"We call upon people around the world, including members of the STEMM community, to raise their voices against the naked aggression of the imperialist USA... We demand an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to diplomacy, peace, and respect for the sovereignty and dignity of nations."
![IUS Condemns US-Israeli Military Aggression Against Iran
[Photo of graves]
Graves are being prepared for over 165 young girls killed in a US–Israeli airstrike on an elementary school in Minab, Iran. (Image: X/ @aragchi)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ak2zoxutguj66x6lyk6pfq36/bafkreifpo3rxnds7gnh3qwqym54pkeiianeu45sbwgtkr4d6ldsrugjtv4@jpeg)
IUS Condemns US-Israeli Military Aggression Against Iran [Photo of graves] Graves are being prepared for over 165 young girls killed in a US–Israeli airstrike on an elementary school in Minab, Iran. (Image: X/ @aragchi)
We, in the International Union of Scientists (IUS), strongly and unequivocally condemn the wanton military attack on Iran by the USA and its Israeli accomplice, carried out under the pretext of a “preventive” strike, at a time when active negotiations were going on between Iran and the USA for a peaceful resolution of the nuclear dispute. The attack began with the assassination of the head of state and top government officials and has since caused the destruction of schools and hospitals and deaths of hundreds of Iranian civilians, including schoolchildren. It is nothing but an act of thuggery, violating all considerations of humanity, international law, and the sovereignty of a nation. While the current Iranian government has faced longstanding allegations of human rights violations, the responsibility to address these issues rests solely with the Iranian people. No external imperialist power has the moral or legal authority to impose regime change through bombardment, coercion, and destruction. The right to self-determination must be upheld without exception.
The USA has a despicable record of having close ties with several tyrannical dictators, and President Trump's declared sympathy for freedom and democracy in Iran sounds hollow. History repeatedly demonstrates that wars waged in the name of democracy and security bring devastation, destabilization, and the destruction of societies built over centuries. Genuine freedom cannot be delivered through military aggression, nor can democracy arise from the killing of innocent people. It is evident that this attack by the US and Israel is not about defending democratic rights or peace, but about reasserting geopolitical dominance and enabling the exploitation and plunder of Iran’s and the Middle East’s natural and human resources—at the cost of human lives and widespread destruction. We call upon people around the world, including members of the STEMM community, to raise their voices against the naked aggression of the imperialist USA, its Israeli accomplice, and their allies. We demand an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to diplomacy, peace, and respect for the sovereignty and dignity of nations.
Grateful for the statement by @iuscientist.bsky.social! Science is an inherently political activity and we must speak out and fight to promote its peaceful applications and continued existence!
MUST READ especially for climate change concerned folks who think they can choose silence on genocide:
“War causes extensive, long-lasting environmental damage, affecting landscapes, ecosystems, biodiversity, and vital resources.” 🧪 @iuscientist.bsky.social
www.iuscientists.org/militarism-a...
A four-panel comic titled "how to get into nature". In panel 1, a person kneels in the woods, looking down at a red-backed salamander, and the text says "notice a living thing." In panel 2, the text says "notice some other things that live near it," and there's a starflower, springtail, ant, little wood satyr butterfly, and salamander on the leaf litter. In panel 3, covered in creatures, plants, and a colorful starburst, the text says "Notice the connections between them, discover the wider ecosystem, learn about its histories, and find yourself following links from bedrock to stratosphere, between biotic and abiotic, at scales both microbial and massive, until you’re hopelessly overwhelmed by the wonder of it all." In panel 4, the text says "Fall into a daze and let moss engulf you." The person from the first panel is still kneeling in the woods, looking happy as moss slowly engulfs them, and they're saying "This is for the best."
How to get into nature.
On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs by Renée Nicole Macklin
i want back my rocking chairs, solipsist sunsets, & coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches. i've donated bibles to thrift stores (mashed them in plastic trash bags with an acidic himalayan salt lamp— the post-baptism bibles, the ones plucked from street corners from the meaty hands of zealots, the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic kind): remember more the slick rubber smell of high gloss biology textbook pictures; they burned the hairs inside my nostrils, & salt & ink that rubbed off on my palms. under clippings of the moon at two forty five AM I study&repeat ribosome endoplasmic— lactic acid stamen at the IHOP on the corner of powers and stetson hills— On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs by Renée Nicole Macklin
i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can't point to anymore, maybe my gut- maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul. it's the ruler by which i reduce all things now; hard-edged & splintering from knowledge that used to sit, a cloth against fevered forehead. can i let them both be? this fickle faith and this college science that heckles from the back of the classroom now i can't believe— that the bible and qur'an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths "make room for wonder" — all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as: life is merely to ovum and sperm and where those two meet and how often and how well and what dies there. On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs by Renée Nicole Macklin
Renee’s poem…
poets.org/2020-on-lear...
If your position is that regime change should be forced on countries where the president does not respect democratic norms and regularly kidnaps opponents using an officially sanctioned paramiliatary, have I got news for you about your position on the United States
Imagining the Maduro trial’s jurors learning about nullification, and how that would play out.
Three million people live in Caracas, five million in the metro area. It's one of the densest cities in South America. Remember this in the morning when they try to spin this as anything other than a cold-blooded attack on a major civilian center.
William Blake's Newton (1795), colour print with pen & ink and watercolour. Blake's picture of Newton as a divine geometer was one of a series he created while living in Lambeth in the late 1790s.
Sorry, I keep thinking about this plate! It depicts Newton and a vision for physical laws... but all in such stark contrast to the luscious complexity and micro-fractal nature of the boulder and life (and ants!) he sits above... missing something key in the vision, perhaps?
Just one more note about Blake inspired by rabbit hole triggered by his 1790's poem about a lost mother of ants... he was apparently moved by equality, abhorred slavery, endless wars, materialistic worldviews, and any revolution that simply replaced monarchy with irresponsible mercantilism! 🐜
The Night of Enitharmon's Joy, 1795 William Blake
I will definitely be reading more about Enitharmon, for so so so many reasons, but including her being queen of heaven, born of sexual problems to dominate men, mother of revolution, and representing what cannot be found within nature! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enithar...
Los's Spectre torments him at his smithy in Jerusalem. This image comes from Copy E. of the work, printed in 1821 and in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art.
Though perhaps Los is a better character fit for physiologists, representing the divine aspect of imagination, but also creating life and described as a smith, 'beating with his hammer on a forge, metaphorically connected to the beating of the human heart; the bellows of his forge are the lungs.'
Blake's watercoloured etching, The Ancient of Days, with a deistic entity in gold and red extending a measurement instrument out from the heavens, against a dark background
Plate 100 depicting Los and Enitharmon of Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion
Plate 2 of Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion, copy E. Relief etching with watercolour additions, mythological hybrid feminine forms and lots of color.
One of Blake's other artworks should be familiar to my fellow comparative physiologists, from the cover of Lighton's book on measuring metabolic rates, depicting Urizen, one of a set of imagined mythological figures who created the world with reason and laws, only to be tormented and later fall...
Once a dream did weave a shade, O'er my Angel-guarded bed, That an Emmet lost it's way Where on grass methought I lay. Troubled wilderd and forlorn Dark benighted travel-worn, Over many a tangled spray All heart-broke I heard her say. O my children! do they cry Do they hear their father sigh. Now they look abroad to see, Now return and weep for me. Pitying I dropp'd a tear: But I saw a glow-worm near: Who replied. What wailing wight Calls the watchman of the night. I am set to light the ground, While the beetle goes his round: Follow now the beetles hum, Little wanderer hie thee home
I'm not very familiar with William Blake's work but came across this mention of ants (emmet) in a 1789 poem, "A Dream" from his Songs of Innocence
Noticing that abstracts for IUSSI (Freiburg, August '26) are due next month! iussi2026.org
Image of a page in Sue Johnson’s 1991 book, Premonition of a Natural History (Fireflies Burning). The page shows an artistic black and white illustration of a butterfly seen from the dorsal perspective; its right wing has been replaced with what appears to be a fractal branching circulatory system. The title on the previous page reads “Proponent of Good Faith” and you can almost see the next image’s title on the page below this one, “There’s a second tier. Do you want to go up?”
Proponent of Good Faith, by Sue Johnson (Premonition of a Natural History, 1991)
Call for papers for the workshop "From Harm to Hope: Slow Violence, Collective Memory and Everyday Resistance" - March 25 – 26, 2026 Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Slovenia. ikss.zrc-sazu.si/sites/defaul...
“I know the world I would like to live in. It’s in my head, but I try my best to live it now.”
Agree! Those conversations haunt me like nothing else… so many people thought it was ok to attack a hospital… but there is NO ethical reason to do that ever, period!
Tenure track assistant professor of biology position in my department just posted!
www.schooljobs.com/careers/prov...
I’ve been using Helicon remote & Helicon focus with our Cognisys Stackshot rail
Isn’t she perfect?
When I visited the AMNH for a seminar on Ants and Palestine last Spring, someone on the zoom chat suggested I "stick to the ants"... but they missed the whole point.
motifri.com/ants-in-the-...
Important read! "We must come together to resist attempts to undermine our identities and our work." @jessicalwarelab.bsky.social www.nj.com/opinion/2025...
Sharing hugs and hope that a shopping trip to someplace validating will help you feel incredible
Photo of Jane standing on a rock, arms raised and in a purple dress, facing the ocean
Starting my second decade as a #trans #womeninSTEM on the faculty at Providence College. We've got ants to study, biology to teach, and barriers to break down!
motifri.com/ants-in-the-...
A sheet of 20 forever stamps from the LIFE MAGNIFIED collection by the USPS featuring brilliant colorful macro photographs of cells and tissues! Moth wing scales. Diving beetle foot, and barnacle legs are my favs.
Not sure who wants a postcard but look at these gorgeous USPS stamps!
Fun story about needle ants causing a wicked bit of embarrassing confusion in Massachusetts... www.enterprisenews.com/story/news/e...
Ants in the City: Assemblage of joy Dr. Jane Waters Providence College Running along the boardwalk on the way to the shore, In two's and in three's, racing on their way, Crematogaster sisters, acrobats with heart. The farmers brought us out to see the mystery, a crop had been targeted, thirsty broccoli, the youngest sprouts, Tetramorium encircled. Clinging to the bottom of a small boulder small and black, almost entirely invisible Myrmecina, cryptic but textured, residents on the roll. Cinnabar creps, witch's butter, and hexagonal polypores, Deana finds the Aphaenogaster hiding inside every gill, when they fungal foray and festival slay. Antennae curving to insertion, or bent abruptly, with a notched clypeus or curving propodeal spines, One character at a time, Myrmica unidentified. It's easy to feel small and helpless, with never-ending war and evil all around. But under foot and the weight of the world, the ants still make their homes together, they still breathe -- and so too, should we. Illustration by Danika Valentine and with thanks to Skyler Jay. Follow Dr. Jane and her research lab on Instagram @antlabpvd or on the web www.lovetheants.org.
Assemblage of Joy, a poem for our Ants in the City column with Motif RI
motifri.com/ants-in-the-...
Myrmecina americana ants filmed in #slomo exiting and returning to their nest through a portal they constructed from nest debris #myrmecology
