I can’t get over this graph. Friday, 29 May 2020 was the saddest day ever on Twitter. Click to enlarge. No seriously, click to enlarge. You ...

When you’re a kid and you study history, you read about all these empires of the past that rose and fell. Rome. Genghis Khan and Alexander...

Academics have bugbears. And a very common one is manuscript formatting. “We shouldn't have to spend our time fiddling with a word proce...

Back in March, a lot of people got very stressed going into social isolation, lockdown, stay at home, quarantine, whatever you want to cal...

I have been thinking a lot about the craziness of “re-opening” and how some people refuse to take any precautions. Just a day or two ago, I...

I make a very brief cameo appearance in this Nature article by Jeffrey Perkel on scientific illustration, particularly BioRender. That...

I was doing fine until this weekend. Then I realized that I screwed up in my online classes. I made a mistake when I changed courses to a...

I am still mad and disappointed I was by the University of Texas system’s decision to open campuses for fall, no matter what. More Texas ...

The Daily Texan is reporting that all University of Texas campuses will be opening this fall. My initial reaction has not changed. OH...

“Publishers” and “journals”are related. One academic publisher typically has many journals. Each journal is independent and has its own edi...

Earlier, I wrote: It’s an epidemic when people you don’t know get sick. It’s a pandemic when people you know get sick. The pandemic has...

This is all B.W. Williams’s fault . • • • • • Classic. • • • • • Adventurous. • • • • • Atmospheric. • • • • •...

I’m seeing a few people bemoaning the lack of science outreach from professional scientists during this COVIC-19 pandemic. Efra Rivera-Serra...

I have gotten tired of these three words (okay, two words and one phrase) in discussions of genre fiction. “Plot hole.” “Retcon.” “Canon...

The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) awards were announced today. And the familiar “Matthew Effec...

Among academics, there is a particular anxiety about being stuck at home. It’s a touchy subject. Productivity and overwork is always a sore ...

Fifteen days, huh? Longer than I thought. It was fifteen days ago that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, my university announced it was ex...

Occasionally, when someone I know asks how everyone is doing (particularly on social media like Facebook or Twitter) how they’re doing worki...

On Monday, a now deleted tweet from Andrew Timming said something along the lines of, “This crisis is a wake-up call. COVID-19 shows how mu...

These pictures of UTRGV were taken Monday, 23 March 2020, when I went to campus to feed my crayfish. You could be forgiven for thinking t...