For people still wearing N95s and the like: The federal office that ensured masks met the N95 or KN95 standards has been destroyed. So any masks sold in the US could well be counterfeit or inadequate.
https://www.ems1.com/public-health/hhs-cuts-eliminate-niosh-respirator-certification-staff
They're not dire wolves. But they're wolves. And they're dire: Trump's Secretary of the Interior has already claimed these new fake dire wolves mean we don't need to protect endangered species!
If you follow me I bet you follow a lot of other science news, so you probably know the supposed 'de-extinction' of dire wolves is not real. But it's still fun to hear @rebeccawatson talk about it. Take a listen.
The dire wolf was not a close relative of modern wolves: it split off from other dog-like animals in North America about 5.7 million years ago. Folks at the company Colossus used CRISPR to alter 14 genes of a wolf to give it some traits of a dire wolf: a stronger jaw muscle, lighter color, larger size, etc. But the resulting pups are not dire wolves.
Colossus claims dire wolf DNA is 99.5% identical to that of gray wolves. But that would be a difference of about 95 genes – plus a vast amount of non-coding DNA that, we now know, actually makes a difference. Furthermore there are epigenetic differences that we have no way to recreate. The new pups will never learn how to be a dire wolf from their mother. And the environment is different – so they will never hunt western horses, dwarf pronghorn, ground sloths, ancient bison, and camels the way actual dire wolves did.
Like @rebeccawatson says, we should be putting energy into saving endangered species, protecting and restoring native habitats, and stuff like that. There are people doing that – and *that* is actually very exciting. Even to grownups.
"One day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, a digital mapping tool used by federal and state agencies to identify environmentally disadvantaged communities was taken offline.
Within 48 hours, a coalition of data scientists known as the Public Environmental Data Project had resurrected a functional but unofficial copy of the tool on an independent domain."
As one of its first acts, the Trump administration removed the online data tool used to allocate money to environmental justice communities. In two days, a coalition of data scientists had restored it on an independent internet domain.
An abolitionist designed the statue. A group of abolitionists paid for the statue. There's a plaque at the feet telling everyone what it's for. They named it the Statue of Liberty. It's arguably the largest anti-racism monument in the US, and the most recognizable anti-racism monument in the world...
Except people don't even know it's an anti-racism monument. They think it celebrates the huge influx of white immigrants from Europe that came to the US.
Hint 1: It's called the statue of *liberty*. Not the statue of immigration or statue of independence.
Hint 2: Broken chains on the feet.
Hint 3: Idea for the statue started in 1865. What else happened in 1865?
Hint 4: What the sculptor said it's for? OK that's not really a hint!
REI is being shitty to its employees by excessively delaying a first contract with some of its now-unionized stores. REI also betrays its claim to be a "co-op" by keeping in place a board that ham-fistedly controls what initiatives can even be put to the members for a vote, and who is allowed to be nominated to stand for election. Disgusting. That's not a fucking co-op.
[Thanks to @emi for the post, which if quote posts were allowed I'd have been able to do directly]
Since 2022, workers at 11 REI co-op stores have voted to unionize but still lack a contract. Now, they are trying a new tactic: running candidates for the co-op’s board.
Since 2022, workers at 11 REI co-op stores have voted to unionize but still lack a contract. Now, they are trying a new tactic: running candidates for the co-op’s board.
I remember seeing a similar routine at the last Summer Olympics
Here's a question: When companies start to see that China's open source AI model Deepseek (R1) can achieve what they hoped with a fraction of the investment needed for OpenAI, will they rip and replace, or double down? It's easy to see how this could go from bad to worse in a very short time.
[edited typo]
Brian Vastag
John Carlos Baez
CelloMom On Cars
Peter Gleick
mekka okereke 
Emi
Mandu 🥟
BrianKrebs