Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them)

Kansas Advancing Anti-Trans Bill Allowing Bounty Hunters To Patrol Private Business Bathrooms The bill, which is racing through the Kansas legislature, stands a significant chance of passing the Senate.

open.substack.com/pub/erininth...

The school district *did* cancel so umm going to be a lot of grumpy people on campus today

A text and email preview that both read "UAA Alert! Anchorage campus inclement weather notice for Thursday, Jan 29...". This looks very promising for chances of a snow day, right?

Nope! The full subject line of the email is "UAA Alert! Anchorage campus inclement weather notice for Thursday Jan 29, 2026. UAA's Anchorage campus will be open today, Thursday Jan 29. See email".

Absolutely roller-coaster, thanks I hate it

sorry to burst everyone's bubble but these are either entirely gen ai or at the very least ai upscaled or altered. these are taken from a page called @squirrel_boxes on instagram. quick 🧵 to explain why they're ai generated:

'The folks are fearful.' Haitians living in Ohio may soon lose temporary protected status • Ohio Capital Journal Thousands of Haitians living in Ohio will lose their temporary protected status next week unless a federal court blocks it.

Haitians in Springfield, Ohio lose temporary protected status on February 3rd. There will very likely be a major ICE incursion the next day. Haitians in Springfield were the targets of Vance’s lying during the campaign.
ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/01/28/t...

100%. We have a particularly active program on campus here and the students are incredible.

A large part of the MAGA demographic is people who still post the "Facebook policy will be changing [date] unless you post you do not give them consent to own your photos! Copy and paste this before the deadline" copypasta that's been going around for 15 years.

one of the quiet legacies of the crew of Challenger is STEM education. as a kid, i visited a Challenger Learning Center, one of many established by the families of the crew, and one of my current UAA students is a McNair Scholar. they're still helping others learn about the wonder of our universe.

signal boost! i'm sure someone in my general network has some suggestions?

i just want to cry. i have literally just spent the last 6 hours responding to email after email of people begging for rent money or for me to point them in the direction of help, which does not exist.

please @governorwalz.mn.gov. we need an eviction moratorium. there is no other solution.

Same lol

going to print out my birding life list and detail exactly where and when i saw each.

current life list is 1042 species, so if i spend a minute on each, that's nearly 18 hours of nerdery, no one's getting any sleep

3-panel comic. (1) [Three small arthropods on ocean floor.] ARTHROPOD 1: Now that we’re multicellular, what are your plans? I’m gonna evolve little legs and swim around with them! ARTHROPOD 2: I’m gonna evolve sharp pincers and use them to crunch stuff! ARTHROPOD 3: I’m gonna evolve glands to make string from my butt and use it to construct elaborate geometric nets hundreds of times my size to catch other animals. (2) [Silence] (3) ARTHROPOD 1: *Dude.* ARTHROPOD 2: Can you *please* just be normal about this? ARTHROPOD 3: *What??!*

Early Arthropods

xkcd.com/3199/

One blip of light among the darkness today:

A 25 year old trans guy in biology messaged me on LinkedIn and thanked me for my visibility and making him feel less alone

No single person can fix the horrors we're in

But every voice that says "this is not okay" gives hope to others 💖🏳️‍⚧️

My husband is working with a group delivering groceries to families from an overwhelmingly Hispanic school in Mpls. He will be buying groceries this Friday. $350 will finish covering their food needs for the week; if he raises more he will buy TP/laundry detergent. Venmo: Edward-Burke-MSP.

The Chicks posted in solidarity with MSP on facebook and the comments are full of "well i'm never listening to you again, how dare you be woke!" and umm i really think perhaps you haven't been paying attention to the past twenty years of their career?

My Latin speaking peeps: @shadowspar.bsky.social was looking for a good Latin equivalent of "fuck around, find out" and this was my attempt, but I know it's not perfect; who's got better?

honestly there's got to be a mummy-themed variation of the game Operation, right? bc 8 is prime age for "that so grosssssss, cool!" content

i definitely am not immune to buying something largely based on a good cover design, but my tastes in that area seem to be pretty different than some of the current trends so it doesn't happen much

and tbh at this point, a hardcover edition with gilding and fancy sprayed edges are 100% a turn-off. not because i think that's a mark of poor quality, but it seems to be trying to appeal to people with distinctly different tastes from me, so i've got to already be interested to overlook that

plot details sure to catch my attention: weird settings, queer characters, a sense of not fully understanding the world but rolling with it, descriptions of bizarre alien/fantastical ecologies

not a romance fan so if that's the main focus i'm less interested

honestly? are people i know have similar taste talking about it on Bsky, and are the blurbs (if present- not mandatory) from authors whose work i also like? does the plot sound interesting (gotta have a summary for that)

and is it in paperback, because i have moved too often to fuck w hardcover 🙃

Order your Faves on my Digital Cookie Site Today That's right! You can order your favorite Girl Scout Cookies from me online, all while helping my troop and I do great things in our community and beyond! Check it out.

Hey y'all! My delightful shenanigans 12yo is selling Girl Scout cookies again this year.

If you're looking for delivery in the Seattle area, order in the next few days - February 1st is our deadline!

Online shipping orders are open for *ages*.

digitalcookie.girlscouts.org/scout/miriam...

Anyway, while we all agree that vampires are gay and werewolves are transsexual, we should also acknowledge that frankensteins use neopronouns

please remember that no matter how many “ICE is losing in MN” articles you read today, there is still a very real, urgent, ongoing crisis in Minnesota.

people need food and they need rent money. that has not changed.

I feel like I've been gently concussed by a pillow simply reading that?

Always great to see bagpipes deployed in the traditional use of "psychological warfare against the enemy"

Is there in fact any "learning" needed for that?

I also gave one of my grad students a ride to the store then home because they rely on the bus and the walk to the stop nearest to them was a mess, and also I was once the friend with no car and thus am duty-bound to pay forward all the rides to the grocery store I got freshman year lol

Very glad I can work from home tomorrow- in addition to a fuckton more snow, we may get sleet overnight and I already dug out two different stuck cars today before the worst of this storm hit