For all the threats to higher education (criticism by MAGA leaders, funding cuts, mockery in media, visa restrictions, etc), I was gratified to find that *demand* by students is just growing. Top universities & colleges are seeing record-breaking #'s of applicants for undergrad education

Happy to be part of the grene-net.org research network, which published its first paper in @science.org #universityoftheaegean #research www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Yes, seals have lice! Under water, lice close their spiracles and reduce their oxygen consumption to a minimum www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Just to be very clear: The Trump DOJ is stealing $1.2 million of your money to gift one of Trump’s cronies, who pled guilty to the crimes he was charged with, and whose suit against the government had already been tossed by a judge.

Just received a photo of myself from my senior year in high school. Its pretty much in-character

The White House has delayed nominating a new director of the CDC before a Wednesday deadline, according to officials.

We have an opportunity to join our team at @arcadiascience.com jobs.lever.co/arcadiascien... We're looking for an evolutionary biologist who thinks a lot about protein evolution. If you have experience investigating genomic and amino acid sequence evolution and protein structural evolution, apply!

It is good to see that AAU is aware of and sharing information about the slowdown in NIH grantmaking. www.aau.edu/newsroom/lea...

These mangaby rickshaw drivers are better qualified for their job than most of the MAGA crew driving key areas of the US government, from DHS to HHS to DOJ

Of the many fascinating features of Hampi (India): musical stone pillars. These thin pillars, carved from solid blocks around a larger central pillar, resonate when struck by hand, even with a finger. They are tuned to different frequencies, so the whole temple can be 'played' as an instrument

A relief carving in granite from about 1500 AD, from Hampi, showing what I interpret as early evidence of goat yoga

Christ on a cracker

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “In place of the Pax Americana we are seeing a sort of Lax Americana,” our columnist Carlos Lozada writes. It is “a world in which a careless and uninhibited and incurious U.S. superpower struts across the chess board, threatening old friends and enabling old rivals.”

A new paper suggests that grant terminations from the NIH over the past year may have further punctured the so-called "leaky pipeline" because women were more impacted by grant terminations than men www.statnews.com/2026/03/23/n...

Someone or someones made $580,000,000 in exquisitely well-timed oil trades that took place 15 minutes before Trump's dubiously optimistic post about the negotiations with Iran. Gift link ⤵️ giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

The American Genetic Association has a new grant opportunity for Research Comunity Engagement Award (RCE). Funding covers activities that strengthen trust and foster between researchers and the communities where they work. www.theaga.org/rce-awards-f... Apply by May 1

11,000 children who don’t know if they’ll ever get to see their parents again. Who are forced to live with friends or even strangers. Whose lives will never be the same again. This is Trump’s legacy. https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-family-deportations-ice-citizen-kids

picture, thousan words, etc etc

Curious timing, given the clear unreliability of fossil fuel prices revealed the last few weeks.

Lyme is found in almost a half-million Americans each year. A new vaccine shows some promise. www.statnews.com/2026/03/23/l...

"The Justice Department is increasingly telling judges it can’t defend ICE’s actions..." www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

The history of Ukraine helps explain the present - if you want to understand how we got to where we are now, the Holodmor Research and Education Consortium has created a free course in the history of the Ukrainian famine. Sign up here: www.coursera.org/learn/holodo...

And it’s well-known now too that research on-campus at NIH is being slowly choked to death. Scientists are leaving and not being replaced, lecture visits blocked, people are spending more and more time not on science but on fruitless paperwork seemingly created to stop progress.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. The leaders of the National Academies of Science and Medicine are not merely standing aside as science and biomedicine are destroyed. NASEM is *actively helping* destroy science with events like this: @health.nationalacademies.org

The real March Madness.

A scientist from Zambia who loves — LOVES! — chemistry runs a lab in South Africa that is being hailed for "extraordinary" work.

It took four years of hate-filled propaganda for Slobodon Milosevic to convince people of committing atrocities. It took less time in Rwanda. Steady messaging that designates internal enemies should never be taken lightly.

Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

1st story: April 2024 2nd story: April 2025 3rd Story: March 2026

Padding through riparian forest during spring flood.

No Parking Any Time. Certainly no parking today. Connecticut River in flood.

This

Here's a gift link. The Times did some really great investigative work here and everyone should read the whole thing. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/u...

I hadn't realised that Bob Trivers had died. What a complicated legacy. jjffh.com/tribute/deta...

"Those who celebrate the triumph of ideology over intelligence have lit an indoor bonfire of our scientific capital and are now dancing around it, mistaking national self-immolation for a crowning policy achievement." - A remarkable @drdrtsai.bsky.social commentary on our SSM Mental Health paper 🧪

Talking to my peers, it’s hard to fathom what the job market for new biomed PhDs will even be - with academic jobs, you’re signing up for near-0 hiring or funding odds; industry isn’t much better, with federal funding & approval process volatility disincentivizing inquiries, investments, or hiring

19% more deaths from Covid in the US than counted thru 2021 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Today, the US Mint approved a gold coin with Trump leaning over the Resolute Desk. Federal law bans living presidents from appearing on currency, but the Treasury found a workaround. The coin advisory committee called it something only kings and fascist dictators do. They are not wrong.

Last year I posted about this freaking out. Breaking the previous record by more than a week and being a month earlier than average. Welp. Yesterday the ice broke on the Santa Cruz. 3 weeks earlier than the previous record, *which was set last year* It is still winter!

The research center of gravity is shifting faster than many expected. New data suggests China's public R&D spending could overtake the US by 2028. While our investment grew 12% since 2013, theirs surged 90%.

I'm excited to announce that the @sortee.bsky.social Guidelines for Data and Code Quality Control in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology are now published in Peer Community Journal peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....

lots of jarring statistics and heartbreaking stories I could share from this story, but this particular anecdote made me tear up when @jonathanwosen.bsky.social first shared this story with me For more details from our survey of ~1000 nih-funded researchers, read the report below

I was just reminded of an old logo for my lab back in Texas, which I'd lost track of. It started as a whiteboard sketch of a stickleback, for fun. Then an anonymous person added a cowboy riding the stickleback

Special Feature in AmNat @asn-amnat.bsky.social just out on Genomic Forecasting. "Collectively, the articles underscore both the promise and the limitations of genomic forecasting while [showing] predictive performance is context dependent" 🧬🧪👨‍🔬🖥️🌲🐋🌿 www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Email your senators to urge them not to confirm Jim O’Neill as Director of the National Science Foundation. He's not a scientist, has no relevant expertise, promoted vaccine misinformation, helped gut the CDC, and his Silicon Valley ties raise questions about protecting the public interest. (1/2🧵)

13% success rates for FY2025 grant awards. NIH finally releases some FY2025 success rate data drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/03/18/n...

Trump Promised the ‘World’s Lowest’ Drug Prices. We Checked the Numbers. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/w...