I helped describe a new species of Andean widow spider! zookeys.pensoft.net/article/185973 This was a rare occurence where an arthropod had a common name before a scientific one. Locals call it "la lucacha," so we are pleased to formally introduce "Latrodectus lucacha" to the scientific community.

We are so cooked

Any time a creative turns to this tech, they are saying "I do not respect the people who do this thing. I do not value their creative contribution to my vision. I think they are so worthless, they can be replaced by the machine that ate their work." It's not surprising this is seen as hostile.

Beetle 🪲🐞 postdoc at the @museumofnature.bsky.social!!! nature.ca/en/our-scien... @canentomologist.bsky.social @entsocontario.bsky.social @entcollnet.bsky.social @coleopsoc.bsky.social

Really need more people to recognize that we have no climate ally in Carney. We need to be actively pushing back, because the plan is clearly to just push infrastructure development through regardless of the environmental consequences. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

This is the money paragraph for me.

Read the latest from the Covid-Is-Not-Over newsletter: Calm mongering vs. the precautionary principle, Why Covid’s still not over, Hantavirus Covid lessons learned play-by-play, and more open.substack.com/pub/johndupu...

This mass courtship event typically marks the beginning of Waymo mating season, and the general public is advised to avoid approaching them or their young and maintaining a safe distance at all times as they can get even more unpredictable in their behaviour towards humans at this time

GREETINGS, MORTALS (Festive Tiger Beetle Edition, from today)

What was your favourite/most fun/most surprising university course you ever took? In my current position I can take one free undergraduate course per semester. I had very limited opportunities to take electives during my BSc so now is my chance! 📚🧑‍🏫

Always repost capybaras

This morning I saw a kid (maybe 10?) who was scootering ahead of me stop to carefully coax a caterpillar off the pathway and onto a twig, then over to a patch of vegetation out of harms way. 🐛🌱

And this your regular reminder to sign @dorassessment.bsky.social, because these problems start from how people have decided to assess research and we can change those!

Sigh. Saying that the issue was human error and this wasn’t an ”AI-alone” problem is a distinction without a difference. Chatbots are run and maintained by companies, by people. They have to be considered together. www.thestar.com/politics/fed...

YES!! It works EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. This is how we make a society thrive and excel. Love this excerpt.

This is a really terrific piece by @alondra.bsky.social that should be taught in all classes on the political economy of the US right now. Think Polanyi on The Birth of the Liberal Creed, but for the AI era.

An #InverteFest story

Yeah, I mean other than the environmental destruction, asbestos-like slop infiltrating everything, killing of jobs, atrocious functionality, rampant plagiarism, and it being pushed by some of the worst people on Earth for their own profit, people must just be radical luddites to reject AI right?

Its always so interesting how "Anti-AI extremists" are always "hysterical" and "loud" but AI "enthusiasts" are always just hopeful and optimistic (maybe hyping at best) and nothing else

A cool behavior I've seen with at least two different mirid plant bugs and several blister beetle sp. - the mirid (Aoplonema sp.) is not preying on the beetle (Lytta sp.), but trying to "steal" some of the beetle's toxic bug blood, possibly to sequester the defensive chemical for itself. #Bugsky 🌿🐙

quick, look at an Andrena vs Colletes comparison before it becomes irrelevant, until like July. Colletes are big spring guys and only show up rarely later in the year.

🐞 #StandTallForTheSmall We’re fundraising to grow #InsectWeek, bringing free, hands-on bug hunts, #WildlifeWalks, creative sessions and much more to local communities across five city hubs in the UK and ROI. Every donation made will be doubled. Support us this week via #BigGive #EarthRaise 🔽

Sooo... who's going to #Bugshot Guyana this July? (Or wants to join? I hear there are a few spots left!) 🕷️🪲🪳🦋🐜🐝🐞🪰🦟🐛🦂🪱 I may have just impulse-registered myself* & @ibycter.bsky.social! So exciting!!!!!!!! *strictly as a bug-pointer-outer and enjoyer www.bugshot.net/bugshot-guyana

Blacklist everyone involved, including co-authors and senior authors, reviewers and editors. We only have one chance to nip this in the bud.

A gorgeous Argiope sp. spider waits for a meal. The zigzags in the web are called stabilimenta and reflect UV light. The stabilimenta may help attract prey to the web and/or also prevent larger animals from destroying the web. Intag Refugio, Ecuador

birds: they will never email you. and that’s a promise.

"I entered in good faith, working with the mining company to help determine whether or not deep-sea mining at Solwara I could be conducted with minimal harm to the marine environment. I exited convinced that there is no viable path forward for hydrothermal vent mining, anywhere in the ocean."

"The natural dynamics of the site present the possibility that the ecosystems it supports could be resilient to mining impacts. Solwara I already experiences natural disturbance. Perhaps it could endure a little unnatural disturbance, too? It wasn’t a bad hypothesis, but it needed to be tested."

"When I set sail on the MV NorSky in the summer of 2008 to probe the depths of Manus Basin off the coast of Papua New Guinea, I believed in the promise of deep-sea mining..." news.mongabay.com/2026/04/deep...

@solomonrdavid.bsky.social check out this amazing felted gar!!! Handmade by local artists here in Newfoundland www.instagram.com/luckywormart...

Here's an awesome natural history humanities PhD opportunity, working with Cambridge University Library & our insect & archive collections here at @zoologymuseum.bsky.social, exploring the links between entomology, life writing & environmental change. Please share! www.ccc.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/...

Capitalism tries to make products seem like necessities. But they aren’t. They’re products. This is marketing. And you can say no to bad products.

Every week I see a post like “well, Silicon Valley has built a dick-breaking machine. No matter how you feel about getting your dick broken, it’s our responsibility to integrate mechanical dick-breaking into our schools.”

Finishing off where #DOGE left off. "Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration. Budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

More context on this #Artemis II image: * This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right * The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon: ☀️🌍🚀🌕

"The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding."

This is so, so well-articulated.

The waternotcoal.ca petition is still moving forward. Join us in protecting our drinking water! #ableg #abpoli #cdnpoli

The policy described would violate rules of international law prohibiting (i) the destruction of property without absolute military necessity & (ii) forced displacement. The former is a war crime, the latter a war crime & crime against humanity. I discussed this with Reuters here: reut.rs/4dStXyu

Free newsletter: The Subprime AI Crisis is here. I explore the disturbing parallels between the run-up to the global financial crisis and the heavily-subsidized AI bubble, and how Anthropic and OpenAI's rush to IPO accelerates the crisis further. www.wheresyoured.at/the-subprime-ai-crisis-is-here/

We have 2 cool shirts! I have to sell them out by early April for 2 reasons: 1) 5 of my family members are staying in the Skype a Scientist stockroom in mid-April 😅 2) I need to fund our mural project which starts the first week of April! They're soft! They're cute! Get a shirt! SquidFacts.net

A small price to pay for poorly written meeting summaries

For serious tho. We have a provincial holiday for St. Patrick’s day and St. George’s day and everyone in St. John’s gets the first Wednesday of August off to watch the boat races (Regatta Day), unless it’s too windy, in which case it is postponed until the following day.

"The AI Grad Student": A Harvard professor describes working with Claude. Early on, he describes misconduct that would cause any student to be terminated: "It faked results, hoping I wouldn't notice." But he ends the essay with "Now I'm doing 100% of my research with LLMs". Am I losing my mind?

If you are interested in doing high-impact, public-facing research ... Join Our Research Team! We are hiring a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. socialmedialab.ca/2026/03/04/p... #PhDSky #AcademicSky #comsky

This was a fucking masterclass in interviewing. Crucial for any of us whose work has become fodder for AI churn in this dystopian hellscape but also just a hell of an interview for ANYONE on capitalism and exploitation, and what CEOs really think of you:

This is one of the most important issues with the global food system, yet it is often ignored. Put simply, we don't actually grow much *food* in our farms around the world. Instead, we grow grossly inefficient animal feed and biofuels. drawdown.org/news/only-ha...

"Nation-building! Something, something, Canada Strong!" Employment and Social Development: ❌ 1,500 jobs Health Canada: ❌ 942 jobs Environment and Climate Change Canada: ❌ 837 jobs Statistics Canada: ❌ 700+ jobs Canada Food Inspection Agency: ❌ 542 jobs #CdnPoli

China is winning because the US gave up. #DOGECuts