doc-brock.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Baby lizard update:

submitted 19 hours ago • 0 comments

From United Humanists on FB

submitted 2 days ago • 839 comments

Glad for this lizard basking in my doorway’s sunbeam who has no perception of our failing government and rollback of human rights. No tyranny, just UV. 🌞 🦎

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Rick Spinrad, the former head of NOAA, shares the immense value that his organization brings, for the wild and crazy cost of... $0.06 per day.

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Science (and science policy, and conservation) friends, I need your help! We are collecting specific, clear examples of harms caused by the Trump administration's attacks on science, to be included in an open letter. Can be links to news stories/social media posts. 🧪🦑🌎 #SciComm #SciPol

submitted 3 days ago • 25 comments

YES, MORE OF THIS. As I've said before, at the end of the day trans people have rights regardless of what the science says (bc that's not how we decide who gets human rights) but ALSO since there's a determined effort to frame transphobia as science, these statements are critical.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

I respect FIRE’s legal advocacy but reporters really need to stop using FIRE’s rankings unless you truly believe that campus speech is most free in southern states that have banned ideas and concepts from being taught in the classroom

submitted 3 days ago • 26 comments

I understand that their goal is to harm a lot of marginalized people. We each need to do what we can to protect the vulnerable. I really get this and ALSO I just need as many people as possible who are able to do so to notice that these people are pathetic. They truly are. Just ridiculous.

submitted 3 days ago • 30 comments

Thiiiiiis. so many federal jobs you learn on the job with sometimes years of training (during probationary period!), bc those jobs only exist in one place in the country if not on earth. but absolutely vital to so many things

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

9 of 10 top schools for economic mobility are Cal States. These schools are also among the largest populations of Pell Grant recipients. They CANNOT exist without federal funding for education and research www.latimes.com/california/s...

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

And so it begins. #Frogs (Common) #Amplexus @froglife.bsky.social @katebradbury.bsky.social @tetzoo.bsky.social @stevoallain.bsky.social

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Proud to be a member of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists! 🐠 🦎

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

Putting a face to what you read in the news. Until last Friday, I served our nation working as a Research Ecologist with the US Geological Survey (USGS). As a federal scientist, I provided robust, defensible information to support good decisions in natural resource management.

submitted 4 days ago • 72 comments

I'm giving an online talk today Feb 20 at noon PST entitled The Secret Lives of Snakes. The Zoom registration link is lpfw.org/snakes-webinar. PLEASE REGISTER AHEAD OF TIME.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

SSE is pleased to offer free virtual #Evol2025 registration to all SSE members residing in 152 countries and territories around the world including India, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Sign up for your free registration code today! https://buff.ly/4hK08PZ @evolmtg.bsky.social

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

So I did this today: banged out a couple hundred words of a pitch while managing lab, sent it to the opinion page editor at the newspaper my parents still somehow get in print, and got back a "yes" in, I absolutely kid you not, under 15 minutes

submitted 4 days ago • 7 comments

If I had a band or a label, I would do a punk cover of "No More Kings" from Schoolhouse Rock. And then I would gather a bunch of people to write a whole album of next-generation Schoolhouse Rock songs, with songs about Social Security and Medicaid and NOAA. I am not kidding in the least.

submitted 4 days ago • 414 comments

Upon learning that yesterday would be my last day as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, I shared this parting message with my colleagues. The next few months will be frenetic and stressful for them. Here are some things that you can do to help them with the mission ahead. (1)

submitted 4 days ago • 68 comments

Were you aware that #scientist , @hippieherper.bsky.social co author on IOB's Dietary Breadth Predicts Toxin Expression Complexity in the #Venoms of North American #Gartersnakes doi.org/10.1093/iob/... is also a great #photographer? Be sure to follow his account & read his paper.

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Brian Gibbs, 41, was working as a ranger at Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeast Iowa. His wife, who is pregnant with their second child, will be kicked off his health insurance next week. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

It has been nearly 20 years since I lived in the US, but I still have strong ties, friends and family there. The last month (has it only been a month?) has been hard to watch from the outside, and I can only imagine how much more difficult it is on the inside. @eseb.bsky.social sums it up well.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

I lost my job at the National Science Foundation yesterday, along with 167 of my colleagues, including some dear friends. This was the best job I've ever had, and I thought it would be my last. The PI community has been sympathetic and supportive, without exception. I will miss working for you.

submitted 5 days ago • 605 comments

If the block on the Federal Register isn’t removed in the next few months, I fear a majority of labs will close within a year. This small procedural wrench has the power to kill US science indefinitely, losing an entire generation of discovery and innovation.

submitted 5 days ago • 25 comments

Interested in mechanistic & hybrid species distribution models? Don't miss our workshop! Online - 2-4 April @gfandos.bsky.social REGISTER: www.biogeography.org/news/news/wo...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Just saw an email sent to a student of mine from a REU canceling their program due to staffing & federal research funding uncertainties. A REU was when I internalized my science ID & applying to grad school. If this continues, it will devastate my students #1 pathway to STEM careers.

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

"I don't know what NSF is going to be now, but it's not more efficient. It's just a mess." My story on today's firings and their impact. www.npr.org/2025/02/18/n...

submitted 5 days ago • 5 comments

Pretty sad. Just got the email that CZI is canceling the second round of Diversity Leadership Awards. Private industry will definitely not fill the hole that NIH and NSF are leaving. 😢💔

submitted 5 days ago • 56 comments

“There are currently four people remaining over there to do the work of 15 people. The danger to the national airspace can’t be understated." "This is a very real threat to the American flying public.” EXCLUSIVE ⤵️

submitted 5 days ago • 288 comments

Imagine being rich enough to do anything you want and choosing to take food and medicine from starving children to give yourself even more money.

submitted 5 days ago • 1922 comments

Yes to all of this, and: there’s no savings from laying these folks off because CONGRESS PASSED A SPENDING BILL TO PAY THEM and there’s no constitutional mechanism that lets the executive take back what Congress tells it to spend!

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

This is an attack on US science. NSF staff provide critical support for scientific infrastructure and global excellence. These are valuable dedicated public servants. Please contact your reps, write letters, make noise! Are there any plans for rallies at NSF headquarters? Journalists: COVER THIS!

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

It's fun looking up the grant I'm funded under a few times a day to see if it still exists

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

NSF employees coordinate grant programs, organize and run panels that award grants, and work with awardees to ensure progress, among other functions. Reducing staffing at NSF will not make it more efficient, it will further burden already overburdened employees, making NSF less efficient.

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

Firings are happening right now at the National Science Foundation. Essential staff are being cut. This isn’t about the budget. If it was, they’d be going after the military (17%) or state appropriations (38%). NSF is 0.7% of the federal budget. All federal employees make up only 4% of the budget.

submitted 5 days ago • 99 comments

Firings happening right now at the NSF.

submitted 6 days ago • 45 comments

NEW: NSF confirmed that they fired 168 employees today, out of their staff of ~1,500 feds. This includes some people who'd finished their 1-year probationary periods, which were extended to 2-years last month without explanation. More to come.

submitted 6 days ago • 30 comments

Our new work on how imbalanced speciation pulses sustain the radiation of mammals with N. Lartillot and H. Morlon is out in Science! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

submitted 269 days ago • 2 comments

This reminds me about the thing I always say about a PhD. It isn’t that I’m an expert in one particular thing. It’s that the thing I’m an expert in is teaching myself things.

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Want to go visit the national parks this year? Sorry. The reservation system is shut down, EMT personnel are gone, so don't get hurt or lost. No one can clean the bathrooms or cabins, so they'll be closed. Rangers are fired. www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

submitted 6 days ago • 847 comments

From this week’s New Yorker.

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Old friend just laid off by USDA, 1 mos short of his probationary period as senior researcher. Brilliant person who left a tenured faculty position several yrs ago to join USDA. Bright early-career researchers also being laid off. USDA is terminating a generation of highly-qualified scientists.

submitted 7 days ago • 826 comments

The Aesculapian snake has begun to thrive in Britain. Should we let it? Tom Major who started his research career at @bangoruniversity.bsky.social and Professor Wuster have been tracking and recording these shy snakes in Colwyn Bay. www.bangor.ac.uk/news/2025-02...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments