it's another meme on deck. 🧪⚒️🦪🦪 Yo, dawg! I heard you like bivalves, so we put clams in your clam so you can bivalve while you bivalve! Someone tag @dantheclamman.blog , I feel like he has relevant interests.

The article talks about opening up central California to oil and gas development.. Looking at Bureau of Ocean Energy Management maps, this could include a large swath of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, including the Bodega and Año Nuevo basins, and Partington basin off Big Sur.

trump take science

They should create a living man out of the body parts of various corpses

Genuinely torn...

At 185 mph maximum sustained winds, Cat 5 Hurricane #Melissa is now just 7 mph shy of what @michaelfwehner.bsky.social r.bsky.social & Jim Kossin have defined as the cutoff for a prospective "Cat 6" hurricane: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

All I see here is a very everyday leaf (the leaf is doing a great job).

Holy shit, echinoderm gang, are you seeing this video? @echinoblog.bsky.social @daveyfwright.bsky.social

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

Despite all my rage I am still just a bug in a cage.

Sexy Amorphophallus konjac

Concurring with The Onion: There Absolutely Nothing We Can Learn from Clams I wrote an article concurring with the recent Onion article: "Biologists Announce There Absolutely Nothing We Can Learn From Clams"

Share if you agree

On 11/12 at 12 Pacific time I'll be joining my fave mag @baynature.org for a talk about salinity in SF Bay! Thinkin on the salt of the Bay, wasting time.🧂🌊 Register at this link: free for members or $5 otherwise, with the fee going to a great cause! baynature.app.neoncrm.com/nx/portal/ne...

This is DISASTROUS

It's impossible to doom scroll if you're scrolling through a feed of hundreds of clam facts.

Premeditated murder of the American research community. None of this had to happen.

Mollusks. Together. Strong. (And I'll dabble in clams so that's fair) Infinite diversity in invertebrate combinations🖖

This is the ideal male body. Interestingly, it's also the ideal female body. And it is both at the same time, in circular orgies called mating chains.

Japanese Urchin POOP! Wow. SO ROUND! via @Crinoidea_hk on the other place #echinoday

My second nautilus is much closer to done after today’s session at the easel. Next weekend, the allonautilus! #nautilus #allonautilus #marinelife #deepseacreatures #mollusks #cephalopods #oilpainting #wildlifeart #animalart 🐡 🦑

"a kind of celebration of ignorance"

They live 100s of years, change sex, and can filter a case of beer in 15 minutes.

Obviously The Onion has been infiltrated and taken over by brachiopodologists. Nice work!

I feel like me and @dantheclamman.blog vs The Onion is the plucky underdog story that the world needs

True theonion.com/biologists-a...

Oxidised (left) and unoxidised 3.2 billion year old banded iron formation. These samples are from drill core and were only a couple of meters apart. #geology #paleontology

Looking for recommendations on where to buy good mussel shirts. That’s not a typo. #malacology is good ecology.

The genetic lore of X-men regarding a single X gene is a disaster, and the supposed mutant species name of "Homo superior" shows a misunderstanding of evolution as directed towards a final form

Submitting a grant at this particular moment feels a bit like tossing a rock into the abyss, but hey, at least I am no longer carrying the rock.

In 13 years time, though, people *would* be convinced to do a dance about shellfish. www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QS...

A lot of Republicans down the Jersey Shore turned out to be great friends of the whales when there was a chance that some offshore wind farms might get built. Looking forward to hearing about how they react to this news...

Do The Clam was co-written by Dolores Fuller, paramour of director Ed Wood.

The comment about the brachiopods has touched my heart! Their biology is quite complex for marine benthic invertebrates...only the brain is missing!!

Fuck Bruce Harrell. Anyway, here's a clam! #InsertAnInvert2024 in 2025

Day 12 #Invertober2025 - Pacific razor clam (Siliqua patula) 🐚 #SciArt #invertebrates

My kingdom for some floss! www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

Between SCOBYs, hummingbirds, and yeast in my aquarium CO2 reactor, I feel like a sugar delivery system these days

Vermiculite (must be labelled as “pure”) or diatomite are other alternatives. Centuries of burning and draining of peat by humans has released a significant amount of CO2 into the atmosphere, contributing to anthropogenic climate change. Harvesting peat destroys carbon sinks

I think the only economically important species is the species in New Zealand that has bioluminescent fungus gnat larvae that people do boat tours to see the “glowworms” in caves!

Fun fact, I used to work for one of the only living fungus gnat experts. He researched gnats that lived in the wild and basically had zero impact on humans. I collected some in Latin America for him and hoped to have a fungus gnat species named for me but I don’t think he will ever describe it.

I could go on a long rant about how commercial potting mixes are including too much organic material and not enough conditioners like perlite. Peat (a surprisingly scarce resource) is being wasted. Plants are dying of root rot. It creates perfect conditions for gnats.

RFK Jr on Tylenol and autism: "It is not proof. We're doing the studies to make the proof."

My cat just did some funny stuff in my house but I wasn't fast enough to record it to post to the internet. I feel bad. I feel like I let you all down. I'm sorry