The Department of Education has now officially submitted proposals to eliminate International Education and Fulbright Hays programs, which have funded thousands of students and scholars to study languages and conduct research abroad. I encourage you to make public comments and contact your reps.

GovInfo

Official Publications from the U.S. Government Publishing Office.

govinfo.gov

thomas simply couldn't join the opinion, this corrupt, misanthropic bigot had to throw in his two cents and put his bigotry into the record

Jay Willis@jaywillis.net · last mo.

Clarence Thomas's concurring opinion in the trans sports ban case in West Virginia contains some of the ugliest transphobic stuff I have ever seen in a legal opinion. Straight-up gleeful. Vile man. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

Why Do Humans Exercise? A Neuro‐Evolutionary Framework for Discretionary Physical Effort onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

this is a great illustration of one of the fundamental insights of democracy — that there is no such thing as "the people" and that majorities are elusive and ever shifting. no election, no decision, is final and treating an election as a final decision is profoundly undemocratic.

Mark Chadbourn@chadbourn.bsky.social · 2mo ago

A fifth of Leave voters have died.

Dr. Killgrove does an excellent job (IMO) of explaining the latest weird, unexpected results from Rising Star and H. Naledi research. Well worth a read! Also, not to humble brag, but I’ve had beers with two of the people quoted in the article (and the author too, IIRC)

Kristina Killgrove@killgrove.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This has got to be the weirdest human evolution story I've ever covered. I'm still baffled -- yes, baffled -- by these results. 🏺🧪

Nice summary of our recent paper on the brain of Homo naledi www.iflscience.com/homo-naledis...

Did This Small-Brained Hominin Have The Neural Wiring For Burying Its Dead?

A reconstruction of the hominin's skull reveals an enlarged region linked to language and tool use, though what that means for its alleged funerary practices remains an open question.

iflscience.com

What does the most complete endocast of Homo naledi tell us about the brain and behavior of this most unexpected, recently extinct human species? #FossilFriday link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Donald Trump’s corruption is driving up your costs. Here’s the receipt—and you’re stuck with the bill.

Fifty years since a simple equation described the chaos of biology 🧪🌐 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Fifty years since a simple equation described the chaos of biology

An exploration of chaos theory in population dynamics showed that unpredictable systems can often be modelled using surprisingly simple mathematics.

nature.com

Yeah that tracks

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'The career ladder in academia is of particular interest as it is a “greedy” occupation due to its lack of substitutability among workers, long hours with increasing returns to productivity, and the importance of establishing and maintaining personal contacts.' Academia is a "greedy" occupation.

You are not going to be able to escape the "I love inflation" clip if you live anywhere near a competitive district or Senate seat. www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...

Trump says ‘I love the inflation’ as annual rate jumps to a 3-year high

The president suggested the recent numbers mean there will be a bigger decline in inflation once the war in Iran is over.

nbcnews.com

What could possibly go wrong. I mean, c’mon mannnn

The Associated Press@apnews.com · 2mo ago

Visa is embedding its payment network into ChatGPT, allowing the chatbot to shop and complete transactions for users.

I'm not much of a whale fossil guy, but this is a super cool paper/discovery

Michael Haslam@twigtechnology.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Up to 7km deep. 1200km long. Almost 500 fossil whales, some over 5 million years old. An epic new finding that shows how much unknown natural treasures the sea floor holds 🧪🐋 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“The known cases of police stalking are almost certainly a vast underreporting of the overall abuse, because they largely include only cases in which the behavior was so egregious that it led to police officers being fired, arrested, or both.”

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Some really crazy cases in here - cop looked up ex-girlfriend and family in Flock 100+ times - cop stalked wife giving "test" as reason - cop searched one plate 395 times in 10 months; was later fired Cops keep getting arrested for using Flock to stalk people www.404media.co/cops-keep-ge...

Some really crazy cases in here - cop looked up ex-girlfriend and family in Flock 100+ times - cop stalked wife giving "test" as reason - cop searched one plate 395 times in 10 months; was later fired Cops keep getting arrested for using Flock to stalk people www.404media.co/cops-keep-ge...

Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk People

There have been more than a dozen cases around the country where police use Flock to obsessively and illegally stalk people.

404media.co

Now published: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

What sets the mutation rate of a cell type in an animal species?

Mutation rates per generation are strikingly similar across germlines of animals and across at least one somatic cell type, suggesting a key role for natural selection in shaping mutation rates. This ...

journals.plos.org

Molly Przeworski@mollyprz.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Happy to highlight an essay I wrote together with @marcdemanuel.bsky.social, @natanaels.bsky.social and Anastasia Stolyarova, trying to think through what sets the mutation rate of a cell type in an animal species: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n

Science Friday has a very exciting guest host this week! Say hello to Jane Lindholm from But Why on @vermontpublic.org 👋

Happy #PrideMonth! To celebrate, I'm starting a thread of readings on queerness in animals/evolution, and keep adding throughout the month. I'll include a mix of writing for popular audiences as well as some scientific articles and book recommendations! 🧪 🏳️‍🌈 (1/n) Nature has ALWAYS been queer! 🌈

NEW When #Neanderthal remains were discovered in Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan, the fragile and crushed condition of the bones prevented detailed analysis. A year of conservation work helps explore the complex mortuary practices observed at the site. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

New post is live! 40 years of race science arguments about brain size & the racial IQ gap, nobody bothered to write down the math or do anything beyond gawk at correlations. I did, walking through the data & formalizing it with the Lande equation. It fares worse than you could even imagine.

Race on The Brain: why brain-size differences can’t explain the IQ gap

Tackling a popular hereditarian argument

open.substack.com

Testing the Energetics of Gestation and Growth Hypothesis for Human Secondary Altriciality onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Testing the Energetics of Gestation and Growth Hypothesis for Human Secondary Altriciality

The pronounced neurological immaturity, yet increased birthweight of human neonates relative to other primates, known as secondary altriciality, is traditionally attributed to obstetric constraints a....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The 9+ month marathon: How pregnancy may have shaped human endurance capacities

Anthropology has long considered the evolution of our uniquely human endurance capacities to be the result of selection upon anatomical and physiological features imposed by the demands of thermoregu....

anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

It Takes Two to Tango: A Pluralist Account for Building Comprehensive Explanations in Human Evolution - Menéndez - American Anthropologist - Wiley Online Library anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

<em>American Anthropologist</em> | AAA Anthropology Journal | Wiley Online Library

The evolutionary study of human dispersal is a key topic in biological anthropology. However, recent research has revealed inconsistencies between molecular and anatomical data across different times....

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

and here is a terrific summary that lays clear why everyone should oppose this-- it will kill science in the United States elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of...

Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule

Russell Vought is going to destroy American Science

elizabethginexi.substack.com

After a Wisconsin town did this, the mayor said: “The fact that they didn’t take the cameras down shows that we are the product. They were never really selling to us in the first place. They're selling to much bigger agencies the ability to spy on a ton of people.” (via boltsmag.org/verona-wisco...)

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New: Regretful cities are literally covering their Flock cameras with black trash bags because they cannot figure out how to immediately exit their surveillance contracts or get the cameras taken down: www.404media.co/cities-are-c...

We released a trove of disclosure records that detail the finances of more than 1,600 Trump appointees, including former lobbyists, industry executives and at least a dozen officials who declined to identify former clients.

Documents Reveal a Web of Financial Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate

ProPublica is releasing a trove of disclosure records that detail the finances of more than 1,500 Trump appointees, including former lobbyists, industry executives and at least a dozen officials who d...

propublica.org

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces — a shift that could further reduce traffic to publishers across the web.

Google Search as you know it is over | TechCrunch

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces — a shift that could further reduce traffic to publishers across the web.

techcrunch.com

this would be an excellent time for donald trump to *not* have installed the host of a youtube show called "erection connection!" as the person charge of infectious disease policy for the united states of america. www.statnews.com/2026/05/17/e...

In Ebola outbreak, a number of Americans in the Congo believed to have had exposure to suspected cases

A number of Americans who are in the Congo are believed to have had exposure to suspected cases in the country’s latest Ebola outbreak, sources have told STAT.

statnews.com

First real post on the new blog! If you follow human genetics, you've likely of "missing heritability". If you look at twins to estimate heritability, you get values much larger than what molecular genomic methods produce. IQ, for example, goes from 50-80% heritability to 10-15%. Which is right?

"Hallucination" implies conscious experience that chatbots lack. We need another term for the specific kind of error where they make things up out of whole cloth. It's not lying because they don't know anything.

Vauhini Vara@vauhinivara.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Speaking of which — when AI chatbots make mistakes, call them that: mistakes, errors, inaccuracies. “Hallucinations” is an unnecessarily jargony term that anthropomorphizes the chatbots. (5/x)