Powering Down: The Consequences of OMB’s Proposal to Politicize U.S. Science

Exclusive: The National Science Foundation is trimming this year’s budgets for hundreds of its traditional basic science programs by roughly 20% to 30%, even though its overall budget is down just 3%. https://scim.ag/4xY2KCm

Job ad is not out yet, but we're going to be hiring an Asst Prof at Cal State Northridge who works on either birds or mammals (area of research is broadly defined). Track down @jbyoder.org, @mutualismecology.bsky.social, or me at #Evol2026 with questions!

Bummed to miss #Evol2026. For all those students looking for a position, we're recruiting MS students (polyploid genomics) and a PostDoc (conservation genomics) for next year. Shoot me an email!

Trump Administration Backs Off Plan to End Ocean Monitoring

HPV vaccine means young women now have 'close to zero' risk of cervical cancer death www.bbc.com/news/article...

One of my favorite poems... The Lake Isle of Innisfree, by William Butler Yeats

“Congratulations to the R Core Team on receiving the 2026 Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics.” statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/06/17/5...

real cool of Outlook to flag correct grammar and try to "correct" it to incorrect grammar

AI Isn’t Breaking Work. It’s Already Broken. - “AI isn’t so much creating new problems as it is magnifying the types of problems that have long existed.” calnewport.com/ai-isnt-brea...

Lab paper exploring integrated -omics in closely related C3 and CAM species of Yucca. I lured @wickellomics.bsky.social to the lab with this data set as "low hanging fruit" and it was anything but, hah. Thanks to David and all co-authors for getting this published! doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... 1/2

You do not change people’s minds by defeating them with logic. Herbert Simon from The Economist

America’s biggest wind farm powers up - “Since April a 3.5-gigawatt wind farm in New Mexico has been quietly ramping up generation and delivering electricity to the grid during testing.” www.economist.com/the-world-in... from The Economist

A very negative (but probably right) view on the Space X IPO, with commentary on the US financial markets that may be a little over the top, but shouldn’t be easily dismissed. - One big grift crookedtimber.org/2026/06/15/o...

#SilentSunday An outcrop with alternating layers of schist and quartzite from the Littleton Formation at Valley Falls Park, Vernon, Connecticut

The ‘commander’s intent’ and science “Proposed changes to the federal grant guidance could let political appointees override scientific peer review. The implications for American research are enormous.”

Donald Trump’s least bad option in Iran He must swallow his pride and accept a deal worse than the pre-war status quo. Have we had enough winning yet?

A great loss of a truly extraordinary scientist and human being.

Trump’s Assaults on Scientific Research Just Got Worse

What Happens to the Next Generation of Scientists if Politicians, Not Peers, Determine Research Funding sciencepolitics.org/2026/06/05/w...

Amy Angert and I are recruiting 2 temporary field technicians to assist with demographic surveys across the range of scarlet monkeyflower in California and Oregon. Perfect for recent graduates who are considering applying for grad school. Apply here: jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/231.... Please share!

I really enjoy EB White's take on New York and New Yorkers.

I had no time to hate, by Emily Dickinson

Metrics for this editorial. This, friends, is called the Streisand Effect. Nice work ADA Leadership!!

#SilentSunday Penwood State Park, Connecticut

Professor Joe Felsenstein FRS is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. After initially working on population genetics theory of recombination, of migration, and of speciation, his main focus has been on phylogenetic inference. #RSFellows https://royalsociety.org/people/joseph-felsenstein-38106/

Based on the guidelines we issued yesterday, please obtain prior approval for the collaborations you began years ago.

"Would someone from abroad want to come to the United States to start their career in science when the NAS Presidential address repeated the structural risks of America’s apparent ‘over-reliance on foreign researchers’?" What on earth is going on at the NASEM? @joshuasweitz.bsky.social reports.

🚨SSE members: check your inbox!🚨 SSE has sent an important email regarding the OMB's proposed overhaul of federal grant regulations--changes that could affect peer review, publishing, conferences, professional societies, international collaborations, and more. @sse-evolution.bsky.social

HUGE kudos to SSE leadership for spearheading collective action against OMB's proposed rule. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🧪 Societies matter!! Support them with your engagement, conference attendance, and choice of journals. SSE members: please consider signing these letters! SSE non-members: please consider joining ☺️

Classic successful pest control program. It works so well people forget it was needed in the first place. In the absence of vigilance, the insects will always win. Case in point...

Just saying…. #BookSky

New AI google going about as well as expected.

A bit thin on detail and understated in tone, but at least reporters are starting to take notice of last Friday's proposed changes to federal funding regulations. Gift link.

This news gutted me. I don’t won’t go into details, but Raul was publicly, bravely KIND to me at a very low point in my professional life when so others were cowardly, weak, and mean. He owed me nothing. He gave because he wanted to. A rare occurrence in my life. jovanevery.co.uk/in-memoriam-...

"The increasing involvement of technology companies in mathematical research raises the risk that research questions may come to be prioritized because of their amenability to automated mathematics, rather than expert judgment of their deeper significance."

@elizabethginexi.bsky.social explains how the OMB proposed rule changes will affect States, cities, not just destroy science. "... in FY2024 the federal government sent $1.1 trillion in grants to state and local governments. ". ie. Medicaid, Transportation, Education. Also how to fight back.

If you’ve heard of Baumol’s cost disease, but don’t understand it. Take a look at this. There is some math, but you can ignore the math and concentrate on the lucid explanation. (There’s an interactive graph.) - You Don’t Understand the ‘Chart of the Century’

I am completely shocked by this tragic news. I really can't believe it. Raúl Pacheco-Vega was an outstanding scholar who did so much to promote good scholarship. Utterly devastating news.

It's a good metric of the health of science in your country when a national scientific society has a highly-attended workshop about how to do a postdoc abroad.

This whole story illustrates my thesis that LLMs are not a democratizing technology; they are an anti-egalitarian technology. As inboxes fill with these kind of scams, authors are forced to ignore cold emails and genuine good faith messages from the community get ignored.

We have to know that the world as it is, with all its inefficiencies and injustices, is better than the world that was. - David French

My quote of the day Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway. Elbert Hubbard

Look, plantar fascitis sucks but I think this guy has bigger issues going on

#SilentSunday Fishhook Nature Trail, Redfish Lake, Sawtooth National Recreation Area, Idaho

The Department of Biology at the University of Iowa is hiring an evolutionary ecologist at the assistant professor level for fall 2027. Come and be my colleague! jobs.uiowa.edu/faculty/view...

A New Version of the Resource Curse - Is the US dollar an example of the resource curse? If it is, what do we do about it? www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

I’d be jumping at this opportunity if I were 40 years younger (and not retired).