Stacy Farina

@stacyfarina

Associate Prof of Biology at Howard University studying functional and evolutionary morphology #BlackLivesMatter (she/they) Fully funded MS Programs in EEB:

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Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· 6d

If you don't have time to read the full thing, here is my take-home message at the end.

The remarkable thing about the case of Cofnas is that, unlike Wilson, he’s not hiding his racism in the shadows. And the consequences for him are relatively minimal, although he might say otherwise. He is gaining in popularity and influence in right wing circles. Right now, hundreds of people are signing an open letter supporting him. He will easily find a way to monetize his outrageous views and gain followers. I wouldn’t be shocked if he joins up with Tucker Carlson. The New York Times interviewed Tucker in May, and the interview made major headlines because of Tucker’s gaffe when he claimed to have never called Trump the antichrist (spoiler: he did). However, I haven’t seen anyone mention this line from Tucker, in response to a question about his role in stoking racial divide: “I’m not saying race is immaterial. Race is important. Race is real. It’s not a social construct. It’s a biological reality.” Tucker made a point to inject this specific claim (which has been repeatedly debunked by scientists) into his response. In my opinion, his emphatic inflection demonstrated that this claim is central to his ideology, that he needed to stress for whoever may be listening.

Voting out MAGA alone will not solve the problem of biology being used to justify claims of inferiority of some people, although it’s an important step. We need to come together as a community, biologists in particular, and reject this ideology wholesale. We’ve shown that we can do it for creationism. Why not scientific racism? Why not eugenics? We can no longer stand by while biology is used to justify the brutalization of immigrants, Black and brown people, trans people, and disabled people. If you’re a scientist who wants to keep ideology out of science, this is your fight.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· 21d

I've got countless photos of these two cuddling, usually on my lap.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Jul 30

And look at these weirdos!

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Jul 30

Agreed! But I can't seem to get most people on board with goosefish being cute. Look at that smile!!

A happy, smiley goosefish who is super adorable. Photo credit to Andrew Powers.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Jul 17

Ask me again why I think the "longevity" movement is sus.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Mar 31

Looks like someone's been vibe coding. There's no way to remove or collapse the banner, it's just broken. And this is google's own browser (chrome), so no capability excuses. Just another broken tool for the enshitification gods.

Google's financial tool showing the dow jones tracker nearly completely obscured by a banner.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Feb 5

This is what the robot told me. Apparently you can't use "Save As" for version control reliably on a mac. I guess the better way to do it is to duplicate the file first.

Why Save As Mid‑Session Is Risky in Word on macOS
The short version
When you use Save As while a document is already open and actively being edited, Word does not always re‑bind its internal write stream to the new file immediately. On macOS, this can result in:

An early snapshot appearing saved
Later edits being written to a temporary or stale file handle
The final “real” file never being committed—without any error

That’s the class of failure you experienced.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Jan 12

An ICE agent in the process of beefing it on a patch of ice.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Nov 22

This is going to be a figure in someone's dissertation someday.

A "re-truth" by President Trump of a user named P78 saying "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!"

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Oct 18

Love the axolotl!! #NoKings #DC

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Sep 25

Google thinks its real this time.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Sep 23

This assignment for Comparative Anatomy has been a big success, so I'm sharing it here!

The two most successful living vertebrate groups, in terms of number of species, are Tetrapods (30,000+ species) and Teleosts (33,000+ species), with Tetrapods transitioning to land from their Sarcopterygian ancestors and Teleosts remaining in the water like their Actinopterygian ancestors.

Your assignment is to generate diagrams of skeletons using any AI image generator of your choosing*, one of a teleost and one of a tetrapod. Critique the images by describing three errors in each skeleton (totaling six errors) and explain what changes you could make to correct the errors. For each skeleton, one example should be from the cranial skeleton, one should be from the post-cranial axial skeleton, and one should be from the appendicular skeleton. When describing each of the six errors, make sure each description includes at least one name of a bone.

*If you prefer not to use AI, you can instead critique images of halloween animal skeletons by searching the web (e.g., enter into google images: "X Halloween skeleton" where X is the name of the animal). Common Halloween skeleton toys for teleosts are piranhas and anglerfish. For tetrapods, there are many options.

Your submission should include the two skeleton images and the text of your critique. For AI-generated images, they should be unique to you (do not use the same images as a classmate). For the halloween skeleton pictures, I understand that some students may use the same images by chance, which is fine.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Sep 11

Had to pause it to confirm the radius thing

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Sep 8

Howard University's faculty and @aaup.org members stand with our students!

September 8, 2025
Dear University Community,

On September 9 at 11am, students of Howard University are gathering on campus to demand an end to the deployment of the National Guard and ICE in DC and to urge the Howard University administration to “protect [student] constitutional rights by refusing to comply with occupying federal agencies.” Similar protests will be held at Georgetown, GWU, and American University throughout the day.

Here is a link to the student campaign: https://www.instagram.com/huwontcomply/

The Howard University AAUP is an advocacy chapter of the American Association of University Professors. We, the current members of the HU AAUP Chapter, are making this statement to express our solidarity with this effort and encourage the students to exercise their First Amendment rights. We share their concerns about their safety, privacy, and rights on campus and in DC. Some of our members will attend to show our solidarity for this important action.

Sincerely,
HU AAUP Chapter
Leadership and Membership

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Sep 8

Good to know that AI image generation hasn't (yet) conquered my "draw a vertebrate phylogeny" assignment.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Sep 7

Kitties on a lazy Sunday

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Aug 28

Pro-racism activism from EO Wilson. If you know anything about Rushton, you know that by 1989, it was very obvious to anyone with eyes that he was a raving racist.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Aug 19

Inverted the colors for printing

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Aug 7

It was a short note, so only 3 paragraphs. Here is the text.

The Trump administration’s executive order 14253 of 27 March 2025 aims to prevent “replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth” and criticizes an art exhibit that defines race as a social construct rather than a biological reality (1). This understanding of race, which the Trump administration considers a “divisive, race-centered ideology” (1), is supported by decades of research in social and biological sciences that have resulted in the consensus that the modern human species does not contain biological races (2–4). It is imperative that scientists publicly refute the president’s false claim. It is not divisive to illustrate examples of how scientific racism has harmed US society.
The biological definition of race has been applied to nonhuman species of organisms on the basis of physical, geographic, genetic, and phylogenetic similarities (5–7). However, no biological definition of race can be accurately applied to subgroups of humans, especially not subgroups based on social definitions of race (3, 8), which arbitrarily use physical, geographic, cultural, and linguistic criteria. This consensus is based upon many lines of genetic and evolutionary evidence, particularly data showing that the amount of genetic variation that occurs within human populations is much greater than genetic variation between populations, and that human populations cannot be considered evolutionarily unique lineages (6, 9). Human genetic variation is continuous and cannot be unambiguously divided into biological races. Two recent blue-ribbon panels initiated by the National Academy of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering have underscored the lack of concordance between social definitions of race and human biological variation (10, 11).

The biological definition of race has been applied to nonhuman species of organisms on the basis of physical, geographic, genetic, and phylogenetic similarities (5–7). However, no biological definition of race can be accurately applied to subgroups of humans, especially not subgroups based on social definitions of race (3, 8), which arbitrarily use physical, geographic, cultural, and linguistic criteria. This consensus is based upon many lines of genetic and evolutionary evidence, particularly data showing that the amount of genetic variation that occurs within human populations is much greater than genetic variation between populations, and that human populations cannot be considered evolutionarily unique lineages (6, 9). Human genetic variation is continuous and cannot be unambiguously divided into biological races. Two recent blue-ribbon panels initiated by the National Academy of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering have underscored the lack of concordance between social definitions of race and human biological variation (10, 11).
The administration’s attempts to resuscitate scientifically disproven schemes serve a political agenda. Scientific racism has been associated with US social institutions since the country’s founding and has caused great harm to millions of Americans (12). The artists, historians, scientists, and sociologists who have detailed the dynamics of this ideology are not the ones distorting the truth. It is the US president, in attempting to silence these scholars by executive fiat, who is perpetrating a “divisive, race-centered ideology.”

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Apr 25

Why TF am I getting this ad???

And ad for maximum security prison furniture

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Apr 20

A screenshot like this of Google AI was sent to me by someone claiming "Biden did it, too." The AI claimed that mass revoking of student visas started in 2023, but linked to the April 2025 stories. It was easy for me to replecate it. It's getting scary out there...

Screenshot of Google AI falsely claiming that mass student deportations started in 2023 instead of 2025

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Mar 7

Huge crowd at Stand up for Science

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Mar 4

Please consider joining me on Friday, wherever you are, for Stand Up for Science. I have been trying to get out ae much as possible. Every person makes a difference! Find your local rally here: standupforscience2025.org

Stacy Farina speaks at a microphone on February 17 in Annapolis for the 50501 protest. They are holding a sign that reads "Science without segregation" with Science written in rainbow, and the "i" in science is a black power fist dotted by the trans flag in a heart.

Stacy Farina on DC news at March 3 protest at NOAA. Their sign reads "Fish are friends and food, NOAA fisheries" with Bruce the Shark from Finding Nemo.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Feb 13

So we are already at the point that scientists are publicly saying that we should only be proud of research that doesn't support diverse students and participants? Cool... now I know where we stand.

A quote from the NPR article about Ted Cruz' list of research to ban: "It's ludicrous," says Joshua Weitz, a biologist at the University of Maryland whose research was not flagged but who has received NSF grants. "[Cruz] is using his position as a senator to make a big noise about fundamental research and mis-categorizing what's going on in the research and technology sector in this country. If one looks at this list, you find things that we should absolutely be proud of funding."

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Feb 8

LinkedIn Message for the former NIH Director www.linkedin.com/posts/monica...

LinkedIn Post by Monica Bertagnolli. LinkedIn doesn't allow copy paste, so see link for text.

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Feb 5

Pictured: Pathetic little boots. Literally gender affirming clothing (men like to be tall).

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Jan 22

I suppose all of the famous biologists who put their reputations on the line to sign that defense of EO Wilson's racism are feverishing writing a defense of DEI programs and trans rights, bc they clearly are willing to risk their careers for what they believe in... right? Right...?

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Nov 20

Hey, @npr.org, it is not good journalism to defend a quack, when the facts aren't on your side. RFK making measel vaccines optional will likely kill thousands of children, regardless of whether the vaccine is still available. We've seen the outbreaks in antivax communities. It is basic fact.

Popkin fears if Kennedy is confirmed as HHS head, "thousands of children may die of measles and many other infectious diseases for which children have been vaccinated for many decades." (Kennedy recently told NPR that he won't "take vaccines away from anybody.")

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Nov 14

This absolutely horrifying. The Republican Senators don't have enough energy to do their jobs??? Then they shouldn't be getting paid by the tax payer. WTF is the point of senate confirmation if the bar is so low that literally no one would be excluded.

A tweet from Robert Costa from CBS News that reads "What I’m hearing privately from a few key GOP senators: yes, they’d prefer to not have a messy fight over Gaetz. Not their favorite. But they also don’t have a lot of energy for pushing back. Trump runs the show, they say. If Gaetz can reassure them, they’re open to backing him."

Stacy Farina@stacyfarina· Nov 6

If anyone wants to see what I do, here are some slides from my most recent talk.