Seth Finnegan

Unmasking the Sea Star Killer After a decade of carnage, we finally know what’s devastating sea stars along North America’s West Coast. Does that mean scientists can save them?

We are so proud of our sea star wasting work that came out today. This interactive article is very complete and includes beautiful videos.
Unmasking the Sea Star Killer www.biographic.com/unmasking-th...

A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.

When the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Eric Schiermeyer heard that President Trump was holding small group dinners with major donors, he saw opportunity. Mr. Schiermeyer reached out to a lobbyist with connections in Mr. Trump’s orbit, who arranged for him to attend a dinner with the president at his private Mar-a-Lago club on March 1 in exchange for donations to a pro-Trump PAC called MAGA Inc. totaling $1 million. The personal and corporate donations were among dozens of seven- and eight-figure contributions to MAGA Inc. from crypto and other interests revealed in a campaign finance filing on Thursday night that hinted at the access Mr. Trump accords those willing to pay. At the dinner, Mr. Schiermeyer, who had never given a federal political donation before, presented an idea for a cryptocurrency called “U.S.A. Token” that would be distributed to every citizen, according to interviews and a flier he distributed to attendees that sets out details of the proposal. He hoped it could be su

Cryptocurrency interests, which have benefited from the Trump administration’s dismantling of a yearslong government crackdown and from the Trump family’s financial interest in the industry, appear to have been the most generous industry, accounting for nearly $45 million in donations to MAGA Inc.An affiliate of the exchange Crypto.com gave $10 million, while the crypto services company Blockchain.com donated $5 million. The venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who are heavily invested in crypto, gave $3 million each. Ondo Finance, which has a partnership with the Trump family’s crypto company, donated $2.1 million to MAGA Inc., on top of $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

The scale of Trump's pay-for-access scheme outlined by the @nytimes.com is mindblowing. Crypto contributions resulting in business deals with the Trump family crypto businesses, oil companies buying influence and later reaping benefits from friendly policies, and a $1 million pardon.

Analysis: The US government has declared war on the very idea of climate change | CNN Politics Americans are used to whiplash in their climate policy. The US has been in and out and in and out again of the key Paris climate agreement over the past four presidencies.

“In his second administration, President Donald Trump is not just approaching climate science with skepticism. Instead, his administration is moving to destroy the methods by which his or any future administration can respond to climate change.“

one of the single best deals in streaming. i've been paying for PBS Passport for years. it rules

Reconsidering space-for-time substitution in climate change ecology - Nature Climate Change Ecologists often leverage patterns observed across spatial climate gradients to predict the impacts of climate change (space-for-time substitution). We highlight evidence that this can be misleading n...

New paper out on the dangers of using patterns across spatial climate gradients to predict what will happen with changing climate. That includes species distribution modeling. Space-for-time substitution can be misleading in sign, not just the magnitude of effects.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The "Alt National Park Service:" On Plagiarism, Part 1 The first in a three-part series.

The Alt National Park Service has spent months stealing from journalists, directly plagiarizing the work of others more than a hundred times.

With more than 4.3 million followers on Facebook and nearly 900k here on Bluesky, they've built a massive following on theft.

When the FDA Commissioner goes on TV to elevate an unverified anecdote about a "friend's parent" dying from a COVID vaccine—while ignoring safety data from 1M+ people published 48 hours earlier—we have an institutional problem. This misleading rhetoric is deeply irresponsible. 🧵

Text from an FAQ in Okbay et al 20222: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z a similar same statement is made in an FAQ in 2025: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.653986v1.supplementary-material Text reads: "The results of SSGAC studies have sometimes been used by online platforms, including some companies, to predict individual outcomes. We recognize that returning individual genomic “results” can be a fun way to engage people in research and other projects and to feed or stoke their interest in genomics. But it is important that participants/users understand that these individual results are not meaningful predictions and should be regarded essentially as entertainment. Failure to make this point clear risks sowing confusion and undermining trust in genetics research"

It is depressing, but all too predictable, how swiftly we’ve gone from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium offering reassurances about the uses of behavioural polygenic scores to one of their lead authors marketing embryo selection for IQ

Looking for a way to do something? read the EPA reversal of the endangerment finding, and then file a public comment explaining why it is false, wrong, misguided. Your comment can be scientific, legal, or just about what the American people want..
Reversal: www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

Firing the BLS Commissioner — the wonk in charge of the statisticians who track economic reality — is an authoritarian four alarm fire.

It will also backfire: You can't bend economic reality, but you can break the trust of markets. And biased data yields worse policy.

People have no idea how valuable it is to have accurate statistics on the state of the economy and society. And yet, here we are as Trump turns to another page in the autocrat's playbook.

You could fund 90 percent of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting budget for two years with the public money Trump is going to spend retrofitting the plane Qatar gave him -- which he plans to keep when he leaves office.

Historical model biases in monthly high temperature anomalies indicate under-estimation of future temperature extremes - Communications Earth & Environment Models tend to underestimate mean monthly maximum temperature anomalies by 2-3% and extreme anomalies by 11-12% over the period 1980 and 2023, which could lead to temperatures 3 °C to 5 °C higher than...

Climate models have underestimated the departure of high temperature extremes from monthly means.

If we assume these model biases persist in future projections, then the climate models are also likely underestimating the magnitude of future high temperature extremes.

www.nature.com/articles/s43...

“The president cut your health care so he could build himself a golden ballroom” is a pretty easy message to sell

Stalin ass shit

Update: I offered the amendment. Not to refuse acceptance of the Qatari jet; just to prohibit Trump from taking it with him when he leaves office - after the taxpayers spend $1 billion to retrofit it.

Failed 14-15. Every single Republican voted to allow Trump to take the jet.

More hostage-taking

Occupancy history influences extinction risk of fossil marine microplankton groups Abstract. Geographic range has long been acknowledged as an important determinant of extinction risk. The trajectory of geographic range through time, however, has not received as much scientific atte...

Happy to announce the publication of our new study!📝‪Ádám T. Kocsis, @kiessl.bsky.social‬, and I examined occupancy trajectory and its influence on extinction risk in marine microplankton! 🔬🦠🌊 (1/2)

bg.copernicus.org/articles/22/...

Chilling to see a senator floating the third term idea

Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End America’s run as the premiere techno-superpower may be over.

For who still thinks this can’t happen here… it’s already happening.
www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

They tried to scrap *ALL* federal funding for the National Institutes of Health.

Via a footnote in a bureaucratic document that hardly anybody would read.

But people noticed, and spoke up, and even MAGA had to walk back something this atrocious.

So speak up!!

Scientists Say New Government Climate Report Twists Their Work A new Department of Energy report “fundamentally misrepresents” climate research and leaves out key context, multiple scientists cited in the report tell WIRED.

NEW: i spoke to nine (!) scientists across several disciplines whose work was cited in the new Department of Energy report that downplays the severity of climate change. all of them say their work was misrepresented, cherry picked, and/or lacked context —

if dems lose the moral high ground, it will be harder to achieve their main objective: keeping their powder dry. you have to think strategically, see?

Black and white photograph of people fleeing the 1946 tsunami

Federally funded science saves lives. Not long ago, tsunamis from events like last night's M8.7 in Kamchatka could strike communities across the Pacific with no warning. Lives were lost simply because no one knew a wave was coming

I've been told that in addition to the local effects you highlight there is a far-field effect from refraction around the Hawaiian islands/Emperor seamounts that tends to focus them on that area.

Extreme Heat Persists in the Southeast

Isn't it ironic? On the day the Trump administration tries to pull the plug on the endangerment finding, millions of Americans are suffering under an extreme heat advisory.

This is an embarrassment for the sterling reputation all of the real scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy. Shame on Chris Wright.

Northwestern University eliminates more than 400 staff positions amid funding freeze Northwestern University has eliminated about 425 staff positions, the latest cost-cutting measure amid the Trump administration’s funding freeze.

The scope of extortion is just staggering. Just to name a few in the news today: Northwestern, UCLA, Harvard, and Duke.

trib.al/UNNxNSD

Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB)

Devastated to see the NSF postdoctoral research fellowship in biology archives. This is a transformative creative opportunity and a path to the professorship for many (including myself). Postdocs are highly trained and often in the newest techniques which spur innovation.
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...