Seth Finnegan
Marine paleobiologist & geologist @ UC Berkeley Integrative Biology & UC Museum of Paleontology
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- Reposted by Seth FinneganThe major flaw with the claim that Trump's foreign policy is "realist" is the fact that it is so deeply ideological. There is no "realist" case for driving South Africa into China's embrace, rather than competing for its partnership. The only reason Trump is doing so is based on racist memes.
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThis #FossilFriday I am delighted to share a postdoctoral position that we @deeptimeecology.bsky.social @camzoology.bsky.social are advertising on early animal evolution in the #Ediacaran. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/postdoc...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganWe found that Jeff Bezos paid *zero* taxes in 2007 and 2011. In fact, he reported making so little in 2011 that he even claimed and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children. This is how he did it (published 2021):
- Reposted by Seth FinneganBreaking, from me: An executive order from Oklahoma's governor directs most of the state's public colleges to "phase out tenure." #AcademicSky #HigherEd @chronicle.com www.chronicle.com/article/tenu...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganRepeal the Homeland Security Act
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThey were never going to get to their stated deportations goal with due process. So they're phasing it out. (Part 2)
- Reposted by Seth Finnegan"The voluntary agreements are an extinction plan," as our lead scientist @jarosenfield.bsky.social describes the state's new Bay Delta Plan. Endangered species will continue to plummet, more fisheries will shutter, and Tribes & Delta communities will continue to suffer with worse water quality.
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- Reposted by Seth FinneganCrazy story: A bank analyst published a report showing Kalshi users lose money even faster than sports gamblers, so Kalshi first tried to pressure the data provider to change their data and then accused them and the analyst of conspiring to extort them when that doesn’t work.
- Reposted by Seth FinneganYou want a hot take? Here’s a hot take. Making this stuff an issue of trust or political divides is… individualizing public health. It’s an abdication of the actual tools we had for living in a society: legal standards for business and food safety. It’s okay to regulate stuff, folks
- This is bonkers. MAHA 'farmers' with ecoli tainted raw milk admit they really don't know how to make the stuff after all. "Producing raw milk takes careful planning from a facility and infrastructure standpoint. Unfortunately, we learned this after the fact." people.com/ballerina-fa...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThis cannot be something a civilian law enforcement agent is allowed to wear in the US — and an agency that has a culture that tolerates this cannot be saved.
- Reposted by Seth FinneganRead this. We're going to need a lot of smart people to figure out how to undo all of this. If that's still even possible. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/o...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganSometimes you have to say it out loud to appreciate how dire t all is: The president just openly declared his plans to steal the midterm elections — in an interview with the former number two person at the FBI.
- Trump: "These people were brought to our country to vote, & they vote illegally. The Republicans should say, we should take over the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that I won that show I didn't win. You're gonna see something in Georgia"
- Reposted by Seth Finnegan🚨Postdoc to #AcademicJob alert🚨 Do you do conservation paleobiology? Urban ecology? Rapid evolutionary response to rapid environmental change? Or, really, any exciting research at the interface of ecology, evolution, and anthropogenic change? Any taxon, any system? Apply! bsky.app/profile/jlw-...
- Awesome opportunity for a 2 year mentored fellowship that transitions to a TT line at Stony Brook in ecological and/or evolutionary responses to global change through the SUNY Prodigy+ program: apply.interfolio.com/178040
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThe western U.S. faces its lowest snowpack on record despite average or above-average rainfall. Warmer temperatures mean more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, and will worsen droughts in areas like the Pacific Northwest and the Colorado River Basin. science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThe idea that the Court should operate entirely in secret is a modern phenomenon. The idea that the Court should be separated from the public is a modern phenomenon. Earlier generations did not accept a powerful, isolated & secretive Court and we shouldn't either 1/6 www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganI've seen fossils in some remarkable places, but this takes the prize: the benthic foram Nummulites in the base of the Great Pyramid of Giza. These massive blocks were quarried from the Eocene Mokkatam Formation when a relictual population of woolly mammoths still lived on Wrangel Island.
- Reposted by Seth FinneganDon’t make the mistake of lumping this in with weekly Trump outrages. This is the knife at the jugular of democracy. It should be an absolute call to maximum resistance for all patriots. Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganOpportunity for women students in paleontology! The Winifred Goldring Award will be presented to three women graduate students and the AWG Undergraduate Paleontology Award will be presented to a student pursuing a career in paleontology. Due April 30th. More information here: tinyurl.com/msdc3m68
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- Reposted by Seth FinneganDo you remember when people were saying "I think my phone is listening to me, i'm getting ads for stuff I spoke about" and people said "They arent listening to you, they're just this good at predicting your interests"? Well, it happens they were doing exactly that. www.cbsnews.com/news/google-...
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- Reposted by Seth FinneganThis is the U Penn donor who helped push the President out, pushed to eliminate arts & science offerings, and drafted Trumps "compact" with universities. People like Rowan repeatedly claimed the moral high ground to impose their agenda on students and faculty.
- Top Apollo Global Management executives including chief Marc Rowan held wide-ranging discussions over the firm’s tax arrangements with Jeffrey Epstein throughout the 2010s www.ft.com/content/092d...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganSome jawdropping CBP crime statistics here...
- I testified Friday before Gov. Pritzker's commission studying abuses of ICE and CBP and tried to explain how the agencies went so far off track. It's actually way worse than I ever realized. Please read and share my testimony as Congress considers reform: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/accountabi...
- Reposted by Seth Finnegan4 federal agents pull over an elderly US citizen for the suspected crime of being brown, break her car window, throw her to the ground, then drive off after they find her US Passport in her purse. The Salem Police, when called, say there’s nothing they can do. www.salemreporter.com/2026/01/31/u...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThis single payment is ~66x the total amount of “Biden family” revenues that the GOP and right-wing media spent years frothing over.” www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/ano...
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[Not loaded yet] - Reposted by Seth FinneganFederal paramilitaries running up on the rooftops to fire irritants and flash bangs down into a peaceable assembly full of little kids
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThe California State University system spent $16.9 million last year giving ChatGPT to all students, faculty, and staff. We are asking the CSU chancellor not to renew the contract with OpenAI when it expires. Anyone can sign the petition — link below!
- The CSU/OpenAI contract is set to expire June 30, 2026. Sign this petition: actionnetwork.org/petitions/cancel-ch… for the CSU NOT to renew the contract and to use the savings to protect jobs at CSU campuses facing layoffs.
- Reposted by Seth FinneganLawyers can't reach clients in ICE detention. I've heard it anecdotally, but scale of issue is horrifying. Bloomberg Law is a legal trade pub so many may miss this. Screenshot from their CA newsletter summarizes "bleak" situation for justice and rule of law. news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/l...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganEpstein is the most garish and harrowing manifestation of this but oligarchy makes life miserable in a thousand other ways. A core point of democracy is that no one should have so much power that they can make themselves everybody's problem. We should have a political party that believes that
- The Epstein emails should really end the debate over whether society should have billionaires. "Do you want there to be a class of people so powerful they can fuck your kids and no one will even try to do anything" seems like an easy sell if everyone in politics wasn't trying to get on their payroll
- Reposted by Seth FinneganScoop: Federal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/u...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThe very well-accepted term for "stripping the legal protections of a minority group and then sending a paramilitary force to carry them away" is "ethnic cleansing." They are planning to ethnically cleanse Springfield, Ohio.
- Reposted by Seth FinneganA new study from Anthropic finds that gains in coding efficiency when relying on AI assistance did did not meet statistical significance; AI use noticeably degraded programmers’ understanding of what they were doing. Incredible.
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThe senators voting to repeal the additional $75 billion in ICE funding represent a 54-46 majority of the American people, but the vote fails thanks to malapportionment and the filibuster docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThe Paleontological Research Institution invites applications from undergraduate students, graduate students, and post-doctoral researchers for the 2026 John W. Wells Grants-in-Aid of Research Program who want to visit PRI collections www.priweb.org/collections/... Deadline is March 2, 2026.
- Reposted by Seth FinneganThat witless piece is actually emblematic of a pretty common attitude: America is the Freedom™️ place, it would never elect a fascist! So that must not be what’s happening.
- Reposted by Seth FinneganI'm glad to share our new study on the nature of distributions of gaps in empirical geochronologies of geological section as a function of time scale. Measurements of proxies are highly uneven if measured through time. 1/5 www.nature.com/articles/s43... 🧪 #Geology ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio
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- Reposted by Seth FinneganRadley is so on the mark zeroing in on this: the creation of new "privacy" rights for federal police. The right to be anonymous to the public. The right not to have anyone know why they shot someone and tried to hide the evidence. "right to privacy" fascism addition.
- Reposted by Seth Finnegan"I'm coming to Boston and I'm bringing hell with me." --Homan in February "Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely." -- Tom Homan in March "I actually thought about getting up and throwing that man a beating right there in the middle of the room" -- Homan in July, referring to a D congressman
- Reposted by Seth Finnegan“If the 4th Amendment permits the government to tear down your door with nothing more than an administrative warrant, the 4th Amendment doesn’t exist.” @radleybalko.bsky.social on the framers’ fear of just what is happening in Minneapolis and historical echoes with colonial Boston under the British:
- Reposted by Seth FinneganOf the biggest scandals in US history just this week, I think I’d rank them: 1) Federal paramilitaries invade US city based on racist lies, murder US citizens 2) Slush fund for the president from stolen foreign resources held in Qatar 3) Whatever FBI and DNI are doing re: 2020 election in Georgia
- Reposted by Seth FinneganOssoff: "This is a seismic event. This should have people across the country absolutely shook. This is a huge deal. This is an FBI raid on the Fulton County Elections office ... This is a shot across the bow at the midterm elections. He tried to steal power when he lost it in 2020."
- Reposted by Seth FinneganIt is wild to me that a military incursion to steal another country’s resources so the president can have a personal slush fund in Qatar is like the 5th most scandalous thing currently happening.
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- Reposted by Seth FinneganI'm calling bullshit on the media narrative that Trump is "pivoting" and "deescalating" on his ICE raids. The threshold is this: As long as the military occupations and the treatment of US cities as enemy territory continue, there's no pivot. ICE out. 1/ (New piece) newrepublic.com/article/2057...
- Reposted by Seth FinneganWikipedia is one of the internet’s last outposts of open-source idealism. AI companies want to mine it into incoherent oblivion, and right-wing authoritarians are cheering them on. Thom Sliwowski describes this historical battle over knowledge writ large.
