Ooh this looks like a cool book

Nick Kristof went to talk to some of the moms losing their beloved children to Trump’s aid cuts. We are paying storage on already existing food rather than release it to starving kids. “I loved my child so much” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

Here’s a really nice alluvial fan I thought you should see

Apparently Guillermo Del Toro has ruined Frankenstein by… being relatively faithful to the source material. Oh my.

Media has been hollowed out from the bottom and a lot of that was beat reporting and grassroots stuff. The top is left without much to support it. There are about a fifth as many reporters per capita compared to 25 years ago.

This is what I and many other parents I know have been looking for! Thanks @meghanbartels.bsky.social

Absolutely scandalous that these ACIP members supported vaccination over… *checks notes* drowning in your own lung fluids while fever wracks your brain. Smdh

Abundant Eocene fossils of plants and animals are found in the Green River Formation of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. This fossil Pseudosalix Hanleyi, with stems, leaves and flowers preserved, is harder to find than a T-rex tooth!

Read up for the full thread, but this is the core.

To celebrate its 180th birthday (!!) @sciam.bsky.social is running a photo contest (details here: sciam.com/180contest) to take #SciAmInTheWild. Where do you read about science?

Crocheted a geode, like you do 🧶 #crochet

It’s a real service to have all of this fact-checking in one thread.

Very clarifying walkthrough of the Covid vax claims coming from RFK Jr!

Roman scent bottles made of gold-band mosaic glass. Beautiful examples of the skill of ancient glassmakers some 2,000 years ago! The Met 📷 by me #Archaeology

The fact that the online news-reading experience is increasingly and insanely hostile doesn't get nearly the amount of attention that paywalls do, but it really should

The NOTUS reporters said they spent five days (!) going through the 522 citations in the report.

I remember when government reports were at least a little trustworthy

Holy hell, this is exciting.

Phantom of the Opera is a lot like Frankenstein in that the modern cultural understanding of the story is severely distorted from the original novel. This tweet gets pretty close to the gist of the book, though:

Just deranged. This was a *solved* problem.

Yeesh

this is why you shouldnt believe what you see on the internet. It was actually closer to 50 years. His name was Porphyrios, he actually caused the creation of entirely new trading routes just to avoid him and was declared enemy of the state by Justinian. He is the hero we need.

This isn’t particularly useful but, well, I hear from a lot of people from the science-centered agencies these days (NIH, NOAA, EPA, couple others) and the degree of, I dunno, grimness (?) is really palpable. The whole gov scientific enterprise is just getting ground into dust. It sucks so hard.

My grandfather’s sister (born 1936) died of juvenile diabetes, this man just says stuff.

depends on your beat. it’s been bad out there for govt agency scientists awhile if you didn’t already have a reason not to rank Cuomo in the primary: he had such a culture of fear going at the state DEC that trying to talk to a bear scientist or a beetle guy was like breaking into Fort Knox

I just think people should know that I have NEVER in 15 years as a science reporter had scientists tell me they couldn't talk to me for political reasons. It's now happened several times within the last week alone.

Your unsettling fact for the day.

I love this so much

“This is the billionaire class wanting to run the country, and their vision for the Rocky Mountain West is privatization.”

autism program funding is also on the chopping block, as if you needed proof that everything they say about autism, including their claim to care about it, is a lie: “The document also proposes eliminating dozens of programs focused on…autism, teen pregnancy, lead poisoning, opioid recovery…”

Here’s how we know that RFK Jr’s alarmism about autism isn’t backed up by evidence. www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-.... I had a lot of thoughts reporting this. 🧵

I saw someone sum this issue up really well the other day on TikTok: If your science is focused on stopping autistic people from being born and not on making sure autistic people and their families have support and resources, that's eugenics.

This is super-cool and probably demonstrates elephants' sensitivity to vibrations over long distances!

My Slate piece on the widespread NEH grant cancellations is live. So much gratitude to everyone who took the time to talk with me these past few days while fighting fires on every side. #humanities #highered #neh slate.com/news-and-pol...

Given changes in diagnosis, it is flat bonkers to do a side-by-side comparison of autism rates in Kennedy's childhood to today's. Nevermind the implicit ableism in Trump's coda here.

Exclusive: Weeks after President Donald Trump’s administration ordered NIH to pull $250 million in biomedical research grants to Columbia University, the agency is freezing all remaining grant money owed to the university until further notice. scim.ag/4if5Rg1

So where's the cash for biomedical research going to come from, if not the NIH? Ummm... @rowanwalrath.bsky.social looks at the landscape for @cenmag.bsky.social 🧪 #chemsky

My best ever aerial shot of Mt. Hood. Taken with an iPhone through an airplane window while flying into Portland, Oregon on a fairly sunny March morning.

Fantastic idea.

A few weeks ago I went up to #ArizonaSnowbowl to take pictures of the snow. As I was getting in my car to leave, I noticed the icicles on this tree in front of my car & just had to unpack my camera for this shot. #flagstaff #arizona #snow #trees #photography #landscape #nature #mountains #sunset

Opportunity cost aside, what would such a study look like? If observational, what would it add to Denmark's study of *every child born in the entire country from 1999-2010*, which found slightly more autism in non-MMR recipients? If randomized, how long would kids be randomized to no vaccine(s)?

NEW: Within the EPA is a small program called IRIS, which measures the threat of toxic chemicals. Two new bills pose the gravest threat to the program’s existence since it was created four decades ago.

Abundant Eocene fossils of plants and animals are found in the Green River Formation of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. This fossil Pseudosalix Hanleyi, with stems, leaves and flowers preserved, is harder to find than a T-rex tooth!

I’m really fascinated right now by this trend of “nothing is really real” in politics

The fact that NSF funding gave us Duolingo could yield some really great owl-based protest signs, if the memes my 10-year-old keeps showing me are any indication

I talked to NIH officials, current and former, about what's been happening inside the agency since the Trump administration shut down their grantmaking pipeline in January. Their stories showed just how willing our new leaders are to break the law: www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...