A recent policy proposal rule change by the Trump administration could end scientific research as we know it. And it’s barely getting coverage.

I wanted to share my thoughts on the proposed OMB rule change that would radically transform federal grant-making into an overtly partisan political process. It's highly alarming, and would be devastating for American science (among many other things).

Creeks "filter runoff, recharge aquifers ... manage floodwaters, cool the urban heat island, clean the air, support pollinators, provide wildlife corridors, sequester carbon, and improve residents’ mental health." "These are not decorative amenities. They are essential infrastructure." (gift link)

TXDOT and the city have downplayed the diversion of Boggy Creek's headwaters bc it's a small percentage of total flow, most of which comes from stormwater after rain events. In the year Oct 2024 - Sep 2025, 1,627.32 acre feet of water passed the gauge at Manor Road, just above my house. 🧵

Quite the damning record, and if you want to plumb some depths this is stacked with it. Lots to reckon with in many an ornate curio closet. www.gurumag.com/pema-chodron...

Former CDC chief medical officer talks about the "pure chaos" when RFK took over at the agency. youtu.be/-Ncm16zd7tA?...

📣 Action alert! EPA is proposing to deregulate PFAS, or forever chemicals. You can learn more and take action by attending EDGI’s workshop, featuring a panel of PFAS experts. Register for the July 9 workshop here: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

I strongly urge anyone with strong sentiments on this critical issue to offer a public comment by July 13. You don't need to be a scientist; this rule change would affect everything from disaster response to cancer research--and involves your tax dollars: www.regulations.gov/...

Here's the situation: The fairgoers have been expelled by force They have been told to shelter in nearby buildings, but all the buildings are locked because it is the Fourth of July People are clustering at the entrance points and blocking traffic for blocks The clouds are growing darker

This is part of a thread trying to make sense of the July 2025 Central Texas floods (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20...) a year ago from a land-use change context. Click within and scroll around, still curious what else to add to it.

The US built its first big army for one reason: to take Indigenous land. Little Turtle & the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance fought back. Their resistance sparked America's first military build-up & changed the structure of the United States itself. New from The Preamble ⬇️ substack.com/home/post/p-...

We are live

Finally got this up youtu.be/Z3lyvZ-YJoY?...

Anyone who writes about agriculture in the U.S. has butted their head up against farmers who won't say the words "climate change." In my latest for @foodprintorg.bsky.social, political ecologist Margiana Petersen-Rockney explains why foodprint.org/blog/margian...

Immortalized in my outrage at the NYT opinion page.

AI models exhibit a stronger pro-government valence in the languages of countries with lower media freedom, due to biases in training data www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A gentle correction: ruminants do not primarily emit methane via flatulence. The primary pathway is archaeal methanogenesis occurring in the forestomach. The gas exits via eructation (belching). (This is in the literature. I have read the literature.)

👇🏼

I'm teaching my sociology of climate change class in the fall. There's always quite a bit of interest from journalism & comms students. So I am going to put in the curriculum some examples of powerful reporting on the climate crisis. This is a running 🧵 of such articles. Feel free to add to it.

Devastación total vista en la ciudad costera del norte de Venezuela, La Guaira / Total devastation seen in the northern Venezuelan coastal city of La Guaira.

Big and very shallow = very, very bad.

Wow, the fake furries sandbox at elementary school story (see above) from 2022 is still getting shared in 2026 - by book ban evangelists at a Texas State Board of Education testimony : bsky.app/profile/fran... (part of a larger 🧵)

Every time I share photos of fireflies in my backyard, I get folks lamenting not seeing fireflies anymore. If this is you, depending on where you live, you can get more fireflies! About 1/3 of our NA species are threatened, but it's pretty easy to help them out especially in these areas. Here's how:

Officials from the Nueces River Authority collected millions of dollars from cities and utility districts near San Antonio and Austin before they partnered with an Israeli desalination giant. insideclimatenews.org/news/2206202...

I mean I'd tolerate evangelizing 'make the Gulf of America blue' if it brings a systemic transformational effort into addressing ocean dead zones.

Seasonal reminder after dealing with swarms of mosquitos after recent rains. (H/T bsky.app/profile/kito... who says it also helps with gnats)

🚨 Help us spread the word! @rshivpriyam.bsky.social and I are hiring a postdoc to work on understanding the drivers of current trends in Earth’s Energy Imbalance and what they mean for future climate. DMs open for questions.

Here’s my idea — instead of trying to get rid of the algae, embrace it. Wetland restoration on the whole thing. Reeds and muck and red-winged blackbirds. A monument to the city’s ecological past.

@bekahbot.bsky.social has done so much. It’s truly inspiring.

I don't have much reach on bluesky and need help making it to the next step of the project. Anything will help

Worth the quick read. Theres a whole thread I want to digress into the tensions between holding spirituality paramount vs. letting it be downstream of material condition, and on asking what kind of economic system to have beyond blaming the existing one.

It's not every day that an English major like myself gets to use the skill I honed in undergrad: staying up (almost) all night on a book report. I read Vice President JD Vance's new memoir, Communion, so you don't have to: www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/u...

I should provide a source for all this:

I am not involved in reporting or editing anything to do with this story for KUT, nor will I be, so I feel free to say out loud: firing Debbie is 100% bullshit. She's a fantastic leader and KUT is worse for her absence.

Texas folks, consider submitting a comment before the deadline tomorrow (June 16th)! Submitted a brief one calling to extend the comment window, feel free to share this graphic with a QR code as the website is hard to find: See futureheist.org/tceq-produce... & futureheist.org/tceq-produce...

A promising new article published in Frontiers in Environmental Science, including two local authors: It explores the potential for simple rock structures like the ones we build in our volunteer trips to restore dryland water cycles and possibly even influence rainfall: https://ow.ly/zU3I50Z5PaZ

i am newly diagnosed with alpha gal syndrome. i now have life threatening allergies to mammalian meat, dairy, and possibly carrageenan. i was even hospitalized for this, they thought i had crohn’s, no i was dying from eating a corned beef sandwich. i was bit by a lone star tick.

Freeport #LNG Liquefaction and Pretreatment operations are the biggest polluters I have seen in 12 years of surveying oil and gas operations around the world. This facility pollutes at this level every day, all day and all night. Watch for movement. That's #methane gas filling the entire frame.

Wait is the chat talking about cultural Scaffolding and extended cognition tonight?

Austin has renamed an East Austin wildlife preserve after late artist and activist Daniel Llanes, honoring decades of work to protect the Colorado River, advance environmental justice, and preserve community spaces. Read the full story here: austinfreepress.org/between-eart...

Can you belong someplace where the biome knows what you did last century

I know I'm conflating two different scenarios, but the prophecy from @loveallthis.bsky.social back in 2021 is holding up pretty well... (more in alt text)

NEW: In 2022, Bitcoin miners promised Corpus Christi millions in tax revenues in exchange for the de-annexation of their water-sucking cryptomine. Four years later, the city is in a water crisis & the mine has yielded only a minute fraction of what was promised. www.texasobserver.org/corpus-chris...

#education #forestschools #natureschools #homeschooling #scieneeducation

Last year, Texas lawmakers gave near-total immunity from lawsuit to companies spreading nominally-treated oil wastewater on Texas farmland and by Texas rivers — provided they followed lenient rules, like dumping it more than 100 feet from creeks or a few hundred feet from homes and wells.

In discerning between 'makers' and 'builders', something to hold is this critique by @debcha.bsky.social around the 'maker' movement to gesture some attention at those doing the at-times repetitive stuff like being an educator - web.archive.org/web/20160305... (Nov. 2014) bsky.app/profile/ksco...

If you think Texas has the potential to not suck — to have clean water, ample swimming holes, cheap pollution-free energy, and a political system not controlled by people wrecking our future for personal gain — check out our new campaign at Future Heist.

It didn’t have to be this way. The current data center heat issue is not just a material problem but an epistemic one that stems in part from debates at The Macy Conferences that led to the omission of heat and materiality from early foundations of information theory. meson.press/wp-content/u...

Texas is about to authorize the spreading of potentially radiactive, PFAS-filled oilfield wastewater on Texas farmland, ranchland and riverland — and you'll have no way to know if it ended up on the food you’re eating or the dust blowing through your kid’s school. Here's how to tell them not to.

A fantastic #ICA2026 in Cape Town is coming to an end. I attended many fascinating panels, but the one that was particularly important to me was ‘Silicon Valley’s #Slippery #Futures: Artificial General Intelligence, Technofascism and the Limits of Reinventing the World’.