Welcome to the CAMBRIAN FECAL REVOLUTION. We didn't name it the Cambrian fecal explosion for obvious reasons. I'm happy to share this paper on fecal matter and its role in Cambrian ecosystems. So if you want to read a really shitty paper (50 days free access): authors.elsevier.com/a/1nYg8cZ3X7...

the banner changes as more goobies are revealed! with a little sneak peak of tomorrow's invert's BUTT #SciArt #InvertebrateOfTheYear www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Revealed: the top 10 invertebrates of the year

At last! It’s time for our invertebrate of the year competition as voted for by you. Today, the immortal jellyfish – come back on Wednesday to find out who else made the top 10

theguardian.com

Petra Korlević@petrathepostdoc.bsky.social · 3d ago

bug is out of the rug, I got commissioned by @theguardian.com to #SciArt illustrate this year's goobies for #InvertebrateOfTheYear there are some really good ones stay tuned! www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I don’t know what to make of supposed “news” outlets like Reuters that report on victims of U.S. foreign policy by not mentioning the cause. To leave the impression that Cuba is failing for no reason, instead of being blockaded, is basically US propaganda. Why trust Reuters?

Reuters@reuters.com · 2d ago

Cuba's national electrical grid collapsed again as authorities struggled to restore power following a nationwide blackout on August 2, state-run media reported, marking a fresh setback in the country's deepening energy crisis.

This is going to turn universities into some of the most tired and uninspiring spaces you've ever experienced.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 3d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

Awful. Also people from El Salvador are Salvadoran, not El Salvadoran.

The City Reporter@thecityreporter.nyc · 2d ago

The detainee had an extensive medical history, including epilepsy, according to a lawsuit. He had complained about his face and hand going numb just before his death, his mother said. www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/08/03/s...

Yeah, I confess I have to get regular dopamine hits When I gently sweep aside a clump of grass and peer into the depths below and a tiny salticid peers back 😍

I've been asked a few times this summer why the wasps all seem to be on the small side (I assumed lack of prey, plus heat stress meaning producing workers ASAP to minimum size thresholds). Great article from @waspwoman.bsky.social going into detail on this: theconversation.com/where-have-a...

Where have all the wasps gone this summer?

And why you should let them share your picnic ham and jam.

theconversation.com

chatgpt is giving regular people the brain rot that was previously only available to billionaire CEOs. we've condensed decades of being surrounded exclusively by people who can't say "no, that's stupid" into a pill form

15% of people in the US, most rural, rely on wells for drinking water and there's a water quality crisis that's going largely unregulated, and unreported. (No one's out here checking wells for quality and safety and overseeing water quality as with municipal water supplies.)

Is Sludge Poisoning Your Well?

The start of a nightmare William Casey Crump, long-time resident, landowner and chairperson of the Stella town board, thinks back on those first days when state testing revealed the contamination. “Wh...

barnraisingmedia.com

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.

Yeah so NYT asked me ~2 yrs ago to write an op-ed about how the Colorado is running dry, & what we should do to keep this exact thing from happening. I said "There's only one real answer. Bill farmers by how much water they use. Duh." NYT editorial staff freaked tf out & cancelled the piece.

Elias Thorne@truebe.horse · 6d ago

saw an article today about an az politician saying how great it was that we're now in emergency drought conditions because the farmers get automatic bailouts and I feel like way more Professional Rural Understanders just breeze by sentences like that. www.paysonroundup.com/news/arizona...

Ameaka Fatima Nkempu, a Johns Hopkins University researcher in public health, was detained by ICE while boarding a domestic flight. She says she is Cameroonian in a Medium article that she authored. As of Thursday morning, the ICE Online Detainee Locator did not list where she was being held.

Baltimore Banner@thebaltimorebanner.com · 6d ago

ICE detains Hopkins public health researcher as agency expands airport arrests

Welcome to our new #PlantsForMonarchs tool! Browse native plants by location, filter by plant type, growing conditions, & more, and find local or online suppliers that have those plants for sale! 🦋🌼👀 ➡️ plantsformonarchs.org

not really surprised to learn that terminal stupidity and racism is the reason i can’t walk into a CVS and just buy a toothbrush without flagging down the one person who might be in the store dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to...

We used to be able to buy things in this country

Locking up toothpaste was a warning sign that our executive class was crazy

dannykatch.substack.com

NEW: Myanmar's civil war has made essential items, including menstrual products, increasingly out of reach for women in conflict-affected areas. "I use the same cloth shared by around six girls here and hide that in a small box. Privacy is nowhere now," says 23-year-old displaced student Shwe Sin.

‘Who Thinks of Pads in the Middle of Airstrikes?’: Myanmar Women Fight for Menstrual Dignity

“Targeting menstrual products might seem small compared to bombings and executions, but it is a serious threat to women survivors of war who need menstrual supplies to stay healthy. This has become a…

thexylom.com

The scientist who identified this gene in the first place calls this profoundly misguided. “Using SRY to establish biological sex is wrong because all it tells you is whether or not the gene is present. It does not tell you…whether testosterone is produced &if so, whether it can be used by the body”

Tennis is the first major women's sports league to require genetic testing

This policy impacts all women; and most other women’s leagues aren’t taking the plunge.

19thnews.org

Astonishing. RFK Jr. adds 8 members to a 6 member FDA advisory panel. 6 of them were sellers of peptides, and the 7th a compounding pharmacist. In an 8-6 vote with all 8 votes coming from these new panel members, the panel approved 4 peptides against the objections of FDA scientists.

FDA Panel Supports Lifting Restrictions on Four Peptides (Gift Article)

In an all-day hearing, the agency’s scientists argued against allowing broad access to unproven drugs that the agency had banned three years ago.

nytimes.com

We just filed a request in federal court to challenge the Trump administration’s axing of a rule that protects plants and animals listed as threatened under the ESA. The “blanket rule” provided automatic protections for threatened wildlife unless officials developed a specific rule for the species.

I could never play Fallout 4, because the protagonist is voiced, and says "what the hell" upon seeing the giant roaches. This is inaccurate, I would be overjoyed and pick one up immediately

I have been WAITING for a story talking about how the current war on immigrants affects immigrant caregivers, rather than the people who work for. Really appreciate this breakdown on the personal, social, financial, political precarity of care work because it is so undervalued and disrespected.

The Crisis of Care Work - The American Prospect

The end of Temporary Protected Status and Trump’s budget cuts make a bad situation worse.

prospect.org

#scicommjobs

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation@xercessociety.bsky.social · 2w ago

Join Xerces and make art that supports conservation! 🐝✍🏽 Job Title: Science Illustration Intern 🌎Location: Remote 💲Compensation: $24/hr, 20hrs/week 📅Duration: Sep-Dec 2026 ❗Apply by: July 31, 2026 Learn more and apply at xerces.org/jobs

Just realised it's graduation season so I should probably share these cool pins I make again. They make great gifts and help to fund my transition canopyrobin.etsy.com/listing/1841...

This month I got 3.3% closer to my transition fundraising goal. If I manage the same in July, I could be 20% of the way there!!

Robin Hayward 🌳 🏳️‍⚧️@canopyrobin.com · 5mo ago

Want to help me pay for my transition? Thank you!! 🩷🏳️‍⚧️ I sell pride pins at canopyrobin.etsy.com and have a tip jar at pay.sumup.com/b2c/QP6VYR07 Facebook & Tiktok pay me for views, comments etc so following me there also helps 😊 • www.facebook.com/share/1DEkUw... • www.tiktok.com/@canopyrobin...

The funny thing is, this gambit never works. Republican politicians and orgs are trans eliminationsit - there is no amount of capitulation that works. She will get the same ads run against her, and all she will have done by taking this position is to alienate a meaningful percentage of her base.

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com · 3w ago

1. The Democratic Party of Ohio has erupted in an intra-party firestorm as Democratic candidate for governor, Amy Acton, endorsed the sports ban and vowed to enforce it in the wake up the Title IX SCOTUS decision. It threatens to sink a close race for governor. Subscribe to support our journalism.

🎯🦋 Save the date for the 10th annual International Monarch Monitoring Blitz! Participation is easy. From July 31st to August 9th: 🌳 Go outside 🦋 Search for milkweed 🐛 Look for eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises and butterflies 🔎 Share your observations! Learn more today 👉 www.cec.org/news/monarch...

📡 Signal Boost! Live on Kickstarter right now, the new TTRPG based on the Clarke Award winning novel CHILDREN OF TIME by Adrian Tchaikovsky / @aptshadow.bsky.social Warning: may contain innovative gameplay, deep time world-building and (very definitely) spiders! 🕷️

Children of Time: The Roleplaying Game

Create millennia-spanning sci-fi epics in this groundbreaking roleplaying game based on the award winning Children of Time novels.

kickstarter.com

The fact that J.K. Rowling successfully bullied Amnesty International into taking down a report that accurately called out her attack on trans people, especially trans women, is so repulsive and such a display of the power of her money, and her choice to put her vast fortune behind persecution.

Amnesty removes report that called JK Rowling's centre 'anti-rights'

Amnesty International UK has removed a report which labelled JK Rowling's sexual abuse crisis centre Beira's Place as "anti-rights".

thepinknews.com

No. We don't want the facists to be better trained. We want them gone. Trained fascists are still a cancer on society.

Harrisburg & Central PA Local News@hbgpalocalnews.bsky.social · 3w ago

ICE has suspended most vehicle stops nationwide following a series of fatal shootings during enforcement operations. The pause, which excludes cases involving serious criminal targets, remains in effect until agents receive further training.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastian Guerrero weren't murdered because of car pursuits. They were murdered because the men driving those cars felt comfortable recklessly killing. None of this ends until we shut down ICE completely.

NBC News@nbcnews.com · 3w ago

BREAKING: ICE orders officers to stop pursuing people in vehicles after fatal shootings in Maine and Texas, according to a current senior DHS official and two former senior DHS officials.

This is huge! The Trump administration is abandoning its plan to withhold Medicaid funding from hospitals that provide gender affirming care to trans youth under 19. www.npr.org/2026/07/13/n...

Trump's HHS abandons threat to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding over trans care

NPR has learned that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally.

npr.org