Some aircraft contrails persist and spread out to form a hazy layer. This hazy layer may be responsible for 1-2% of global warming. Who gave the airline industry permission to alter our sky in this way? contrails.org

Geologic Core Sample xkcd.com/3171/

So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth! #protistsonsky 🧵

I’ve been running around asking tech execs and academics if language was the same as intelligence for over a year now - and, well, it isn’t. @benjaminjriley.bsky.social explains how the bubble is built on ignoring cutting-edge research into the science of thought www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

Wonderful to see a writeup of our recent permafrost work out in @natclimate.nature.com ! "Microbes wake up" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Amazing, depressing article about RFK Jr by Michael Scherer in The Atlantic. This graf at the end stayed with me. Our national policy is now based on the difference between 17 and 21 outcomes out of populations of 22000. As usual, hard to know if it is stupidity or dishonesty.

Editor-In-Chief for FEMS Microbiology Reviews of @femsjournals.bsky.social @femsmicro.org #SocietyJournal #Microbiology #EditorInChief fems-microbiology.org/opportunitie...

Study after study shows that using LLMs is bad for cognition, bad for learning, bad for understanding, bad for mental health. So why are our schools and universities still relentlessly pushing them?

I agree with this, but I think 'learning requires effort' is sadly not something many internalize. I encounter loads of students who view difficulty learning as evidence of their inherent insufficiency; therefore they self-select out of certain subjects the moment things get tricky (1/2)

One of the arguments against letting gay people serve in the US military was "unit cohesion", because gay people might disrupt social bonds & mutual trust, an argument that was always in bad faith. Imagine the impact on unit cohesion this might have. Yet somehow totally fine.

What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma. It's *scientific publishing*. We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_... Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇

I've always been a fan of markdown format for code notebooks but....wow, editing python with quarto in positron is genuinely a more pleasant experience than jupyter notebooks!! #rstats

Why are planetary scientists, astrobiologists and and SETI scientists so negative (pissed off, even) about Avi Loeb’s repeated claims that 3I/Atlas may be an invading alien spaceship? 🧵 🧪🔭🛸 (1/7)

Murine norovirus and influenza virus H5N1 can survive the process of making cheese from raw milk, persisting for weeks. Thus, it is recommended that milk contaminated with viruses be heat-treated to ensure safety. Get more info in #AppEnvMicro: asm.social/2Gi

A wonderful collaboration between my lab and Andy Ellington and Edward Marcotte here at UT. We obtained lots of thermal stable plastic degrading enzymes from the deep sea (Guaymas Basin, Gulf of California)

Hundreds of thousands of people, dead because of a decision made by the world's richest man

The US withdrawal from WHO could impact the flu shot. Flu samples sent to CDC from around the world are down 60% this year, as of July. "When those viruses are not coming in, we don't know what to put in the vaccine, and you're going to have less effective vaccines." www.npr.org/sections/goa...

Amy Angert and I are recruiting a #postdoc to participate in a collaborative NSF-funded study of demographic responses to climate across the geographic range of the scarlet monkeyflower. Please repost! jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/224...

this is a nightmare and i love it

purrr 1.2.0 out now — mostly removing long deprecated functions but a few small performance nad parallel processing improvements. Learn more at www.tidyverse.org/blog/2025/11... #rstats

BREAKING: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is illegally closing 13 campus buildings (including ~100 laboratories). Report coming from GESTA, the Goddard employee union

A devastating set of decisions on the part of UC leadership to withdraw support from our nationally recognized postdoc program that prioritizes research excellence combined with addressing our university public service mission. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

Dartmouth’s Earth Science Department is hiring in Geobiology and/or Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry!

"Science is being destroyed across many agencies" say federal researchers. For my latest @nature.com piece, I spoke to 19 different scientists across EPA, NOAA, NIH, NASA, and USGS to document how science is being dismantled across US federal agencies.

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

(9/9)This article details the administration’s ongoing destruction of NASA science. Here Press Secretary Bethany Stevens clearly violates the Hatch Act, as Acting Administrator Duffy has done. If they’re not held accountable, NASA’s integrity may never be restored. www.space.com/space-explor...

A personal reflection on the destructive erosion of ethics, norms and respect for law at NASA: 🧪🔭 🧵

If you take the time to read the whole Gates memo (which I did), the bulk of the content was mostly solid and encouraging. Really! It was the FRAME that was off--very off, from the first line. And when your framing is off, then how you make decisions and set priorities is off. THAT'S the problem.

Government has published one of those quiet but important documents that might get overlooked as it is not 'newsy'. The headline finding is that £1 of public R&D investment generates £8 in net economic benefits for the UK over the long term www.gov.uk/government/p...

The average nucleotide identity (ANI) underpins how we map microbial diversity, compare species, and connect genomes to ecology. I wrote a short piece reflecting on the discovery and significance of this metric (and really enjoyed digging into the context and story behind it!) #microsky 🧬

ladies and gentlemen...we got him

I wanted to offer some thoughts on the Gates climate memo that has been circulating this week. While I can't directly speak for others, I can say that my own response is one of dismay & deep frustration (and that this view is shared by many climate/Earth scientists). [1/n]

Oof, WY, KS, AR, SD, NE, KY, ME

To all team #GDGTs members: T. Schneider and @islatope.bsky.social have a new paper that describes a new software to calculate a wide range of GDGT-based indices! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🔗 to the summary by T. Schneider in my next post. 🧪 With implications for ⚒️ and #PaleoSky (1/2)

While the feds continue to play stupid games, SNAP recipients are set to lose food aid for the next month. In the Bay Area, a growing number of restaurants are stepping up to help, and we're maintaining the list. Share with anyone who needs it. www.coyotemedia.org/these-bay-ar...

More people need to watch this. It's what happens when a pipeline carrying CO2 ruptures. We need these pipelines for any carbon sequestration scheme (CCS, DAC). When the flood of heavy CO2 gas rolls over the landscape it suffocates everything in its path and shuts off car engines, which need oxygen.

👏🏽 Congrats to our CU Boulder colleagues in GEOL & EBIO + their co-authors for a very interesting study on microbes in permafrost. @cubouldearth.bsky.social @tacaro.bsky.social @kopflab.bsky.social @isotopes.bsky.social + others

Whatever strategy you’re about to suggest, we’ve thought about it. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

NASA Mars Perseverance Rover at Jezero crater Sol 1,663 (24rd Oct, 2025) Close-ups of a new abrasion Sherloc-Watson cam Site 79 / 102 📷 Credits: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Martian-Observer

NYT pushed its “Dems must go moderate” take again yesterday. In a new piece out today, @adambonica.bsky.social shows even more clearly why the data don’t support it. It also shows what a skilled empiricist and teacher Adam is. Very proud of my pal’s public work. open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...

TWELVE open PhD positions - what a fantastic opportunity for aspiring ocean scientists! UAF is a fantastic university with really amazing faculty, and Fairbanks is a beautiful place for outdoorsy people.

HiPOD: An Olivine-Rich Massif in Hellas This observation targets banded terrain located in an olivine-rich massif in the Hellas Basin. In places, this banding is disrupted by a blobby and streaky dark-toned unit. https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_076431_1525 NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

I forget where I first saw this trick, but this is valid #Rstats code: set.seed(2025-10-22) Setting the random seed to today's ISO 8601 avoids using the same seed, and gives you a quick reference for the day you started the project without digging through git logs.

Announcing the Data Explorer “Convert to Code” Feature on Positron! With a single click, you can copy the R or Python code that reflects the filters and sorts you've set up in the Data Explorer UI. Transition quickly from visual exploration to scripting today! positron.posit.co/data-explore...

Fewer grad students means less science, but many STEM PhD programs in the US are cutting back on admissions this year due to federal funding uncertainties. Words by me for @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41... @emsque.bsky.social @ucsdcooperlab.bsky.social @julieposselt.bsky.social 🧪

Postdoc vacancy: Microbial dormancy in the cryosphere @erc.europa.eu #ERC_SIESTA 📢 PLEASE RT 🧬 Single cell microbial activity measurements, flow cytometry, cell sorting, omics, ecological interpretation ☀️ Marseille, France ‼️ Apply ASAP & before 7 Nov Link: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

🚨WATCH/SHARE: A new @propublica.org short documentary about how Russell Vought became Trump’s “shadow president.” See for yourself newly unearthed video and audio of Vought laying his plans and his worldview like never before. www.propublica.org/article/vide...

More than 11 million tonnes of meat is consumed in cities in the US every year, according to an analysis in Nature Climate Change. This equates to 329 million tonnes of carbon emissions, which is comparable to emission levels from US domestic fossil fuel use. go.nature.com/3Jo8DEh 🧪

Nevada could’ve fined the company more than $3 million, but regulators are seeking a reduced penalty of $242,800, citing an “extraordinary number of violations.” With City Cast Las Vegas