I can't believe that my new book, The Data Management Workbook, comes out in less than 2 weeks. I'm very grateful to @cbahlai.bsky.social for writing this wonderful endorsement for it. Christie is not only a great scientist, but also an advocate for data management and open science.

Had a great and productive Status of #Insects #RCN working group meeting! Thank you @cbahlai.bsky.social and Eliza, Matt, Dave, Chris E and Chris H and everyone there! 🦋🐝🐞🐜🦗🦟🪰🪲🪳

As a native Ohioan, I'm still struck by the lack of stories on SB1 as the academic year in Ohio begins. Ohio is operating under the most restrictive higher ed law in the nation but you'd never know it based on reporting from Ohio.

ladies and gentlemen, the weekend.

Hey everybody! I'm on sabbatical next semester and I've...been utterly negligent in planning it. What I'm saying is, if you were thinking about asking me for a department seminar etc between January and May 2026, I will put on a show for you. I'll talk about sampling theory, but cool!

Every tech update now is like: "Great news, the word processor you've relied on for twenty years has learned to juggle! Is it good at it? No! Does it help in any way? Of course not! Has it made it insufferable to use? Oh, absolutely."

Nevertheless you can buy my awesome friend @mapesgeog.bsky.social 's fantastic book at wvupressonline.com/New-American... and if she gets rich we'll be able to buy a much nicer isolated retirement commune for grumpy professor ladies.

Gave a community book talk tonight and I am reminded that people don't realize the university pays us to write books. Like, we don't write them to get rich or even make money. I wrote a book 1. to share info more broadly 2. as part of my job. One of many reasons higher ed matters.

Hey everybody! I'm on sabbatical next semester and I've...been utterly negligent in planning it. What I'm saying is, if you were thinking about asking me for a department seminar etc between January and May 2026, I will put on a show for you. I'll talk about sampling theory, but cool!

LOL Musgrave

"okho" I see no lies

🎉New preprint! "TADA! Simple guidelines to improve code sharing" tinyurl.com/8rmnwjrk We present simple guidelines to help researchers of all coding levels improve the transparency and reproducibility of their analytical code, TADA! Transferable, Accessible, Documented, Annotated.

Lots of (appropriate) outrage about the Brown student survey meddling but I’ve heard less nationally about what’s going on in Ohio (state inserting a required “bias” question into our surveys & requiring we be reviewed on it).

A podcast interview with me on science & religion research just dropped: scienceandbeliefinsociety.org/s4-episode-3...

Okay so maybe a bit tho. Whatever, I'm still going to wear the chucks and sit backwards on the chair when I jam with my junior colleagues about radicalizing our approach to frequentist statistics.

The radicalization of the American right is THE story of US politics over the last four decades and political reporters are still not allowed to talk about it

I don't know if there's ever been a culture more in love with charlatans than ours. "Success" defined entirely by how good you are at tricking people into giving you money. An entire country of aspiring slop merchants

I've reviewed many NSF proposals, and I've been on a few NSF proposal review panels. Those experiences helped me see that while some good proposals aren't funded, bad proposals definitely aren't. It's an insult to all scientists that DOGE is now doing additional reviews of funded proposals.

So: In 2017, Congress made this happen: NIH: Proposed 22% cut --> 9% increase NSF: Proposed 11% cut --> 4% increase NOAA: Proposed 16% cut --> 4% increase Obviously, 2025 is not 2017. A lot is diff now. But still: 💰 Congress, not WH, sets budgets. 📞 Public support & calls to Congress matter.

Call me crazy---I think everyone should be able to eat.

I knew the U.S. higher education system was a massive draw for foreigners, but I did not know the U.S. sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it did natural gas and coal combined. Great piece by @crampell.bsky.social

So excited to work with this super team!!

So excited for this paper by the Insect Loss RCN led by Chris Halsh! #insectloss @cbahlai.bsky.social academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

Live your life so that when you visit the Pope and he dies the next day everyone’s first thought isn’t “bet he killed him”

Hegemonic masculinity is a cornerstone of fascism. So we can see the same dynamics in an altercation with a schoolyard bully. If a bully forced their victim to submission, it only makes the bully more powerful. It gives him legitimacy in the eyes of other peers who care about masculine domination.

Booker, after speaking for more than 24 hours and breaking Thurmond's record, is still standing and still speaking--using his time to warn his colleagues and his country about the dangers of defunding universities and defunding scientific research.

The rhetorical victory is this: the proposal that we can and will outlast them.

I'm sure y'all are fucking tired of me but one thing I wanna say upfront is that I am brainstorming on here how to talk about what we as academic scientists and experts do so that other people in our country can understand what will be lost.

hello ok i am awake what did i miss tell me every thing

we believe we are special and we simply are not

The LTER is great because we can support ecologists through their whole career. Next community call is about getting folks into the network! Recruiting and Retaining Scientists in the LTER: How to find and keep the best and the brightest! 🌟 March 26, 9am PT—register! lternet.edu/events/recru...

hey that's fascism

Appropriate time to bring back my 5th grade winning essay: “Libraries change lives. I should know. Both my parents were poor growing up. But because of libraries, they became successful college professors. With the help of libraries, they found the books they needed, and those books were free.”

🦋 In 20 years, the contiguous U.S. lost 22 percent of its butterflies, according to a groundbreaking new study published today. We got the data, and I made a tool that lets you find out what's happening with butterfly species in your town. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/interactive/... 1/3

BREAKING: We're sending an open letter to universities across the country, offering support and urging them to reject pressure to punish international students and faculty for exercising their First Amendment rights. Schools must hold firm against the Trump administration's censorship attempts.

As someone who spends a lot time thinking about the values I want to teach my kid (besides PLEASE DON’T EAT DIRT), the thing I keep coming back to is this: I want him to believe that the strongest, bravest thing he can do is give a shit about other people—especially ones who aren’t like him at all.

How's your weekend been going? I replaced a broken tap in my bathroom! And in the process, I stripped the shutoff valve on the cold water supply and unglued the sink from the counter top. This feels like a metaphor but it isn't.

BREAKING: A federal judge in California has ordered OPM to rescind memos calling for the mass termination of probationary employees, saying the agency overstepped its legal authority and must inform other agencies it lacked the authority to issue such a directive.

We’re hiring! Looking for a seasonal insect job? Come survey butterflies and bees with VCE! vtecostudies.org/about-us/emp...

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.

I've been screaming this for years.

recap of things to learn from Korean movement, including a website making it easy to send text messages to anti-impeachment parliamentarians, effectively rendering their mobile phones unusable due to the overwhelming volume of incoming messages. wagingnonviolence.org/2025/02/less...

CNN made FOIA request about DOGE—only to learn FOIA staff was fired flip.it/tjEKRX

Happy Person Must Either Be Stupid Or Evil theonion.com/happy-p...

I've lost count of how many academic elders have handwaved "we've been through this before" without acknowledging the violence done in going through it, and the protest, speech acts, and activism that made that previous moment minimally survivable.

The notion that Trump's "I'm king" tweet is "just trolling" or "a joke" presents an opportunity to recreate my just-joking thread (porting it over from the Bad Place): 1. I wrote my PhD dissertation on the social function of humor (in literature & film) and here's the thing about "just joking."