I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :( So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/

Happy Ctenophore Day! These glowing ocean drifters look like jellyfish but aren’t! They’re comb jellies, shimmering creatures that light up the sea with rows of beating cilia 💙🌈 Which species can you identify? 👀 Most are raised in @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social lab #CtenophoreDay #CombJelly #Ctenophore

Happy Ctenophore Day! 🐙🦑🧪

Opinion: ‘Earth system engineers’ and the cumulative impact of organisms in deep time www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

When does biology become geology? This is a fun paper for us (although I, myself, was just one more member of Band-Aid for this particular paper), and hopefully it helps clarify a lot of things that we sort of already knew but never really formally addressed. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The new Martin Hall at @swarthmorecollege.bsky.social is spectacular

@kentremendous.bsky.social @joeposnanski.com I'm a longtime Poscast listener (since 1957) and statistics professor. Re: solitaire win%: at 350 games, the SD is 2%. Meaning 68% of the time, your win% will be accurate to within ±2%, and 95% of the time, your win% will be accurate to within ±4%.

I think we also get distracted because we tend to anthropomorphize the larval stage as the child and the adult stage as the real animal. In some cases (not necessarily holothurians, but perhaps e.g. butterflies), it would be more appropriate to think of them as the eating stage and the mating stage.

📢 deeptime: an R package that facilitates highly customizable and reproducible visualizations of data over geological time intervals 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/2096... Fully #openaccess in @bigearthdata1.bsky.social with insight about deeptime📦 development and code examples! #rstats #geology #paleontology

This was my favorite King of the Hill joke with Chuck Mangione. RIP, king.

Chuck Mangione was a musical hero to me. He was from my hometown, where he was a legend. My mom took me to see him in concert when I was 13, and it was a life-changing moment — he made me love music. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/a...

So surreal being here when the stadium is empty

Home plate at the old Yankee Stadium, now a public park. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle stood here.

Back in the office today

Another of the greats leaving us. Dick was a huge influence on me when I was a graduate student, and wrote papers that completely changed the way I thought about the history of life. A gracious and good-humored man, and a kind and supportive mentor.

This makes me really sad: Richard was a great guy. Some of my best memories from my Smithsonian are from interacting with him.

Richard Bambach, 1934-2025. A warm and generous man, and a titan of paleontology. www.regerfuneralhome.com/obituaries/r...

Very sad to hear of the passing of Richard Bambach, one of the key paleontologists who ushered in the paleobiological revolution, and an incredibly kind and generous person. It was a pleasure learning from him at the Smithsonian’s paleo journal club over the last decade or so.

Richard Bambach will always be remembered as a champion of functional-ecological way of thinking in macroevolution. Way before the modern trend in analyzing functional diversity. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #Geology #EvoBio

Very sad to learn Richard Bambach has passed away. In addition to his significant contributions to science and the 'paleobiological revolution', I will mostly remember him as a warm and wonderful presence in our paleobiology journal club when I was a postdoc at the Smithsonian

First day at my summer job

Swarthmore College has a teaching collection of fossil plants that has probably not been used in decades, recently re-discovered when we moved into a new building. We are hoping to catalog/digitize them. Can anyone ID any of these specimens beyond the brief descriptions on the cards? (1/2)

🦕🐚"Prediction and Identification of Mass Extinctions" workshop has ended after many fruitful discussions. ⚒️🦤Watch this space for the outcome 😎 www.paleosynthesis.nat.fau.de/index.php/pr... @bethanyjallen.bsky.social @danijeladim.bsky.social @thefairestfowl.bsky.social

Who knew a fish could express "What the fuck was that?" with such ease.

is this true -- a coelacanth was discovered off California? If so, it would be huge news, but I can find no confirmation of this story. Is this some kind of prank or AI hallucination? www.msn.com/en-us/news/w... www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com/scientists-d...

Heard from a former (undergrad) student who just defended her PhD. Students: tell your old profs about your successes and achievements. It's not bragging, and we love to hear about it. It's one of the best parts of being an educator. #academicsky

Watching animals eat is like my biology crack. I don’t need it, I don’t have to do it, I don’t even always like it, but there’s just something about critters noshing on one another that leaves me gobsmacked. And nothing does it like the comb jelly Beroe [Thread 🧵] 📽️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xkN...

Anyone in the Philadelphia area seeing aurora tonight? Just looked now and I don't see anything from the western suburbs.

Had the opportunity to briefly play in a Ewe (Ghanian) drumming workshop today at @swarthmorecollege.bsky.social with Master Drummer Emmanuel Agbeli. What a cool experience. As Steve Reich noted, it really does sound like the downbeat occurs in different places for different instruments.

Do you want to learn how to contribute to and use the Paleobiology Database? 🌎🦕🐚 Look no further - we're now welcoming applications to the 2025 edition of our introductory workshop! More details here: forms.gle/xQqDEQwwXeTH...

The Amorphophallus titanum at @swarthmorecollege.bsky.social is in bloom! A.k.a, the "corpse flower", it is the world's largest unbranched inflorescence (multiple-flower structure). We have 2 other individuals, which look like small trees in the 2nd photo, but are actually single giant leaves. 🧪

A fun project to be part of! 💻🐚

20 minutes ago here in Venetie, Alaska, the skies erupted in a beautiful auroral substorm. Here is just one of many real-time videos I recorded during the show to give you a sense of how fast and dynamic the aurora can move.

Martin Hall renovations coming along at @swarthmorecollege.bsky.social. Formerly the biology building, it will now house computer science and film & media studies. The new section of Martin Hall faces Lang Music Building.

Hello everyone! Pal(a)eoPERCS is now on Bluesky. If you already know us, we welcome you to our new account! If you are not familiar with us, Pal(a)eoPERCS is a virtual seminar series designed to showcase the research of Early Career Researchers in paleosciences 🌎🦖🔬🦴🦠. Find out more at paleopercs.com

Pi Day at @swarthmorecollege.bsky.social. (3.14 fell during our spring break, hence the belated celebration today).

Lungfish xkcd.com/3064

Our lesson plan/lab on ocean acidification is now online: serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/a... By Zoey Werbin & me, part of the broader impacts of our NSF grant on modern extinctions. Similar to other existing labs, but more emphasis on principles of experimental design (since I'm a statistician :-) 🧪

Watching barnacles sweep the ocean for food is so mesmerizing. They look like eyelashes opening and closing. I could watch this for hours. #barnacles #intertidal #marinelife 🦑

On this #fossilfriday, take a moment to remember the great Richard Fortey, who passed last week. Scientist, naturalist, writer, and gentleman of the highest caliber. My thoughts in @stephenmossauthor.bsky.social obituary for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Really sad to report that our friend and colleague Richard Fortey passed away this morning after a short battle with cancer. We’ll all miss his wit and wisdom. Here he is checking out a dino footprint we found while filming together on the Isle of Wight

If you’re going to caveat the R0, though, you should also point out that that 18 is in a “perfectly susceptible” population - no vaccinations whatsoever. And fortunately, the US is not a perfectly susceptible population.

I keep seeing news stories saying one measles patient can infect as many as 18 people. This is a misunderstanding of the R0 value. 18 is the *average* number of secondary cases infected by a person w/ measles, not the maximum. A single super-spreader can infect far more than 18 people. #episky 🧪

We had clear skies tonight and a great view of Mars, Jupiter, and Venus. Too many trees and too much light pollution in the Philadelphia suburbs to see the other four planets, though.

I was getting a printout at the office printer when I noticed that someone had printed an exam for Stat 21 Spring 2025. But *I'm* teaching Stat 21 this semester, and it wasn't my exam! Not sure why someone else would print an exam purportedly from my course, but maybe there's a simple explanation.

@science.org just published this article about the Paleontological Research Institution and its importance in this time of financial crisis for the institution. Please share widely as donations in any amount can make a real difference in the short-medium term. ⚒️🧪🦑 www.science.org/content/arti...

Just learned that Elizabeth Vrba passed away last week. She was an intellectual giant in the field of paleobiology, and her work influenced the research programs of many a paleoecologist, including mine. I am sad that I never got to meet her in person. Rest in peace.

Super Bowl Sunday... the perfect time to go grocery shopping.

Philadelphia skyscrapers lit up in green in advance of the Super Bowl