It's that time again. For the next 24 hours, drop any infectious disease and/or vaccine-related questions below in response to this post, and I will do my best to answer them. Responses are for information only and are NOT medical advice. #AskAnIDDoc September 2025 edition.

Shanah Tovah! May the coming year be as sweet as honeycakes and as savory as brisket, and may it see fascism ground into a sticky paste suitable only for scraping off the bottoms of our shoes

I found this birding book along the side of the road on the Tamiami trail in the Everglades on 8/25/25. It is so well loved with sightings going back decades. If you're a birder (I am not) please spread the word and hep me find the owner so they can be reunited

Sandwiched between two pieces of matzoh, zecher l’mikdash k’Hillel (iykyk)

Also, if you're a freelancer in the Bay Area, you can pitch us: www.coyotemedia.org/pitch-us/ We don't have a ton of money for freelance right now, but we are commissioning some stuff! More on what we're looking for, and our rates and freelance policies, at that link.

A very clever solution for recording this shy guy, and also the best possible angle for filming a crab!

IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT TRANS PEOPLE and you're not really sure how. First off, listen to trans people they will inform you how to support. Second, DONATE MONEY TO STRUGGLING TRANS PEOPLE Trans people, drop your links below. Now you know how the rest of us, cis, feel with everything.

Y’all, Automatic Noodle by @annaleen.bsky.social is SO GOOD. Found-family robots building community & exploring self-determination together in the wake of a brutal civil war, & also discovering the joy of making delicious food? YES PLEASE. Cozy cyberpunk is the genre I never knew I needed & it rocks

I thought that pelicans stretching their pouches over their own necks was the absolute weirdest they could look, I stand corrected

As you prepare for whatever lies ahead today, perhaps you'll want to reward yourself tonight with some science-y fun? If so, consider setting aside time to watch the Ig Nobels, a ceremony awarding science that makes you laugh, then think 10 winners+1,000 paper airplanes+"a soupçon of gibberish" 🧪

Re-upping this: Especially if you're in the first category, pregnant and struggling to get a Covid shot or confused by federal guidance, I would love to hear from you. [email protected]

I may be a bit biased because I think everything @monospace.com does is wonderful, but how freaking amazing are these tiny landscape paintings? He’ll be selling them at the Hoboken Fall Arts & Music Festival on 9/28 (and soon on his Etsy shop, www.etsy.com/shop/monospace) #art

Our bodies are ridiculous meatsacks that break in all kinds of unexpected and often unpleasant ways. But sometimes they just keep working as usual, even when they very clearly shouldn't

Think of mummification, and you might picture embalmed mummies from ancient Egypt. But thousands of years earlier, hunter-gatherers in Southeast Asia were also mummifying their dead through smoke-drying, according to scientists who examined dozens of burials—most from 4,000 to 12,000 years ago 🧪

Your daily reminder that space is very big and we are so, so smol In Feb. 1984, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II performed the first untethered spacewalk using a self-propelled backpack. He "flew" 320 feet from the Challenger shuttle, farther from a spacecraft than anyone had ever gone before 🔭

How do you like your eggs? If you're a paleontologist, the correct answer is "ancient." These Cretaceous eggs from China are especially exciting; they're 86 million years old, & scientists dated the eggs directly by vaporizing bits of fossil eggshell & comparing the ratios of uranium & lead atoms 🧪

Here is Jamal from Gaza. All I'm trying to do is rebuild my family's life. I'm trying to do what I can. We lost everything. Literally everything. Hand in hand we can rebuild my family. Nothing is impossible when we all work together. chuffed.org/project/1389...

Meant to share this link to help Gretchen and the lost revenue from losing her book.

Nice to see the mainstream press finally picking up on this.

In which I beg archaeologists to sign up for the fall semester of Skype a Scientist, because we're getting buried in requests for your area of expertise. Sign up here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I'll be speaking at an online coalition press briefing tomorrow morning about the attack on the Venezuelan boat. If you are a journalist and would like to join in, please DM me for the link.

One year ago I decided to draw a line under my decades long tech career and return to my first love: painting landscapes. It’s been a wild ride, with dozens of pieces sold online and at local markets, and some now on display at local galleries. Next year I will have my first solo exhibition.

Re-upping for the afternoon crowd! Come work with me making awesome comics with our powerhouse editorial team! #comicjobs

It's great news that there's a new vaccine for treating chlamydia in koalas, but it would be understandable if right now you're asking yourself "wait, WHY do so many koalas have chlamydia"

Do you have a passport? Community organizations have been working to help queer and trans people secure the ability to travel out of an increasingly authoritarian America. Here's the story of one passport clinic in Atlanta, Georgia. www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

One big thing I learned from covering this was how HUGE it was that so many neuroscientists worked together for so long! Large-scale projects like this are super rare in neuroscience—a researcher joked to me that organizing neuroscientists is like herding cats—which makes these 🧠 results even more 😱

I don’t know what you were doing on the bus schedule update board, Angry Toast Man, but you made my morning just a little bit brighter 🍞

Where in the brain are decisions made? Everywhere, according to a new map! In my latest for @cnn.com, I wrote about a game-changing breakthrough in neuroscience: data gathered from more than 600,000 neurons in the mouse brain show that decision-making activity is widespread across the brain 🧪

Paleontology just lost a real one: Mark Norell, Curator Emeritus of fossil amphibians, reptiles & birds in @amnh.org's Division of Paleontology. The WSJ once called Mark "the coolest dude alive," he described some truly astounding fossils, mentored loads of paleontologists and was a good human 💔

Imagine a Cretaceous marine reptile biting down on a mollusc, & then look at this fossil ammonite with rows of mosasaur toothmarks punched into the shell. If you've never seen a high-res digital 3D model of a fossil via a 3D viewer in a web browser, I highly recommend giving it a spin (& a zoom)! 🧪

rule by the person who makes the methylenedioxymethamphetamine, call that a mollygarchy

doctors I trust more than RFK jr

The number for those who need screen readers (855)435-7693

Check your books against libgen if you can and are able. Bankrupt these mfers

OF COURSE, the fossils and scientific work in this study are exceptional but I must confess I'm utterly smitten by paleoartist @himarudolf.bsky.social's tiny hatchling pterosaur yeeting itself into a typhoon

Bring this back as a poop-up store

There's HEEEEEERE artologica.etsy.com Original watercolors that reject AI. One of each, unique.

Every time I tune into @wfmu.bsky.social I hear an artist who wasn't on my radar before but who is an instant HELL YES. Today the show was Double Dip Recess with DJ Roger, and the artist was Madilyn Mei singing about dressing like a pirate (the uke wall in her YouTube video was an added bonus)

I wrote about baby pterosaurs for @sciam.bsky.social! These sparrow-size youngsters met a tragic end—a typhoon snapped their wings and sent them hurtling to a watery grave. Their fossils were displayed for years, but new analysis revealed fractures that were likely caused by powerful storm winds 🧪

🚨RELEASE: After 500 days at the table with no fair contract, Science News Media Guild members (@sn-media-guild.bsky.social) have authorized a strike. Bosses are stalling. Workers are ready to fight. ✊ wbng.org/2025/09/05/s...

The article's punchline is delivered by mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, who thinks the city should deploy feral cats to clean up rat hotspots (he says he's "an expert in this area because I stay up at night" when rats are active, which is not the most ludicrous thing he's ever said but it's close)

For #FossilFriday, please enjoy this fossil of a hypercarnivore whose scientific name—Kostensuchus atrox—references an Indigenous Patagonian word for "wind," the Greek name for the Egyptian crocodile-headed god Sebek, and the Greek word for "harsh" But in my heart, I think of it as Mighty Wind

What measured ~12 feet long, weighed 550 lbs and nommed on dinosaurs? THIS GUY. Don't call it a crocodile (even though it looks like one)—it's a crocodyliform, an ancient extinct relative of modern crocs that lived about 70 million years ago in the floodplains of what's now southern Argentina 🧪

More of this.

"How to Report ICE" zines are available for free printable download for these places: California Chicago Colorado DC Metro Area Florida Massachusetts NC Triangle Area NYC Philly Pittsburgh Portland St. Louis Metro Area Washington State Zine request form in folder. drive.google.com/drive/folder...

Perhaps you’ve heard that Reeve Carney (Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) is stepping into the Emcee role for the London production of Cabaret, but do you know about his sublime performance of a beloved internet classic that will utterly rewire your brain

President Trump deployed military troops and federal agents to DC and LA to respond to made-up emergencies, and is now threatening to do the same in other cities across the country.

Bluesky science-y folks, if you don’t mind my asking: what the heck is this? I found it on a beach in Sandy Hook, NJ. It’s very light and feels hollow, and the opening on the back is ringed with tiny fibers so it seems like it’s organic … but I have no idea what it could be. Some type of egg case?

Yarn lovers are facing higher prices, delays, and supply issues as new U.S. import rules take effect. With parcels under $800 now taxed and many postal services halting deliveries, several beloved European yarn brands have already paused shipping to the U.S. 😿 Read it: 👉 archive.is/lxp1v

Nine former CDC directors, from Bill Foege onward, speak out about the incalculable harm that RFK, Jr. is doing to public health in the US and around the world. Gift link.