Air quality. I grew up in the Los Angeles basin in the 70s and 80s and remember having to stay inside because the smog was so bad - Stage 2 smog alerts, they were called. Apparently they haven't had one of those since 1988. Haven't had a stage one smog alert since 2003.

Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 14h ago

Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.

As an educator, no, really, I’m pretty anti-AI in most cases. That offloading of mental load means intentionally deskilling yourself, removing yourself from being an active participant in your own life, and isn’t even trustworthy.

Brittany Ellich@brittanyellich.com · 2d ago

This. I don't think anyone is really anti-AI. They're anti-the-companies-pushing-AI. LLMs have some really incredible use cases. They can be assistive technologies, help with mental load, and allow you to focus more on the present than an endless stream of tasks or your phone.

Court announces cases it will hear in October, which include significant disputes on climate change and immigration detention

Court announces cases it will hear in October, which include significant disputes on climate change and immigration detention

scotusblog.com

Please share and donate! The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change is an award-winning resource produced by the Center for Climate Change Education at PRI in Ithaca, New York. We are raising funds to print and distribute 1000 copies of the Guide to teachers across Kenya. 🧪⚒️ gofund.me/d534917b4

Donate to Support PRI's Work Teaching Climate Change in Kenya, organized by Paleontological Research Institution

Teaching Climate Change in Kenya: Essential Resources for Tea… Paleontological Research Institution needs your support for Support PRI's Work Teaching Climate Change in Kenya

gofund.me

Giant clams love light. As a general rule, the more light they can get for their symbiotic algae, the better. Which makes the "devil clam", Tridacna mbalavuana from Tonga and Fiji so weird. It lives up to 100 ft down! https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/479982-Tridacna-mbalavuana (364)

Devil Clam (Tridacna mbalavuana) · iNaturalist

Tridacna mbalavuana, the tevoro clam, is a species of bivalve in the family Tridacnidae. It is found in Fiji and Tonga. It is currently listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Source: Wikipedia, '', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tridacna_mbalavuana, CC BY-SA 3.0 . Photo: (c) James W. Fatherree, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by James W. Fatherree)

inaturalist.org

In case you are actually interested in non-Cthulu Antarctic fossils, the largest collection is at the Paleontological Research Institution in upstate NY. And they could definitely still use an infusion from a wealthy benefactor who fancies themselves an antarctic explorer.

Alison Robin@alisonrobin.com · 2d ago

The only people funding Antarctic expeditions anymore are private investors from old money who belong to weird social societies. These rich guys are just obsessed with recreating some expedition from the 30's that only found a couple fossils. I don't get it.

Word to the wise: any president or board that responds to this letter without formally consulting their faculty and staff through established governance bodies and after a public comment period is abdicating their fiduciary responsibility. #MakeSharedGovernanceMatterMore www.ed.gov/media/docume...

7) “Institutional neutrality” is not a suicide pact. Let’s have robust discussions about what it is and is not, what it does and does not entail. No version of IN justifies what Russell Vought and OMB are attempting to do. Every version requires opposing it. hdl.handle.net/1951/89039

🌍 Applicants must be active PALEO student members with an interest in careers in paleontology. The program is not limited to U. S. students. 📅 Learn more and apply through the Paleontological Society website.

💰Winners will receive: 🔹 A FREE 1-year Paleontological Society student membership 🔹 $1,000 for students presenting original research OR 🔹 $500 for students attending the meeting

Know an undergrad attending GSA 2026? Share this opportunity with them! 🤝 Students selected are expected to engage in mentoring opportunities throughout the meeting, 5 hours of volunteering at the PS booth, and interacting with our social media team.

Fossils of any other animal : I'm a glorified roadkill Crabs : ✨🦀✨ Fossilised Sexy Yesterday w/my calcium chitin carapace ✨🦀✨

New in small snail science; Looks like an interesting paper by Crestohl and Bush; will have to give it a thorough read this week Quantifying size-related biases in the preservation and description of Cretaceous and Paleogene gastropods. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

cant be normal about Cenozoic molluscan taxonomy I’m so so sorry

Good snail news 🐌 🦑 www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07...

Taronga Zoo breeds rare snail back from brink of extinction

About 1,000 Campbell's keeled glass snails are settling into their new home in the crevices of a secluded valley on Norfolk Island, after being bred back from the brink of oblivion.

abc.net.au

Regulators have linked Mark McAfee’s raw dairy farm to more than a dozen recalls and outbreaks that left hundreds of people ill. “I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital,” McAfee said. “But here’s the thing: I’m a pioneer.”

He Profits Off Raw Milk That’s Making People Sick. The Government Isn’t Stopping Him.

With Raw Farm, the largest raw-milk dairy in the country, Mark McAfee has capitalized on a once-fringe product that’s been thrust into the mainstream in recent years and backed by Health Secretary Rob...

propublica.org

"Spectacular marine fossils tell the story of the long-gone Western Interior Seaway and the planet's past aquatic life," writes Riley Black. www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-... #FossilFriday

An Ancient Sea Once Split North America Down the Middle. The Beautiful Multicolored Ammonite Shells From Its Waters Are So Perfectly Preserved That They Still Shimmer Today

Spectacular marine fossils tell the story of the long-gone Western Interior Seaway and the planet’s past aquatic life

smithsonianmag.com

For #FossilFriday, the enigmatic trace fossil Lumbricaria, interpreted as fecal strings left by ammonites, from the Late Jurassic (~150 mya) Solnhofen Limestone, Germany & seen earlier this week in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh PA. 🧪🪨💩 ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021PPal....

This study highlights what makes snakes so special, even among legless lizards: their ecological diversity. Even early snakes were all over the place, including underground and in the ocean. This also shows that limb reduction isn’t just a step towards an inevitable worm-like lifestyle.

Tiago Simões@trsimoes.bsky.social · 2w ago

Proud to share our latest paper in out in Nature today on the origin of #snakes. We present Tametara mirim, an articulated 3D preserved stem snake from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil. Tametara helped us re-tell the story of snake origins in a novel way... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨BREAKING: A group of 25 states is suing the Trump administration, accusing federal officials of leveraging billions of dollars in federal disaster grant funding in an attempt to coerce states into implementing the president’s anti-voting agenda. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

States sue Trump admin for withholding $148M in disaster aid over ‘unlawful’ election demands

While many red states have raced to enact President Donald Trump’s policy goals — even ones that have been blocked by the courts — blue states have persistently refused.

democracydocket.com

My problem is that I love him dearly & haven't the slightest interest in recovering. 👁️❤️Jimothy #sorry_NotSorry

They say that admitting you are obsessed with Jimothy, the raccoon with Shortened Spine Syndrome, is the 1st step to recovery...

Happy to share this 'capstone' project from my time as a postdoc @umich.edu, where we show that hierarchically nested bursts of body-shape evolution may underlie much of perching-bird diversification over ~50 million years. Free access link here: rdcu.be/fuxB1

Rates of passerine body plan evolution in time and space

Nature Ecology & Evolution - A reconstruction of the evolutionary history of passerine body plans over the past ~50 Myr shows rare bursts of phenotypic innovation near the origin of major...

rdcu.be

Taxonomy is far from complete but it also is not "complete enough" to warrant the disinvestment seen in ithe field and natural history generally. Museums and herbaria need funds to store, curate, and describe species and taxonomists need to be paid to do it www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The flounder effect: disparities in taxonomic and ecological study intensity across extant and fossil marine organisms hamper conservation - npj Biodiversity

npj Biodiversity - The flounder effect: disparities in taxonomic and ecological study intensity across extant and fossil marine organisms hamper conservation

nature.com

Marc A. Milne@forthespiders.bsky.social · 2w ago

It may be surprising to some that there are thousands of undescribed species just sitting in museums awaiting description. One of the main reasons this problem exists is that taxonomy is undervalued and underfunded, a trend that coincides with the devaluing of studies on natural history.

ICE shared Medicaid data, which it wasn't even supposed to have in the first place, with Palantir. Anyone else worried about this? Here's what you should know about Palantir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_VwyhErd88

The Most Dangerous Corporation in America?

The AI surveillance state is real — and it's being built by Palantir.

youtube.com

The main reason for the organized assault by polluters & hired guns on the new @nationalacademies.org report on climate change & extreme event attribution (see my review here: michaelmann.net/comments-on-...) is the fact it provides a tool for holding them accountable for the damage they've done.

Michael E. Mann@michaelemann.bsky.social · 3w ago

Trump, the GOP and the polluters & plutocrats they answer to are responsible for the death and damage caused by this fossil-fueled disaster: www.reuters.com/business/env...

imagine if this guy were running for public office or something lol

Robert Downen@robertdownen.bsky.social · 3w ago

Ken Paxton recently bought 3 Utah luxury condos worth $1.6 million. He then put them in a blind trust that shares an address with the Dallas home he appears to be sharing with a woman who is not his wife.

The Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, the Arctic island's leading environmental and natural-resource research centre, is halting new collaborations with US partners to protect its data and scientists. www.msn.com/en-ca/news/w...?