My 24-year-old cousin with a motif for our times.

Ray Harryhausen did not make creature armatures and spend four moving each joint one at a time so you could tell gen AI to make a fake kitten video for your influencer content

Animation Obsessive@ani-obsessive.bsky.social · 2d ago

Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts are amazing even now. He animated the sequence by himself for more than four months -- without computers or even an easy way to check his work. We're looking into how he did it: animationobsessive.substack.com/p/how-ray-ha...

A globally invasive fish (actually a group of congeners) distributed through the pet trade and long established in North America continues to spread - and is becoming superabundant in various waterbodies on the continent. Its impacts have likely been underestimated. academic.oup.com/fisheries/ar...

The rise of goldfishes in North America

ABSTRACT. Goldfish Carassius auratus is a longstanding global invader that has entered a new phase in its invasion history, spreading into new geographical

academic.oup.com

We had to show you some more presentations from last night's poster session, but we're still sad we can't highlight them all! Be sure to stop by the #Botany2026 Exhibit Hall to check them out. Follow along all week for updates from the conference 🌿 #plantpeopleFTW

Too real, Futurama, TOO REAL

Tom Collett’s new book “Insects and How They Navigate Their World” is out and seemingly the pdf is free 👀 (for me anyway) link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Insects and How They Navigate Their World

Discover how insects navigate using vision, memory and cues from nature. A clear, engaging look at ants, bees, and the remarkable abilities of tiny brains.

link.springer.com

Starting in Spring or Summer 2027 K99/R00 (under its new activity code KT1/R00) will only be available to US citizens, permanent residents, and non-citizen nationals. I am hearing this from many program officers, but NIH has yet to make an official statement to my knowledge.

Not sure if everyone appreciates the difference. Rooftop solar hardwires into your main panel via a dedicated breaker, so it requires a permit, an installer, an electrician, and a utility agreement. Balcony solar just plugs into a wall outlet, sharing an existing circuit with no permits or rewiring.

A new deal on balcony solar just dropped in the US

Plug-in panels can lower your bills. To boost the American market for the tech, nonprofit Bright Saver is selling kits with no markup, starting at around…

canarymedia.com

New from Andrew Joseph Pegoda: In an attempt to overcomply with Texas law, the University of Houston will eliminate over 100 women's studies, gender and sexuality courses from the core curriculum. It won't be enough to appease extremist Republicans.

University of Houston Nixed Its Gender and Sexuality Classes. That Won’t Stop Texas’ Crusade Against Higher Ed

College administrators wrongly hope that anticipatory obedience will satisfy a GOP-run Texas Legislature that is increasingly hostile toward education.

texasobserver.org

The most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.

Higher education has been hemming & hawing about how to earn the public's trust and I must say, capitulating to the Trump administration on behalf of all institutions without a broader discussion, facilitated by Koch-brothers-supported AEI, is a hell of a way to DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF BUILD TRUST.

Today is the only day you can experience Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” on the day it is set. Audio: archive.org/details/brad... PDF: thephilosopher.net/bredberi/wp-...

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is a statistical workhorse in many disciplines. This paper proposes an alternative: just graph everything. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The conspiracy theories with some of these younger folks are so out of hand. I also learned recently that a ton of people don't think Anne Frank is real and also that Helen Keller could not have actually been blind and deaf. A really huge issue is that we entertain ideas this ludicrous as discourse.

Razzball@razzball.bsky.social · 2d ago

The whole Mariners' pen believes Babe Ruth didn't exist. Kinda want all MLB players to believe this and make the owners agree to it in next CBA

I care about my experience on this site, not the user base. That means I should get to control what I see in my feed. No algorithms. Nuclear block.

The Verge@theverge.com · 2d ago

Bluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."

Function is determined by *receptors*, not signalling molecules. Dopamine is not "pleasure" or "happiness" or "satisfaction." The neurons that dopamine *activate* are what's important. That they're activated by dopamine is happenstance; another molecule could do the same job.

Elizabeth Lopatto@lopatto.bsky.social · 2d ago

I see a lot of you talking about "dopamine" and I wish you'd go back to talking about your astrological signs because at least then you wouldn't be confusing yourself about a real thing

From a Fox Poll out 7/31: Talarico-Paxton is the marquee race down here but check out the dead heat btw Abbott and Hinojosa for governor. This contest isn't even on the radar for the national Dems, AFAIK. She's has $3m cash on hand--Abbott has *$67m*. Some more highlights from the poll... /1

this is going to turn me into the joker

“(Student’s) higher levels of fear of failure and lower levels of self-esteem did NOT lead to an increase in ChatGPT dependence.” (The title of the article does not seem to line up with the main result?) doi.org/10.1007/s106...

When university students’ insecurities drive them to rely excessively on Artificial Intelligence: Relationship between fear of failure, self-esteem, social support and ChatGPT dependence - Education and Information Technologies

In learning processes, students with a high fear of failure and low self-esteem may be more inclined to use technologies like artificial intelligence (ChatGPT…) to avoid making mistakes, potentially even developing a dependency on such tools. However, it is believed that having peers and teachers who help these students build confidence and receive support to overcome failure could act as a buffer against attachment to technological tools like ChatGPT. To test this hypothesis, 467 university students participated by completing a series of scales to measure their fear of failure, self-esteem, peer support, teacher support, and dependency on ChatGPT. Following a moderated mediation analysis, the results revealed that the initial hypothesis was not supported. Indeed, higher levels of fear of failure and lower levels of self-esteem did not lead to an increase in ChatGPT dependence. Likewise, social support from peers and teachers did not influence the previously mentioned relationship.

doi.org

Let’s unpack this post by NIH and CDC Director and self-made victim Jay Bhattacharya. 1. This was not misreporting. This is what RFK Jr. said in his interview. 2. Free speech was not “suspended”. If it had been no one would know who Bhattacharya is.

Sixteen years ago today, Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus founded Retraction Watch. Happy birthday to us!

Celebrating Retraction Watch’s 16th birthday, how sweet it is

Suddenly, we’re 16. And what a year it has been.  Our birthday (and annual birthday post) comes on the heels of one of the biggest stories we’ve told this year: The unreported death of a 6-yea…

retractionwatch.com

It continues to fuck me up that we stay thinking about 9/11 but want to memory hole Covid so bad we're destroying the entire concept of public health in the US.

Still amazing that the official government policy is universities can't do DEI except for hiring professors whose politics better align with the regime in power.

Max Kennerly@maxkennerly.bsky.social · 2d ago

Time to add another formerly respected institution to the garbage pile, this time @aau.edu, which just worked with the Trump admin to endorse resegregation in high education, embedding MAGA fraudsters as faculty, and banning student expression. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Also a lot of people had access to things they were *never* able to access before, including conferences, social events, and classes, because they were online

Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Bisexual of the Blade (Alt-text or DIE)@shengokai.blacksky.app · 3d ago

(I'm looking at you, my colleagues who cried bloody murder over the need to do online conferences and the loss of the "in person conference experience." Fuck you, too.)

Happy Monday, I’m going to say something that sucks: it’s worth understanding that the clips of RFK on CNN are circulating in MAHA / MAGA world as an absolute fucking victory lap. Looks bad to us, but to them, it’s aura farming content gold. We have no idea how to counter that so far tbh

Scoop: The Trump administration is sending a letter to college presidents asking them to pledge a series of policy changes by the end of the year. Unlike last year's Compact, this effort was devised with input from higher ed leaders. Free link to my exclusive: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

McMahon Asks US Colleges to Pledge Campus Reforms by End of 2026

Education Secretary Linda McMahon is sending a letter Monday to the leaders of US universities asking them to commit to a slate of campus reforms by the end of 2026 in the Trump administration’s lates...

bloomberg.com

I don't like this.

Time to add another formerly respected institution to the garbage pile, this time @aau.edu, which just worked with the Trump admin to endorse resegregation in high education, embedding MAGA fraudsters as faculty, and banning student expression. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

AI slop graphics in journals is a bigger problem than I thought. 😵‍💫 BIG update to the slop graphics collection today, with ten 🔟 new entries - and more to come. I've got so many new entries to add, I'll probably be updating the collection about once a week for a few weeks. bit.ly/academic-slop