Over/under on how long until faculty somewhere get an admin email blaming them for grades not being submitted because they didn't preemptively download student work from Canvas in case of a global hacker attack
Christie Bahlai
@cbahlai.bsky.social
Associate Professor of computational ecology at Kent State. Armchair data science philosopher. Bug doctor. Cat person. 🇨🇦/🇺🇲. She/her
Latest paper with @kbslter.bsky.social data 🙂
PNAS Nexus@pnasnexus.org · 4mo agoLady beetles have declined in abundance by 39% since 1993 in experimental plots in Michigan. Rather than a steady decline, researchers found ups and downs with different rates of change and apparent drivers among species and across habitats. In PNAS Nexus: https://ow.ly/94Ur50YAFBG
I can't believe that my new book, The Data Management Workbook, comes out in less than 2 weeks. I'm very grateful to @cbahlai.bsky.social for writing this wonderful endorsement for it. Christie is not only a great scientist, but also an advocate for data management and open science.
Had a great and productive Status of #Insects #RCN working group meeting! Thank you @cbahlai.bsky.social and Eliza, Matt, Dave, Chris E and Chris H and everyone there! 🦋🐝🐞🐜🦗🦟🪰🪲🪳
As a native Ohioan, I'm still struck by the lack of stories on SB1 as the academic year in Ohio begins. Ohio is operating under the most restrictive higher ed law in the nation but you'd never know it based on reporting from Ohio.
Hey everybody! I'm on sabbatical next semester and I've...been utterly negligent in planning it. What I'm saying is, if you were thinking about asking me for a department seminar etc between January and May 2026, I will put on a show for you. I'll talk about sampling theory, but cool!
Every tech update now is like: "Great news, the word processor you've relied on for twenty years has learned to juggle! Is it good at it? No! Does it help in any way? Of course not! Has it made it insufferable to use? Oh, absolutely."
Nevertheless you can buy my awesome friend @mapesgeog.bsky.social 's fantastic book at wvupressonline.com/New-American... and if she gets rich we'll be able to buy a much nicer isolated retirement commune for grumpy professor ladies.
The New American Small Town
The New American Small Town Jennifer Mapes
wvupressonline.com
Jen Mapes@mapesgeog.bsky.social · 12mo agoGave a community book talk tonight and I am reminded that people don't realize the university pays us to write books. Like, we don't write them to get rich or even make money. I wrote a book 1. to share info more broadly 2. as part of my job. One of many reasons higher ed matters.
Gave a community book talk tonight and I am reminded that people don't realize the university pays us to write books. Like, we don't write them to get rich or even make money. I wrote a book 1. to share info more broadly 2. as part of my job. One of many reasons higher ed matters.
Hey everybody! I'm on sabbatical next semester and I've...been utterly negligent in planning it. What I'm saying is, if you were thinking about asking me for a department seminar etc between January and May 2026, I will put on a show for you. I'll talk about sampling theory, but cool!
🎉New preprint! "TADA! Simple guidelines to improve code sharing" tinyurl.com/8rmnwjrk We present simple guidelines to help researchers of all coding levels improve the transparency and reproducibility of their analytical code, TADA! Transferable, Accessible, Documented, Annotated.
TADA! Simple guidelines to improve code sharing
ecoevorxiv.org
Lots of (appropriate) outrage about the Brown student survey meddling but I’ve heard less nationally about what’s going on in Ohio (state inserting a required “bias” question into our surveys & requiring we be reviewed on it).
A podcast interview with me on science & religion research just dropped: scienceandbeliefinsociety.org/s4-episode-3...
S4 Episode 3: What do non-religious scientists think about their religious colleagues? - International Research Network for the Study of Science and Belief in Society
In the third episode of our new series, Dr Rebecca Catto, Associate Professor of Sociology at Kent State University (USA) who was for a decade a Principal Investigator on the Science and Religion, Exp...
scienceandbeliefinsociety.org
Okay so maybe a bit tho. Whatever, I'm still going to wear the chucks and sit backwards on the chair when I jam with my junior colleagues about radicalizing our approach to frequentist statistics.
Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · last yr.Literally making up a guy to get mad at
The radicalization of the American right is THE story of US politics over the last four decades and political reporters are still not allowed to talk about it
Gregg Gonsalves@gregggonsalves.bsky.social · last yr.I am wondering why Lisa Leher from the @nytimes.com did not discuss the data that suggests political violence in the US in the current era mostly comes from the right. Seems like a strange fact to ignore. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/06/14/u...
I don't know if there's ever been a culture more in love with charlatans than ours. "Success" defined entirely by how good you are at tricking people into giving you money. An entire country of aspiring slop merchants
I've reviewed many NSF proposals, and I've been on a few NSF proposal review panels. Those experiences helped me see that while some good proposals aren't funded, bad proposals definitely aren't. It's an insult to all scientists that DOGE is now doing additional reviews of funded proposals.
So: In 2017, Congress made this happen: NIH: Proposed 22% cut --> 9% increase NSF: Proposed 11% cut --> 4% increase NOAA: Proposed 16% cut --> 4% increase Obviously, 2025 is not 2017. A lot is diff now. But still: 💰 Congress, not WH, sets budgets. 📞 Public support & calls to Congress matter.
I knew the U.S. higher education system was a massive draw for foreigners, but I did not know the U.S. sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it did natural gas and coal combined. Great piece by @crampell.bsky.social
Catherine Rampell@crampell.bsky.social · last yr.Last year, the United States sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it sold in natural gas and coal combined. wapo.st/4luJyph
So excited for this paper by the Insect Loss RCN led by Chris Halsh! #insectloss @cbahlai.bsky.social academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...
Meta-synthesis reveals interconnections among apparent drivers of insect biodiversity loss
Abstract. Scientific and public interest in the global status of insects has surged recently; however, understanding the relative importance of different s
academic.oup.com
Live your life so that when you visit the Pope and he dies the next day everyone’s first thought isn’t “bet he killed him”