Science is cool

Sharing of flu samples from around the world with CDC is down 60% this year as of July, and other WHO labs have seen a dip too in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from WHO. That patchier view of influenza's evolution could mean a less effective flu shot next year. www.npr.org/sections/goa...

Slowly dawning on me that today is the first time since the start of the year that I’m not on a constant weekly big deadline. #filmmaking

Voted YES ✅

SCIENCE!

Krill fishing has just got even more political and horrifying Ukrainian scientist, Leonid Pshenichnov, has been arrested by Russia for his work in Antarctica towards protecting krill from overexploitation He faces life in prison for "high treason" 🦑🌊🧪 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

NoKings 2 - San Francisco 100 to 150 thousand people in the street for democracy. Photo: thank you to Dan Dunn for 50501 #NoKIngs #NoKings2

What sucks about the soulless losers trying to destroy creative work is that, because they've never done anything creative in their life, they don't understand the basic fact that it's the process of learning how to communicate something that makes it so that you communicate something interesting.

Pandas, snow leopards...and bacteria. A newly formed team of scientists is setting out to conserve the world's diversity of microbes. Here's my story: nyti.ms/47vEfRC

Scoop: Ron Conway, the prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Democratic donor, resigned today from the the Salesforce Foundation board. He told his close friend, Marc Benioff, he barely recognizes him anymore after his pro-Trump remarks in the @nytimes. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/u...

new protest song just dropped

The science is in: COVID boosters are worth it, even if you've been vaccinated and/or infected before. Stay safe out there, friends!: 🧪 🛟 www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-...

#New: There are now no major metro areas in the US where buying a home is less expensive than renting a home. Gap between monthly mortgage payments and rent payments: San Francisco: 191% San Jose: 186% Seattle: 120% Source: @InvestorsObserv

Help me get the word out? Any Slack channels you can share this event with?

The Now

Help me get the word out? Any Slack channels you can share this event with?

Same. Today I’m running off to Wyoming for the Jackson Wild Film Festival.

One thing that is going to turn me into the Joker is the fact that no airport shops sell masks. At all. 🃏🤡

👇

A judge ruled the firing of thousands of federal employees was illegal. But he stopped short of ordering the government to reinstate them, predicting the Supreme Court would overturn it.

SF BAY AREA! You are invited to a sneak peek screening of my documentary ANTARCTICA UNEARTHED before it goes to national TV broadcast next year. Wednesday, October 15 at 7pm near Palo Alto, CA. Free to attend but registration required: arielwaldman.com/screening (cc @darthbluesky.bsky.social)

SF BAY AREA! You are invited to a sneak peek screening of my documentary ANTARCTICA UNEARTHED before it goes to national TV broadcast next year. Wednesday, October 15 at 7pm near Palo Alto, CA. Free to attend but registration required: arielwaldman.com/screening (cc @darthbluesky.bsky.social)

Today I watched the sunrise as I tuned in to a 16-piece orchestra halfway around the planet recording music made uniquely for my second nature documentary, Prairies Unearthed. A wonderful way to focus on the beautiful things happening on Earth. Thank you to my music composer @edithmudge.bsky.social

A grim reminder: these people will never be satisfied. There’s no point at which they will say “we’ve won, let’s enjoy life.” They will always be looking for someone else to punish, to revile, to dehumanize. They’re empty without that.

An abandoned plan to visit another star highlights the perils of billionaire-funded science

"How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor?" A Dramatic Reading of The Recent New York Times Dispatch from the Hamptons. Presented by The Gilded Age's Morgan Spector.

"Third-party organizations often find more success registering communities of color – particularly immigrant communities — than political parties or government officials. Stewart said that this recent exclusion is simply part of the administration's larger effort to intimidate immigrants."

The We Are All DC march to protest against Trump admin’s takeover of DC is currently heading toward the White House: Via @benjalvarez1.bsky.social

We’re only a few years removed from creatjng a vaccine to protect against a deadly airborne virus in a matter of months. Now, we have a scion fail son running the CDC into the ground not because it failed, but because its success conflicts with RFK Jr’s eugenicist ideology.

Edit: It's about punishment theater.

I was fortunate to speak at a conference with Rai Weiss in 2018. I had fallen in love with the methodology he invented for detecting gravitational waves and created a video about it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7krl... I became even more fascinated by his life story: www.kavliprize.org/rainer-weiss...

I just went through the application to check for myself. These are indeed real questions applicants to vacant federal meteorologist positions are being asked.

the latest episode of Foundation sums up the 21st century so far in a single line

My team at OSTP helped craft and implement the Biden administration’s scientific integrity policies to help keep politics out of government science. Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration has rolled back these safeguards for independent science. It’s an open invitation to political interference.

That's me in the polka dot dress! Spending a couple days this week with my Antarctic research team hearing about all the cool science they've been up to.

“The 🤡 administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions... If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere.”

NEW: Incredible scenes in Sydney, Australia today as tens of thousands march for Gaza, demanding an end to the genocide. #MarchForHumanity (🎥 Ema Franklin)

This is putting a chill down my spine today.

New: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting says it is shutting down cpb.org/pressroom/Co...

Yes! Boom....ordered.

Wearing my SCIENCE AROUND AND FIND OUT shirt today. Available here: arielwaldman.threadless.com/designs/scie... 🧪 #scicomm

If you’re curious about the abridged history of how NASA ended up where it is today (amazing science agency that faltered for decades on human spaceflight), this is a really great and accurate read. 🧪

🎉

Wearing my SCIENCE AROUND AND FIND OUT shirt today. Available here: arielwaldman.threadless.com/designs/scie... 🧪 #scicomm

LOOK HOW HAPPY IT IS 😭😭😭😭😭😭

Techbros couldn’t have invented GPS because to have it work at all requires the use of distant black holes; basic research that gov’t needs to fund over decades that tech never will. They don’t realize yet that they’ve turned off the faucet of the tech hose by defunding science.