This is the energy we need in 2026

It’s impressive how one commentator can be this confidently wrong. The term “sex assigned at birth” was used in the 60s by obstetricians to explain the cursory way that sex was determined, based on external genitalia alone. It was used in the DSM III-R published in 1987.

😍

I know there's a lot of bad stuff going on but governments formally declaring they're not going to oppose or resist the production of child abuse material because they're addicted to notifications feels like a moment we can't even begin to comprehend right now

if we ever come up with a cure for death, it should first be given to the walnut breeders (context: walnut trees grow and mature very slowly)

Can I suggest my own? 😂 When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History & America's Black Botanical Legacy. I explore 7 trees & the cotton shrub--the science of them, personal/family history related to them & their intersections with Black history. It's out Jan 20, 2026 us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

well, wild success with the "talk about something that's not news/politics please for the love of god" approach on the ol' skyline today

i think american life would improve significantly and quickly if society was more encouraging of people to have Hobbies. the most perfect and serene state of mind that exists is when one is Doing one's Little Things

Mistake I often make is worrying about the two or three most knowledgeable people in the audience and what will they think. Have to remind myself that if I present just to them I lose the other 95%.

Since I'm putting together a talk this week and I've put together a lot of talks in the last year for a variety of groups, I'm going to opine a bit about giving scientific talks. The tl;dr is you have to think about who your audience is and what they want/need from you at every single step. 🧪

new dog hates rain just as much as the old dog did

Elon Musk's wealth has already increased by $24 billion in 2026.

It’s worth noting that, underneath all of the normalization the nation’s press corps does for Yarvin’s evil quackery, like this lavish sit down interview with the New York Times, driving all of the antisemitism and cruelty, he is also a very stupid person.

Folks getting in the weeds about licensing agreements but this research study engaged me in research, by creating a bespoke dataset about me, before I agreed to participate. They already made the dataset before I was invited to participated. That's not how informed consent works

kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

A reminder - before Trump, MAGA, Musk and Fox rewrote history - that this is what the entire country agreed had happened five years ago today:

I'm guessing #PAG33 is going to be a smaller conference because fewer international folks are going to want to travel to the US right now (understandably)

anyways i think it's kind of wild how quickly we went from "be careful, that shark in the flooded city is from a different hurricane" to "nearly every piece of media about this world event is fake and also we took the fake media and made it nude also we added more explosions"

Circle Back Day has been cancelled by this full-body migraine 🫠

if you go through all your google scholar alerts before any other emails, you don't have to reply to anybody but you still clean up your inbox and therefore Feel Productive

The first two hours this morning

"Hope you had a restful break!" we all frantically type, trying to vaguely remember what exactly our jobs are.

Happy New Year, all. May 2026 bring positive change and accountability.

Sigh. Not a huge surprise, but also people should understand that American science is struggling on huge scales, even though it's happening in these "nickel and dime" ways. (a lot of disappearing opportunities, not renewed grants, etc. etc.)

why does my adolescent dog know what beer is and become very interested when I get a can out of the fridge

we adopted a dog a couple nights ago. she's a working breed mix, she's a lanky teenager, she's very snuggly. we named her Mabel.

“An AI scientist, for example, could figure out how the human brain works, or deliver any gene to any cell in the body.” Yeah and a magic pony could shit bricks of 24k gold and piss a highly concentrated solution of pure heroin.

Report: Average American’s Retirement Plan Involves Richard Gere Falling For Them After Paying For Sex https://theonion.com/report-average-americans-retirement-plan-involves-richard-gere-falling-for-them-after-paying-for-sex/

impulse-ordered a red wings jersey off ebay

College hockey is so much fun

I have two teensy things to take care of today and then I'm off for this whole week. I actually have no idea what to do with myself. I keep thinking of fun work-related things to do and then I mentally hit myself with a newspaper and say "NO!! Stop thinking about genetics!!!!"

This is New England's version of the Louvre heist. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

what should Ogg Industries do

Remember: When Tylenol was poisoned *by an outsider* and killed people, the company recalled all their products & redesigned them. When Intel’s Pentium had a bug so obscure it affected 1 in _9 billion_ long division calculations, they recalled their chips. ChatGPT was made deadly *by its team*.

But that one white guy couldn’t get a job in Hollywood because woke!!!!

I'm so ready for this. I've been hanging out in diners in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri AND Iowa over the past two years LET ME TALK TO THE JOURNALISTS

my mother, god love her, does not understand the Plight of trying to find a good bagel in the rural Midwest

wendell berry QUESTIONNAIRE

🫠

the amazing thing about bari weiss is that they let a woman fail upward this far

really cannot be emphasized enough that bari weiss has literally never done journalism. i don’t mean that in the pejorative sense. i mean that in the “has never performed the job she was hired to do” sense

Modeling European Beech masting events shows (1) conditions that trigger masting are becoming more frequent, (2) this is reducing viable seed production, and (3) "... disruptions to masting are projected to become the norm, with the greatest reductions... at colder margins." 🌿

Our job is to engage with, build upon, & further the academic literature! If you don’t take that responsibility seriously, feel free to find a better-paying job that you’ll be better at.

How many lotto tickets would one need to buy to offset the fact that there are half as many winners today vs 10 years ago bsky.app/profile/paul...

At the HHS announcement yesterday announcing proposed rules to ban GAC, they said trans people are "at the root of the evils we face" and are "a hatred for nature as God designed it and for life as it was meant to be lived.” Just in case you thought it was about concerns for proper healthcare.

I talk about everything as risk management. It’s especially important in work because the political economy changed — sometimes literally called risk shift — while our cultural practices still assume known knowns & predictability. What’s your risk tolerance? That’s the most important question.

My birthday is very close to the end of the year. The #1 movie the year I was mostly 10 years old is The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Seems promising, right?

Maybe we shouldn't treat houses as investments, but instead, homes.