NEW: The F.D.A. refused to accept an application from Moderna for its mRNA flu vaccine. Its reason: The agency did not think Moderna compared the new vaccine to one of the best flu shots available. The company spent $750M+ on a 41,000 person study. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/h...

I cannot stress this enough: you want to write a book? Write it. Do it now. Don’t wait. There is never a perfect time and you don’t need anyone’s permission. There are always dragons ahead. Not to be dark, but the cliff awaits. Write it in scraps, in voice notes, in a crappy notebook...

Graduate Students’ NSF Fellowship Applications Are Being “Returned Without Review” 🧪 eos.org/research-and...

Don’t forget about Daniel @sadbumblebee.buzz himself, who is a brilliant and compassionate writer, climate reporter, and developer — among many other talents. Some of my faves of his work: wapo.st/4rv3WZJ wapo.st/4a1IIwS

The Post was foolish enough to unleash a bevy of the world’s most talented multi-disciplinary journalists out there for their competition to scoop up. These are some of the most hard working and skilled people I know. Save this one and reshare it please! 📊

Today I was one of the many laid off from the Post. It is a dark day for news. For now I am going to take some time with my family before figuring out where I go from here. In the meantime, please consider supporting my colleagues. Any contribution helps: www.gofundme.com/f/standing-t...

"The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

This is an incredible performance and worth four minutes of your time www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l2R...

America: where you can sell a random “wellness” drink at CVS, claim it “may” somehow “reinforce” your immune system, and literally call it “The Flu Shot.”

When kids have the moral clarity that many adults lack

Best Data Visualization Projects of 2025, a.k.a. my favorites flowingdata.com/2025/12/31/b...

My favorite evidence that congestion pricing in New York has reshaped peoples’ behavior: we can see a surge of people trying to enter the zone before the price kicks up at 5 a.m., and after it decreases at 9 p.m.

Brilliant piece. The Upshot doing what it does best, a clear and comprehensive look at the data. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Happy new year! My all sky camera imaged the sky every 15 seconds and this picture shows what happened in the sky in 2025. It shows the length of the night and day with the hourglass shape, the monthly lunar cycle with the diagonal bands, the elevation of the Sun at local noon, and lots of clouds.

"Describing the research process, Baek compared it to repeatedly building and discarding ideas. “You keep holding on to hope, then breaking it, and moving forward by picking up ideas from the ashes”" m.koreaherald.com/article/1064...

Loved this

"We're not going to get a better internet by waiting for platforms to become less extractive. We build it by building it."

Last night I set up my telescope so we could all watch the planets while waiting for the new year to arrive. After the fireworks had subsided, I attached my camera and captured my first astrophoto of the year featuring Jupiter and its moon Europa. #astrophotography Happy New Year everyone!

ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown

I love how well every step is explained here. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol_Q...

New York City was bracing on Friday for its biggest snowfall in more than three years. The area in and around the city was expected to get 6 to 9 inches of snow over the weekend, with up to 10 inches predicted in some areas.

maybe don't replace your office workers with LLMs, one just called me to tell me to bring "a valid photo Idaho" to my appointment tomorrow

This is pretty amazing: poloclub.github.io/transformer-... A basic language model (GPT-2 small) that runs in the browser, with all of its calculations visualized.

“He was the kind of guy who went up to the chalkboard and started writing out equations and explaining everything” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/u...

Jumping Frog Radius xkcd.com/3181/

Change in employment since Trump took office, by sector. www.ms.now/opinion/trum...

More than 2,900 attorneys quit the Justice Department or were fired during the first 10 months of this year -- about triple the number who depart in a typical year. personnel records obtained by Reuters show.

Very moving documentary filmed over 14 years that follows three kids who grew up poor: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTbo...

There's some wisdom here: www.joanwestenberg.com/thin-desires...

Nearly all weather, climate, & natural hazard research involves NCAR in some way-either directly (as is the case with countless affiliated scientists at universities or elsewhere) or indirectly (through use of NCAR's irreplaceable community datasets, predictive models, or its computing facilities).

I'm not sure most folks are aware of the immense magnitude of loss this would entail for the global weather and climate community, and beyond. NCAR has played a greater cumulative role in advancing weather prediction and atmospheric modeling than perhaps any other single entity in the world.

Unbelievable. This would be a terrible blow to American science, writ large. It would decimate not only climate research, but also the kind of weather, wildfire, and disaster research that has underpinned half a century of progress in prediction, early warning, and increased resilience.

It is hard to overstate how critical @ncar-ucar.bsky.social is to climate science in the US and around the world. It's the beating heart of our field. Generations of scientists have trained there, and almost everyone I know relies on deep collaborations with NCAR scientists. It's end is unthinkable.

Exclusive: The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, according to a senior White House official, taking aim at one of the world's leading climate research labs.

Concept art by Lou Romano for The Powerpuff Girls (1998–2005), created by Craig McCracken, Hanna-Barbera Cartoons

We've gotten absolutely pummeled with rain in the PNW, but all that water is running right out again (through houses and farms and towns...). What we really need is snow, to hold the moisture in place and get us through our dry summers, but that will get more and more rare as the climate warms.

Here's the research: www.joinclassaction.us/post/the-use...

Me too! There's one that comes by my balcony every morning and its so cute and charming.

Made a site comparing the sizes of living things :) The great Julius Csotonyi spent 5 months painting over 60 illustrations for the site, no ai used > neal.fun/size-of-life/

adding AI hacker to my resume

NEW — I put together a list of independent journalism subscriptions that would make great holiday gifts. From music to politics, astronomy to alcohol, tech to social justice, there’s something for [almost] everyone. Support indie media *and* surprise and delight your loved ones! My guide:

"A squircle is a shape intermediate between a square and a circle." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squircle

It's today! Come to the Science Comics Carousel from 1-2PM for my visual exploration of thinking and perceiving. I do a lot of thinking about how we think about science! My comic BRAINS is a love letter to the brain and how thinking for yourself is beautiful. See you soon @massmice.bsky.social!

Why do math diagrams on wikipedia look like this? I can't imagine what the author hoped to communicate here.

They really don't write textbook introductions like they used to...

Reading old court transcripts and, I mean, whomst

Top quality poetic opening

be the bitch doing something yourself that you want to see in the world

I am so thankful for this reporting, it has been so hard to explain to non-scientists how these changes have impacted us and this does a great job.

While the administration has said it is cutting “woke programs” that “poison the minds of Americans", it actually funded fewer grants in every area of science and medicine. “They brought everything to a stop,” said Sarah Kobrin, a branch chief at the N.I.H.’s National Cancer Institute