stop 👏 anthropomorphizing 👏 the 👏 chatbot 👏

46 states have fewer people than the number who will die because Trump, Elon, and Rubio illegally destroyed USAID.

The disparity btwn what’s actually happening in Los Angeles and the way it’s being mischaracterized is one of the biggest stress tests of modern media in recent memory. Botted socials, AI, old clips, declining literacy—it’s like seeing a broken emergency response system hit by a storm.

🚨 NEW SPECIES ALERT 🚨 From @mongabay.com, “3,000-year-old trees in Tanzania are new species.” 🌍🧪🌳 news.mongabay.com/2025/03/3000...

This year’s Whitley Awards, commonly dubbed the “Green Oscars,” have been presented to seven conservationists from three continents working to protect and revive a diverse range of threatened animals and plants, including jaguars, yew trees and orchids, frogs, monkeys, gibbons, elephants and cranes.

Submitting a review for a deserving paper by a first-time author is always a great way to start the day ✨

This is the biggest and best development on fighting climate change in a long time.

Americans should care more about who has access to their data.

Four of the Big Five Publishers Sign Letter Urging Congress to Restore IMLS 📚 www.wordsandmoney.com/four-of-the-...

New study in @consletters.bsky.social reveals #peatlands are dangerously under-protected. Covering just 3% of Earth’s surface, these terrestrial #wetlands store 600 billion tons of #carbon — more than all the world’s #forest biomass combined — yet only 17% of peatlands fall within a protected area.

Big career announcement! We've relocated from Miami to San Diego, and on Monday I start as the Conservation Portfolio Strategist @sandiegozoo.bsky.social. This is a pretty perfect role for me, driving conservation impact at an amazing institution, and I can't wait to get started 🐼🦁🦍

A broad array of people in major institutions let their disdain for trans people, activists, & youth in general turn their brains into custard over the last decade. They were warned their grievances would be used to destroy the institutions they were putatively trying to defend. They didn't listen.

Nothing will kill more children than the ongoing decimation of CDC, NIH, and USAID work to lift vaccine uptake in the US and world. Child survival rose 75% in the last 50 years. Vaccines account for 40% of that. Measles vax alone was 60% of the benefit. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

I don't understand why 50,000 people need to go to this conference every year www.bbc.com/news/article...

Priests in Bali manage an ancient system of sustainable rice farming This 'religious technology' ensures there’s a balance of wet & dry fields so pests can’t spread They set planting, harvesting, flooding & fallow cycles to manage bugs & water sharing issues, @mongabay.bsky.social reports:

If we can "avoid a government shutdown" by voting for this CR, then why is the entire Department of Education closed today? Why is USAID closed? Why are hundreds of billions in grant contracts frozen? We are already in the shutdown. And your votes DON'T stop it. In fact, they allow it to expand.

🚨 Everyone needs to call their Dem Senator right now. They are starting to cave. Tell them: 1. Vote NO on Cloture AND 2. Vote NO on the Republican spending bill. Don’t let them pivot to reconciliation. GOP doesn’t need Dem votes on that and they know it. TODAY is the showdown. 🤳🏽: (202) 224-3121

Reminder @irorotanshi.bsky.social and other are putting together a special issue of the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society @linneansociety.bsky.social titled 'Mobilizing Natural History Collection in the Global South' Details available here: academic.oup.com/biolinnean/p...

Since this is probably about to be relevant: a reminder that when you poll the general public, they estimate NASA to be between 10-30% of the federal budget. It's less than 1%. All that amazing science and technology and wonder is got for less than a penny on the dollar of your taxes.

I know this is extremely vulgar idealism, but I do think we should try to aggressively reassert the norm that lying is bad. Not in a "Four Pinnochios" fact-checking kind of way, but in a way that frames this kind of lying as moral degeneracy that is fundamentally corrosive to the human spirit.

40% of global shipping is dedicated to moving fossil fuels around. Switch to clean energy and that's a lot less pollution/fewer maritime accidents. And no more oil spills.

Resharing for those interested in museum-based STEM education! #museum #education #InformalEducation

Never thought I would see the national parks being dismantled. What's next - sell the parks to some oligarch and charge exorbitant admission fees like theme parks? wapo.st/3Db7DAu

Happy to share our paper out today in Journal of Museum Education. We used the STEM-OP protocol to evaluate our field trip programs & test how this formal education evaluation instrument translates to the informal setting. Hopefully other museums find it useful! www.tandfonline.com/eprint/U5G4E...

🧵

I spoke with Kaesee Bourne, a fish and wildlife biologist terminated under the DOGE layoffs, about the work she was doing for the government defector.com/an-interview...

can't believe it's 2025 and i'm stressed about tariffs and measles, like am i a character in an american girl book

Maine Sea Grant generates $15 in income for every dollar spent. And that’s what the “treat government like a business” people never seem to want to admit. The ROI of federal funding is beyond anything any corporation could ever dream of. It just doesn’t end up in their pockets.

“Cuts at NOAA/NWS are spectacularly short-sighted and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters” www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

Per senior USAID official, Trump Adm actions likely to cause * up to 18m additional cases of malaria; 166k additional deaths * 200k children paralyzed with polio * 1m children not treated for malnutrition * 28k new cases of infectious disease www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/h...

I love how it’s always a crisis when women start outperforming men and just normal when it’s the other way around

Richest guy in the world telling us we can’t afford to have our government fund cancer research.

President Zelenskyy showed more backbone and self-respect in one Oval Office meeting than the entire GOP has collectively demonstrated over the last 9 years. He is standing up for his people while Trump mows through ours.

Do you fly in airplanes? Drive on highways? File taxes? Have kids or elderly parents? Go to the doctor? Prefer not to be poisoned by toxic chemicals? Then you rely on the government services that Musk is hobbling. It is tragic that many Americans won’t realize this until those services are killed.

With the firings at NOAA, it’s a big day for all kinds of life-threatening natural hazards (blizzards, wildfires, tornados, tsunamis, hurricanes) and people who hate marine animals. The rest of us, not so much.

Folks, this isn't complicated! Someone who says "of course I support protecting the environment," but then slashes the budget of the *Environmental Protection Agency*, does not actually support protecting the environment! There's no need to pretend there's some secret brilliant principle here!

Andrew Tate being allowed to come to the U.S. and avoid facing trial for sex trafficking in Romania is beyond stomach-churning. This man is a HUGE influencer and uses his platform/following to further abuse women who have accused him. Now he won’t face justice, reaffirming his lies to his followers

everyone seeing how when you takeaway the DEI the planes start falling out of the sky

The passage of Trump’s budget resolution in the House means we are very close to 4 things happening: 1) Tax hikes for folks earning less than $360K. 2) Medicaid functionally disappearing. 3) Tax cuts for the ultrawealthy. 4) Federal deficit increasing by trillions (with a T). Not great, folks.

If I were a Democrat, and I saw Trump do a purge of high-level generals who were women and people of color and wouldn't be "yes men," I wouldn't vote to advance JD Vance's college friend for Secretary of the Army. And yet....16 Democrats just did so

Really pleased to have assisted a couple of scientist-writers in editing their letters to editors and editorials about why NIH and NSF matter through @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social and looking forward to more! This is such an important resource.

The US voted *with* Russia against the UN resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine and demanding a withdrawal. Utter betrayal of country, allies, and principles.

If they are really cancelling NSF REUs, then we need to change graduate admissions to exclude or minimize the importance of past research experience. There's just no way to compete unless you are well connected or monied otherwise.

At the same time as Meta abandons fact-checking in the U.S., the company is revamping a program that has paid bonuses to creators for content based on views and engagement, potentially pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts it once policed. New, @craigsilverman.bsky.social @propublica.org

“Maybe if I send an occasional provaccine tweet I’ll be able to live with myself”

Removing in-state tuition for undocumented children in Florida is not only a shameless act of disloyalty to Floridians but it is also a senseless one. www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/02/19/e...

Just submitted a letter to the editor of the Winston Salem Journal about the importance of science funding for North Carolinians, and I'm happy to assist other scientists who want to write but don't know how to get started. The text of my letter is available here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

If you are at an event where someone on stage gives a Hitler salute and that person is not dragged off by security and kicked out, you are at a Nazi rally.

U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick was peppered with boos and catcalls throughout a town hall meeting in Roswell late Thursday, as hundreds of critics jeered the Republican for backing President Donald Trump’s agenda during his first month in office. #gapol ajc.com/politics/mcc...

His emphasis on the freedom to "joke" is telling. Because hearing sexism couched in humor leads boys men to adopt more sexist views and makes both men and women less likely to speak up and challenge others' sexist acts.