Don’t mind the gap, actually. The gap doesn’t care.

Texas sky update

Who does not want an AMAZING 3D printed fly???? This Drosophila was printed for me today as a prop for a talk at the @rigb.org It caused a minor commotion on the tube on my way home. And I LOVE IT - @bittelmethis.bsky.social 🤓🪰🤘

Everyone else: Everyone else: Everyone else: Me, at a sudden press conference: I would like to clarify that the dump truck full of bodies is not registered to me.

This may be lost in the noise--this is as impactful or more than the cuts to NIH and NSF 🧪

If you wonder why students protested loudly under Biden but aren’t as visible under Trump, it’s because they thought they had some margin of safety to speak on campus then. Even before Trump 2.0, they learned administrators and political leaders were willing to harm them instead. So here we are.

A native Pheidole dentata big-headed ant, attacked by a pair of ant-decapitating phorid flies at UT’s Brackenridge field lab.

With a perfectly reasonable answer: college administrators, in collaboration with largely Democratic local and federal governments, made sure to crush those protests last time.

A few months ago I splurged on a nice Lenovo think pad to replace an ailing midrange laptop, and I’m wondering why I didn’t do it sooner. Whole new experience. Sometimes I regret buying the expensive thing, but this upgrade was worth it. And might be cheaper over the long run because it’s so solid.

I am reiterating my proposal to take every Trump regime member, after this is over, and leave them chained to the border wall.

One of my former students took her final project for my field natural history class and turned it into her Honors thesis: a 100% original, hand-drawn field guide to the rocky intertidal! And she got copies printed for her defense!

He’ll be accepting bribes to remove tariffs on particular items. It’s just a giant shakedown of the U.S. economy.

This is the whole point of tariffs. It’s the whole point of the Trump regime, in fact. Use the U.S. government to shake down the entire planet, emptying its resources into crime syndicate pockets.

Doesn’t the government have a form we are supposed to use to report anti-Christian bias?

Texas sky update.

I’m seeing too many content scraping accounts lately. You know, the ones who post “a frog a day” or whatever. They’re lousy! They steal photos, post without credit to get lots of followers & then often make money off the account. Please block them & try these real photographers instead!

i keep thinking about the artemis crew and how if i was on the ship, every time i woke up i would be freaked out about how far away from home i was. literally nobody in the history of humanity has ever been this far away from their home. nobody. ever.

Are Republicans aware that, because they handed Iran a newfound ability to tax the world's fertilizer supply, they are now paying the Islamic State every time they buy food?

Looks to me like the US just lost the stupidest war in history.

A Terlingua business owner says he just turned down half a million dollars rather than help house border wall construction crews. Contractors are offering huge sums of money to lock up lodging for wall crews, but these rural communities won't sell out to destroy their own home.

You have more in common with the people of Iran than you do with anyone in this administration, any member of the technocracy, anyone who is profiting from this war, or any billionaire. When you see Iranians forming human chains outside key infrastructure sites, you should feel a sense of kinship.

8pm approaches. A sweaty Trump, finger hovering over a big red button, watches the election returns roll in.

This ant species is Pseudomyrmex boopis, which should be pronounced "BOOOOOOOP-is!" while bopping someone's nose, but taxonomists tell me to sit down and stop giggling and say "boo-OH-piss" like a grownup. So pronounce it however you want, I guess.

Earthset from Artemis II. I am overcome.

The rest of the world should probably collectively stand up to the U.S. right now, tbh

I hope the rest of the world is prepared to seize the U.S. military bases in their territories, and the assets of U.S. officials and oligarchs, should Trump actually attempt to make good on his threats. We can’t wage war against Iran and everyone else all at once.

Another move by Republicans that appears designed to force secession and dissolution of the United States.

FUUUUUUUUUUUCK

The wikipedia entry for Myrmecia pilosula starts well enough. But, this is an Australian ant, so the article ends with a photograph of a hospital and an extensive discussion of medical interventions.

I think I just made a discovery by looking through a ton of iNaturalist photos. Prey specialization of a particular ant with weird mandibles. Can't find anything published about this at all.

New shot of the Moon taken only a few hours ago by the Artemis II crew! More of the lunar far side coming into view :-D flic.kr/p/2s676GN

Yes… Ha Ha Ha… Yes!

“A.i.” serves fascism.

I can tell it's fall in Australia because the ant socials are lighting up with posts about Myrmecia bull ant queens.

The beautiful Myrmecia fulvipes, from Victoria, Australia.

This is how I work now

How are we going to survive this era of violence and social disintegration? Fortunately, I just found out, scientists have been working on something.

They are stupid people who cannot tell the difference between strength and brutality, and a result they are weak and losing the war that they started.

After some thought, I’ve decided the appropriate punishment for regime members and their DHS enforcers after the trials and convictions is to chain them to their precious fucking border wall and leave them there. Plenty of steel bollards.

The non-profit National Butterfly Center is a 100 acre (0.4 sq km) botanical garden located along the US-Mexico border near Mission, TX. It hosts 200 wild butterfly species on migrations to & from Mexico. And now it will be a construction zone so we can build a rusting metal wall.

I *really* like this one. Photos — real photos — of the Earth are powerful because we know we’re sharing the view of another human being. www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2... 🚀🌏 #earth #NASA #artemisii

Movie plot idea: earth’s civilization collapses in a volley of nuclear weapons on Easter weekend, leaving several astronauts stranded on a lunar mission. A scrappy team of surviving engineers tries to bring them home.

Little House on the Private Tropical Island

If Austin, Texas ever gets bored of regular politics, we're going to drain the lake and find the bodies.

Zizotes milkweed is a weird little thing.

The tech industry props up the richest people on the planet and pays far less than its fair share of taxes. It can absolutely afford its own R&D. But instead, it’s effectively hijacked our public science infrastructure because having more wealth than anyone could ever spend is still not enough.

I am shocked to see this language from the NSF. “The U.S. National Science Foundation's Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request reflects a strategic alignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment while eliminating woke and weaponized grant programs that previously funded radical DEI projects.”

In hindsight it was a bad idea to allow journalism to become a daycare for gossipy dullards with rich parents

Sometimes wars don't have good and bad sides. Sometimes there are just a bunch of evil fuckers murdering people.

Extremely shady behavior from Southeastern Louisiana University: removed a professor from a research project after she went public with pollution findings. Background here, administration's stated reasons for removing her have been all over the place. lailluminator.com/2026/03/06/r...