The comments are 🔥🔥🔥 but this one took the cake. A literal lol.

An online petition against UConn’s golf facility, for those interested… #nutmegsky #UConn www.change.org/p/save-the-u...

Saw a lone elderly man, holding a flag & a sign that said DEFEND DEMOCRACY. IMPEACH TRUMP. on a small patch of grass at a medium-busy 3-way intersection on my commute this morning. That’s his Wednesday morning, in Nowhere, CT & I respect that.

Tesla paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2025, despite making $5.7 billion. This Tax Day, remember that you have paid more in taxes than a multi-billion dollar company—all thanks to corporate tax breaks from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.

Guys. Check your speaker volume. No. Not the microphone. I can hear you. The speakers. Check your speakers. I’ll put it in the chat.

Learning lots at Connecticut’s state art museum (The Benton at @uconn.bsky.social ). Looking at an 1844 hand colored lithograph of Pocahontas. Did you know there is only 1 surviving image of Pocahontas made during her lifetime (a 1616 engraving by Simon van de Passe)? I wonder what she looked like

I thought I could do it. I started to but then quit. Like a coward. Because I’m curious but also afraid. And yes, this is about banana flavored coffee at Dunkin. It sounds like something from The Bad Place pretending to be The Good Place. I must know how terrible it is. But today was not the day.

Brutal.

Where are you @repjoecourtney.bsky.social @chrismurphyct.bsky.social @blumenthal.senate.gov WHERE ARE YOU #nutmegsky

UConn spent $400,000 to hire the Segal Group to help launch “an organizational assessment of our decentralized business & administrative support, along with marketing & communications functions”. They’ve just released their first findings - “four overarching themes”:

Look. I give up. Can someone help me interpret the x<-1 portion of this graph? I get that at (e.g.) three years after having a baby, x=3, mothers are ~30% less likely to have a research job than other women (and fathers have a ~10% penalty). Do I have that right? So then…

UConn is planning on clear cutting a local tree preserve to build a golf facility for exclusive use by the men’s golf team (9 members & 3 coaches, IIRC). Email your opposition to the following: #nutmegSky

Great question. Thanks for asking….

UConn is planning on clear cutting a local tree preserve to build a golf facility for exclusive use by the men’s golf team (9 members & 3 coaches, IIRC). Email your opposition to the following: #nutmegSky

“Heads up! We noticed you deleted a large number of files from your OneDrive” Who & why are they doing this to us. MFer I know what delete is. “Ignore this email if you meant to get rid of these files.” Or - leave me alone & don’t send brainmelting garbage emails no one wants. Time for a break

You know what all teams in the men's Final Four (and both women's teams in so far) have in common? HERBARIA. UConn is threatening to cut the staff of our nat history collections (plus many other awful budget cuts). If only we cared as much about biodiversity as we do about buzzer beaters!

Our union has negotiated for 12-14 weeks paid leave for birthing parents and 6 weeks paid leave for non-birthing parents. For each, 6 weeks can be converted to 12 weeks at 50% effort. How does this compare to your university??? I wanted more but considering we had ZERO until now it feels …ok?

Dunkin put 3x the sugar I requested in my coffee today & my god, it’s a liquid candy bar. Apologies to everyone who has to deal with me at any time today. LFG. #dunkinchronicles

Attn @uconnaaup.bsky.social

My small town, on their website, has its budget for this year, its budgets for several recent years & its proposed budget for next year. Where EVERY $ came in from & where EVERY $ was spent & I can’t for the life of me figure out why UConn doesn’t have the same ding dong dang thing.

I appreciate that the scientists who made this both convey their results & their personal opinions on the taxa. Bats = beautiful, majestic creatures worthy of our investigation & wonder Rodents, monkey, dog, cow, donkey = meh Humans = barely tolerable Cats = laughable evolutionary mistakes, idiots

I don’t know why everyone hates gray hair. My gray streaks make me feel like an X-Man. I love them.

Do you guys ever think about penguin evolution? Bayesian Total-Evidence Dating Reveals the Recent Crown Radiation of Penguins. Gavryushkina et al. 2017. academic.oup.com/sysbio/artic...

I love hearing geese fly overhead. They sound so … disorganized. What are they honkin for.

New study in Nature reports no one is laughing at the jokes in your talks, everyone noticed that stain on your pants and your colleagues all thought what you said at Faculty Meeting was stupid.

Brutal.

I’m at the mid-career slump. I’m at the national research funding & infrastructure crisis. I’m at the university budget cuts. I’m at the nonsensical war. I’m at the demolition of our democracy. I’m at the combination mid-career-slump-national-research-funding-&-infrastructure-crisis-university-budge

I swear Dunkin is the most chaotic chain in America. Generally chaotic good but sometimes not (“is this coconut in my drink?”). I just ordered 10 munchkins. Guess how many I got. Go ahead. You’ll never guess.

I need a new video game. Any recs?

Society Champion, Eliza_coli has designed Multicoloured Microbes colouring sheets which provide a fun microbiome-themed activity for outreach work. Society members can now access these, alongside a host of other resources: https://microb.io/3N9ESZP

This video - without a neighbor’s generator going in the background- is 💯x better.

Now that the sun is out, so much ice is thawing & falling out of the trees, it looks & sounds like medium-heavy rain. Yay, I guess?

I love caves, inflatables and science communication. This month is #colorectal cancer awareness month - the disease that has been ruining me the last 20 months. Get a colonoscopy folks. It’s not as fun as what I’m doing here but it ain’t that bad either.

Every minute of every day.

I saw some guys in Levy vests placing rentable Levy scooters near a crosswalk on campus. Is that how this works???? The company just leaves their scooters anywhere they want? I wondered where they were coming from… now I know, I guess.

Background - I’ve been fighting with acct people about the fact UConn says all fractions of an annual software contract past a grant’s end date can’t be paid off the grant. So 1 month ($6) of an annual subscription has to be accounted for - even though an annual subscription is in the grant.

Are administrative-burden audits a thing? I think the amount of STUFF UConn requires of our time is excessive - trainings, inspections (ok these might be fine), paperwork, surveys, approvals, etc. It’d be interesting to quantify (in work hours & $$$) although I already know it’s TOO MUCH

In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨 Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!) Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1093/fems...

Just a head’s up: That is not snow out there. It’s wet cement.

That classic New England pastime of waiting for the power to go out. 👍👀👍

#NutmegSky Good to see us among the states w/o official ICE co-op.

I did not know there were so many of these and I love them all. Happy Darwin Day, y’all!

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

with a PhD from @uconnhistory.bsky.social. our alums do great things!

Things are going swimmingly.

I’m about to waste A LOT of time making a Women in STEM Keynote using Elden Ring character building as the analogy for being a successful woman in STEM. Lots of different attribute combinations work! Don’t try to stop me. I’m confident that with just 100 hours of work, it’ll be a great 20 minutes.

Moment of joy: Yesterday I overheard a very cute toddler in a very cute toddler voice call seltzer water “spicy water”. That’s all.

On campus objectives today, UConn edition: Do not freeze. Do not fall down.

I think this is Rudy’s “I really don’t like pooping in this much snow why are you doing this to me” face.

MAJOR NEWS! We just launched an awesome new tool! The illustrated Birds of the World Phylogeny Explorer lets users trace any bird’s lineage, compare species relationships, and explore major evolutionary milestones with a click of a button. SHARE and EXPLORE! birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/phy...