William Brazelton
@wbrazelton.bsky.social
Associate Research Professor, School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah Research Scientist, Blue Marble Space Institute of Science
Version 1.0 of my Microbe expansion for Terraforming Mars is finished. All cards are scientifically correct and thematic. Updates/changes described below. You can download them on my lab website (www.environmental-microbiology.com/media.html) or BGG (boardgamegeek.com/filepage/326...). Good gaming!
Great piece. These magic bullet solutions are usually flawed. Interrogate, analyze, read source material, train your brain to need and expect complex solutions not simple ones.
David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈@whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 3w agoWhen I was writing this piece about the Ocean Cleanup, I had a surreal experience: They assured me that they only kill invasive species, and sent me a published paper to demonstrate that. But the paper said the opposite! I wonder how many journalists just took their word for it and didn't check?
Geologist Reunited With Beloved Rock He Studied 20 Years Ago https://theonion.com/geologist-reunited-with-beloved-rock-he-studied-20-years-ago/
This confirms what the CDC leader said before she was fired. Kennedy wanted the science to be cooked until it aligned with his politics.
UK 🇬🇧 🤝 🇺🇦 □@ukbastard.bsky.social · last mo.Sanders releases trove of internal HHS emails showing RFK Jr. pressured CDC over vaccine messaging Emails indicate that Kennedy directed the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel to restrict access to vaccines thehill.com/policy/healt...
In a time of tremendous scientific, economic, and geopolitical interest in the seafloor, the US has decided that it doesn't need a scientific drill ship anymore.
U.S. Scientific Ocean Drilling@us-sciod.bsky.social · 2mo agoAs you may know, the JOIDES Resolution is on its final transit to a shipbreaking yard in Turkey. Though expected, this news is difficult to hear. As we feel this loss, we want to hear from you: What is your favorite story from the JR? 📷 Phil Christie / Sea1 (left) 📷 Adam Bogus / IODP (right)
Over the course of my 20 year career, Every other nation with major ocean research programs has dramatically expanded their research fleets. The US has net lost 17 ships, mothballed 2 DSRVs plus the Sealinks, and critically underfunded NOAA.
U.S. Scientific Ocean Drilling@us-sciod.bsky.social · 2mo agoAs you may know, the JOIDES Resolution is on its final transit to a shipbreaking yard in Turkey. Though expected, this news is difficult to hear. As we feel this loss, we want to hear from you: What is your favorite story from the JR? 📷 Phil Christie / Sea1 (left) 📷 Adam Bogus / IODP (right)
Countries in this World Cup that have won a match despite having fewer bird species than their opponents
“Killer” is too kind. Musk is a mass murderer. He’s disrupting democracies around the world. Not to mention the “mechahitler” white-supremacist misogyny machine of Grok & X. I witnessed firsthand the cruel, ignorant, wasteful destruction at NASA at the hands of DOGE. www.theverge.com/tech/949259/...
The world’s first trillionaire is a killer
Elon Musk’s empire of wealth is built on suffering.
theverge.com
It's an important time to speak out against the proposed changes to OMB rules - see ASLO statement. And, we are ready to lend our expertise to review what needs fixing and rebuild.
ASLO Comments on US Office of Management and Budget’s Proposed Rule on Federal Financial Assistance - ASLO
The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) stands firm with the scientific community in expressing serious concerns about the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB)’s prop...
aslo.org
Thread: how many other Frontiers journals (and others?) are doing this?
Michael Okun@michael-okun.bsky.social · 2mo agoI’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇
Trump Administration to Remove Hundreds of Deep-Ocean Observation Instruments, Dismantling $368 Million Program eos.org/research-and...
Trump Administration to Remove Hundreds of Deep-Ocean Observation Instruments, Dismantling $368 Million Program - Eos
The Trump administration’s National Science Foundation (NSF) has begun dismantling the infrastructure of a $368 million deep-ocean observing program critical to monitoring marine ecosystems, global cu...
eos.org
New World Screwworm What You Need to Know The pest has been identified in the U.S. for the first time in decades. There’s a lot of misinformation swirling around. Here are the facts. This is a long thread but worth it. 1/9 🧵
Let's Streisand-effect these people. Here's the editorial that somehow merited calling the cops. Read and share.
Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now!
The opinions expressed in this editorial are the personal views of the authors (S.E. Kahn, C.A.M. Anderson, J.B. Buse, and E. Selvin) and do not represent
diabetesjournals.org
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2mo agoRemember the current NIH director going on about protecting researchers from government censorship? Today his people called the police in to forcibly remove my colleagues from their own society meeting for sharing an editorial published in their flagship journal that was critical of him. Gift link
Remember the current NIH director going on about protecting researchers from government censorship? Today his people called the police in to forcibly remove my colleagues from their own society meeting for sharing an editorial published in their flagship journal that was critical of him. Gift link
Police Remove Diabetes Experts From Conference for Distributing Critique of Trump Administration
nytimes.com
This is an example of a scientific association censoring its members, real scientists, for defending attacks on science. The police were called to remove the scientists for handing out hard copies of this editorial. diabetesjournals.org/care/article...
Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now!
The opinions expressed in this editorial are the personal views of the authors (S.E. Kahn, C.A.M. Anderson, J.B. Buse, and E. Selvin) and do not represent
diabetesjournals.org
Jeremy Faust, MD@jeremyfaust.bsky.social · 2mo agoIncredibly disturbing story broken by @medpagetoday.com team. www.medpagetoday.com/special-repo...
This is extremely chilling - virologists being targeted for what appears to be minor (if any) "offenses". We all know _why_ this is happening, so I'm not going to belabor that point - but I want to provide some context on the technical details. 🧵 www.science.org/content/arti...
NIH scientists plead not guilty to smuggling monkeypox viruses into U.S.
Defendants face prison time for criminal charges but samples may all have been inactivated and used for routine diagnostics
science.org
NASA-DARES Draft Strategy Open for Public Comment astrobiology.com/2026/06/nasa... #astrobiology #NASA
NASA-DARES Draft Strategy Open for Public Comment - Astrobiology
The opening of the public comment period for the draft Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy (NASA-DARES)
astrobiology.com
roberts and alito have concocted a jurisprudence in which constitutional amendments explicitly ratified to secure the right of black americans to vote now restrain congress from securing the right of black americans to vote.
another day, another story about the administration's war on knowledge itself, all in service of allow its corporate patrons free rein to rob us blind and poison our world www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...
Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System
nytimes.com
Our kids and grandkids will look up stories like these and wonder "why???" www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...
Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System
nytimes.com
Trump Executive Order Kickstarts Deep Sea Mining Rush https://theonion.com/trump-executive-order-kickstarts-deep-sea-mining-rush/
The Cycle 1 selections for NASA's new Solar System Science program have been released: lnkd.in/ekTCh5Vm Of 266 proposals, 43 were deemed "selectable"—that's a 16% selection rate. (Technically, these proposals haven't actually been selected yet; there's another somewhat political step for that.)
“Eddy received a letter from the [NIH], informing him that his work "had been determined to be of absolutely no value to the US taxpayer, and therefore it was being specifically terminated," he recalls. Eddy says he has given up on any dream that his funding would be restored”
Maggie WW@maggieww.bsky.social · 3mo agoI keep thinking I’m done being shocked. It is abundantly clear there is a vendetta against anything that gives joy or laughter and helps people. I cannot believe the brilliant researchers who have been targeted and criminalized. Easy to demolish, hard to rebuild. www.npr.org/2026/05/21/n...
Freedom is when the government mandates college students to take classes about conservative viewpoints
Silvia Secchi@profsecchi.bsky.social · 3mo agoSo to recap, students weren’t enrolling in the “center for intellectual freedom” classes (they were free to do so) so now the legislature wants to force students to take them. Irony is dead, bludgeoned d to death by the worst ignoramuses. Too bad students won’t learn about it in those “classes”.
The U of Utah is losing great faculty like the author of this piece, and I can’t blame folks for leaving
Voices: I loved teaching in Utah — until this policy made it impossible to stay
“Notwithstanding the continued efforts on the part of students and faculty to oppose these changes, under the current leadership, things are only going to get worse,” writes Maximilian Werner in an op...
sltrib.com
Using JWST, scientists have spotted one of the earliest galaxies ever observed: a faint, chemically primitive galaxy called LAP1-B, seen as it existed just 800 million years after the Big Bang. phys.org/news/2026-05...
Webb discovers one of the universe's first galaxies
Scientists have discovered a galaxy as it was 13 billion years ago, 800 million years after the Big Bang. It contains possible evidence of the universe's first stars and is one of the most chemically…
phys.org
Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have deployed an autonomous underwater robot called CUREE to seek out and map biodiversity hotspots on coral reefs with remarkable precision.
This is basically harassment of scholars willing to question the Trump administration’s targeting of Chinese colleagues. Innes already had the FBI investigate his lab and was given the all clear. Now USDA is shutting down the Lab, which focuses on making fungus-resistant plants.
Science Magazine@science.org · 3mo agoBreaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr
![Comic. [Two people with tiny star floating above display on table.] PERSON 1 with ponytail: Now, your grandmother said this was a relic low-mass population III star, from the first generation of stars. Unfortunately, the high iron content shows that it formed much later, after several rounds of supernovas. I’m afraid it’s a population I star. PERSON 2: Aw, darn. Well, it still has sentimental value. [banner for Antiques Roadshow]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreid2vzxc6ftisazc66p275gofrnkpbotbksmz7prz26wkuej7653we)
