Members of Congress calling out the blatantly unlawful proposed OMB rule on federal grantmaking. Let’s keep the pressure on! thehill.com/newsletters/...

This is more money than was spent on cancer research at the National Cancer Institute since 2014.

Every time I share photos of fireflies in my backyard, I get folks lamenting not seeing fireflies anymore. If this is you, depending on where you live, you can get more fireflies! About 1/3 of our NA species are threatened, but it's pretty easy to help them out especially in these areas. Here's how:

Teslas everywhere aren't inevitable. AI isn't inevitable. Data Centers aren't inevitable. Garbage culture isn't inevitable. Living in a technocratic serfdom ruled by miscreant oligarchs isn't inevitable.

tech capture of the NSF: “it allows NSF to make awards to nontraditional recipients such as a limited partnership or a venture capital firm, some of which might have been created solely for the purpose of receiving the NSF award.”

Happy summer solstice with the riot of green, heat, humidity, and life that are the Mississippi woods at this time of the year!

Both totally unnecessary and extremely funny that the Guardian has an interactive graphic for you to change the color of the US flag's blue to the color of the Reflecting Pool from 8 to 19 June and counting

Weird cat

NSF grants awarded per day (two week rolling window): normally 30-60 this time of year, now around 6 (note the y-axis is log scale). Data compiled at bomeara.github.io/rnsf/ . Inspired by looking at the awards plateaus at grant-witness.us/funding_curv... #NSF #AcademicScky 🧪

U.S. government claiming Musk has the right to poison Memphis because xAI is "vital" to national security, because the Pentagon signed a contract with them. Elite immunity is a cancer that causes cancer, among countless other ills. www.wired.com/story/doj-la...

NEW: the US government intervened Monday on behalf of xAI in a lawsuit over its gas turbines, claiming that the company needs to run the turbines in order to power Grok, which is "vital" for national security lots of wild stuff in the filing:

🧶 Today is World Wide Knit in Public Day 🌍 a reminder that preservation is not passive, it's made a stitch at a time. Check out Mlle. Riego de la Branchardière’s THE KNITTING BOOK (1848), part of our Victorian Knitting Manuals collection 👉 archive.org/details/krl0... #WWKIPDay #Knitting

This for me is the big issue in journal editing now. Not just obvious fabricated content and references but empty automated research text overwhelming our knowledge production, review and publication systems. 6/

CORREÇÃO DA TRIVIA Jonathan David é o SEGUNDO jogador com nome de música do Belle & Sebastian a disputar uma Copa do Mundo. O primeiro é o brasileiro Piazza. Correção muito bem feita pelo @cfimmig.bsky.social. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvtJ...

New: A county commissioner in North Carolina refused to let citizens oppose Flock at a meeting this week, instead making dozens of people select one person to represent them: "You will not speak on Flock tonight...I’ve spoken. I’m not debating this." www.404media.co/you-will-not...

Academic writing should be addressed neither to the public nor to other academics. It should be addressed to a single interlocutor with whom you have a petty rivalry and whose work you are trying to discredit

There was a rattle snake discovered near one of the training fields, and I'm sorry but welcome to the US. We have rattlesnakes in most states. IDK what to tell you.

Just announced: OpenAI plans to lease a 9.2 gigawatt 100% fossil-fuelled data centre on Ohio. Its emissions will be between 20 - 37 MTCO2-e - somewhere between the total grid emissions of France -> Netherlands As much GHGs as 9.5 average coal plants. Will raise US total emissions by 0.5%

Over the last month I saw that human editors are now stripped of control. I could no longer stop the system from auto-inviting "reviewers" with zero relevant expertise. Even worse - the AI began actively revoking the invitations I manually sent out to actual, qualified experts.

When Frontiers started automating the editorial process, I stayed. I reasoned that as long as the automation could be turned off, human editors can still ensure rigorous, high-quality peer review. This now became impossible - the system has been entirely hijacked by algorithms.

Nostalgia Content xkcd.com/3256/

Commentary: I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake

From the #AppsPlantSci Phylogenetic Networks issue Ancient hybridization & #phylogenetic discordance: Exploring evolutionary complexity in #Asteraceae (Ellestad, @erikarmoore11.bsky.social @carolsiniscalchi.bsky.social @jennifermandel.bsky.social et al) doi.org/10.1002/aps3... #evolution #botany

I went to Utah to see what life is like in America's new reality, where vaccine-preventable diseases are common again. Utah's measles outbreak has lasted 10 months. Pediatricians teared up in interviews. Mothers were stressed. 🧵My latest @wired.com @kffhealthnews.org www.wired.com/story/anguis...

"AI is operating at a PhD level" oh, so it's replying 'sorry for the late response' to every email and complaining about its labor conditions?

🚺 Em menos de 2 minutos e sem registro nominal de votos, a Comissão de DIREITOS HUMANOS do Senado aprova o PDL 3/2025, o PDL da Pedofilia, que proíbe acesso ao aborto legal por meninas que foram vítimas de estupro e engravidaram. A relatora do texto é Damares Alves (Republicanos-DF).

Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Congressman Bobby Scott have called on the Department of Labor to rescind a proposed rule that would open up millions of Americans' 401ks to crypto, private equity, and private credit www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Have you, like me, spent the last 26 years worrying if the Canadian Potato Museum STILL has the display of various potato diseases with potatoes in little coffins? Stop worrying. I checked today. Still there.

The popular revolt has mounted a broader challenge to neoliberalism, austerity, and US imperialism in Latin America.

Here's the serious bit for anyone who'd rather skip the 4000 words of jokes

NEW: The city of Dayton, Ohio has covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags in part because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city also doesn’t seem to know whether it is allowed to take the cameras down.

Tech oligarchs have spent 3 years screaming that their plan is to win the race to AGI, which they define as the point when machines replace the vast majority of human economic activity. They just figured out that we could hear them. Bit late, Jensen Huang. www.channelnewsasia.com/business/ceo...

“I write with dismay, grief and sorrow for the permanent closure of MIT Libraries Barker, Dewey and Rotch, and termination of library staff in those libraries. For MIT to be closing three of its four major libraries..." fnl.mit.edu/may-june-202...

University administrators two years ago: we can’t allow social justice movements to change the university as we know it University administrators today: in order to accommodate the new probabilistic bullshit generator no one likes we must change everything about the university

Female birds with confusing names.

Now you can keep track of how many billions the AI companies are losing on AI. (Red is spending, green is revenue.) isaiprofitable.com

The real welfare queen in America is Jeff Bezos, worth $279 billion, who pays wages so low his workers rely on food stamps and Medicaid while he sailed on his $500 million yacht to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring because his tax rate is less than 1%.

We found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations increased by more than 50% under Texas’ abortion ban. Here’s how we did our analysis. (Published Feb. 2025)

what do you want prints available: mcapriglione.art

HALF of all green cards go to people in that second category; those here in the US who applied for a green card through "adjustment of status."  This group covers everyone from spouses and children of US citizens to skilled professionals getting a green card through an employer.

After five teen girls were targeted by AI-generated child sexual abuse material, Radnor Township High School in Pennsylvania has become a case study in how schools and police around the country grapple with how to response to deepfake crimes involving children.

"US employers spend more than $1.5 billion annually on union avoidance" www.epi.org/publication/... New from @epi.org and @laborlab.bsky.social.

Memphis is “under full-blown occupation” by ICE. Here’s why you may not know that.

Yes, the famous model organism used in plant sciences, "fly"

In 2025, HHS issued stop work order for federal research lab that studies Ebola virus and other deadly pathogens and fired its director. This lab was a world leader in accelerating development therapies and vaccines for Ebola and other viruses. 1/ www.wired.com/story/hhs-ni...

what is it with universities and being so determined to drive nails into their own coffins

put another way, investor who stands to gain from widespread adoption of asbestos donates money to have asbestos put into university walls.

Absolutely crazy: Researchers wanted to put cameras on teachers to observe the behaviors of preschool students and use the footage to train AI www.404media.co/researchers-...