Leonardo Ziccardi’s excellent functional trait dissertation chapter out and highlighted in Funtional Ecology and MSU Ecology, Evolution and Behavior News! eeb.msu.edu/news/study-r...

Nobel committee has thrown its hat in the ring to destabilize South America and legitimize Trumps attacks 😡 www.democracynow.org/2025/10/10/n...

Highlighting my student Leonardo Ziccardi’s excellent new paper and the cool collaborations that made this in canopy leaf level quantum yield research in the Amazon possible!

And a commentary piece on Leo’s new Amazon forest in-canopy fluorescence paper! nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

First big paper from my lab to share on Bluesky :) “Seasonal and intracanopy shifts in the fates of absorbed photons in central Amazonian forests: implications for leaf fluorescence and photosynthesis” - Ziccardi - New Phytologist - Wiley Online Library nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Not a single time in this article glorifying the need for sprawl to address the US's affordable housing crisis is there a mention of the vast transportation costs of sprawling living patterns. Nor is there mention of the fact that sprawl is directly linked to disinvestment in urban cores.

How surprising is it that so many US institutions are seemingly open to an openly fascist authoritarian coup d'etat when the US has literally the highest incarceration rate on the planet? Land of the free, right.

Big ups to the Columbia trustees and administrators who convinced these absolute cretins they had the recipe to destroy American higher education.

This is, in large part, pandemic revenge. As far as these oligarchs are concerned, all science does is tell them stuff they cannot do. They can't keep spewing carbon. They can't keep businesses open as usual when millions are dying. They have concluded that research is the enemy of profit.

NEW: @motherjones.com reports that one of the men renditioned to El Salvador is Neri Alvarado, who was working in Dallas as a baker. An ICE agent told him they were questioning all men with tattoos. Neri has an AUTISM AWARENESS TATTOO in honor of his 15-year-old brother with autism.

In the face of mostly deafening silence about political abductions happening on campuses, the fervor of opposition in Congress to the Signal leak is pretty rich. Having thought police disappearing people reported by collaborators is as bad a political situation as there is. We need to fight that.

That there’s a new quadrant of the ‘you’re fucked’ plane on the Trump event horizon is no comfort. However, that it’s as simple as a drunk guy who reads large text history books about Hitler’s greatest battles (allegedly) randomly texting people attack plans is a little relieving. I get that.

So a national security breach about bombing Yemen—a bad action btw—has the Democratic establishment livid when the arbitrary detention and pending deportation of green card students expressly for political beliefs exercised through legal 1st amendment speech—not even done after 9/11—was a ‘meh’?

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025... MAGA's education policy ... MAIMS (Make America Ignorant Menial Serfs)?

Unique to America, our health care system is designed not to make people well, but to make CEOs & wealthy stockholders incredibly rich. The result: We have the highest infant mortality rate of any wealthy country on earth. How cruel, how immoral is that? We need Medicare for All.

This flew under the radar, but Trump revoked a minimum wage hike for companies that contract with the government. An estimated 390,000 workers will now see significant pay cuts. It's not surprising that Trump's populism is fake, but it's hardly ever been more clear.

Perhaps share this with any normie ICE loving relatives or acquaintances to help them understand the bipartisan born bedlam that is the US immigration system in 2025 …? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I think we’re currently on track for the criminalization of climate science in the US, at least if this administration is not effectively opposed www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Illegal and unconscionable. Places scholars working on critical research in perilous situations while disrupting the research and sends a strong message to international scholars that the US is no longer functioning and will no longer be a global leader. Self sabotaging lunacy in short

One of the examples of USAID funding cut’s costs with well known deadly consequences. Murder is at the top of my list of things that are bad. Elon Musk ordered this, which makes him what exactly?

We are barreling toward a full blown constitutional crisis. Trump's announcement that he's ending thousands of aid contracts FUNDED BY CONGRESS is unconstitutional and illegal - and horrible for our security. 1/ A quick🧵on what's going on. apnews.com/article/trum...

I miss DEI

"Undermining the NSF is not just a threat to universities and researchers — it is a threat to the well-being of every American." www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

I cannot express how frustrated and hurt I am by mentoring/training a lab member for five years, only to have them take an important job in government that was abruptly deleted a month after they took it.

This is what obeying in advance looks like. The NSF fires 10% of its total staff in a move that went beyond what was requested by the current regime. The NSF is the flagship of US basic research infrastructure. 🧪🔌💡☀️💨🔋 www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

What is wrong with these people. This was such an obvious and easy anti-Trump home run that would have saved lives. Instead, it’s another big L.

From NSF EAR program director Raleigh Martin on LinkedIn #climatesky #greensky

Good article and a good example from my PhD mentors and others for getting in the public sphere locally about the economic and social impacts of gutting publicly funded research tucson.com/opinion/colu...

This is incredibly frustrating and sad.

This will negatively affect me and all the other researchers. I am also frustrated and upset for our federal colleagues at the NSF, both those let go and those left to deal. Holding the mission & impact of the NSF in the highest esteem, this is yet another flush pushing US leadership down the drain.

BREAKING: Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier released from prison after nearly 50 years

Anyone know of good articles contextualizing the attack on ‘DEI’ and providing a description of DEI that makes it clear it’s not racism against white peoples or whatever it’s being labeled that could be shared in an academic setting?

Man, if you live in NY call the Governor’s office to demand she exercise those constitutional powers for the first time; Adams has got to go. A lot of people’s lives are on the line with his level of compromise (not to mention baseline corruption and incompetence).. He’ll be rolling out red carpets.

Of all the stupid corrupt sh*t somehow this one really sits on top like a big red ribbon on the whole destroy to privatize (put in the hands of Musk) package. Flying has a terrible climate footprint anyway; time to keep the travel near home, and/or fly in and out of Toronto for international travel

Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention gives a red flag alert for the Trump administration www.lemkininstitute.com/red-flag-ale...

Why was I thinking about this classic Simpsons moment recently 🤔

I have work to do but I'm distracted by watching US scientific progress & leadership being irreversibly undermined because a few unelected malcontents are penalizing researchers for following legal requirements set out by congressional orders to augment basic research with benefits to society.

As of 2020 there were 74,313 vacant properties in Detroit. These children froze to death homeless in a van.

www.regulations.gov/document/FWS... Save the majestic (and gigantic and amazingly slimy) Eastern Hellbender salamander!! Deadline tomorrow for comments. Not my greatest missive but getting the ideas across..

The great Trump famine is upon the world

As awkward-handsome as the day he was adopted ~15 years ago, one of my lovely sibs providing a local and morally defensible perspective on ignorance as bliss

One piece of good news in 2025, there is a bran-new BaianaSystem album and it slaps! open.spotify.com/album/4pzQgS...

So which dystopian sci-fi future do you think we’re heading for? (1) Mad Max (absolute ecocide with motorcycles) (2) The Terminator (AI nuclear war + robot killers wading through skulls) or (3) Butlerian Jihad from Dune backstory (great destruction of thinking machines)? I dunno but rooting for 3.?

USAID’s website has been deleted, all that is left is a note saying all personnel are now on administrative leave and personnel outside the US are to be brought home. Completely illegal, no act of congress or even executive order was signed to dismantle the agency

No sh*t. I’d say ‘stress, fear frustration, dread, the deepest of sorrow…’ Not hyperbole. When you study the natural world, going in the wrong direction looks like utter calamity since we’re so close to cascading run away warming feedbacks and biodiversity loss. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Why is the NYTimes not doing podcasts called ‘the plutocratic coup d'état in Washington mugging America”? There is no door for legitimacy in any of this. Same paper that brought you the Iraq war I guess… ultimately not so surprising if incredibly disheartening

"The American Association of University Professors, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education &other groups argue in a lawsuit filed Mon that the orders exceed executive legal authority, violate both the 1st & 5th Amendments, &threaten academic freedom &access to HE for all"

It is simply not enough for universities to say, “Our grants & research offices are looking into how research will be affected by the latest directive.” University leaders must actively and very publicly make the case for the kind of work many of us do. The silence on this front is deafening.