Great team to work with!!

One of the easiest ways to shoot down the idea that "AI" is an expert is to show how it deals with something people know about. Younger readers may not get this as most appliances come pre-wired, but anyone 35+ can see these are chaotic fire hazards. From Mastodon, AI asked how to wire a plug:

Nature is metal. Carrying the decaying skull of your vanquished enemy as a hat. From a Wildlife photographer of the year contest. www.popsci.com/environment/...

The pond beside my back yard has a highway of fox (?) tracks.

Students applying for NSF funding are having their applications “returned without review” for being “ineligible,” despite their proposed research falling squarely within the application guidelines. eos.org/research-and...

Reporting on GRFP applications returned without review.

Frost on a dead flower head in my garden

American scientists have historically been leaders in the collection and analysis of data on climate change. These projects are now under threat econ.st/4r1S1Tk Illustration: Javier Palma

What’s the best choice for a good bird guide for India (southern)?

When MAGA claims ICE is only going after the worst hardened criminals, remember this photo.

So about TrumpRx: We crunched the numbers today and about half of the drugs on there have cheaper generics available already. www.statnews.com/2026/02/06/t...

Short walk on the frozen pond found delights: cool spots from freeze-thaw patterns, and a veritable highway of fox (?) prints

Repost with a photo of yours that would make a good album cover (In this case the Beatles if the Beatles were all Black-crowned night herons) 📷🦉🌿

Postdoc position available in my lab! Project will focus on how the microbiome-derived metabolite butyrate shapes C. difficile fitness and pathogenesis & will build on our previous/ongoing work in this space. Apply here: hr.wisc.edu/postdoc-and-...

Holy shit: it's an RFP for the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (PRFB). Hello old friend www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

BREAKING: Over 680 members of the National Academy of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering have endorsed articles of impeachment against RFK Jr. (1/2 🧵)

New preprint from our big collaborative evolution experiment in 9 whole lakes in Alaska, written by McGill grad student @lucaseckert.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... What happens if you put a mixture of multiple source populations together to complete & evolve in multiple new lakes?

Try reaching out to [email protected], they are logging and handling inquiries.

New round of NSF GRFP declines without review. If you were affected: 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at [email protected] so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter This is the link to the post: bsky.app/profile/noam...

First day on the Yale campus for my sabbatical. It’s a bit emotional to be here; my dad went to Yale (BA ‘69 and PhD (‘72)

Still digging through this thorough report from @sanders.senate.gov. I want to flag this screenshot of what program staff receive when studies include "terms potentially associated with misalignment with agency priorities" (Newspeak for 'banned words')

“In reality, the challenge is not the NIH policy itself, but publishers attempting to monetize a compliance requirement that should cost researchers nothing.”

New paper with @laurenfuess.bsky.social and Amanda Hund and others in Frontiers in Immunology: www.frontiersin.org/journals/imm... We used antigen injection experiments to measure the time-course of transcriptomic changes in three populations of stickleback with varying anti-helminth immune traits

New @protocolsio.bsky.social post describing our new protocol for generating intestinal organoids for #stickleback: www.protocols.io/view/generat... With work by postdoc Arshad Padhiar, funded by @moorefound.bsky.social

APPROPS OF NOTHING. www.wired.com/story/hhs-is...

Slim 5 can now simulate genomes with multiple chromosomes like autosomes, sex chromosomes, mitochondria and chloroplast dna academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

My department at Washington State University is recruiting an Assistant or Associate Professor in vector-borne disease 🕷️🦟🦠 Full job description is linked below. Come join us on the Palouse!

Virginia public health officials are warning of possible exposure to measles after a passenger with the highly contagious disease recently traveled through Dulles Airport on January 24.

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics? 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at [email protected] so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has recently said that he wants to transform the NIH into the “research arm of MAHA” and a “central driver of the MAHA agenda.” Lysenkoism 2.0 continues apace at NIH. sciencebasedmedicine.org/maha-podcast...

I am looking for a PhD student to join my new Socio-Eco-Evo group, hosted in Katie Peichel's Evolutionary Ecology Division @ University of Bern. We're offering a fully funded 4-year position, studying social plasticity and behavioral adaptation among stickleback in Greenland. Please share around!

Coming to #evol2026 this summer? The SSB Early Career Travel Funds competition is now live! Apply by February 27 for this years’ Tri-Society meeting. More info: www.systbio.org/early-career...

Trump reversed decades of national security objections to selling advanced AI chips to UAE. National security experts were alarmed. But there was a secret. Before the deal, UAE had sent $187M to the Trumps and $31M to the Witkoffs in secret payments. Mind blowing corruption.

All you need to do is put an SS symbol on the arm sleeve of the ICE goon and…

I was a White House ethics lawyer. I used to advise people not to even accept a free cup of coffee from someone who had interests before them. And staff followed those rules. I can’t even find the words to describe the scale of Trump’s corruption here.

Today I learned about the book Telliamed by De Maillet, a Frenchman who lived 1656-1738. The book lays out the idea that the earth arose gradually through time en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beno%C3...

It's Squirrel Appreciation Day. Celebrate by reading this article from The American Naturalist that studies the storing habits of squirrels. https://ow.ly/2YmO50XK0yy American Naturalist / ASN 🐌

Worth remembering that something did happen: the journalist who revealed this died from a car bomb.

This is corruption on a breathtaking level. Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal nicknamed the "spy sheikh", pumped $187mn into Trump family businesses. A WSJ team has the whole story, reported here for the first time. Remember: Jimmy Carter had to sell his peanut farm.

The NYT story on the upset is up. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/u...

Excited for this always excellent meeting. I submitted my registration yesterday.

Last rant (for the day) about the "Reclaiming Science" MAHA event. Deputy Director Memoli (who was described as running NIH inside whereas Director Bhattacharya handles external issues [Narrator: Normally, the NIH Director does not delegate NIH management] participated in a panel discussion. 1/16

Two mornings in a row a bobcat left tracks in the deep snow just outside my office window. Since then I’ve been getting up before dawn to photograph her passing in the snow, and she’s been a no-show every morning.

That makes sense.

ICYMI, Rice University students have developed a free online map to track ICE activity throughout the country. Find it here: www.icemap.dev. Gift link to @houstonchronicle.com story about it: www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

They used "anti-semitism" as a pretext to deport foreign-born students and chill free speech, and their deportation chief -- the one with the nonstandard Hugo Boss-style greatcoat -- was spouting anti-semitic insults at a US attorney

So does he fancy himself Napoleon or Trajan? Either way this is self-styled emperor behavior, and not a good use of federal funds. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

🧵Good news out of #NIH today. (1) NIH is extending #ESI and #K99/R00 eligibility to accommodate researchers whose eligibility would have ended during the previous shutdown. Take a look at NOT-OD-26-020. If your ESI status would have ended in 2025, you get an automatic extension through 2026/03/31.

It’s going to be political hacks. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"Leadership" matters... perhaps more than ever.