The influence of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program really cannot be overstated. The fact that there is still no solicitation for this year is unfair to students and risks damaging the future of American science. Please take 30 seconds to sign the open letter to US STEM Leadership 🧪🌎

Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment. The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

look don't be surprised if you send out sometime the afternoon before Rosh Hashanah and your Jewish colleague can't get to it right away, we go over this literally every year?

This is not because AI is generally useless. It is a tool that has to be carefully tested for possible uses and implemented in ways that create a net benefit. Like all tools. This is not happening. So it may point to the possibility that a lot of business decision makers are useless.

"No single study on AI in the workplace is going to be definitive, but evidence is mounting that AI is affecting people’s work in the same way it’s affecting everything else: It is making it easier to output low-quality slop that other people then have to wade through."

OK this is setting up to be an interesting test of the AI models, which nearly all favor AL93 & AL94 tracking much further west than the physics-based models.

It really sucks to have to fight for a university that will not fight for you

Do you know someone who does outstanding work on avian pop modelling & forecasting? Or who works at interface of avian conservation and decision making given uncertain futures? Submit a keynote nomination for the BOU conference Avian Futures here: bou.org.uk/event/avian-... . Deadline is next week!

I'm teaching problem decomposition this week and that means The Return of Moo Deng!

I have worked with exceptional university scientists in the US under the H1-B program. This $100,000 fee will make it all but impossible to hire them in academia going forward.

Only 1 person in the whole study went from identifying as trans to not identifying as trans. The 1/5 number came from youth going between the binary and non-binary spectrum. This headline and post are misleading on purpose to fit the economist's editorial bent on the political issue.

Yet again, machine learning — even gussied up via the transformer architecture — encodes and reinforces societal biases. This study reveals that LLM-based peer review relies heavily on author institution in its decisions. arxiv.org/abs/2509.15122

This is great to keep in mind! I also try to remember the objectives of the project and if my comments/edits are aligned with those or just me adding my personal preferences.

Do you remembah?!

One thing I always try to do as a reviewer/editor when recommending a change is to think about whether or not the resulting improvement to the paper/software justifies the amount of time I think it will take the author to address it. The bigger the ask, the greater the need in order to justify it.

I like this. Since under RFK Jr, Covid shots are now for people with underlying conditions that put them at risk, Michigan’s chief medical executive Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian states that not having the most recent Covid shot constitutes such an underlying condition. www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside...

Apex predator

“We will not allow authoritarians to dismantle higher education. We will not allow billionaires to profit while communities suffer. And we will not allow fear to silence students and workers who speak out.” — Todd Wolfson, AAUP President #DefendHigherEd #HigherEdBenefitsEveryone @aft.org

Hey, #ruby folks! I've been one of the #RubyGems maintainers for the last decade. Ruby Central has forcefully taken control of the RubyGems organization on GitHub, the `rubygems-update` and `bundler` gems on rubygems[.]org, and more. You can read the details here: pup-e.com/goodbye-ruby...

I usually can’t even get bureaucracy close enough for autocorrect to get it

UGH THIS ONE TIME I MEANT DUCK

these tools can be useful, even transformational or foundational, but I think more in the 'duct tape + pvc piping' is foundational than in the 'one ring to rule them all' view. If even the companies are proceeding with tool use, this is something we too can build for ourselves.

As an ecologist, just putting here for the record that we are never going to have an AI model 'predict the future of biodiversity'.

Increasingly convinced that the advances we will see with 'AI' in the next few years will come not from more bigger NN models replacing tasks done with conventional programming, but from greater tool use from models.

The rampant violations of academic freedom and intrusions on extramural speech are escalating rapidly. Faculty members have the right to speak or write as citizens, free from institutional censorship or discipline. Expression of opinion as a citizen does not constitute grounds for dismissal.

"This convening is... the first step in scaling a movement that reimagines how values-driven open science orgs can grow together, share resources, & strengthen the ecosystem we collectively serve [to] ensure that... open science is not only innovative, but also equitable, sustainable, and resilient"

Ben Sasse complaining about some faculty writing a provocative Nature editorial in a Wall Street journal editorial is peak Ben Sasse. www.wsj.com/opinion/univ...

This quote in a passage from "Blood In The Machine" is from 1801. I guess the super rich tech titans/investors and their influencer / journalist courtiers never change? This is pretty much the modern equivalent of that old quote: 1/9

32 years ago today, Counting Crows gifted us a masterpiece. I am not worried, I am not overly concerned. I am, however, old.

I feel for my Indigenous colleagues in the U of Alaska system.

This would fix me(trying out new feature) tinyurl.com/avetafix

Guy who has never read the news: I think we should automate police wellness checks, a thing that always works and never goes wrong. I think this should be something that our product does automatically.

When Posit Cloud goes down while you’re teaching class (you’re glad you have online copy-paste commands to get you and your students up and running locally)

result in VA-11 special election tonight is a 16 percentage point swing to Democrats vs 2024 — right in line with the average swing in all specials held in 2025 docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

hi, cis folks! if you said you’d stand with trans people, we need you now. the FY26 budget bill gets a vote by 9/30. the GOP wants to jam a ban on federal funding for ALL health services that provide trans care for ANY AGE. we need you to call senators: reps.fyi more info & script downthread.🧵

When Campus Reform and Turning point came after professors and created the professor watchlist, administrators didn't pay attention..Now they are being fired and attacked. Maybe institutions should have done more to protect academic freedom....

NEW: The law is supposed to protect unaccompanied migrant children from being summarily whisked out of the country by ICE in the dead of night. But that didn't seem to matter on Labor Day weekend, when the Trump administration tried to do just that. My latest: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

BREAKING: Susan Monarez, forced out by RFK Jr as CDC director, to testify in front of Senate panel next week. Monarez has said RFK Jr pressured her around vaccines. RFK Jr has said she was untrustworthy. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

The knight stood, triumphant, over the prostrate dragon. He raised his sword high above his head and- "I wouldn't if i were you" The voice was in his head. Confused, he glanced around. A black cat was cleaning a paw, casually nearby. He raised the sword again. "Are you REALLY, really sure?" /1

Two things: 1) Black Lives Matter is not *done*. It's never done. Me Too, also not done. Y'all really underestimate our endurance.🤷🏿‍♂️ 2) It's not difficult to be an ally. Andrew Garfield and Julia Roberts made space, Ayo Edebiri took her space, and the nonsense question was exposed for what it is.

“Authoritarians thrive on your silence. Be loud for America.”

Once Donald Trump gets the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under the color of law – what comes next?

The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.

The We Are All DC march to protest against Trump admin’s takeover of DC is currently heading toward the White House: Via @benjalvarez1.bsky.social

Several anti-ICE protestors on the Ohio-Kentucky border. This is how the police dealt with them. Literally beat the hell out of them. This is Trump's police state America, coming to a protest near you.

Some good news: *everyone* is eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine in Washington State, and it *will* be covered by your insurance!