A juvenile great horned owl in a tree

So much joy brought by the seasonal muppet goblins 🥰 🪶 🐣

Statement from Rep. Lofgren (ranking member of House Science Committee) re dissolving SBE: "What NSF is reportedly doing is in illegal contravention of the laws enacted by Congress this January. For over 75 years, NSF’s guiding light was how to best support cutting-edge research across all...

This is one of my favorite pieces of Tumblr fandom lore

Social media en toto is losing relevance + utility. We will not see another "global water cooler" like peak twitter again in the medium-term. This is not specific to Bsky. Threads has a broken algo AND the worst of the griftfluencer class. These are just the times we live in. New things will emerge

had to go see the landback skyscrapers for myself

And as always per this administration absolutely traumatizing good people who work hard on behalf of this nation

Checked on the family of Tawny owls (Strix aluco) in horrible wet weather this afternoon. Parent owl still keeping watch over what appears to now be a single surviving owlet. Owlet looking absolutely miserable as pulses of driving rain came through.

Owlet looking absolutely miserable as pulses of driving rain came through.

View of the owlet from the rear. Feathers appear pretty water repellent.

Checked on the Tawny owl family in horrible wet weather this afternoon. Parent owl still keeping watch over what appears to now be a single surviving owlet. Owlet looking absolutely miserable as pulses of driving rain came through. #Birds #Owls #WestLothian #Scotland 🪶🦉 #Photography #Nikon

So Erin Reed blocked me over this one but I’m going to take a few minutes to point out why this “reporting” is so bad and repost a few times to hopefully spread the word. TL;DR Erin either doesn’t understand anything about NYC law or politics or is outright lying about what’s happening here.

A photo of the Pike Place starbucks in Seattle Washington

We, the partners at Pike Place #301, are excited to announce our intent to unionize with Starbucks Workers United. As partners of the first Starbucks, we’ve decided to form a union to uphold the core values of our company and the Pike Place Market: fair and equal treatment, respect, and dignity for every single partner who makes this store so special. Thousands of partners around the country are working together to fight for a better workplace, and we look forward to joining them. Starbucks as a company was built on the core pillars of belonging, courage, and joy. Sadly, under your leadership – in our store and so many others – Starbucks has lost its way and veered from the core values that defined us. Store partners are the most important part of the Starbucks experience. We open the stores every morning and close them every night. We greet customers, make the coffee, clean up the spills, and remember our regulars’ names and favorite orders. But beneath the veneer of the excellent experience we craft for visitors every day, partners do not feel a sense of belonging and joy – unequal treatment is the norm, not the exception. When we speak up, that courage is punished, not rewarded. That has been most evident with Starbucks dispatching two national labor relations personnel to our store to surveil partners after the company heard we were discussing unionization, raising tension in the store that can be felt by both workers and customers. The market's founding gave us clear directions: "It is for you to defend, to protect and to uphold, and it is for you to see that those who occupy it treat you fairly; that no extortion be permitted and that the purpose for which it was created be religiously adhered to." The path to our union may be challenging, but we know this: We are better working together as a team, we have each others’ backs, and we respect everyone’s right to make their own choice. We call on Starbucks to live up to the core values of courage, joy, and be…

Today, the "original" Starbucks at Pike Place Market in Seattle, is announcing they're organizing their union. ✊

Read the letter workers addressed to CEO Brian Niccol about why they're joining thousands of workers nationwide fighting for a better Starbucks:

Give him the goddamn cake.

“That’s funny, the damage doesn’t look as bad from out here.”

come on man lmao

we endlessly debate the optimal ways of getting stronger in the gym. but while debates are many, genuine innovations are few: most methods are variations on the theme of "pick up something heavy, put it down, repeat" and the details are less meaningful to our muscle cells than they are to our egos

being able to sit patiently with other people's thoughts, sit patiently with your own, and make both of those processes legible to someone who is not you is very valuable. if you can find a new way to do this that is fantastic news but I suspect it will at least resemble the model we've inherited

more seriously: both an adult life spent teaching and an adult life spent on message boards and sites like this one have underscored to me that reading and communicating about reading is very much not a trivial skill. the recent tech developments further underscore this for me

you may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like

tl;dr: NIH is running at about 60% of pre-Trump levels and NSF is running at about 20% of pre-Trump levels of funding-outlays (some directorates far below even that). Utterly catastrophic. An unforced disaster for U.S. society, and the world

A line grant of the cumulative numbers of awards for NSF from fiscal years 2021-2026. The curve for fiscal year 2026 lies below well the other curves.

NSF update

Still looking very bleak.

4/5

A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

More context on this #Artemis II image:

* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right

* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕

The Danger of Keeping Score Podcast Episode · On the Media · April 1 · 22m

“… the curse is, we’ve forgotten that a meaningful life comes from processes, and we’ve tried to squeeze out games and play in a life of ever more optimizing our productivity and outcomes.”

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

White House Seeks $1.5 Trillion for Defense in New Budget Request

CFPB workers don't cost people money, we get it back for them. But Trump's radical budget director Russ Vought wants you to believe he has to fire us to pay for this: #stopvought #savecfpb www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/u...

HASTINGS: I say, Poirot, this vial’s labeled “hyaluronic acid”! Is it a poison?
SKINCARE HERCULE POIROT: Non, mon ami. This acid, it replenishes the skin’s barrier naturale
HASTINGS: So this is a gal who takes care of her skin.
SKINCARE HERCULE POIROT: *irritated* The gentleman may use it as well

This is about 10% of California's power sectors emissions. Think about how hard it is to make a grid this size 10% cleaner. That is the amount of work a new fossil plant of this size cancels out.

We cannot have new fossil infrastructure if we hope to have a safe climate. There just isn't time.

!! Wow, NPR article highlighting botanist @naomibot.bsky.social !!

I really try to avoid suggesting that some academic fields are better than others but I just opened an applicant packet in which the cover letter, CV, and four of eight letters of support are .docx and ONE LETTER OF SUPPORT IS .DOC

Me, reviewing student award applications over the last two weeks: why does no one teach these kids to submit materials as PDFs instead of Word documents

Me, reviewing faculty award applications today: oh no

Gantt chart? More like Cantt chart.

broke: Gantt chart
woke: Cantt chart
bespoke: Shantt chart

Stipulated: I am as helpless against secondhand news about BookTok insanity as a boomer reading Facebook posts about Millennials inventing new parts of speech

Listen, authors are sneaky, if you let them trick you into reading more than the bare minimum there's no telling where it'll end. Sequels? Prequels? Entirely new books with no connection whatsoever to the one you just finished?