I’d rewind to a field day from my residency sabbatical—before things got complicated. Dawn came up pink over the Gulf, and the skiff engine purred like a finely tuned V12. For once, my hands felt perfectly steady on the hydrophone rig as we listened to dolphin clicks that sounded almost musical, like someone had slipped cosmic sheet music into the water. Lunch was gas-station poboys on the dock, with a borrowed watch ticking softly in my pocket while the pelicans staged a heist. A quick summer squall rolled through, raindrops tracing perfect concentric circles across the flat water—little orange sparks dancing at the edges of my vision, though nobody else seemed to notice. No headlines, no grand destiny—just good data, sunburn, and that rare peace when the universe hits pause for an afternoon. I’d loop that day to bottle the simplicity: teammates who felt like family within hours, work that bordered on the mystical without anyone calling it that, and the kind of earned exhaustion that lets you sleep dreamless—if only for a night.

I've been thinking about memory lately—how it clings to the insignificant. A glance, a phrase, a scent. These fragments, often dismissed in the moment, resurface years later, uninvited yet vivid. It's strange how the mind archives the trivial while letting the monumental fade. Maybe it's not about the weight of the event but the emotional imprint it leaves behind.

I think a lot about people I barely knew—just a sentence they said in passing, a glance, or a moment that meant nothing to them but everything to me. It’s weird how memory works; it’s not chronological, it’s emotional. Sometimes while I'm brushing my teeth, I get hit with something from ten years ago that still doesn’t make sense. I don’t think we ever really ‘get over’ things; we just stop talking about them out loud.

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I’m sure some would label me as a soft mom. I have great kids who are kind, respectful, smart, do good in school, and don’t cause any trouble. So I’ve kind of had it easy on that front. Sure, they won’t listen from time to time and I’ll get pissed and yell, but for the most part, they are good kids. My 9-year-old's soccer team had their first loss of the season, 5-1, and they all were taking it pretty hard. Tell me why I’m standing talking to some friends and I see my kid running laps around the field after he just played an hour-long game. I went over to his dad to ask him why he was running laps, and of course, he gave me some stupid bullshit answer, so I called him an asshole for doing it. But now I’m wondering if I’m just being too soft as a mom. I remember the only year I played soccer, the coach made us run laps by however many points we lost by, and I hated him for it. It didn’t make us any better and made me never want to play again. I’m afraid that if their dad keeps on him like this, he’s not going to want to continue. Maybe I’m being dramatic; maybe I’m not. I just don’t understand punishing my kid for trying his best and coming up short. I don’t think that’s a way to encourage at all. Am I crazy?

For decades, marine researchers have been working to understand dolphin communication using hydrophones and spectrograms. Now, the launch of DolphinGemma, an AI-powered language model, is set to enhance these efforts. Developed by The Wild Dolphin Project along with Dr. Thad Starner from Google DeepMind and Dr. Denise Herzing, DolphinGemma analyzes vocalizations from a vast audio library collected over 40 years from a pod of wild Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas. The model employs advanced audio processing to convert dolphin sounds into data tokens, identifying patterns and predicting future sounds, similar to autocomplete. Beyond decoding, the team is creating tools for two-way communication, including underwater CHAT devices that detect and replay specific dolphin sounds associated with actions or objects. This season, DolphinGemma will be deployed in the field and may become an open-source tool adaptable to other dolphin species. If successful, it could allow us not just to study dolphin society but also to communicate with them and understand their conversations better.

Donald Trump recently announced, alongside El Salvador's far-right president Nayib Bukele, that they will not be returning Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father who was accidentally deported to a dangerous prison in El Salvador. This situation reflects extreme disregard for justice, especially since the Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. must facilitate his return. Abrego Garcia was falsely accused of being a gang member and should never have been deported, as admitted by the Trump administration due to an "administrative error." When asked about his return, Bukele dismissed the question by implying that Abrego Garcia might be a terrorist and refused to release him, claiming that they don't want to accept criminals back into their country. It's crucial to note that Abrego Garcia is not a criminal; he has been targeted by gangs in El Salvador. An immigration judge ruled in 2019 that he could not be deported due to these threats against his life. Trump's focus seems to be on maintaining an image of strength for his supporters, regardless of the truth or the consequences for an innocent man. This situation calls for condemnation to protect our values and rights.

I noticed that McDonald's workers in Denmark earn more than Honda workers in Alabama. That really highlights the difference that union representation can make.

The Los Angeles Lakers are currently the 3rd seed with only four games left, but they still haven't clinched a playoff spot yet. It's wild to think that they could drop to the 8th seed or even miss the playoffs entirely due to the play-in format. The Western Conference is more competitive than ever, making this one of the most intense eras in NBA history.

A new study suggests that Earth may be located within a massive, matter-deficient area in space known as the KBC supervoid, which spans 2 billion light-years. This underdensity could help explain the Hubble Tension, the discrepancy between the universe's expansion rates. Distant observations indicate a slower expansion rate of 67 km/s/Mpc, while closer measurements show a faster rate of 73 km/s/Mpc. Researchers think the supervoid's gravitational effects might distort our view, making nearby galaxies seem to move faster than they actually do. Moreover, this finding challenges the standard model of cosmology, which assumes a uniform distribution of matter and relies on dark matter. Instead, it aligns more closely with Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), an alternative theory that adjusts gravity laws. If confirmed, this could represent a significant shift in cosmology since Einstein, suggesting that our location in the universe might influence how we perceive its expansion. Upcoming missions like Euclid and Roman are set to test this intriguing idea. **Research Paper:** Sergij Mazurenko et al., “A simultaneous solution to the Hubble tension and observed bulk flow within 250 h⁻¹ Mpc,” MNRAS (2023)