2nd and 3rd new bird species of the year today in Long Beach, CA, USA, thanks to eBird rare bird alerts: Grace's Warbler (here naturally) and Swinhoe's White-Eye (part of a rapidly expanding group of escapees in this part of the LA area) #Birds #BirdPhotography

Given the state & prevalence of LLMs today, I wonder if there's any value in student personal and research statements as part of grad school applications. When I read very similar statements from very different students, I find it hard to trust them. I also wonder about their recommendation letters.

First new bird species seen in 2026: Painted Redstart, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, CA, USA #Birds #BirdPhotography

Townsend's Warblers are pretty, including this one in Elysian Park, Los Angeles, CA, USA #Birds #BirdPhotography

At the Rose Parade

Watching the Rose Parade is always fun on New Year’s Day

A new bird species for me: Thick-billed Kingbird, Griffith Park, Los Angeles, CA, USA #BIrds #BirdPhotography

One of the stranger things about being in Pasadena is that you can regularly say - oh, there's a peacock on the roof

I'm reviewing computer science PhD student applications over my "break" and am amazed at them. It's hard to find any that don't seem like they would be good PhD students, and they almost all have interesting stories and strong recommendations.

Costa Rica nature, Nov/Dec 2025 (22/?): Amazon Kingfisher (x2), Ringed Kingfisher, Three-wattled Bellbird #Birds #BirdPhotography #CostaRica

2025 saw tremendous momentum at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, coming to Chicago's southeast side. It'll be a first-of-its-kind campus built for quantum technology and microelectronics innovation and scale-up. Read more about them 👉 https://iqmp.org/ #SystemStories2025

A Cooper's Hawk in Pasadena, CA, USA #Birds #BirdPhotography

Check the spotlight of one of the premier founding members of US-RSE, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ( #NCSA ), on how they help promote #RSE's impact on #research and provide valuable resources! 👉 www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

A new paper: M. Barker, J. Cohen, P. H. Serrano, D. S. Katz, K. Martin, D. Rudmann, H. Shanahan, "Institutional Policy Pathways for Supporting Research Software: Global Trends and Local Practices," Journal of Open Research Software, v.13(1), p. 39, 2025. doi.org/10.5334/jors... (1/2)

Just decline the peer review invitation. What are you people even doing?

📣 New for #RSECon26! We’re launching a Research Software submission route! 🎉 Have software ready for publication? Submit to @joss-openjournals.bsky.social as part of RSECon26. Accepted or pre-reviewed papers get JOSS+RSECon26 branding and a 15-min talk. More info: tinyurl.com/rsecon26joss

This is a very useful guide from Cornell Lab of Ornithology for distinguishing various North American Sparrows. The illustrations are exceptional in my opinion. 🪶 www.allaboutbirds.org/news/identif...

"To these detectives of digital inauthenticity, I say: Friend, welcome to a typical Tuesday in a Kenyan classroom, boardroom, or intra-office Teams chat. The very things you identify as the fingerprints of the machine are, in fact, the fossil records of our education."

I'm very sad to see that NSF is gutting peer review, as described in doi.org/10.1126/scie... (1/5)

A week in Costa Rica after Thanksgiving with Herman from Costa Rica Gateway led to 205 bird species photographed plus some other things. (1/?): Emerald Tanager, Silver-throated Tanager, Crimson-collared Tanager, Blue-gray Tanager #Birds #BirdPhotography

I'm happy to be able to say that Y. Yehudi, M. Cashman, M. Goedicke, W. Hasselbring, D. S. Katz, S. Müller, C. Goble, C. Jay, "Research Software Lifecycles and Stages," ECEASST, v.85, Dec. 2025. doi.org/10.14279/ece... is now available

Via @lrasmus.bsky.social, the DOIs in pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... no longer resolve to anything, both the original that is mentioned in the title (doi.org/10.1089/vio....) and the retraction (doi.org/10.1089/vio....) www.liebertpub.com / www.sagepub.com isn't supposed to do this...

🧭 We are happy to announce our new #SSIFellows! Read more about this year's applications and the 2026 cohort at www.software.ac.uk/news/introdu...

I need help! 🟢 One reviewer report for this JOSS article is complete. 🟠 Since we haven't got a response from the second reviewer, we need to assign a new one. 🔵 Any volunteers to review the manuscript? 🟣 Regression estimators and R. Thank you in advance! github.com/openjournals...

I've collected a set of papers and articles that discuss errors in research due to software errors, in a GitHub repo: github.com/danielskatz/.... I think this could be a useful resource for many purposes, and additional contributions are welcome.

The Spanish is clear while the English is ambiguous cc @lingthusiasm.bsky.social

For Thanksgiving, I've started reading "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics", www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/bruce... I think as recommended by Greg Wilson

ReSA’s Nov newsletter (preview.mailerlite.io/preview/7781...) includes: - News from South Africa’s National Science and Technology Forum - Research Software Awards - Research Software Community Leadership Forum (CLF) & IRSC Program Committee - Events, including eResearch NZ/eRangahau Aotearoa 2026

Reading www.404media.co/how-ruby-wen... (ok, I'm a bit behind), and saw "this whole affair is an example of why this stuff gets really messy when people start getting paid, and once you start introducing formal organizations and employees and nonprofits and lawyers and all this kind of complexity"

Sophie Bui, Community Manager at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, recently completed her training with Nurturing Online Communities (NOC), and shared her Project Management knowledge during her QSS.

How are we still making discoveries about the 5000-year-old ancestor to English, Latin, Czech, Hindi and many other languages? In our latest episode we get enthusiastic about figuring out Proto-Indo-European with @dannybate.bsky.social!

As an advisor (on software) to the Netherlands Open Science NL program, I'm reasonably happy with the new 2-year work plan that has been released, and think that it will be good for the research community www.openscience.nl/en/news/work...

🚀 The US-RSE November Newsletter is out! Highlights: USRSE’25 Recap, USRSE’26 Announcement, Steering Committee Updates, SC25 Conference & more 🎉 👉 us-rse.org/2025-11-06-n... 👉 Learn more about US-RSE: us-rse.org/about/ #RSE #RSEng #ResearchSoftware #ResearchComputing #ResearchData

Good work at @ncsaatillinois.bsky.social's Center for AI Innovation is being recognized internationally 🙂

I wonder if I can win the oldest SC shirt at #SC25 contest

If you're going to be at #SC25 tomorrow (Sunday) and are interested in research software engineering #RSEng, you might come to the RSE-HPC-2025 workshop - us-rse.org/rse-hpc-2025/ - from 9:00 to 5:30 in room 267

Short-eared Owl, Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, Missouri, USA #Birds #BirdPhotography #Owls

I attended the @computersociety.bsky.social awards ceremony (www.computer.org/volunteering...) last night, as a Board of Governors member, and was amazed and inspired by all the research, education, and mentoring work that the awardees have done, and what it's meant to computing and society

🔥The 2025 Steering Committee Candidates have been announced!🔥 Read more about them here: us-rse.org/2025-11-11-s.... Would you like to help pick the next leaders of US-RSE? There is still time! To be eligible to vote, you must join US-RSE by Fri, Nov 14th: us-rse.org/join/ #RSE #RSEng

Do you use Spring Batch (spring.io/projects/spr...)? Would you be willing to review a {software and short paper} submission to the Journal of Open Source Software @joss-openjournals.bsky.social that extends it? If so, please let me know or just comment in github.com/openjournals...

The Netherlands eScience Center is looking for an Executive Director. Interested candidates are invited to contact Holtrop Ravesloot via [email protected] or view the vacancy on our website buff.ly/o3ku6BO (in Dutch). Apply by 23 November via [email protected]

Welcome to St. Louis

Some Northern Lights in Champaign #aurora

I'm embarrassed reading this

US-RSE is heading to #SC25! 🎉 📍 Booth #3911 | Nov 16–21 | St. Louis, MO Stop by, meet fellow RSEs! Join our #RSE-HPC Workshop (Nov 16) and Topgolf Focus Group + Social Hour (Nov 18)! More at us-rse.org/rse-hpc-2025/ 🎯Email [email protected] to sign up for the workshops!

In honor of my recent academic promotion, I got to choose a book for our library to buy and put a bookplate in, so I chose this book by Greg Wilson. Tonight was the ceremony for me and the other 145 people promoted this year, where I got to see it in person.

The #iSchoolUI has 🔸FOUR🔹 open faculty positions in the areas: Information Sciences, Information, Culture & Society, Information Behavior/HCI/UX, and Early Literacies! Submit your application by December 15 ▶️ bit.ly/iSchoolatIllinoisJobs

I’m recruiting students this upcoming cycle at UIUC! I’m excited about Qs on societal impact of AI, especially human-AI collaboration, multi-agent interactions, incentives in data sharing, and AI policy/regulation (all from both a theoretical and applied lens). Apply through CS & select my name!

Apply for the next #URSSI winter school on research software engineering, 15-17 Dec in Portland, OR: urssi.us/blog/2025/11... For: grad students, postdocs, & other early career researchers (or beyond!) looking to increase your software dev. skills. Applications close 21 Nov, so apply soon!