You know how you tell your students that one should bring as many datasets to bear as you can? This is a study you should show them.

Mamdani vowed to lower class sizes. But he’s facing major financial and logistical hurdles. The city is projecting up to $1.7 billion for teacher salaries and $18 billion for school construction.

That didn't take long. The only difference between this and Trump's "Mexico will pay for the wall," is that hiring more teachers is actually a good idea. But both are lies that people told to get elected.

www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

This is an astonishingly cruel position to take on the dilemma of homelessness.

Iran Asks For Help As UNESCO-Listed Forests Burn Iran has urgently requested international assistance to combat a devastating wildfire that has been raging for nearly three weeks in the ancient Hyrcanian Forests, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2...

If any of you have ever been to the Hyrcanian forests of Iran and Azerbaijan, this is really bad news:
www.rferl.org/a/iran-hyrca...

Remember that the legal definition of bribery requires an actual exchange of goods.

Essentially the soundtrack of my high school life.

Have the students use AI to search all of those admin's theses for plagiarism.

Mixed feelings today about starting my Gen Bio II lectures on natural selection dressed as Jim Jones.

You likely already know about it, but if you're in Tower Grove Park, you might as well cross the park to Hartford Coffee Company (Hartford and Roger) for well, coffee. My friend James Fox started that place in 2005 when I was in grad school.

Enjoyed running a chromosome counting workshop for @mossmatters.bsky.social and his students at TTU this weekend. Also enjoyed working with Xanthisma texanum, which has one of the lowest chromosome numbers in plants (2n = 8).
#GunsUp

This #*&*@ thing, which my grandmother called cypress vine, is perhaps the fastest growing species I have even seen.

Purple thumb Thursday- meiotic chromosome count of Iva annua (Sedgwick Co., KS). 34 chromosomes at prophase I, then 17 chromosomes in the haploid cells of anaphase II.

If you've never seen any of Teri's exquisite cytological work, you should start now.

This is great to see. I've long admired Harvey's work on Viola, and these UG experiences can sometimes be transformative for students. Certainly were for me.

Thoughtful piece, but this is a "cover your mouth" understatement: "...using an LLM is easier, faster, and cheaper than most previous temptations; but that’s a difference in degree." No previous version of having someone else write for you is in the same galaxy as a free, instant, web-based LLM.

l'm sure your grad/undergrad students and colleagues are surprised (and sorry) to hear this. I'll genuinely miss you as well. I'll stick around to fight this garbage though.

Those Democrats tired of getting their teeth knocked down their throats should read this. Those that are fine with that should feel free to ignore it.
www.thirdway.org/memo/was-it-...

Research Botanist ...

Let me be the (perhaps) the first to promote this job on bsky. BRIT is a super important herbarium run by some of the nicest folks I've met in Botany. I'd love to have another great colleague in this neck of the woods...
www.paycomonline.net/v4/ats/web.p...

Nice photo Chris! Here's one from SW Wisconsin.

Just added to my Vascular Plants vegetative morphology lecture. Thanks Scott!

Watching Matt play lab dad is honestly one of my favorite parts of Botany. Next year he's gonna need a CDL to drive whatever gigantic bus he takes to Tucson.

Cash bar?

Ag secretary says able-bodied Medicaid recipients should replace immigrant farm workforce USDA secretary says there’s “no amnesty” from mass deportations for farm labor, but that enforcement should be “strategic.”

The GOP is about to discover the precise limits of the American work ethic.
www.politico.com/live-updates...

I actually think about the map in the upper right (Black population percentage) all the time. I think many people who have never lived in one of these regions would rather not think about it at all.

You know why.

Thanks BRIT Press for sponsoring our meeting! Hands down some of the nicest people in botany. Make sure to stop by their booth.

My #McClintockLetters to the editor was published last week in my hometown newspaper- the Hickman Co. (KY) Times. Thanks to @cornellasap.bsky.social‬ for coordinating this effort.

Bravo. This would now appear to become Fig. 1 in literally every undergrad ecology lab using museum data to test the advancing phenology hypothesis.

Aaaaaand the acceptable lanes just get narrower and narrower.