I’m delighted to share some news: my new book "You Don’t Know What You’re M ss ng" is coming out in the UK on 4th June. It’s about something that lies hidden in the background of almost everything we do, yet rarely gets named: Missingness. uk.bookshop.org/p/bo... 1/9

👇🎯 Your regular reminder that <no one> knows the right amount viewpoint diversity on college campuses, & there are <exactly zero> societal institutions in America with more respect for viewpoint diversity than universities. It's not even close. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

I think this is part of what's driving me potty at the moment. Seeing ostensibly intelligent people exercising zero critical thinking and falling for what is clearly a scam because they've not taken time to do the reading (ha, literally in many cases)

Albert Einstein passed away #OTD in 1955 due to complications from a ruptured abdominal aneurysm. Doctors recommended surgical intervention but Einstein declined, saying “I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly." Here is his office as he left it. 🧪 ⚛️ Image: R. Morse/LIFE

Tell the truth and get fired.

My latest. I’ve been watching the media coverage of the murders of Dr. Cerina Fairfax and Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer. One way media can fight back against male violence: If you kill your wife, you don’t get to be called a “husband” any more. You’re her killer. open.substack.com/pub/karenatt...

Forest Service plan to close research stations stokes fear as wildfire season approaches michiganadvance.com/2026/04/18/r... From @stateline.org

Incredible level of grift here. Even compared to all the other grift from this regime

It shocks me how many businesses still don’t seem to get that Trump’s cultural revolution did not actually happen

Such an important piece from @drhigginsmd.bsky.social. I had similar conclusions when I looked at the Politico poll in question, but Dr. Higgins expressed it more eloquently than I ever could. Vaccine hesitancy is not mainstream and we should not present it as such.

“Maybe vibe-coding isn’t actually working as well as people think it is,” she thought absently, staring out the window at the rain while waiting for Bluesky to actually work. “Maybe we need more than vibes. Maybe we actually need…each other.”

Save the US Forest Service from destructive “restructuring” peer.org/letter-tell-...

This semester, my paleoecology students are working on species recovery plans for extinct species from the fossil record (I gave them a list to choose from), and my approach of "only assign things you'll actually enjoy grading" continues to be paying dividends.

The new Massive Attack x Tom Waits track and video are worth a listen and watch.

“viewpoint diversity” is a right-wing political project, as lisa siraganian explores in great detail here: www.aaup.org/academe/issu...

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse Media and universities: AI is here to stay

My big takeaway from reporting this story is that it's not JUST about the Forest Service. The closure of these stations threatens to upend a delicate system of mutually beneficial collaboration and resource sharing, and the impacts will ripple out far beyond the Forest Service itself.

We’re about to hear a lot of hand-wringing about how the internet did this to men but this is what men did to the internet.

Good to see this. @whitehouse.senate.gov turns his sights on Elon Musk's unpermitted jet engines polluting a South Memphis community to power his Colossus II supercomputer. Time for EPA to actually enforce environmental laws.

The acceleration of the closure of small liberal arts colleges is such a gut punch. These are often the kinds of places that are life-changing experiences for students, providing opportunities for exploration, connection, and learning outcomes that aren't possible at larger universities.

I’ve always said that submitting a grant proposal is an exercise in hope—not just in terms of being funded, but as a symbol of what it means to dream big and ask exciting questions. Despite everything happening to federal science over the last year, I’m holding on to that hope. Proposal submitted.

People hate this shit so much. Nobody's having fun. Even the AI people are getting tired of this. They're losing and they know it. Even with the ever-growing revenues of OpenAI and Anthropic, things feel weird and bad. Anthropic's services are also randomly broken or rate limited to hell. Cool!

NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health. 'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:

I just finished my second play-through of Cyberpunk 2077 and I have thoughts.

As somebody exiting the technology industry, it really does annoy me that for years and years and years we were all told "learn to code, learn to code, become agile, you should be working in tech" and then that all got farted out the window as soon as they thought they could minimise costs.

The point of the university as a concept is that it's been here for a thousand years and meant to be here another thousand. Turning education over to producing what the market needed five years ago is never going to work well.

It feels so weird to hear people say they use LLM to summarise a paper when the ABSTRACT exists - it's already been summarised for you! If there's something you want to find out from the paper which isn't in the abstract, then maybe you should READ IT

Whenever I find out a colleague is using LLM to do literature searches and to "summarise" papers

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.

Yep. People don’t come forward publicly because the social costs for speaking out about abuse are almost always higher than being outed as an abuser. I’ve seen this same culture play out in academia over and over again.

At a certain point of wealth, what is being pursued seems not to be wealth, but the ability to make other people suffer. What's being pursued is immunity from human decency; the ability and even the right to be depraved with impunity. They get off on the suffering. www.the-reframe.com/where-it-ends/

Listen, you've never sobbed in your life the way you sob when you internalize that humanity is the means by which the universe understands itself.

We needed this moment of collective joy.

Science is good. We should fund it.

NASA failed to predict the real splashdown risk.

Oof, I had no idea I was carrying so much anxiety about the Artemis crew! I’m so glad the made it nom safe. I can’t imagine what it’s like, waiting inside Integrity for someone to come and let you out. It’s like waiting to deplane but a thousand times worse! Welcome home, trailblazers!

I'm moonscrolling

Things that work: giant rocket, very precise math, orbital mechanics, cameras, iPhones Things that don’t work: Microsoft Outlook, toilets, sat phones

I have a theory that the horribly botched Title II compliance rollout at universities is not because the government suddenly cares about accessibility (Title II only applies to digital infrastructure), but because of lobbying by tech companies to get us to all train AI image description algorithms.

I never tire of pointing out that multiple shows did "Oh, my old friend is trans? That's interesting!" episodes in the '70s and '80s, and while none of these hold up by modern representation standards, they're all quite good and accepting in a way you might not expect.

Guess what time it is? It's abortion fund-a-thon time! Help me support Jane's Due Process, helping teens access abortion in Texas (and beyond). JDP has been helping teens since before abortion was illegal in Texas, and now helps get pregnant people out, as well as providing Plan B to folks.

🌿 The BSA Spring Swag Store is here! Two gorgeous new designs by BSA's own Catrina Adams, including the stunning Resilient collection and a woodcut-style design to benefit PlantingScience.org. BSA members can email [email protected] for 10% off. www.bonfire.com/store/bsa-sp...

Somewhat urgent question: does anyone know if "biodiversity" is getting caught up in NSF AI filters because of the word "diversity?" In other words, is that safe language to use in a proposal right now, or no?

NEW: Raised voices by the community brought back Pride flags at Boston University, for now. The people have the power! www.advocate.com/politics/sta...

Contrary to increasingly popular belief, there are, in fact, still things computers can’t do - as @sifu.tweety.fish reminds us:

Things I Know Far Too Much About (that aren’t theater or movies): 1. Pre-Code Hollywood (hey, it’s not A movie) 2. WWI 3. The Forgotten Realms

One of my former students took her final project for my field natural history class and turned it into her Honors thesis: a 100% original, hand-drawn field guide to the rocky intertidal! And she got copies printed for her defense!

Also of note, Iowa paid Chris Rufo—perhaps the leading propagandist for the current assault on higher ed, an unqualified hack and admitted fabulist—$34,000 to speak. It's embarrassing that any higher ed institution would invite him, especially when they are cutting departmental budgets.

What makes this satire is that no one would actually physically restrain someone saying this today.