What is the minimal machinery needed for complex, cognition-like behavior? Very cool.

Well that's a thorough summary. One of the best articulations of university governance for a public audience that I've seen in a while.

"An email from NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to research-center grantees, seen by Science, requires their institutions to promise that U.S. authors of papers NIH has flagged because of foreign co-authors will not collaborate with them in the future."

Breaking: the 1st circuit denied the emergency injunction request by the Rhode Island child advocate. As a result, Rhode Island children's will have to turn over medical records of trans youth to judge Reed O' Connor in Texas within the next 45 minutes. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Here's a Scottish badger for a change. I think this is the matriarch of the sett having a look around. From other shots it is obvious she is feeding young cubs at the moment. #UKwildlife #mammals

I bought this cookbook, despite its distinctly unpromising title, because a cookbook roundup by Dan Kois said that it had increased his family’s vegetable consumption by 200-300%, & I‘ve become a huge fan Not always the best for quick weeknight dinners, but extremely delicious dinners even 4yo eats

Nothing makes someone look guiltier than forcing the Justice Department to promise never to investigate your taxes or prosecute you for anything they might find

"The point is to wander through physics. Even if math terrifies you, you are entitled to spend some time with it." BOOM. @chanda.blacksky.app probably just took a booster dose to my years of accumulated educational hurt (signified crucially by, but not limited to, maths)

We did things that disemployed almost 6 million US manufacturing workers. It's not job destruction that blocks policy. It's profit destruction.

Blossoms I have smelled this morning. Well, the plum and lilacs had a fragrance, not so much the redbud and apple. It’s spectacular out here this morning.

We can end gun violence. We don’t have to live like this. To the land of the free: this is not what freedom looks like.

Now would be a great time for a social-economic historian of WW1 and/or WW2 to drop a thread about how wartime production of food and logistics shaped what we nowadays think of as 'British' or 'American' food. This is BlueSky. I know you must be out there.

After turning off predictive text on my keyboard, the typos were wayyyyy up and the typing speed in the gutter. I was committed to my path. 3/4 days, turns out it was mostly bad habits reinforced by predictive text. Everything's good now 💅🏾 What other "habits" has tech formed in me? In others?

I just can't get past "What do you mean I have to check AAALLLLLLLL my citations?" Like, dude, what? My PhD advisor would have hung me by my toenails on the quad if I didn't know what one of my citations was for.

A thing! I hear it! #CatsOfBluesky

Highly encourage folks to listen to Dr. Topol's conversation with @donmilton.bsky.social and read that NYT piece. Spillover events will continue happening with increasing frequency, public health must adapt and adopt maximally cautious approaches to transmission to contain future outbreaks.

This Needs to Happen…. Idea: a law that says if you’re going to build a data center, you have to also build enough solar panels to power it. We can call it the Bring Your Own Damn Grid Act.

Younger daughter & I found these fossilised crinoid rock stars (segments of the ‘stem’ of Jurassic feather stars/sea lilies, related to starfish & sea urchins) in the gravel on the edge of a lake nr Peterborough UK. She used them to make an ammonite:

Seems to me that this is a great time for all of the 'vote or die' white people to be at the forefront of fighting for voting rights. Perfect time not to fantasize about what you would have done during the mid-century Black freedom struggle but to enact a 21st century version of it. Let's stay tuned

Ponderosa bark puzzle 🌿 Sisters Trail today

The Onion should do a satire with a good outcome just to see if they can manifest it.

Janet always brings the bird joy.

Really wish I could go viral on BlueSky. I created an app that merges Mutual Aid with Black Businesses: on the app, you can shop Black Businesses on 1 app, all Black Owned conveniently under 1 roof. On the same app you can see people struggling with overdue bills/rent/evictions etc & give them aid.

… we have lost much of the civil rights act, most of roe v wade, most of the EPA, any remnants of a progressive tax code, the voting rights act. I’ll be shocked if the ADA makes it through the next two years. I want to vote for candidates who recognize the scope and are ready to try new things.

Under 'medical history', we were hoping for something more specific to you personally. You wrote "Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928".

The president of Cornell hit some students with his car, lied about what happened, and cast himself as the victim. Cornell's trustees, palpably aghast at the idea that a powerful man could be held accountable for his actions, have issued an official statement saying fuck the students

Use alt text so everyone can enjoy your photos and graphics!

The personalized treatment encourages the immune system to attack glioblastomas go.nature.com/4uliVYg

Dog and cottonwood fluff

“The result: more than 4 million people — a cohort the size of Los Angeles’ population — have already lost SNAP since the law took effect. Hunger prevention advocates say Black Americans have been disproportionately affected, and that the worst is still ahead.” wordinblack.com/2026/05/hung...

Without tribal consultation, US Bureau of Land Management cancelled the “Public Land Rule" that required BLM to consider conservation & development equally in land-use decisions. This leaves millions of acres across the West vulnerable to oil/gas extraction & mining. www.kotatv.com/2026/05/14/f...

"True democracy was ushered in and kicked out in my mother’s lifetime. When she was 15, Black people like her finally were granted the right to vote and now at 76 saw 6 members of SCOTUS declare that, for all intents and purposes, especially now as a FL resident, she no longer has those rights."

Do we even promote science at the NSF anymore? Or is this just a way to divert the already starved funds away from physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, and geosciences towards AI, computation, and any grifter who uses the word "quantum" slyly enough? Asking for a concerned planet.

"Breaking the vicious cycle: How two German scientists seek to solve #ME" #MECFS - my latest article has just been published by @thesicktimes.org thesicktimes.org/2026/05/14/b...

I have nearly unlimited (and often early) access to all the AI, and my #1 productivity unlock of the past year has been to revert to taking handwritten notes. I even re-learned cursive to make it faster.

The Trump administration is not anti-fraud. It's anti-government-assistance to the poor and minorities. "Anti-fraud" is just the newest eupheminism for it. The administration is decidely pro-fraud. The media needs to be explicit about this and not just uncritically convey Trumpist talking points.

I feel I should alert Bluesky to the baby foxes in our yard

The good taxpayers of New York have given me a pair of Meta glasses because I am low vision disabled, and I seem to have used them more than a lot of people on here, so let me say a little about my experiences:

gwen does fantastic work as usual on some of the 401,000 trans people who’ve had to flee hostile territory in their own country in the past 18 months.

STAT+: MIT says research has fallen 10%, and grad student enrollment is down www.bostonglobe.com/2026/05/14/b...

Best article I have read this week- it’s always fun to read about brilliant scientists and their brilliant ideas but I love love love it when people lead with their full humanity. Really looking forward to reading her book

"A piece of this book is me saying there is value in banding with the poets, and fighting for the value of being curious and trying to articulate the world with whatever tools are available to us. Not for the purposes of selling something, but for the purpose of fulfilling our humanity.” 1/ 💙📚 🧪

Every good thing this society half-assedly started due to COVID should've been not just continued but constantly improved upon; but too many of y'all have The Fear, & those programs remind you of the thing that scared you. So instead you burn down your house 'cause your basement made spooky shadows

Every time I read about this it blows me away. So cool.

1/ There is a bill going through the New York State legislature that would transform our ability to provide medical genetics care: www.nysenate.gov/legislation/...

While BioNtech & Moderna become household names because of their Covid vaccines, those emerged from different projects: finding ways to treat the most challenging cancers. They hypothesized that we could vaccinate patients against their own tumors, & evidence is mounting that they were right! 1/n 🧪