Daniel Bolnick

a pelican with their mouth open, and two fish are above to fall into their pouch, but one is above another and may take a path out

the pelicans mouth is closed, and there's a fish out

the pelican looks at the camera, miffed, the fish is far away from its head at this point

the pelican opens its beak and tries to go for it, but i can report back it failed, the fish was long gone

FINALLY GOT IT!

I've taken well over 100,000 pelican pictures, maybe 200,000.

Over 20,000 the past month alone.

Today, I snagged "The One That Got Away"

In my infinite optimism, I give you, a very rare:

Fish success story.

🪶

Scoop: FDA vaccine chief’s memo cited 10 pediatric Covid-19 vaccine deaths—but the agency’s own analysis found 0–7. Dr. Vinay Prasad circulated a memo before FDA scientists finished their work. His conclusions overshot what the agency’s own analysts ultimately found.

Prasad, Makary and others who claim that COVID19 vaccines killed 10 children are not telling the truth.

According to @jeremyfaust.bsky.social, the committee that worked on this question reported that there were ZERO deaths that they were certain were caused by the vaccines.

Well worth reading.

I tested GPTzero's ability to identify hallucinated articles. It flagged real articles as fake sometimes. Worse, it flagged many hallucinated articles as real. And the kicker: it even gave me (hallucinated) links as evidence that the fake articles were real.

Yes, I assigned a term paper to my undergrad class
Yes, I explicitly forbade AI use and explained why
Yes, some used it anyway, extensively citing hallucinated articles.
But then the real twist...

Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written fully by AI Controversy has erupted after 21% of manuscript reviews for an international AI conference were found to be generated by artificial intelligence.

Hey Siri - explain the intersection of the words "irony" and "schadenfreude"

Siri: An AI conference overwhelmed by AI slop
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Boxing up the NSF at Eisenhower Av for the forced relocation. Boxes have “Details Matter” signage.

NSF

- Forced reorg

- POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements)

- Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …)

I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing.
“Details matter” 🙃

UF Biology is searching for an Asst Prof in Evolution, Ecology of Infectious Disease - spread the word! @ufresearch.bsky.social @ufgeog.bsky.social @sse-evolution.bsky.social

explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

Celebrating Dolph Schluter's receiving a major award from the King of Sweden, at the Speciation GRC in 2023. Unknown to us at the time, Dolph was COVID+ as we passed the scotch around. He wasn't able to give his keynote address at the GRC, sadly

It'll be great science at an incredible venue.

Save the date: the next Speciation Gordon Research Conference will be January 24-29, 2027 at Renaissance Tuscany Il Ciocco, Lucca (Barga), Italy.

Summer school:<br> Evolutionary Biology in Guarda Information about the annual summer school Evolutionary Biology in Guarda

The 2026 Guarda Summer Course in Evolutionary Biology is now accepting applications. Amazing place, amazing course, amazing opportunity for early grad students.

tb.ethz.ch/education/gu...

Undesired: Trump tries to invade all three.

The decline of democracy in the US means you can’t visit the US if you commented on the decline of democracy in the US

Sorry that’s been your experience. As a former Editor-In-Chief (and an author of nearly 200 papers) I can confidently that there are many Editors and AEs who are hands on, thoughtful, and intervene on bad reviews. But it does vary between journals for sure.

Conspiracy theorist election denier given FEMA’s second-most important role Gregg Phillips will lead the Office of Response and Recovery, “the heart of what FEMA does.”

SCOOP — Gregg Phillips, a conspiracy theorist with no emergency management experience who helped produce the election-denying documentary ‘2000 Mules’ with Dinesh D’Souza and has faced numerous legal inquiries, has been named head of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery.

My story:

This one I didn’t have to rotate. Second throw. The vegetable was frozen solid before I threw it so I was hoping for something more dramatic.

Testing the thickness of our pond ice with a projectile. Sound on.
(Sorry, had to rotate it 90 degrees to fit Bsky orientation requirements)

YouTube video by Mattias Krantz I taught an octopus piano (It took 6 months)

And the video: m.youtube.com/watch?v=PcWn...

E.P.A. Erases Mention of Humans Causing Climate Change From Some Web Pages. Gift link: nyti.ms/3Mo6REt

American Science, Shattered An eight-decade partnership between universities and the federal government made U.S. science preeminent. It took Trump less than a year to shred that

The destruction of the enterprise of US academic science has been one of the most confounding aspects of a hugely confounding year. My @statnews.com colleagues are writing about the consequences for individuals & the country.
You want to read this series.
www.statnews.com/american-sci...

Well, this is not comforting...

This musician taught an octopus to play the piano The task required hundreds of hours of problem-solving and patience. Musician Mattias Krantz said it was worth it.

This is a really fun news story.
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/20...

After NIH grant cuts, breast cancer research at Harvard slowed, and lab workers left Amid NIH funding delays, reversals and uncertainty, a scientist at Harvard who studies breast cancer has lost one-third of her lab employees and wonders if she can continue her research experiments.

Amid NIH funding delays, reversals and uncertainty, a scientist at Harvard who studies breast cancer has lost one-third of her lab employees and wonders if she can continue her research experiments. n.pr/4a4N3zD

An airport gym. Not a horrid idea (as long as it doesn’t mean sitting next to a smelly sweaty person for hours on a plane). Also not the top priority (safety, punctuality, fair reimbursement practices)

Dead vultures removed from Ohio school grounds; bird flu suspected State wildlife crews removed more than 70 dead vultures from the athletic fields near St. Bernadette School on Friday, days after neighbors expressed concern from the bizarre sight.

More than 70 vultures found dead on athletic fields in Ohio. They most likely died from bird flu.

This isn't going away.
www.wlwt.com/article/dead...

Enabling Discovery Through Genomics (EDGE)

The new Enabling Discovery through GEnomics (EDGE) Program page is posted. Please contact us at BIOEDGE@nsf.gov if you have questions. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Broken link.

It was 7:15 am on a cloudy day so light was low. It is soft even in the original photo, though higher resolution.

It’s sharper in the original photo, but bluesky reduces image quality so it looks blurrier and a bit grainy in bluesky.

A cannon R mirrorless SLR with a 500 mm lens rf 100-500 4.5-7.1

Bribe your constituents