My sad middle-aged version of Rex Manning day

My Morrowind character when I’m done leveling enchanting

𝒃𝒆𝒄𝒂⁠. 𓆩♡𓆪@dailyrunway.bsky.social · 6d ago

Shailene Woodley in Balenciaga fw26 Couture at the #Emmys

Everyone in my life gives me shit for running in the rain (and consequently taking the occasional spill on wet leaves), but how else are you going to see a splendid post rain boxie?

What an incredible labor of love for science overall

Wayne Maddison@waynemaddison.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Tree of Life web project is back! A phylogenetic view of biodiversity way ahead of its time (ca. 1995!), conceived and led by David Maddison, collaborative & human-curated, widely used in teaching. Defunct technology had doomed it until Travis, Danny, and Andrew revived it. 🥳🎉 🧪 #evolbiol

The Tree of Life web project is back! A phylogenetic view of biodiversity way ahead of its time (ca. 1995!), conceived and led by David Maddison, collaborative & human-curated, widely used in teaching. Defunct technology had doomed it until Travis, Danny, and Andrew revived it. 🥳🎉 🧪 #evolbiol

David Maddison@bembidion.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Tree of Life Web Project is back online! tolweb.org Thanks to Travis Wheeler (@wheelerlab.org), Danny Mandel, and Andrew Lenards, the original programmers for ToLWeb, for retooling the code to work on a modern OS! It is hard for me to believe it lives again.

No.

Keen on learning how to use Bayesian model selection to test different hypotheses of diversification? 🦴🧬🕰️ Check our latest work in Molecular Biology and Evolution! academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... With @zihengyang.bsky.social, @phil-donoghue.bsky.social, and @mariodosreis.bsky.social 💫 (1/2)

On the origin of animals and placental mammals: a critique of literalist readings of the fossil record

Abstract. The fossil record is incomplete, as evidenced by the pervasive presence of ghost lineages throughout the Tree of Life. For example, across placen

academic.oup.com

Just finished the Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta. Has a bit of a Piranesi feeling, but goes in a very different direction. It is a shortlister for the 2026 Award, and you have plenty of time to read it before the winners are announced! www.tashanmehta.com/madsistersof...

Mad Sisters of Esi

Forthcoming from HarperCollins India, Winter 2023: Myung and Laleh are keepers of the whale of babel. They roam within its cosmic chambers, speak fables of themselves, and pray to an enigmatic figur...

tashanmehta.com

Skipping lunch to read because nothing has changed since middle school. Everyone is twelve theory undefeated (shockingly, not derogatory … this time)

Bought a lighted helmet on a whim, and it is a complete revelation. I can’t believe I’ve cycle commuted so long without one.

Watching the 1995 Pride and Predjudice on Hulu and boy was it not made for smash cuts to American commercials

🚨 PS SHORT COURSE ANNOUNCEMENT GSA 2026 October 10th (location TBD) A primer for researchers of all stages interested in trait-based paleoecology and deep time vegetation-climate interactions. Description in comment below!

Reading something I wrote yesterday and I’m beginning to think I’m on a slide into curmudgeondom

Buffy Summers: Ready To Die

Alt: Buffy Summers jumping into a grave

static.klipy.com

Kicking off my morning unsocketing my arm as Splash decides to stop when I’m at full speed

Okay I'm gonna start a thread for my thoughts about AI. Will add to it occasionally as thoughts come to me. (Via my organic brain!) First, "AI" is a marketing term. Silicon Valley uses it because it sounds cooler than "machine learning" or "enhanced algorithms."

Kicking off my research and development day by handling the wrong manuscript

Homer Simpson: I Am So Smart

ALT: Homer Simpson: I Am So Smart

static.klipy.com

There is nothing worse than making a good pace despite the heat and then seeing the high school girls cross country team come up behind you

Five years back in Berlin #4a: Finding the small and mighty Most species are <5 mm. But small ≠ unimportant: ants outweigh all wild birds + mammals and spiders eat as much prey as humans meat/fish: ~400–800 Mt per /lyear. Meet EntoSieve for size sorting onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Hope to see you all on August 27th at 15:00UTC (10:00AM Central) for my @palaeoverse.bsky.social lecture! Details on how to register here: palaeoverse.org/events/ I'll be talking about inferring and dealing with budding phylogenetic trees, including a full tutorial!! Hope to see you all there!

Our paper (also, my first first-author paper) is now available in MEE early view! In this study, we introduced a state-dependent Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model we implemented in RevBayes to test adaptive hypotheses in macroevolution. (1/3) besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

An efficient Bayesian phylogenetic approach for joint inference of continuous and discrete trait evolution under a state‐dependent Ornstein–Uhlenbeck model

Macroevolutionary adaptation of a continuous trait to different discrete states across species can be modelled using a phylogenetic state-dependent Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (OU) process. Existing infere...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Splash looking for her boyfriend, a very handsome English Setter, up the road from us. She drags me to his place every walk

Wheeler et al. (2026-07, Molecular Biology and Evolution) Improved gene tree inference from removing alignment errors both from focal genes and when training substitution models doi.org/10.1093/molb...

Improved gene tree inference from removing alignment errors both from focal genes and when training substitution models

Abstract. Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) is a key step in phylogenetic analysis and is prone to error. Unfortunately, algorithms that remove likely alig

doi.org

I keep forgetting that my husband bought the super spicy one and applying as normal

April Wright@wrightam.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I added too much chili crisp to my mac and cheese and I am going To Die.

Standing among code fragments like Chewbacca standing amongst the broken pieces of the Millennium Falcon

Super excited that our paper led by @sandinmm.eurosky.social in PNAS is out! We show that crown-group eukaryotes were already taxonomically and ecologically diverse throughout the Mesoproterozoic, revealing complex communities well before the Neoproterozoic radiation. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Environmental phylogenetics supports a steady diversification of crown eukaryotes starting from the mid-Proterozoic | PNAS

Molecular clock and preservation of early microfossil assemblages suggest that eukaryotes were present and already diverse more than ~1600 million ...

pnas.org

I added too much chili crisp to my mac and cheese and I am going To Die.

"Three roles for background natural history in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology: (1) as spark (motivating research questions and hypothesis), (2) as scaffold (supporting the conduct of studies), and (3) as substrate (serving as raw material for new research)." www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Spark, Scaffold, Substrate: The Multiple Hidden Roles of Natural History in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | The American Naturalist: Vol 0, No 0

AbstractOver the last 30 years, as ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) has become more theoretical, experimental, and data driven, there has been a growing worry that the space for natural history ...

journals.uchicago.edu

Coming to #JMIH26 this week? If you don’t have lunch plans Saturday, come to the NSF info session at noon in Maurepas! We’ll have a presentation, and plenty of time to answer all your questions!

Been in New Orleans less than 24 hours and already got assaulted by a Salt Life roid rager in front of the hotel. Good to be home.

However weird you think Minnesota is, it’s so much weirder I gotta get home for the Solstice next year

Loon courtship dance: Peak Minnesota?

YouTube video by WTIP North Shore Community Radio and Media

youtube.com