Carrie McDonough

new (open access) paper alert!

Nice study illustrating an important point: "below the reporting limit" or even "not detected" doesn't mean 0! phys.org/news/2026-10...

Unbelievable 🤦‍♀️Frightening www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Trump told North Carolina voters he'll 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝘂𝗱𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗣𝗙𝗔𝗦 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝘀 if Republicans lose the House and Senate. You don't #SupportTheTroops if you threaten them and their families for votes.

Biological sex is complicated. Before you discriminate against someone on the basis of “biological sex” & identity, ask yourself: have you seen YOUR chromosomes? Do you know the genes of the people you love? The hormones of the people you work with? The state of their cells?

Today's the day - NO KINGS! Find yours at: NoKings.org

Republican politicians are *obsessed* with schoolchildren coming home a different gender because of pro-trans teachers, WHICH NEVER HAPPENS. But they are completely indifferent to schoolchildren not coming home *at all* because of guns, WHICH HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!

whoa... the current map of "No Kings: Vote Early" events planned for tomorrow, sat oct 17: www.nokings.org

You rarely hear him switch to demon

i’m just so fucking sorry that my muslim friends have to be hit with this despicable racism every single day. it’s not ok and you should not have to tolerate it. this country belongs to all of us.

So we fly a pride flag in our front yard in a very conservative neighborhood and it’s been there for the last few years. Someone put this in our mailbox and my goodness…

This is...a huge deal.

Job alert: This is a fun one. At @ucs.org, we are looking for a Science Ambassador Fellow to advance our organization-wide initiative to fight back against the current attacks on science and democracy through mobilization of the science community. Join us! apply.workable.com/union-of-con...

One mural costs 325 tote bag or t shirt sales. Or 283 advent calendars. Or 1625 stickers. I want to make more biodiversity murals in 2027…have you visited our shop lately? SquidFacts.net

As a PhD student designing my first survey, I added what I thought was a throwaway question at the end. To my surprise, thousands of academics answered it! The paper is out today: doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

Last call for Boston-area grad students & postdocs. We are hosting a one-day #scicomm & public engagement workshop on Tuesday, Oct 20. This is made possible by faculty sponsors at Brown & Harvard, and will be hosted at MIT. Application closes Friday - apply ASAP at bit.ly/ENGAGE-Bosto...

While RFK Jr. spreads misinformation and withholds access to vaccines, measles is spreading like wildfire. Measles has killed 5 people in PA, including 2 infants too young to be vaccinated. Please ensure you and your family are vaccinated to protect the unprotected. www.cbsnews.com/news/us-meas...

Billionaires are incompatible with democracy, just saying

Heartbreak in Springfield, Ohio. Please read this important reporting. It all begins with big lies and it ends with ethnic cleansing and deaths for which we must not only mourn but feel ashamed. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

This is slightly out of my normal lane, and I could charge six (hell maybe seven) figure to deliver this message as a consultant, but I’m gonna do it for free. Because I’m ✨enraged✨ People in the think tank/policy/inside the beltway DC world have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE how mad people are abt Cornell. 🧵

Congratulations to Carrie McDonough @carrieamcdphd.bsky.social - the recipient of 2 awards so far this year! The 2026 Ron Hites Prize in Environmental Science: Indiana University O’Neill School of Public & Environmental Affairs & 2027 James J. Morgan Early Career Award (Americas region).

There are a lot of Trump officials who need to be impeached, but Russell Vought -- the quarterback of all the Project 2025 fuckery and a central player in the administration's overreach -- really needs to be at the top of the list.

✝️✝️✝️ BREAKING: The Pentagon is now officially a Christian Nationalist Fascist Organization. HEGSETH: "Today, at my direction, I'm establishing the Office of Religious Affairs. It will report straight to the top -- a direct line to the secretary ...

Hello Physical Oceanographers! Columbia University in New York City is seeking candidates for tenure track Assistant Professor level position, with special interest for combined PhysO and AI expertise. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/194070

Don't know who made this. But we love you for making it ❤️

It would be nice if AI forced a change in the scholarly culture of accelerating productivity.

This has to stop! www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/s...

🚨 MAJOR BREAKING: The Trump regime has been lying about the full number of U.S. service member deaths in Trump’s Iran War, six U.S. officials tell The Washington Post.

Maybe they should try asking students what they want to earn advanced degrees in, instead of shoving more industry-adjacent AI experience down their throats. Students want to solve the world's most pressing problems, not just the ones industry wants to pay for.

The implementation phase begins... whereby investigator-initiated research is considered secondary to the whims and political priorities of OSTP and OMB who want to narrow what constitutes science into a limited set of corporate-focused interests while slashing budgets. www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-lea...

So depressing. My PhD studies were funded by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. My research program was pretty much exclusively funded by the NSF between 2013 and 2020, and then 60% NSF until 2025. Future university researchers won’t have this opportunity.

Scientist here: It is widely known inside science that this—top-down imposition of a research agenda—leads to mostly rote, boring, non-innovative work. Building an institute to do discovery science is hard: you hire young people, put them together, hope synergies arise and ideas fall out.

“The United States will no longer limit the planet-warming pollution that power plants pump into the air while burning coal and gas” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/c...

MAHA = Measles Are Here Again

And reminder to people 38 or older, you might not have gotten the double dose as a child. 2-shot MMR didn't start until 1989. MMR is typically covered by insurance. There's virtually no danger and minimal side effects to getting a booster. I got mine at the pharmacy. It's easy, just do it.

A 40-year-old unvaccinated woman in Pennsylvania has just died from measles. There is no controversy. She needlessly died from a disease that is preventable with a vaccine. But HHS Secretary RFK Jr. thinks measles isn’t that bad. Nobody should die of measles in the United States.

Remember kids, communism isn’t when the government owns the means of production. It’s when someone with blue hair tells you their pronouns, as Karl Marx demanded.

Bloodbath for NSF Geosciences

Not BREAKING NEWS because the Trump admin has been deleting and altering federal datasets for over a year. You can argue about policy. But when the government starts eliminating the data we use to determine whether those policies are actually working, that deserves a hell of a lot more attention.

Measles cases top 3,000 to reach highest level in three decades, CDC reports A Pennsylvania coroner confirmed Friday that two infants died in the state’s growing measles outbreak. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

"The consent orders appear to clearly spell out the risks to the public and workers, and include explicit admissions that the EPA does not understand the level at which people could be harmed"

This isn’t a map. It’s geographical fan fiction. Shame on you, Google