David Bapst

Yes, it’s now fixed! Thanks to Tiffany Napier at GSA who reached out to OpenWater (the vendor) immediately when I sent her a copy of your skeet

Sunset over the strange Joshua Tree landscape this evening.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting says it's shutting down The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funnels federal money to public media stations, says it's winding down operations after President Trump signed a law rescinding all funding.

I remember hearing the words "brought to you by the corporation for public broadcasting" every time I watched Sesame Street as a kid. Horrifying that this tiny pot of funds for educational media and public information is being stolen from us. www.npr.org/2025/08/01/n...

I'll have more info in a few weeks when I get back from fieldwork but I'll be recruiting 2 graduate students to begin in 2026 (1 PhD, 1 MS). My lab investigates macroevolutionary dynamics using phylogenetic methods & the fossil record. Please share with students having strong research interests!

Assistant Professor Online applications must be received before 11:59pm on: September 14, 2025 If a date is not listed above, review the Applicant Instructions below for more details. Available Title(s): 270-NN_FACULTY -...

The School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University invites applications for a permanent, full-time, nine-month, tenure-track Assistant Professor position with a specialty in Vertebrate Ecology.

wsu.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/WSU_Jo...

the whole plate is nice but u can tell what was the artists true passion lol

mfw my journalism is independent

Petition for Action As provided under the Lloyd-La Follette Act (5 U.S.C. 7211), the signatories respectfully petition the Committee to: 1. Ensure that NSF employees are shielded from politically motivated firings and protected under merit-based personnel systems. 2. End illegal impoundments of monies appropriated to NSF. 3. Defend the agency from further interference in its peer review process. 4. Demand transparency from OMB, DOGE, and NSF leadership regarding internal employment policies and future agency relocations. 5. Reaffirm NSF’s scientific independence and support for world-class research that advances national prosperity and security. NSF employees are committed to serving the American people through research, education, and innovation. But they cannot do so under fear, censorship, and institutional sabotage. Without immediate oversight and corrective action from Congress, one of our nation’s greatest engines for scientific and technological advancement faces irreversible long-term damage. Put simply, America will forfeit its scientific leadership position to China and other rival nations.

NSF staff release their appeal—slightly different format than the declarations of dissent from EPA/NIH/NASA; a more formal petition to Congress to redress attacks on the agency and its employees. 149 signatories (48 named)
democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/do...

Discworld QOTD, from Jingo

“Odd thing, ain't it... you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.”

5. The right-wing enthusiasm for AI science is not about doing better science faster. It’s about eliminating one of the most effective forms of societal resistance to authoritarian control.

Congress cut funding to NPR/PBS, CBS canceled The Tonight Show, and Philip Bump took a buyout at the Washington Post... it is all just a little too much for me

It's my last day at The Post. Allow me to commemorate my tenure there by noting that, at different points, I irritated Donald Trump¹, James Comer², and the Russian government.

¹ From Marty Baron's book.
² From Comer's. 99% of this is false, true to form.

lukewarm higher-ed take: the ideological slant of higher education is in some ways detrimental to what the mission of the institution is supposed to be, but this is also *largely the fault of the right*. look in the fucking mirror if you want to know why academics don't like you!

time for the press to do another feature on biden

What other iconic images owe their existence to museum collections?

Incorporating continuous characters in joint estimation of dicynodont phylogeny Continuous characters have received comparatively little attention in Bayesian phylogenetic estimation. This is predominantly because they cannot be modeled by a standard phylogenetic Q-matrix approac...

Updated preprint! Thanks to suggestions from reviewers, we have some new insights on using continuous traits in phylogenetic estimation.

And a lot more about dicynodont taxonomy. Seriously, google dicynodonts and tell me you don't want to know what's happening there

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

YouTube video by Kiabugboy Macrocrinus mundulus #crinoid #paleoart #prehistoric

Macrocrinus #crinoid #SciArt #Paleoart
youtube.com/shorts/fxUPE...

Paleontologist to lead U.S. national academy The prestigious organization faces funding challenges and political controversies

Is this bringing paleontology to the "high table"?

every so often I remember Kathy Hochul got her start on the town board for my hometown of Hamburg as a kid and it shocks me

Fossil stickleback fishes preserved on white rock in a black specimen tray.

The back half of a fossil bird, preserved on light colored rock.

For #FossilFriday, a visit to the Truckee Formation of Nevada: sticklebacks and a grebe in UMMP. Annual layers in these lake sediments give a precise relative chronology for fossils from different levels, providing kyr resolution essential for bridging paleontological and biological perspectives.

Ancient proteins rewrite the rhino family tree — are dinosaurs next? Molecules from 20-million-year-old teeth are among the oldest ever sequenced.

This week, two papers in @nature.com reported informative ancient proteins from Early Miocene (!) mammals. What I've realized now that I've had a chance to actually look at them: *both* studies include UMMP alums and/or current researchers as authors. Neat. 🦏🦷🧬
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Opinion | Trump’s Tariffs Blow Up the Copper Market U.S. firms will pay 50% more while waiting years for more U.S. production.

*sits down backward in my ancient Mesopotamian chair* you know who ELSE blew up the copper market www.wsj.com/opinion/dona...

Troubling Times at the Tar Pits: Mark Dion’s Excavations Amidst Other Historical Mischiefs — Extinct In which Alison Laurence looks to La Brea's past and present during dire times

New today: the wonderful historian Alison Laurence (UC Santa Cruz, Contingent Magazine) explores the past and present of the La Brea Tar Pits in a "dire" age:
www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2025...

Mark your calendars for the FREE 2025 PS Short Course, Open Science, Collaboration, and Reproducibility in Paleontology! It will be held from 8:00am - 5:30pm on Saturday, October 18 in San Antonio, TX.

www.paleosoc.org/2025-paleo-s...

#gsaconnects2025 #paleontology #paleo #gsa #shortcourse

Ever wanted to infer a morphological or total-evidence phylogeny in BEAST2?
It’s long overdue, but we now have a tutorial on Taming the BEAST to talk you through the process 💻🌳⚙️
Thanks to Joëlle Barido-Sottani for helping me pull this together!
taming-the-beast.org/tutorials/To...

‘It’s a nightmare.’ U.S. funding cuts threaten academic science jobs at all levels “There is a lot of pressure to essentially leave the country or not pursue research,” one Ph.D. student says

I can't stress enough how close U.S. science is to the cliff.

"Numbers released in May by the National Science Foundation (NSF) indicate that if Congress approves the cuts to the agency proposed by the White House, the number of early-career researchers it supports could fall by 78%" (@science.org)

Fifteen mantis shrimps in various colors and patterns. Their names are written below. They have bright, large eyes. Some are smiling gently. They are drawn in a cartoonish style, based on real species.

Mantis shrimp 🦐

The native Marsh Fleabane, a sweet smelling plant traditionally used to make a tea for relieving pain. Bizarrely, typical of salt marshes, not backyards, but whatever.

Pff, you should see my unruly back yard. A true jungle mostly seeded by birds, overrun with geckos, anoles and even bigger wolf spiders. I have a four foot tall marsh fleabane!

A rectangular block of rock with a scale pencil lying on top. The front face is obliquely lit, showing a feathery texture that starts at center left and branches out to the right.

Plumose structure on a joint face defining a block of Helena Formation micrite limestone, Glacier National Park, Montana, USA. ⚒️

A group of NASCAR stock cars racing in front of a large building with pillars and a dinosaur in the background

I love how the Field Museum is featured so prominently in the NASCAR annual broadcast of the Chicago street race 🧪