What we talk about when we talk about the unbearable lightness of boring titles

The death rate among children under 5 is expected to grow this year for the first time in the 21st century, researchers say. A key factor, they say, is cuts to U.S. and other foreign aid www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the examined one is exhausting

Feeling festive? Why not deck the halls with @cvrinfo.bsky.social's papercraft #VirusSnowflakes and celebrate the science of viruses and the fight against viral diseases. Download for free: cvr-engagement.co.uk/virus-snowfl... #scicomm #sciart #decorations

Today on the sanitation beat www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/w...

An obituary any scientist would be proud of imo

Camping in an era of climate change

I sowed all my wild oats years ago. Now I am sowing thoroughly domesticated oats. I prefer these ones.

👀

NSF GRFP is out 2.5 months late w/key changes 1. 2nd year graduate students not eligible. 2. "alignment with Administration priorities" 3. Unlike prior years, they DO NOT specify the expected number of awards... that is a BIG problem. a brief 🧵 w/receipts www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

My dog Daisy (x.com/DaisyFetch) is an anti-rabies-vaccine activist Y'all should check her out

Water pollution doesn't necessarily stay in the water, and downwind communities suffer. Proud to have been a part of this study led by Ben Rico and the Prather team at UCSD, and hoping for some effective action to clean things up soon. @kprather.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Horrific & stupid. Polio will come back to Florida. By the way, everyone should just follow WHO guidance on vaccines. They are there (despite recent funding losses as America leaves the chat) to guide everyone, including folks in fragile states or in other places that lack competent leadership.

This is the sort of work this administration is halting with their ridiculous, backward policies. Public health scientists solve important problems and help people.

These monsters are undoing decades of progress. We will all be sicker. More people will die. Needless suffering brought on my willful ignorance, grievance, spite, & cruelty. I have no words to describe how distressing this all is. There is just no point. Never let the pigeon drive the bus.

Just assume flood water has poo in it, because it universally does, though human versus animal & the amounts differ a lot. But any flood water carries exposure risks. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/w...

Today on the sanitation beat: cave remediation www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/c...

New Jersey scientists are testing mosquitoes after a resident may have contracted malaria locally, which health officials said would be the first known instance in decades of someone being exposed while in the state.

One of the students in my wife’s 3rd grade math class is headed for disappointment

Today on the sanitation beat: near constant shitting Birds have to top the list of daily defecation by body mass, as observers of Canada geese & chickens will attest. But some clearly top the league tables. "Streaked shearwaters ... [shed] about 5 percent of their body mass every hour."

Today on the sanitation beat: sanitation as public art: "You don’t want to scream ‘sewer pipe’ at people" Actually yes, yes I do! www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Back to real life from time away pondering the universe. Night sky in Idaho's Frank Church - River of No Return Wilderness.

I am getting the sense that the people running the government oppose everything I have ever worked for Or, more generously, they fundamentally misunderstand & therefore do not appreciate the importance of environmental quality & public health, & so don’t care I don’t understand this

Every rebuttal letter

A looming global water crisis may be under appreciated as climate change takes hold. Today I report on a new study that finds the planet is quickly drying, with mega-regions of water loss now stretching across continents. www.propublica.org/article/wate...

Today on the sanitation beat: international cooperation

Professor achievement unlocked

Why do we put so much emphasis on chemistry in relationships? Seems to me that having good physics or biology with someone is just as important. To say nothing of psychology.

Deeply grateful we don't have combined sewers here in Chapel Hill - the 9+ inches of rain we got could have resulted in a scary preponderance of ... shIT.

Who is everyone's favorite Duke alum? Richard Nixon or Stephen Miller?

Mycoaesthetics www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

A credible attempt to estimate the global health costs of USAID’s dismantling. Required reading.

Words cannot describe how excited I am to share the findings from the second half of my postdoc in @aaronwhiteley.bsky.social's lab where we discover that bacteria use functional amyloids to defend themselves from predatory bacteria. rdcu.be/euu5Y. See thread for details on this epic adventure 1/.

no. men must never acquire the devastating power of the Novel. in fact we should preemptively invade their country to shut down their efforts to develop fiction

So cool, a novel archaeon with a super small genome and no metabolic genes! "An unprecedented level of metabolic dependence on a host, a condition that challenges the functional distinctions between minimal cellular life and viruses." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I’m observing a lot of people in my world who seem to just be running out of steam.

Karolinska is looking for 20 (!!) assistant professors and offering 6 year appointments with ~1M USD startup packages. ki.se/en/about-ki/...

I have been arguing that Jaws is such an important political & philosophical film for so long. I feel vindicated! I can’t wait until the cognoscenti begin to recognize the other: Ghostbusters II But of course these two, as well as Deliverance, are just retellings of Moby Dick Plus ca change

Millions will get sick & die because our government has abandoned its leadership role in global health. I fear the damage will not be easily undone. Exhibit A

Hope this is useful - consensus statement "Guidelines for preventing and reporting contamination in low-biomass microbiome studies" rdcu.be/er3Io

Why is germ theory in the same air quotes as "miasma theory," I ask as a historian of medicine who is very very tired

Today on the sanitation beat With respect to recovery of said toilet "the police have nothing to go on"

Overhead bin malfunction and this dude jumps up and is like “I’m an engineer” and sets about repeatedly slamming it They were like sir, please be seated because you’re making it worse He slunk away Maintenance guy fixed it instantly, no PE required

Today on the wastewater beat Sewage: the great equalizer

I keep telling cautionary tales but no one is listening

All scrolling is doomscrolling in this moment