The talk to your friends app and the witness the horrors app being the same app is not great for the mental health is it

If Trump can declare war without congressional authorization, then Congress has effectively disbanded itself.

Study finds ChatGPT Health did not recommend a hospital visit when medically necessary in more than half of cases. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

🧪🦣🏺 I'm quoted here, and much of what I spoke about with Carl echoes April's comments. Extra thoughts: 1. nice new piece for extending complexity in how we think about #Neanderthal interactions, though as authors note, multiple mechanisms (not just mate choice) possibly active in X chromo patterns

Let's outlaw scheduling meetings without first. I don't care what my university account calendar says, it's not a reflection of my availability, and even if it was, that doesn't give you the right to commit me to anything without my consent, kthxbye.

The National Science Foundation is systematically being converted to the National AI and Quantum Research Foundation. “I see it as the administration exerting political control over what has traditionally been NSF’s ability to fund the best science.”

once your email storage is full you should be allowed to graduate from it. no more emails for you. you’ve seen enough emails. you’re free now

Cool (hot??) new climate podcast alert!

It's not getting much press coverage, but last month the Department of Education quietly stopped fighting a lawsuit challenging the infamous DEI "Dear Colleague" letter. This effectively means the letter is unenforceable. This is a huge win that deserves celebrating, and we can thank unions!

It's easy to mock people who hold unscientific beliefs about food, chemicals, or medicine. But those fears don't exist in a vacuum. You can't change minds about vaccines, diets, etc. without understanding that those fears have root in distrust in industries that have a history of lying about safety.

Since yesterday, the Einstein AI cheatbot website underwent some rebranding. The tagline changed from "Einstein does the busywork so you don't have to," to "Einstein is the personal tutor every student deserves." In the FAQ, "How does Einstein do all this?" became "How does Einstein help me learn?"

Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, FINALLY.

"It entails...avoiding oral contraceptives, antibiotics, and over-the-counter pain medications like ibuprofen..."

We are counter-programming the State of the Union with a fundraising telethon featuring everyone’s favorite Bluesky posters doing short presentations and sketches on stuff they are passionate about. Will stream on YouTube starting at 8:30pm EST postersmadness.wordpress.com

Relevant to today's conversation about AI's inherent sexism, here's an email from cognitive psychologist and early AI theorist Roger Schank, arguing to Epstein that women can't be truly intelligent, because they care too much about what other people think.

"But he didn't know" okay, great, but did he speak out against an overtly sexist, racist power broker, or did he accept the invitations and the money? Because this culture doesn't just happen. It's created by the consent of the people who have access to those spaces. 19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

It should be against the law to operate a business and not have a clear mechanism to talk to a real human being when you need to.

I have never been more glad that I have resisted the digitization of my classes.

The past is never dead; it’s not even past. - Faulkner And yes, the answer is yes, I absolutely wanted to read about cyanobacteria and banded iron formation and the Michigan mines my grandfather worked in.

It starts with us. It starts with the words we use. How we speak to ourselves, how we speak to others. What we choose to read and watch shapes our minds, and that is something that is entirely within our control, and should be taken very seriously.

"Snowball Earth might have had a dynamic climate and open seas": a nice article about our new study led by the amazing @cgrifgeo.bsky.social, just published in @scinews.bsky.social www.sciencenews.org/article/snow... @unisouthampton.bsky.social

“[People in the plastics industry] are very happy for us to look at ourselves and at each other, and not look at them,” says @bethgardiner.bsky.social, author of "Plastic Inc: Big Oil, Big Money and the Plan to Trash our Future."

A confirmation hearing has been set for next Wednesday for Steve Pearce, Trump's latest pick to head the Bureau of Land Management. If you care about public lands, call your senators. I wrote about Pearce's uniquely disqualifying past back in November at Sierra: www.sierraclub.org/sierra/conse...

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right. Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement. This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

Signed!

This. As a podcaster, you become very aware of how much we don’t notice the “ums” and “uhs” when listening to someone speak, but they stick out like a sore thumb in text. This is how the media influences public opinion. Stop giving the papers that do this your money.

I don't know what to do but just keep repeating it so I don't go insane: the rise & eventual total domination of RW media is the single most significant political development of my lifetime and the entirely of the US political & media elite resolutely refuse to discuss or even acknowledge it.

Grabbed mine! 🔭

Historian of medicine here. Yes. Yes, they did.

☝️👱‍♀️👉📈

The people who have to insure our homes and cars know that climate change is real, because it affects their bottom line. It's not that regulating emissions is bad for business; it's just bad for a small number of industries that happen to be very powerful.

The number of people who seem to think the SAVE Act is "just" a voter ID bill is truly alarming. People are not living in shared realities.

I wonder if people are paying attention to how much their doom scrolling is cutting into time they used to use to read books

Hey, journalist friends: The Maine Monitor is hiring an environment reporter! The position can be remote, but you must be based in Maine.

Every now and then, I say “I’m right on top of that, Rose!” when someone asks me to do something. Someday, they’ll actually get the reference and I will have found my people.

Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, The Hunger Games, Jurassic Park, Silence of the Lambs, North and South (the British miniseries based on Elizabeth Gaskill’s book), Stand By Me, Big Little Lies (HBO show, season 1)…

This is a much-needed initiative from an organization doing truly impactful climate work. If you’re working on climate solutions, check these out!

If you are also dealing with a sense of betrayal, I think this is a good listen. Scientific societies (plural) have failed us because they are, in the end, still behaving like boys' clubs. Also TW about the incident in SVP24 Minneapolis. pca.st/episode/d8b6...

How A.I. Companies Are Preying on College Students. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...

As expected, in the final rule, EPA's Endangerment Finding repeal backs down entirely from challenging the science, choosing to focus on statutory arguments regarding EPA's authority. Good work, everyone who contributed to the @andrewdessler.com review!

If somewhere, everywhere, and nowhere are words, then somewhen, everywhen, and nowhen also get to be words.

Have there been any fun new paleo studies out this week? I like to share them with my class for #FossilFriday, and I want to make sure I don't miss anything.

I have a friend who said, of Starfleet Academy, that this took them out of it - that seeing a person in a wheelchair in the 32nd century seemed unrealistic, since medicine in Star Trek "should be able to cure whatever was wrong with them." That's not the case, for any number of possible reasons.

When did humans start using drills? “A new study reveals that Egyptians were using a mechanically sophisticated drilling tool far earlier than previously suggested” (about 3250 BCE). It’s the oldest known rotary drill 🔩 you guys! www.austriaca.at?arp=0x0041300e

NSF's graduate research fellowship (GRF) program is designed to teach aspiring scientists how to write a winning grant proposal. So why are so many applicants being denied that learning experience? www.science.org/content/arti...

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

This is the type of thing I keep trying to talk to people about for higher ed. Not conference rooms where I "listen to diverse perspectives" but actually doing work to imagine what strengthening the US higher education system in furtherance of a democracy would look like.

Journalism places verifiable information into the public record and leaves others—officials, courts, markets, communities—to decide what follows. It functions as a form of civic maintenance, keeping the factual record from fragmenting entirely. @mongabay.com news.mongabay.com/2026/02/what...

The real problem isn’t that private equity is driving up costs, wages have stagnated, and unregulated hotel chains like AirBnB are gobbling up stock. It’s your relentless appetite for—I’m sorry, I’m getting a breaking update…they’re saying that it’s no longer avocado toast, it’s gut-friendly juices.

U.S. coal is so desperate it’s getting handouts from the Pentagon @opinion.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...