Human monogamy in mammalian context — How monogamous are humans? Somewhere between the European beaver and a meerkat royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

The Conservative overhaul of @utaustin.bsky.social is underway. The school has been brought to heel by conservative critics of higher education. It is part of a broader transformation at Texas' universities www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/u...

Trump’s pardons cover every conceivable form of corruption. He is doling them to crooks, cronies, campaign contributors, violent insurrectionists, child sex offenders, convicted drug dealers, and others open.substack.com/pub/theunpop...

Cranial feathers of male golden (C. pictus) and Lady Amherst’s (C. amherstiae) pheasants significantly restrict their visual field relative to females and may impede their ability to gather information. In the vertical extent, the difference is 30° to 40° royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Hong Kong: How the Mecca of Chinese capitalism is attracting top Western scientists, courting international researchers with astronomical salaries and cutting-edge equipment english.elpais.com/science-tech...

Censorship and purges in US — A professor who showed a graphic labeling the MAGA slogan as covert white supremacy has been removed from teaching as ordered by a MAGA US senator under a new Indiana law meant to foster “intellectual diversity" www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u...

Charting the Decline in International Students to the U.S. — 19% globally, 12% less from China, 44% down from India www.nytimes.com/video/upshot...

Trump's corruption has felt like the dog that didn't bark for a while, politically speaking. But I wonder if looting the Treasury like he's Imelda Marcos could be the thing that finally gets people to pay attention

White House fails to entice top colleges to sign submission to MAGA policies in exchange of funds. The blackmail has been rejected by MIT, Brown, Pennsylvania, Southern California, Virginia, Dartmouth—Only @utaustin.bsky.social ‬⁩expressed "enthusiasm" www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

Fossils found in Kenya shed light on the origin of human hands—Remains of ‘Paranthropus boisei’, who inhabited the earth 2.6 to 1.3 million years ago, reveal that they were capable of manipulating objects and food, climbing trees, perhaps making tools english.elpais.com/science-tech...

US government's foolish War on Basic Science — Cutting funding for gravitational wave studies won’t save taxpayers much but will jeopardize future scientific breakthroughs open.substack.com/pub/theunpop...

A cGAS-mediated mechanism in naked mole-rats potentiates DNA repair and delays aging — Unlike human cGAS, which inhibits DNA repair by homologous recombination in the nucleus, the naked mole rat enzyme has 4 amino acid changes that enhances DNA repair www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The University of Zurich said that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, known for their work in development economics, will move from the US to Switzerland, amid US government's attacks on universities www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/a...

M.I.T. is the first university to reject US government's blackmail to trade "favorable treatment" in exchange to cap international student enrollment, freeze tuition for 5 years, adhere to definitions of gender, prohibit anything to “belittle” conservative ideas www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

Censorship and purges at US universities — ⁦‪Rutgers‬⁩ professor @mark-bray.bsky.social moving to Europe after threats from far-right groups accusing him of promoting antifa political violence www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I’ve received multiple death threats + doxing (including my home address) directly following harassment from Turning Point USA, Jack Posobiec, Andy NGO, + Fox News which called me an antifa ‘financier.’ I have been forced to move my classes online. If journalists want to talk, DM me or reply here.

19% fewer international students traveled to US, the steepest decline since the pandemic. Nearly one in three U.S. international students are Indian. Their number started to decline last year. But this August, it dropped by an additional 44% www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

US government to mint $1 coins as legal tender in praise of #USdictatorInTheMaking with his face and words on both faces, allegedly in celebration of US 250th anniversary. That was declared illegal in a 1866 law, which enshrined an unbroken tradition www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b...

What it takes for a working-class kid to get a college education— Sense of hopelessness is a primary driver of partisan hatred and inequality. For the past 40 years, US dropped higher education as a public good and privatized: $1.7 trillion in student debt www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

US government blackmails universities to get research funds, urging them to pledge support for Trump’s policies: to cap enrollment of international students, commit to strict definitions of gender, prohibit anything that would “belittle conservative ideas" www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

US government tackles science

Trump, Hitler comparisons, and Francisco Franco — The “Is Trump the next Hitler?” debate misses his sinister parallels to another 20th-century European tyrant: Generalissimo Franco, the blood-soaked Spain's dictator for 40 years slate.com/news-and-pol...

Give in or fight back? US universities are torn on how to respond to US government — The University of California, one of the government's biggest targets so far, is in an uproar over how to respond to the attacks. So is the rest of higher education www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/u...

#USdictatorInTheMaking sends troops to Portland, Oregon, and to immigration detention facilities around the country, authorizing “Full Force, if necessary” and escalating a campaign to use the U.S. military against Americans www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

US has become a country where the president can order the indefinite imprisonment or the unilateral killing of people merely because he has deemed them to be criminals www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/o...

Judith Butler is being targeted by US government after the University of California, Berkeley, gave them a list of 160 names of faculty, staff, students, in a inquiry into “alleged antisemitic incidents," including one of the most famous Jewish intellectuals www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

For only the 2nd time in 2025, Democrats have actual leverage to block Trump and his party. This time, they plan to use it: government shutdown starting Oct. 1, a tricky path that will require discipline and focus if it is to prevail in winning concessions www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

US government cancels the annual Household Food Security reports, which were introduced in the 1990s to help state and federal officials decide on food assistance programs. The latest report found some 18 million US households were food insecure in 2023 www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

Censorship in US—Environmental Protection Agency has ordered scientists in at least one of its research offices to immediately pause almost all research, stop publishing their studies. The decision to reevaluate all studies was made by MAGA political appointees www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

US government's proposal to UCLA — $1.2-billion fine; drastic overhaul on hiring, admissions, sports, scholarships, discrimination, gender; sweeping detail of how the university must enforce Trump's far-right policies; public declarations of support to those policies www.latimes.com/california/s...

US universities are incentivized to attract international students, charging them heftier tuitions. But US government crackdown on foreigners is projected to reduce this year’s international arrivals by at least 30% www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

#USdictatorInTheMaking orders federal regulators to revoke broadcast licenses over late-night hosts who speak overly negatively about him

"The good people...,” Richmond wrote, “will not much care whether America is lost or not, till they feel the effects in their purses or their bellies.” Only when defeat stared them in the face would they rally against the government www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/int...

“Anyone who stands in our way will be cut down"— Kirk as pretext for tightening Trump's grip, silencing dissent, concentrating power: full state control. The repression of academics, lawyers, journalists, civil servants, military officers, judges will intensify www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Wow. Reward and planning everywhere.

A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour: The activity of single neurons during decision-making — A resource for understanding how computations distributed across and within brain areas drive behaviour www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Whether it's Obama wearing a tan suit or Trump declaring "Chipocalypse Now" and pledging to unleash "the Department of WAR" on America's third largest city, leaders of both parties have shown disregard for presidential norms.

From Erdogan's Turkey to Trump's USA

US government has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer-related research grants and contracts, suspended payments for hundreds of millions more — The National Cancer Institute has lost $2.7 billion of funding, its lowest budget in more than 30 years www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/m...

MAGAs mock the victims, blame only one side, and demand more violence. A culture war favours those willing to disregard the rules, a lesson that liberals and the left are, rightly, reluctant to learn – but that reluctance comes at an increasingly high price www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

MAGA purge at Texas colleges — More public universities turn to Republican politicians to lead them www.texastribune.org/2025/09/05/t...

MAGA purge at Texas colleges — A student accused an instructor of illegally teaching gender "against our president's laws" at Texas ⁦‪@TAMU‬⁩. So the University fired the instructor and removed a dean and department head #LandOfTheFree www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

We are watching a scientific superpower destroy itself — A decade ago, only 1 Chinese research institution figured in the world's top 10. Now 8 of the 10 leaders are in China. The single remaining US institution among the top 10 is Harvard Then came MAGA www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/o...

Warning to visitors to US: you may be arrested by masked, unidentified agents and jailed at any time if: •You are not white or •You are heard speaking a language other than English or •You are heard speaking accented English Courtesy of US government and Supreme Court www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/u...

US Supreme Court allows to make indiscriminate stops and arrests based on, alone or in combination: •Race or ethnicity •Speaking Spanish or accented English •Presence at a particular location—day-laborer, agricultural site •Performing a particular type of work www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/u...

World has been living in a golden age of science, both fundamental discovery science and advancing practical applications—This will continue, but not with US leading the way. China, to some extent Europe, will emerge as the leaders of basic science and applications english.elpais.com/science-tech...

Trump comes for US public universities. But, so far, only those in states not ruled by his party www.economist.com/united-state...

Cooperative Breeding as a Likely Early Catalyst of Human Evolution - What may have triggered this coevolutionary feedback loop: bipedality, direct selection on altriciality, a higher-quality diet, or cooperative breeding? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Authoritarians have long feared and suppressed science as a rival for social influence. Trump is borrowing some of their tactics, such as Xi's and Orbán's budget cuts, intimidation, and high-tech surveillance to cow scientists into submission www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/s...

Texas universities projected to lose international students by about 15%, from roughly 94,000 to 80,000, reducing their economic contribution from $2.6 billion to $2.2 billion. US is expected to lose 30%-40% of international students, a loss of $7 billion www.texastribune.org/2025/08/26/t...