Reminder that free will exists and New Year’s resolutions don’t have to suck. Resolve to eat every kind of cheese, pet every dog you see, resolve to take pictures of clouds and look up what you see. No one needs to be a “better version of themselves” when they can visit every local brewery.

Good news! From now until January 1, you can get 25% off your pre-order of my new book!!! 🧪🐻🦑🦉🐜🐍🦀 GRIZZLED: Love Letters to 50 of North America’s Least Understood Animals Here’s how! open.substack.com/pub/jasonbit...

@rebeccarhelm.bsky.social Thought of you when I saw this. I would love sheep leaf sea slug cards :)

"Academics literally cannot make genAI go away" we also can't make underage drinking go away and we're not advocating for installing bar carts in every classroom.

"Did you see what Mark Cuban posted? Oh did you see the clapb—" You shake yourself awake in the cold North Atlantic water. You are not online. It is July of 1858. You are a baleen whale, and you have changed your mind. The future most not come to pass. The telegraph cable must break.

ビンポン！the same goes for marriage restrictions in japan. The point is that the government gets to decide who you can marry or if you can determine your own name.

The “yelling at strangers” phase of the Internet was fun while it lasted. But with the advance of AI, that age is coming to an end. Do not engage in the era of “yelling at robots on the internet.” No good can come of it.

Several pissed off peeps have rocked up in this thread. In the past, I entertained angry anonymous posters because I’m a glutton for discourse, and I knew they were real. Now, new policy: I will only actively disagree with people on the internet who are named and known.

Something that’s been giving me so much peace is the idea that we all have limited tokens of attention, so when we give strangers and trolls our attention, we’re giving them our limited tokens, depriving our actual friends. Being good to our real friends means cutting out the people pleading.

Super cute snail

🎄 in the deep sea

Over at X, Elon has added a feature that allows you to edit any image anyone has posts using AI I edited an image of a real scientific paper (left) with the prompt "change the title and images to be more fear-inducing" I can envision no ways in which this may be abused. None at all. 🧪

“It comes down to the fact that the FDA is not doing its job,” a retired cardiologist said. “Everything you are swallowing should be tested — there should be no question about it. You don’t want a bad batch coming to the drugstore.”

Friendly neighborhood biologist here again. I’ve been seeing lots of post on how simple biological sex is. Since sex in society is such a hot-button issue these days, we should be able to find the basis of biological sex in law, right? Let’s do it! Let’s find the basis of sex, round 2! 🧵

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

And/or they can be little!

It’s almost New Years Resolution Time! Here’s mine: 1) Every month, I will purchase at least one piece of original artwork. If I don’t find anything I like/can afford, I’ll donate to an artist on Patreon. What are yours?

Friendly neighborhood biologist here. I see a lot of people are talking about biological sexes right now. Lots of folks make biological sex seem really simple. Well, since it’s so simple, let’s find the biological roots, shall we? Let’s talk about sex...[a thread] (Reposted from the other site)

Self soothing on the Internet because I’m upset about AI must be what Edward Scissorhands felt like when trying to hug himself

AI slop has made it to the deep sea. That’s not a blobfish: Deep Sea Social Media is Flooded by AI Slop www.southernfriedscience.com/thats-not-a-...

Just read this on Insta and am gobsmacked at how the AI propagandists are telling us TO OUR FACE that they want to: 1) replace all artists and thinkers 2) read our every emotion 3) influence our every move And us being pissed is just “the first stage of grief” KEEP UP THE PUSH BACK FOLKS!

Artists and writers: Has AI taken your job? Have you noticed a dip in freelance/contracted work?

Fun fact: Apache jumping spiders (Phidippus apacheanus) are completely harmless, but evolved to mimic velvet ants from the genus Dasymutilla so predators wouldn't mess with them.

I relate @beetlemoses.bsky.social, I relate

This, this is what I’m here for..🙌 For a little bit of intrigue and learnin’ 🪼🩵

There's something that feels a bit dead about the world right now, but tens of thousands of people just came together to help us solve a 100 year old mystery about a little blue jelly, and I find that heartbreakingly hopeful:

This kind of stuff makes the rest of the crap tolerable

Check out our latest preprint!

In our last thread, we left the jelly-enjoyers of Bluesky with a cliff hanger ending, in what one eager onlooker described as soap opera science 😜 ... wait no more, we are back! Grab your popcorn shrimp and come with us on a journey spanning more than... bsky.app/profile/iwan...

was randomly browsing r/megalophobia earlier only to see an image of stygiomedusa with a snorkeler at the surface, which is bonkers since it's a deep sea jelly. 🦑🧪 after a little digging, it came from this paper: doi.org/10.1590/S198... about this observation: www.instagram.com/p/BzlnDMxht0y

Let's do another #ctenophore survey. You are scuba divining and see this lobate comb jelly cruising in search of prey. Is it swimming to the LEFT or RIGHT? 🦑🧪🌊

For CTENOPHORE DAY, a little survey: Which end of this fishing Pleurobrachia is the mouth on? Please just "vote" in the comments — no definitive answers. 🦑🧪🌊 P.S. this is one of my earliest #ctenophore photos, shot on film in a home-built kreisel. P.P.S. Legit data-gathering for a future paper.

Ok folks, time to help with actual science while scrolling social media! Marine biologist Dr. Steve Haddock is conducting a study on public perception of this critter down below. He needs replies! Please go talk to Steve and re-skeet far and wide!

Yesssss!!! Our lab has a new paper out, and it comes with an awesome story:

Hey author friends! Please help! I do freelance writing, and I’m trying to find my DC pro and semi-pro writer friends. How do I find them? Are there Bluesky starter packs, meetup group, professional societies? How do writers find each other?

Happy Friday afternoon folks. Here be some leaf sheep wishing you a lovely day 🌊

CAN YOU GUESS THIS ONE?? 👀 (Thanks to @schmidtocean.bsky.social for letting me share their video!)

Many sea stars begin life as young fairy-like creature (called a brachiolaria) that float through the open ocean. Eventually, a small star forms within them (here in yellow). The fairy-like brachiolaria sinks under the star’s weight, and the star pops out! 🎥@the_story_of_a_biologist (on Insta)

With the rise of AI, social media as we know it is about to die. As a Very Online Person (*sigh*), I see this as part of a larger swing. In the last decade, for better and worse, commentators have gained popular trust. Now, all those random accounts are completely untrustworthy. What do we do? [1/n]

You can no longer believe what you see online. So, what happens next? What do you think?

Bet this will be the coolest, and weirdest, thing you read today :))

I want to tell you a story, and it begins with this VERY WEIRD animal: Meet Thetys vagina... [a thread 🧵] 📸 m_patton bit.ly/2Mgw8Sf 🌿🧪🦑🐙🌊

Hi all—I posted a thread earlier about a politician who shared what appeared to be an AI generated post attributed to me. Karl (below) suggested it may have been a misattribution. In an effort to always share correct info & be transparent, I’ve removed my post while I gather more info.

Meet the “squidworm” 🦑🪱 Discovered by WHOI biologist Larry Madin and colleagues, this 4-inch-long animal was just one of roughly 6,000 new species uncovered during the Census of Marine Life, a decade-long global effort involving more than 2,700 scientists to explore and document ocean life.

WOW

I just couldn't stop thinking about how weird sperm whale mouths are and yet how perfectly shaped for inserting giant squid into

#CephalopodFriday - mit einer Sensationsmeldung! Das erste Video, wie ein #Pottwal einen #Riesenkalmar #Architeuthys erbeutet. @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social teilte dies vor 2 Tagen (Thanks!!!). Ich habe auf Meertext etwas Info drumherum geschrieben scilogs.spektrum.de/meertext/cep...

OMG 😭 Huntington's is an inherited disease that's like Alzheimers + Parkinson's all in one. NOW: "once the gene therapy has been delivered into the brain... [it] injects a piece of DNA to reprogram the neuron to become a factory for its own cure." LIFE SAVING! www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhEx...

And thank you Dagomar for sharing it with me! You are the true whale-squid video whisperer

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)