these people - Sean Duffy, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr - genuinely don’t know what a job *is* beyond being on TV/video and yelling about stuff. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/07/u...

Published version @pnas.org of our collaborative work with Talia Karasov Lab (tkarasovlab.org) et al., 🧵👇 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @cloeucl.bsky.social @ugiatucl.bsky.social @ucllifesciences.bsky.social @uofubiology.bsky.social #microsky #phagesky

Photos of newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island. Augustus Sherman took the photos between 1902 and 1920 when he worked as the Chief Registry Clerk. Striking to me how the outfits all look good because they have a discernible silhouette (shape and drape).

I guess we're really never getting the strait opened.

Only took the first week of Pride Month to see @nature.com publish an article assigning binary genders using ChatGPT to authors. 🙃 In our queer opinion, could we not? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Does McNutt believe in the value of basic research?

New lawsuit: @rcfp.org attorneys are representing three news outlets in challenging a Penn State University policy that censors the speech of the school’s trustees, making it harder for journalists to report news about the state’s largest university.

Asst Professor - Plant or Fungal Genomics // University of Wyoming jobs.chronicle.com/job/37995586... The Department of Botany and the School of Computing invites applications for a tenure-track position in Plant or Fungal Genomics at the rank of Assistant Professor. #BotanyJobs

NSF uses staffing cuts to strip Inspector General's office of its ability to investigate research misconduct www.science.org/content/arti...

Marc Feldman and Jessica Riskin with another withering critique of a "sociogenomics" popularization: "...you can’t add or subtract factors that interact, such as genetic and environmental influences. How much of a rainbow’s formation is due to moisture in the air and how much to sunlight?"

A quick warning to my fellow authors. An online book club asked me to do a zoom presentation about.Calling Bullshit. I agreed because outreach is critical to what I do. As things proceeded, they asked me for a contribution of several hundred dollars to cover their expenses! Don’t fall for this.

Update: 199 killed. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The Department of Biology at the University of Iowa is hiring an evolutionary ecologist at the assistant professor level for fall 2027. Come and be my colleague! jobs.uiowa.edu/faculty/view...

This is North Korea level bullshit, and a total fucking disaster for science and for the United States alike. It doesn't matter whether it fails to pass; this kind of thinking is already penetrating NIH, NSF, NASA, etc and causing severe harm. NASEM, AAAS, AAUP, etc must condemn unequivocally.

“Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year…Citing data that shows the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30km/hr, city officials imposed the lower limit in most of Helsinki’s residential areas and city center in 2021.”

My PO said I had to fill out this form for 3 of my papers for the RPPR of my NIGMS MIRA grant in February, or I could not include them in my progress report. It looks like things have gotten even worse since then.

This AI slop "art" being sold on Wayfair has crushed my soul. Is it the multiple spelling errors in my favorite Genus & Family? Is it the insult to "pernenial" plants everywhere? Or is it the mutant inflorescence 1 meter long and larger than any of the leaves? Yes.

🧬 New preprint on coral somatic evolution! We compare the robust coral Orbicella faveolata with the complex coral Acropora palmata. 80x whole genome sequencing shows that O. faveolata has high fixation of somatic variants in older interior polyps consistent with a segregated germline.

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.

Cowardice and complicity do not pay. The National Academies should have been standing up for science, not trying to appease the regime. www.aip.org/fyi/republic...

"An email from NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to research-center grantees, seen by Science, requires their institutions to promise that U.S. authors of papers NIH has flagged because of foreign co-authors will not collaborate with them in the future."

NESTERAK: President Trump has granted clemency to numerous individuals who have stolen hundreds of millions in Medicaid funds. Can we expect any of these folks to be shown the same mercy? McDONALD: I'll take a different question

USDA has protected the US from dangerous house plants

UVic is hiring a Terrestrial Plant Ecologist Assistant Professor! Come join our department! We're nice and Victoria is awesome. www.uvic.ca/science/biol...

We have an open-rank professorship position open @unileiden.bsky.social Institute of Biology: careers.universiteitleiden.nl/job/Assistan... welcome to apply! due: 7 June

Functional genomic map of local adaptation in sorghum to guide allele mining https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.17.725773v1

Job opportunity in Plant Science at Adelaide University in South Australia. Learn more at jobs.adelaide.edu.au/jobs/lecture...

Well, would ya look at that! NSF is going to send >10% of its current budget to industry (read: tech start ups) instead of universities…it’s as if the admin is trying to dismantle our basic science mechanism and use it as a start up fund for private companies 💁🏻‍♀️ www.nsf.gov/tip/updates/...

Alito: mailing abortion medication violates The Fugitive Womb Act bsky.app/profile/stev...

The board consists of three semi-literate car dealers who were the state’s top GOP donors. Their top priority is fighting wokeness in the Potato School by putting up a statue of the confederate general who owned the largest potato farm in the state in 1859.

Researching while Chinese: The full story of what is happening to Chinese postdocs--and faculty members--at the University of Michigan and Indiana University www.science.org/content/arti...

Hey plant friends, PA Botany is back this year with our summer workshop series - June 10 for Carex (central PA), June 23 for Herbivorous Insect Diversity (northeast PA), tbd for PA Plant Communities. Registration is open, links at pabotany.org! Hope to see some of you there!

How do generalist parasites stay adaptable across many hosts? Root-knot nematodes show balancing selection maintaining host-specific variation in key pathogenicity genes. academic.oup.com/evlett/advan... Image Wikimedia

Crop yields under simulated nuclear winter: a growth chamber experiment https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.05.723012v1

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

BIG news: The proposed border wall through Big Bend National Park is off following months of bipartisan backlash.

IU locked down the laboratory of Distinguished Professor of Biology Roger Innes on Thursday night. An email from Vice President for Research Russ Mumper said the lockdown is the result of a "U.S. Department of Agriculture activity." @weiss-a-woni.bsky.social Read more: www.ipm.org/news/2026-05...

New #ecoevo paper @pnas.org: Evolution of species’ range and niche in changing environments. I show that feedback between evolutionary and population dynamics can create a tipping point where genetic variance erodes, and species’ ranges contract or fragment www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #popgen 🧬🧪 🌎

The timing of this Canvas hack made me laugh, since this is my class’s very next assigned reading (which they now can’t access lol) eric.ed.gov?q=lms+AND+k1...

EXCLUSIVE: In 2022, a Georgia grand jury investigated Trump’s alleged interference in the 2020 election. It heard from more than 60 witnesses. For years, the full record of what those witnesses said under oath has remained hidden from public view. Until now. www.lawfaremedia.org/projects-ser...

🌱 We’re hiring in Plant Biology at Penn State! The Department of Biology at Penn State University Park is searching for a tenure-track Assistant or Associate Professor in any area of plant biology.

Born from the collaborative spirit of #TRR356, I’m excited to share my first first-author project! 🪴🦠 What started as a side project with @kbuhrman.bsky.social led us to discover that KAR/KL and SL signalling fine-tune the strength and timing of plant defense responses in a conserved manner!

Botanical parasitism of an insect by a parasitic plant: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Herbarium collections for the win. Maybe not the time to be dismantling your collections, @duke-university.bsky.social ?

How a planned Disney World vacation turned into four months in immigration detention: A 9-year-old shares her story of being held at the nation’s only operating detention center for immigrant families in Dilley, Texas. (Published Feb.)

This is a straightforward question and deserves a public answer on the NIH website. The simplified review framework cannot also mean using a double-secret probation mechanism operating in the shadows to determine outcomes.

I'm looking to hire a postdoc. Please share if you can!

Penn State Biology is hiring! We have an opening for a tenure-line faculty position in plant biology - if you'd like to pursue awesome science in a supportive and interdisciplinary community of researchers, consider applying! psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...