Perry North. 4071 Franklin Road - Incarnation of the Lord Church. Caller says a thin guy in a robe went into the church and is yelling out of tune at the choir.

Cover of report "Mission Aborted: how NASA illegally implemented the president's budget request without congressional approval. Minority staff report, prepared by members of the committee on science, space, and technology, us house of representatives, April 2026

This report came out today by minority staff of the House science committee on how three NASA missions were aborted due to NASA illegally following the FY26 president's budget request instead of congressionally approved budget. Very important reading. 🔭🧪 democrats-science.house.gov/staff-report...

Excited that my paper on a Jurassic fish with teeth on its nose is now out! Shoutout to my co-authors Ben Kligman and Maranda Stricklin, who is another all-star undergraduate mentee. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Montana Supreme Court Rules Its Constitution Entirely Protects Trans Citizens In Landmark Ruling The ruling will have enormous impacts for transgender residents in the state.

1. In a landmark ruling, the Montana Supreme Court has declared that the constitution, one of the most progressive in the nation, entirely protects transgender people.

The ruling is even insulated from SCOTUS decisions, due to how state constitutions work.

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Paper print-off held in front of laptop. Part has muli-panel figures showing aspects of fish jaws, based on CT models rendered in gray. They are covered with labels and leader lines.

So many Carboniferous fish jaws (28!) to look at and think about on my way to Atlanta. The most rewarding in-flight entertainment, courtesy of @reallyoldfish.bsky.social!

bifrost: an R package for scalable inference of phylogenetic shifts in multivariate evolutionary dynamics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...

Congratulations to all. Both being awarded and HM are huge accomplishments, and you should be proud of yourself either way.

Result from the Zechstein sea #paleostream! This famous deposit from the late Permian of Central Europe (mostly Germany) has a special place in paleontology history and incidentally has a locality not even a km from where I sit right now.

Nerodia sepidon (common water snake) lying on a patch of moss surrounded by emerging leaves of herbaceous plants and dead grass

Noturus stigmosus (Northern madtom) lying on the bottom of a water-filled plastic box. In left lateral view

Two blunt lobed hepatica flowers emerging from muddy ground. There are sporadic dead leaves of oak surrounding the hepatica, and a large log towards the top of the picture

All from today. The world is waking up.

If you’re speculating about the 2028 Democratic nominee right now, might I suggest you get a hobby. Or look up local volunteer opportunities. Something.

The Carnegie special, squishy fishy.

For #fossilfriday I have the holotype of Kalops monophrys, CM 27372. Kalops is a classic “palaeoniscoid” from Bear Gulch , a Mississippian lagerstätte in central Montana. While squished, it’s undeniably a gorgeous fossil.

Slender fossil jaw bone in a foam lined box sitting on a wooden table.

Black slab of rock in a translucent box. An orange and black scalebar is to the side of the rock, which is covered with dark impressions of disarticulated bones.

Some UMMP embolomeres for #FossilFriday: Archeria jaw from the Permian of Archer Co., TX and archeriid bits from the Carboniferous of Linton, OH.

Fossil fish head from the Pleistocene of Galveston, TX

Do you have pictures of the specimen in other views?

@james-v-andrews.bsky.social

I did not think Bezos would go Howard Hughes Piss Jug Crazy before Elon, but here we are

Tabby cat looking down at you with slight discontent

Tabby cat looking out from under a blue and white comforter

Cat shots from the past two days. God I love this creature

Armageddon is terrible, but our only other option was diversity trainings at work.

Unhinged

You cannot talk about lunar exploration without the U.S. Geological Survey.

Case in point: Tim Hait! While he'd join the St. Helens team right after the May 18, 1980, eruption as an information scientist, he was part of the team that trained Apollo astronauts in geology 101.

The more you know.

Without these long-term research programs, there is no #2026MMM

Drove through Ohio a few days ago and was stunned at the water levels in the Portage River and surrounding areas. Local news is reporting on people being able to kayak in their backyards. Sounds fun, but think of all the E. coli..

Black text on white background “Happy Easter, New York!  Today, millions of New Yorkers celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the victory of hope over despair and faith over fear.  As the air warms and cherry blossoms begin to bloom, this holy day is a sacred time to pause and reflect on a season of rebirth. Whether you spend this day singing in pews, parading on Fifth Avenue, joining a processional guided by the bamboo trumpets of Haitian Rara music, or hunting for painted eggs amidst the spring grass, I wish every New Yorker celebrating a joyous day.  Let us all embrace this holiday's spirit of hope and renewal as we build the City — and the world — that we deserve.”

This is an actual post. This is not funny. This is beyond desperate. This is a deeply unwell man who doesn’t belong anywhere near the levers of power. Every member of his cabinet and Congress is complicit in not demanding his removal now.

Large steam-driven mechanical contraption, consisting of a wooden frame with iron tubes, cylinders, and piston. It is partially supported by a stone pier. This is a Newcomen engine, built in the 1760s to drain deep mines in England at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Prior to the implementation of mechanized approaches to coal extraction, mines in the north of England yielded abundant Carboniferous fossil fishes while they were still worked by hand.

Carboniferous fossil fishes: brought to you by this.

The Dermal Skeleton of Stem‐Actinopterygian Moythomasia durgaringa and Its Implications for the Nature of the Ancestral Osteichthyan The figure presents a model of Moythomasia and a schematic histological model illustrating the internal structure and features of the cranial bones. These include bone (brown), osteocyte spaces (red)...

Our latest: Dermoskeletal histology of Moythomasia and the evolution of the vertebrate dermal skeleton, led by Xianren Shan and Edine Pape, with a little help from Martin Rucklin @evopalaeo.bsky.social and Davide Pisani @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social

Proposed cuts to BIO are higher, closer to 72%

U.S. Forest Service unveils extensive closures of research facilities Cost-cutting move is expected to cause resignations and turmoil

What will happen to the 82 USFS experimental forests around the country? Many sites have decades-long experiments that are tracking how forests are changed by timber harvesting practices and climate change. As I say here, “you can't just pick up an experimental forest site and move it to SLC.”

Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration Budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing.

BREAKING: In response to huge cuts in Trump's budget request, NSF is shuttering its SBE directorate. Staff will be transferred to other parts of the agency and "grants that align with Administration priorities" will be maintained.

That & more w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social & @edwrdchen.bsky.social