Our postdoc @dr-ewilliamson.bsky.social's recent PhD study on an Australian native solitary bee, Megachile tosticauda, challenged a longheld assumption in insect biology: that all bees rely on a functional gut #microbiome. So what happens if it's missing? #bugsky invertebratelab.com/2026/02/24/a...
as long as folks are enthusiastically donating to state level trans orgs today, figured I'd reup this list the @them.us team and I put together a few years back: www.them.us/story/orgs-f...
(some info may be outdated, but use this as a jumping-off point!)
Amazing news!
When you purchase the audiobook of my novel Lessons in Magic and Disaster between now and Feb. 12, ✨ 100 PERCENT ✨ of the purchase price goes to BINC, the nonprofit that helps booksellers who are having a tough time.
I love this audiobook. And BINC. It's a win-win!
libro.fm/binc
E-mail from Lawrence Krauss to Epstein detailing his consideration of the top 5 candidates for the Origins Project Postdoctoral Prize Lectureship. Text: I have gone over the =ist, and there are 5 people who should be considered as finalists: Adrian Liu Meng Su Aaron Englehart Gopinath Sutendra Ahmad Haidar Of these, I believe there are 3 who rank at the top =nbsp;(conveniently the top three in the list above).. They are =xceptional candidates. The remaining 2 are also very good. =nbsp;l rank Gopinath higher than Ahmad, but both slightly below the =est. Of =he remaining 3, they are all remarkable..) can see reasons to choose =ny of them.. Your comments are invited. Here are =ine: 1. Liu: =iscussing one of the most exciting upcoming fields in astronomy.. =nbsp;Clearly very accomplished. Also clearly one of the best =eachers ever. 2. Meng Su: Very diverse.. his work on black hole (with =is supervisors) garnered him great attention, and he is working on 3 of =he most exciting areas and has achieved significant international =tatus in each.. 3. Aaron Englehart: working on the forefront of =rigins, an ASU grad now with Szostak (nice, but I worry if we choose =im we may be viewed as parochial), interesting lectures and good =ommunicator.
Finally, since the astronomy prizes offered by ASU were funded by Epstein, so Lawrence Krauss consulted him for input on who should win these awards! Personal note: I applied for this award (not knowing any of these things at the time), and I am SO glad I did not make that shortlist!
Hey everyone!
Huge news! Our trans girl scout list has sold a total of 146,000 boxes as of today!
But MANY trans girl scouts only have 20, 30, 40 boxes sold.
I just resorted our list to put those on the top.
Go get your girl scout cookies and make a trans kid's day!
Current status of the fundraisers for those killed by ICE:
Renee Good: $1,499,580
Alex Pretti: $1,289,249
Keith Porter, Jr. $302,423
Parady La: $45,848
Heber Sanchez Dominguez: $47,991
Luis Beltrán Yanez Cruz: $18,640
Victor Manuel Diaz: $2,538
Geraldo Lunas: $2,260
Luis Gustavo Núñez: $1,935
On black gradient background with black and white image of President Trump, pink and white text reads, "Trump administration WILL EXPAND global gag rule to ATTACK best-practice health care for trans people."
BREAKING: Media outlets are reporting the Trump administration will expand the global gag rule to target trans people around the world, marking the latest attack in their obsessive crusade against our community. apnews.com/article/trum...
Money for trans reporting! via @transjournalists.org Spread the word and apply!! www.transjournalists.org/reporting-fe...
People really really downplay dental health. Cavities are not the worse case scenario here. Poor oral health can kill you
A big black cat snoozing on top of a LEGO box.
Also huge update, I got two more cats.
Well one of my cats died. And then I was really sad.
And then I got a little less sad and also I got two more cats.
This is one of them. He's 9 years old and huge.
We are back! Hopefully on a more consistent basis this time 😅- but listen, you've seen the news. We live in the USA and we're both academics and at least one of us has multiple diagnosed anxiety disorders. You get it.
New episode on hematophagous arthropods!
asabpodcast.com/2026/01/15/e...
SUPER late response but the auto payment for our podcast host had failed! We are BACK
About two dozen provider organizations have stopped offering gender-affirming care in response to Trump’s threats. But not all hospitals are complying in advance. Boston Children’s Hospital recently issued a statement saying it would continue care. www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/07/bost...
Short comic with no panel edges. There’s a woman in a yellow tank top and blue spandex shorts with short strawberry-blonde hair. She sits on the ground leaning in close to a plant. Next to her is text that reads “There are worlds inside worlds” The POV comes in close to the woman’s face, we see her smirks at a beetle on top of a leaf. The text continues “for those with the eyes to see” Close up on the beetle, a Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle, the beetle addresses the woman “Sup?”. The final portion of text reads “and the heart to care.”
hoping that when they say the LLM talks like a Ph.D.-level expert, they mean "holds indecipherable decades-long academic grudges expressed largely in the form of questions that are actually more of a comment"
But look at those eyes
Not really even broadly relevant to the podcast but I'm so happy! No water-wasting data centers in the DESERT.
THE DESERT!!!!! IT'S A DESERT.
😘 - me at all the beautiful deserts
I wrote up what the new World Athletics policy actually means, who is exempt, and what might come next, along with a little *hot take* about the financial piece of this. buttondown.com/tested/archi...
Sex testing is officially back in sports -- which is a huge bummer and also contradicts so much ethics, human rights law, and actual science. More on all that (and the history) on my podcast Tested: www.tested-podcast.com
i think a lot about how zotero is actually one of the technologies academia actually should be pushing on students and faculty versus the lake-guzzling, town poisoning, and labor exploiting chatbots
Because a lot of people won't appreciate this: also, university presses have a habit of making authors handover copyright of their academic manuscripts, so a lot of authors won't even have the ability to say "no" to this kind of shit as more presses do it
bsky.app/profile/hype...
You don't have to think about this if you aren't impacted by it, but it becomes way easier to just not go out in public.
And so we don't.
People sometimes comment that trans folks have a huge online presence - do you think that this is because we have thriving offline social lives?
I can confirm the PBS Passport is a very good deal for $5/month or $2.50/month if you do yearly.
Thousands of hours of top notch content. NOVA is great. The new Ken Burns doc on Leonardo da Vinci is excellent.
You can sign up at the link below!
www.pbs.org/passport/lea...
Local librarians and booksellers (including us) weigh in on what you should be reading this summer!
(Spoiler: we suggested @mskellymhayes.bsky.social, @prisonculture.bsky.social, @shanehawk.com, @tvayyyy.bsky.social, and #MargePiercy 🔥📚)
Someday I'm going to get into a throuple with a geologist and a botanist and we're going to go on the best hikes anyone's ever even heard of.
Star Trek The Next Generation scene. We're in a SHUTTLECRAFT! Riker is sitting on the driver's side but the pic is close in. He's looking up kind of doing that thing you do when you're otherwise just hanging but someone says something that makes you do a record scratch. Closed caption reads, "Commander, tell me about your sexual organs."
The GOP plans to slash $2.1 Billion from the National Science Foundation. It won’t just hurt labs—it hurts students, startups, and the future economy. From clean energy to advanced manufacturing, these are jobs of tomorrow. These cuts hand American jobs and opportunity to our foreign competitors.
If this is accurate, WeTransfer is unusable for professional creative work. Would violate most work-for-hire contracts to share copyrighted material with a third party like this.