It isn’t “for no reason”. The tariffs allow Trump to hold large corporations hostage until they pay him massive bribes. The reason is to enrich Trump, whatever the cost. I’m tired of people thinking there’s some deep policy or something when it’s just mundane mob shakedown shit.

Curator of Education job (tenure-track Assistant Professor) at the Museum of Natural History, University of Colorado Boulder! Salary $90-$100K, 9 month full time position. Apply by Jan 21. jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

New Ant Lab video today about pincer wasps and a new research project. This one has some really cool, newly-filmed insect behavior in it! youtu.be/9osTBzQ0zbk

Finally got some photos of Australia’s “blue ant”, Diamma bicolor, which is not an ant at all but a shockingly large metallic blue thynnid wasp, wingless and solitary, that hunts mole crickets. Been meaning to shoot this thing for years.

I don’t understand vertebrate taxonomy. They keep making pointless genera for one or two species. Which defeats the entire purpose of genera. There should only be like nine genera of mammals.

Ants Make Individuals Weaker to Build Bigger Societies www.discovermagazine.com/ants-make-in...

So Bari Weiss’s first real editorial intervention at CBS is to repress coverage of American concentration camps.

Found a nest of one of my favorites! A true oddball. Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus, the red-headed spider ant.

Australia road trip update

This is misinformation. The current problem with the New World Screwworm began in 2023, when the supply of sterile flies used to keep them out of Panama was interrupted. DOGE did not have time machines. asm.org/articles/202...

That’d be a start, but we’re not getting closure on this era until all these fuckers are in prison, and their assets distributed to regime victims. They don’t get to murder so many people and get away with mere impeachment.

A real treat to watch a male Lyrebird perform at the Healesville Sanctuary yesterday. Truly magnificent.

My daughter had a very snooty visitor today. #echidna

Why are rich people paying trillions for “artificial intelligence?” I know people who have genuine intelligence. The real deal. None of this fake shit. Give them your money. It’s a better product.

Australian news has been covering the Epstein-Trump story a surprising amount.

Found a nest of one of my favorites! A true oddball. Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus, the red-headed spider ant.

Hanging out in an old deck chair with lots of cobwebs, in a yard filled with mosquitoes, taking bets.

The redactions just make it clear that Trump is, in fact, a central figure in what may have been the world's largest network of criminal pedophiles.

A real treat to watch a male Lyrebird perform at the Healesville Sanctuary yesterday. Truly magnificent.

I'm sorry but Australian horse flies are insane.

Emu update.

Given the location, it won't be bears that take down this Libertarian Utopia. But it could be dengue or, hopefully, screwworm.

Wombat update.

Propublica is arguably the most trusted and influential investigative reporting publication running today. Its management would only do this if they wanted to destroy it.

Wombat update.

Australia sky update.

Wombat update.

Ahmed al Ahmed, the man who tackled one of the Bondi killers, became an Australian citizen 3 years ago. His deed was "his way of conveying his gratitude for staying in Australia, for being granted citizenship." He took 5 bullets, and fears he'll lose his left arm. www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

Thank God for this vital information, wasn’t sure how we’d get out of our cabin in an emergency.

Australia sky update.

UPDATE Australia’s New South Wales Police Force say that 16 people have been killed in the Bondi Beach massacre and 40 people remain hospitalized.

Mass shooting in Australia

Australia sky update.

#FromTheArchives Another "came across this while looking for some other photo" photo. Steller's Jays excel at that sweet/haughty expression. #birds #becurious 🪶

Words cannot express how much this breaks my heart.

This reminds me of an old joke in South America, that Paraguay came in second on Transparency International’s Corruption Scale because the number one country, Cameroon, bribed the judges.

Conservatives ran an op at A&M to create a controversy, then used that controversy as an excuse for a purge. The whole thing is fake.

Think of it this way: many rich parents want their kids in colleges surrounded by smart people, otherwise what’s the point? Thus, they are tacitly happy to overpay the privates at full price to ensure the place is crammed with actually smart students. Which means your kid gets an aid package.

A few months ago I shared this beautiful and mysterious hawkmoth caterpillar from the Amazon, and it seems that now more than ever we are finally close to revealing its ID thanks to @gwentomologist.bsky.social, who decided to rear it to adulthood. I highly recommend following this story on IG!

I would like a religious exemption for paying taxes to a government that kills its own people.

Texas ground update. #atxwx

“These political parties, they’re like shipwrecks: metal structures, they’re dead. Street protests, youth politics come into them like shoaling fish, to turn them into living reefs.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Australia is set to become the first country to implement a minimum age for social media use, with platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube forced to block more than a million accounts, marking the beginning of an expected global wave of regulation reut.rs/4pS1oE5 1/7

I keep looking for signs that the normies have figured out we’re in danger, but I’m not sure how to tally this

The point is to use activist students to purge schools of teachers and staff who are not Party supporters. This is all very Soviet.

Read to the end, and you’ll see it was the Hitler Youth behind the suspension of the second instructor. Turning Point USA is a toxic, bigoted organization incompatible with the modern university. Which is their point, I guess.

We are discovering new species at the fastest rate ever. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A cool story about sacrifice and social immunity in ants.

Our infrastructure isn’t ready for what’s coming.

One of the founding members of the UT Austin TPUSA chapter was later arrested for animal cruelty at a Neo-Nazi training camp, where they were doing something awful with a goat. True story.