Kim Weeden

Time series plot of Fairbanks, Alaska winter (Dec-Feb) average temperature each season 1929-30 to 2025-26. The ten highest and lowest values are color coded and two era means are shown (1929-30 to 1975-76 and 1976-77 to present).

Fairbanks airport December through February 2025-26 average temperature was -14.6F (-25.9C), which is 10.5F (5.8C) below the 1991-2020 normal. This is the eighth coldest winter in the past century and the first "top ten" coldest since 1970-71. #akwx #Climate #Winter2026 @leahwrenn.bsky.social

The savings we're getting here by annihilating decades of American science will pay for whole minutes of the operation to create decades of death, immiseration, and chaos in Iran.

Head shot of a young looking white guy with a smirk and one eyebrow raised. Backdrop is an American flag and part of a federal government seal.

I feel so much safer knowing that this 22-year old Trump loyalist with no relevant experience was in charge of US counterterrorism programs until less than a year ago.

A guy who no woman would leave in charge of watching over her drink while she used the restroom.

The war on Iran likely brings a new oil price shock and windfall profits.

So, who stands to win?

Our research shows: Last time around (2022), the US reaped the largest fossil fuel profits of any country ($377bn). 50% went to the top 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%. A🧵

Had a great time talking to @drdaveobrien.bsky.social about The Division of Rationalized Labor. Listen to the podcast here: newbooksnetwork.com/the-division...

As of 2025, this analysis of privacy policies indicates that every major AI company uses your private conversations to train their models by default. Every prompt, file, photo, personal detail: all of it feeds directly into model training. arxiv.org/pdf/2509.05382

Screenshot of encyclopedia entry for Ovenbirds. "Studies of Ovenbird territories were conducted by Stenger (1958) and Stenger and Falls (1959).

I stumbled across this reference to my mom's MA thesis in Cornell Lab of Ornithology @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social publication.

She was one of 1st ornithologists to use audio recordings in the field to study songbird territoriality. Lab of O even sent folks to her site to observe her methods. Boss.

The real story is that foreign governments try to interfere with elections in the U.S. all the time. In 2020 and 2024, the U.S. had private and public infrastructure in place to catch them, call them out, and mitigate the damage. Now, those mechanisms are gone, intentionally undermined and dismantled by the Trump administration. Instead of securing our elections, it seems that the current administration would prefer to exploit the spectre of “foreign interference” to justify its own *federal interference* in the upcoming midterm election.

Yesterday, Trump tried to justify the attack on Iran with rehashed claims of "election interference" from 2020 and 2024. Here's my 2 cents on what that was all about:
katestarbird.substack.com/p/the-electi...

Is Arizona's voucher program uniquely bad, or is misuse of taxpayer funds an inherent feature of these programs (and Arizona is just the state for which you have data to show it)?

Biobidet, purchased with ESA $$

If we say Arizona is flushing taxpayer money with its ESA program, it turns out that’s not a metaphor.

An electric bidet, purchased with ESA funds.

After spending the day in these data, I’m beyond frustrated. Public dollars meant for kids’ educations, literally down the drain.

Commitment to white footwear, but not to a shoe size. Also willing to spend an extra 43% of the taxpayers' money to get a women's size 10.

Israel strikes two schools in Iran, killing more than 50 people State media says Israeli attack on girls' school in the city of Minab in the south of the country kills dozens.

I have Epic Fury.

All decent people do.

www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/...

People are asking why Trump landed US in an illegal war with Iran.

The answer is that his approval ratings are low.

That's it.

A war allows him to create a shared enemy (which boosts in-group solidarity), a distraction from his domestic disasters, and a pretense for declaring emergency powers.

Oh no, that's all of us. One big happy soup line.

(I do make fun of it, but to be fair, I like Cornell's version of a faculty club much more than the ridiculously pretentious faculty clubs at some other universities that will remain nameless university of chicago.)

Cornell has a faculty soup line. You pay in advance for tickets. Each $10 ticket gets you a paper bowl of soup (choice of two kinds!), a roll, and a generic version of an Oreo cookie.

We're livin' the dream ...

scholar.google.com/citations?us...

GS now lists 2 lifetime citations, but they are in different versions of the same encyclopedia entry.

He also has a second, 2024 publication in a MDPI journal, Religions, which published 1546 papers that year. (That's one every 5.67 hours...)

National series highlights Alaska MMIP crisis, questions of justice for Alaska Native people | Alaska Beacon A new investigative documentary series on HBO highlights the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples in Alaska.

National series highlights Alaska MMIP crisis, questions of justice for Alaska Native people, writes @corinne-smith.bsky.social for the @alaskabeacon.com alaskabeacon.com/2026/02/27/n...

College athletics is in turmoil and has been for years. While the right was screaming about trans athletes, the economic and ethical foundations of college sports were completely reconfigured, with (among other things) very little thought for gender equity. And nearly no one was paying attention.

Some folks are framing this as DEI for conservatives. I intentionally avoided this bc it cedes too much to RW.

Uni DEI initiatives are NOT about hiring less qualified scholars from underrepresented groups. They're about reducing headwinds, inc. discrimination, that highly qualified scholars face.

Still waiting for all those open searches for Marxist business-school professors.

‘This is not a Ted Carter decision,’ University Senate meets to discuss Wexner name removal, Chase Center concerns, Athletic developments The question of removing Les Wexner’s name from Ohio State buildings followed university President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. into the University Senate’s monthly session Thursday. “We have very, very ex...

Maybe OSU's faculty is too polite to say it publicly, but Chase is hiring people whose CVs wouldn't get them a 2nd look in a real dept's search.

2 pubs, both in bottom-tier/scam journals, & 1 citation? That's NOT a TT-at-an-R1 level hire. It's a diversion of resources to "win" a race to the bottom.

Hundreds of American nurses choose Canada over the U.S. under Trump More than 1,000 American nurses have successfully applied for licensure in British Columbia since April, a massive increase over prior years.

Hundreds of American nurses choose Canada over the U.S. under Trump
www.npr.org/2026/02/25/n...

Would not surprise me if he issues an executive order nullifying Title IX's proportionality requirement for college athletic scholarships.

All part of the GOP worldview that men are more deserving than women, and that Trump's whims supersede laws.

Why the Trump-Backed Save America Act Threatens Election Security Nationwide - Bucks County Beacon Buried in the legislation is a mandate requiring every state to funnel voter data into a centralized voter-purge system plagued by security and accuracy concerns and controlled by the Trump administra...

New from me: “Why The Trump-Backed Save America Act Threatens Election Security Nationwide *** Buried in the legislation is a mandate requiring every state to funnel voter data into a centralized voter-purge system plagued by security & accuracy concerns & controlled by the Trump administration.”…1/

"Rochambeau" works, although the adjective form is a bit tough. Rochambeau-esque? Rochambeauly?

- more students taught per FTE than humanities
- more grant or foundation dollars per FTE than humanities, less than natural sciences
- cheaper grants to run than natural sciences (fewer wet labs, expensive and bespoke equipment, exorbitantly priced journal subscriptions, etc.) but same IDC rate

This "kids who play outside are healthier / do better in school" claim is the latest public health example of "I'm going to completely ignore selection effects or pretend that tossing in a weak measure of parent SES solves the problem."

Not just MAGA, either. Saw it in our campus health center.

I thought Kids These Days are verimax[x]ing rotation.

If you think BIRTH CONTROL pills are “a disrespect of life,” and can’t just say birth control is safe and effective for the overwhelming majority of women with your whole chest, you should NOT be America’s top doctor.

I'm voting NO on Casey Means for Surgeon General.