For non- Spanish speakers, this is announcement of the passing of Raúl Pacheco Vega. It doesn’t say when or what happened, but comments on his work and how generous he has been to colleagues not just at his home institution but around the world.

This is a devastating loss. Dr Raúl Pacheco-Vega, a UBC alumnus and former UBC faculty member, was a warm and engaging human being who put great effort into supporting students and other early career researchers develop their scholarship. Such an authentic person. He will be greatly missed.

Buen camino, profe Raúl Pacheco Vega. Fuiste y serás siempre el investigador más chido.

Hosting a dinner party as an adult is fun - you end up with more food, and more wine, in your fridge than when you stated.

On this: I’m a tall Brown woman with a strong jawline. A whole white woman accused me of being a man in a public toilet the other day. I didn’t correct her because my being trans or cis was not the point. The point was she felt entirely comfortable and confident doing that to someone in a TOILET.

I wish politicians would spend as much time thinking about how to fund schooling, rather than making already vulnerable communities (and individuals) the scapegoats for their failure to govern. The bullshit they use to gain political power is an equivalent of a trans panic opportunistic ploy.

Adult who stands outside elementary schools with weird signs about children and gender claims the new leader of the BC Conservatives privately affirmed her position on a question of public policy to him during an in-person meeting:

"During her leadership campaign, Findlay touted her experience as a cabinet member in Stephen Harper’s government but also made opposing Indigenous rights and ending SOGI — sexual orientation and gender identity inclusive education — central planks in her pitch to party members." Happy Pride 🏳️‍🌈

It's Pride Month again soon - hmm - do I feel "prideful"? In some spaces being queer in STEM and academia is NBD. In other places - you can't pee in a toilet, you get harassed at work, you can't travel to certain conferences/places, and you are less likely to stay in the field. 🏳️‍🌈🧪

Happy Pride Month!!

Whoaaa I did not know David Roberts was like that. That's some insane shit to say to someone

When people say "let's make science great again" - I leave the room.

Choosing to use our titles, when we might prefer not to, is an individual workaround for a systemic problem. And of course, when people then object to us using our titles and use that as an excuse to put us down, the workaround fails, because the system has not changed.

"we're so informal" is a regular comment about the friendliness of Engineering Departments in Canada. & you can also see the visual homogenization of the Faculty rank of those same Engineering Departments. I still wince when students, who I know well, call me Professor - but I also appreciate it.

The problem is not using the title or not, the problem is the asymmetry and the lack of respect that is embedded in how scientists from minoritized groups are treated

🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

In most competitive systems - the downfall of one group leads to another to rise. The scale of destruction, and the widespread issues in many other countries which "could" absorb these changes - this means there will be an absolute loss of talent & expertise.

There's a persistent fantasy that maybe some other nice countries will start mass-hiring US scientists. That's not going to happen. A few high-profile, big name researchers will get poached, sure. But most countries, including some very nice ones, are underemploying their own scientists already.

I am about to go to a Garden Center/Nursery. Wish my credit card luck!

It is still wild that I am flying 4 hrs and staying within the same country. 🇨🇦 (And obviously this flight from Montreal to Vancouver isn't the longest flight in Canada)

I was just thinking about how when men perform healing or magic tricks (think: Jesus) they were called miracles and the men were revered, but when women did it they were called witches and burned at the stake.

People in Vancouver complain about traffic. Come to Montreal in rush hour...

A nice piece of work mostly by my colleagues, where they did some careful experiments to explore how crystals grow on surfaces 🔬🧪

All 90 are listed as FRS this year, none as ForMemRS. In the new-fellows press releases of 2014 & 2023, changes to the numbers of FRSs & ForMemRSs to be elected per year were noted. In 2014, 44 + 8 became 50 + 10; in 2023, the maxima increased again, with e.g. 70 + 24 in 2025. What gives on 2026?

Quite. And exploring any other axes of diversity would undoubtedly be a similarly dispiriting experience 🙁

The Royal Society, as the UK's national science academy, has a history of being horrendous on anything related to equity and diversity in the fields of its remit. This is yet another example.

I enjoy how the Royal Society is held in such high regard, and a leader in their field etc. And yet they continue to fail to show leadership.

"Our Fellowship is strengthened not only by individual distinction, but by the diversity of perspectives and experiences its members bring" "26% of this year’s intake of Fellows and Honorary Fellows are women"

I found some fruit - this is exciting. #CanYouTellIamAtAConference

If your only response to Tony Blair being a ghoul is WHAT ABOUT FARAGE AND WHY IS THIS STORY NOT ABOUT HIM, I think you genuinely have something wrong with you.

It's odd that the older I get, the more happy I am to have a very social conference day - but then I am extremely happy to just sit at a bar and have dinner by myself while the world chatters around me.

"Please provide a justification for the foreign collaboration." Science.

Or in more detail: Robert Merton's (1942) famous norms describe the ethos of modern science. The second of these, universalism, precludes the consideration of national borders, race, or other personal characteristics in determining who may contribute to, and what constitutes, valid science.

He warned us we'd have to remind you. "Particularly in times of international conflict, when the dominant definition of the situation is such as to emphasize national loyalties, the man of science is subjected to conflicting imperatives of scientific universalism and ethnocentric particularism."

Currently in Montreal, so "is he gay or European" vibe is broken.

"You don't have kids so you shouldn't talk" is a symptom of child rearing being shoved onto individuals and families. Raising a child shouldn't be on individual households (it isn't anyway even if we're told it is). Other people in your community have a vested interest in your children.

The depressingly sobering take I can’t argue against is the idea that almost all social progress in the Global North has come as a response to the given inequalities no longer being as essential to maintaining the allocation of power.

Another reminder: if there exists *any* class of people who don't have due process rights, then *nobody* actually has due process rights because the government can always just say you're in that class.

I like that academic BlueSky is not a carousel of academic dramadies - the hot takes and "isn't this terrible" drive some forms of engagement, but is that the engagement I want to spend my time on?

Remember when right-wing trolls tried to "invade" Bluesky, but the blocklists were so effective that it nuked the entire thing from the offset? We must return to our old ways.

This is evil collective punishment.

Your kids are not your property and a lot more people need to be told that

Hmm - Uber has switched to being a taxi rank model at Montreal, have to love it when a private international company comes in and undercuts the existing market, and makes it a worse experience 🫠

I accidentally booked a "no cabin bag" ticket for my flight, and as I stand by a baggage carousel waiting for my bag-that-could-go-in-the-cabin I am regretting not paying attention to the fine print.

"noise dressed up as data." @caut.bsky.social @academic-chatter.bsky.social

I assigned random gender/ethnicity labels to scientific abstracts from the literature and then asked Claude to do a thematic analysis. Claude identified a clinical versus computational split for female/male authors and a DEI focus for Black/URM authors. All in completely random data.

W. I. T. A. F.

A longer form piece on the student experience/evaluation of instruction (SEI) - and why it continues to disappoint medium.com/p/d54a9342544a

A longer form piece on the student experience/evaluation of instruction (SEI) - and why it continues to disappoint medium.com/p/d54a9342544a

Sighs - I am reading my student evaluation* of instruction. One student doesn't like how I set up the course and writes a whole essay about requiring rubrics from me. I provided rubrics, in 3 places, and spent class time - twice - on the rubric. And this reminds me why I really dislike the SEI.