One fashion tidbit I keep thinking about lately is buttons. Do you know how massive button-making was? Before zippers and plastic, mind you, buttons were MADE BY HAND. First appeared in the Indus Valley 2800 BCE, made of shells--and not as fasteners, but decoration. Button holes came later.

The big fin squid just wants your love

so..just gonna float this notion that if you use a gen AI to write for you and do not disclose it you are not just failing to cite but committing academic misconduct because you are presenting a result and deliberately obscuring how you got it.

Last image from tonight (short film in the morning): this brother out here with his Singer sewing machine, gifting people a custom embroidery on their jerseys and hats with the name and the date, was more artistic than anything at Burning Man and ad gorgeous as a Caravaggio. Magic! Goodnight.

Not a fan of sports ball but I did love and still do when an NYC team wins. Cries of joy out of every window.

Remote monitoring of sepsis patients does not reduce hospital readmissions. Various at-home surveillance methods for patients with severe infections do not prevent them from returning to the hospital, a new study finds. Read more: ow.ly/6jNH50ZbjV1

tell me you want to cut personnel from your grant budget without telling me etc..

Today I'm posting a new blog about an astonishing scientific own goal. Hundreds of papers have reported using a totally wrong antibody to investigate the tumor suppressor p16. This mistake has happened because scientists have muddled the names of two proteins. forbetterscience.com/2026/06/02/m...

primary reason I will never be able to go home. There is no work for me.

okay - liver macrophages are critical to the magnetic sensing abilities of rock doves...and blue fin tuna co-opt their lymphatics to make high speed hair pin turns in water. THE IMMUNE SYSTEM IS AWESOME...and I'm using "awesome" correctly.

Today’s #BirdOfTheDay alt theme is determination. These guys are determined to chase me off ….. 😆

Been on HRT ~2 yrs. Every 90 days CVS has either not had my very common doses in stock or failed to released them to me within a week of the refill date b/c they need my Dr. to reissue the 12 mo. script. Why? FIIK. My insurer is CVSHealth/Aetna. So now every 90 days I menstruate 2x in 3 weeks.

"Beleaguered" is a wonderfully expressive word. I am beset by troubles so manifold that they have formed a league. I am playing host to a diplomatic summit of the United Nations of Fuckery, and negotiations are *not going well*.

Absolutely happened when I was a kid - and it happened when my daughter entered preschool. I spent years afterwards trying to convince her that management of disruptive kids was not her job.

Oh, but when *I* fall dramatically into the water while everyone is watching, I'm "ruining your kid's baptism."

Wonderful research from @projectceti.bsky.social showing other sperm whales, including non-kin, attending the birthing process of a female. #whales #cetaceans #childbirth #assistedbirth #anthropology #biology #animalcognition

the f#$%.

Sometimes I'm just boggled by the capabilities of other species and this is one of those times. A just-fed hummingbird has blood glucose of 757 mg/dL. That would put a human right in the ER. Oh and they feed every 30 minutes. www.sciencenews.org/article/bird...

He is the definition of failing up. Overdue.

Fredericton's St. Thomas University could cease to exist and Sackville's Mount Allison University could be privatized under scenarios the Holt government is considering for cuts to post-secondary education. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Why do I have to pretend that I'm going to print something in order to save it as a PDF. Why do I have to engage in a little ruse.

“You wouldn’t like it,” I say, as my kids stare at my coffee, watching me add a candy cane, chocolate, whipped cream, mini marshmallows, and some sprinkles on top. “It’s for grownups.”

These last 24 hours.

I just really need @chuckwendig.bsky.social to know this account exists. It's a joy. There are some really strange angiosperms out there. This is a rather plain apple though.

kindness is free. for an ad-free kindness experience, upgrade to kindness+ starting at $15.99 a month

Not one but two fires on campus at the same time. That has to be some sort of sign, right? It has barely rained over the last 12 weeks.

A bed found in the grave of a 30 year old man buried in Lauchhiem-Mittelhofen, southern Germany, dated to 704AD.

Tried to cancel a streaming service subscription multiple times and received a "error occurred" message. This happening to anyone else?

I had missed the story about the story about the #nurseshark with #xanthism in the #Caribbean. Naturally, @melissacmarquez.bsky.social was aware, and made it the topic of her column @ Forbes. I'll put a link to the journal article in a reply below www.forbes.com/sites/meliss...

much needed.

#microsky We challenge the long-standing view that peptidoglycan alone protects cells from bursting. Our study shows that the periplasm — enclosed by OM–PG connections — acts as a pressure buffer essential for osmoprotection in Gram-negative bacteria. 📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I remember standing on a street in an Atlanta neighborhood in 2010 and seeing almost half the houses were empty, with remnants of having been quickly vacated.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough how new this reality is. Extreme risk of fire in the Canadian Shield, Taiga shield and Taiga plains is not normal. THIS IS NOT NORMAL.

So, someone in my house just got a new work phone that is all google-y AI-tastic. Sigh. So they asked me try the feature. And I realized what totally bothers me. Her soothing English voice was soothing. She answered my questions kind of like how you answer an enthusiastic child you're tired of.

Clippy is here. Clippy is not going away. You must learn to write with Clippy.

It’s possible for something to “be here” and find uses and yet not be the object of everyone’s attention or the way everything must or will be done from now on and for some proposed uses to be bad. Growing up with nonstop “revolutionary new technology” marketing has broken people’s brains about this

Inside you there are two wolves

Have your students act out an immune response with our Immune System paper model! Give them prizes for best sound effects! Learn more here: bit.ly/2QUGerF #EduSky #iteachbio #immunesystem #Tcell #Bcell #immuneresponse

I try to stay away from politics but this crab eating a grape is very important.

Seems worth mentioning today that primary caretakers for relatives w/ dementia are considered such a uniquely highly stressed group that they are repeatedly studied to examine how stress effects vaccine-induced immune memory. They frequently put themselves aside in the service of someone else.

good lord...and now MERS has made an appearance in the U.K.. One unfortunate person, lab confirmed. Much less contagious than SARS-CoV-2, but tends to be deadlier. www.gov.uk/government/p...

Yay Eagles!

Have been hopeless b/c grant indirect costs getting slashed the easiest way for a uni to keep from bankruptcy is mass lay offs of faculty & staff - the ppl who do and support the research..& who cares? The world is on fire. But Mia Farrow post made me feel a better. Ppl care. The work we do matters.

So the world is exploding right now but I am still outlandishly pleased by the invention of this stain. Like....this will be such a fantastic tool for living tissue work. The ECM is everything.

This day has been very rough. Sharing Chuck Wendig's photo of this Blue Jay doing Blue Jay things. Try not to think about the possible provenance of the peanut though (Blue Jay's are notorious thieves).

Keep your friends with extreme selective eating in their households in your hearts this month. Few beige foods can be cooked or peeled...or washed for that matter.

the vibe I need

With everything so seemingly terrible these days & no sign of anything remotely hopeful in the near future, I thought you might need this photo of a baby giraffe.