Bernadette Quint (she/her)

Lab geek turned novelist 🌈

[Josh Moser @TheMozKnowz]

Erling Haaland the last Norwegian player to leave the stadium. Stayed behind until 9:30 PM local time to take photos with family and other fans. He became one of the most beloved players in the sport by Americans during this tournament. #worldcup2026

[Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran]

Yesterday the CDC finally updated its data on the outbreak of diarrhea caused by the Cyclospora parasite, which has affected thousands of people.

So far, cases have been confirmed in 31 states.

[Lou Diamond Phillips @LouDPhillips]

“When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”

[Raphousetv (RHTV) MEDIA 🔌 @raphousemedia]

Kid Created his very own Language “creekage” so he Could talk to his friends😳

[ᴅᴏᴏᴍᴇɴɪᴄ @dinosaur_info]

I'm going to burst into tears

[dank @cptdankkk]

Jaylen Brown says he used the NBA Players Association instead of hiring an agent for the NBA Draft because they're paid to help players

“When I entered the draft, I didn't have an agent. I'm probably the highest picked selected ever that didn't enter with an agent. When I was evaluating, I went through the whole process and sat with a bunch of people, and what they was offering I ain't really need. It was kind of already slotted, so I leaned on the union a lot more”

“A lot of the agents came and was like, ‘Yeah, we'll move you to L.A. We'll get you a trainer, put some money in your pocket,’ and I was like, ‘For what? Do I gotta give the money back?’ They was like, ‘Nah, but standard agent fee is 4%.’ I'm starting to do the math, and a house, car, and all that, whatever he was offering, is a lot less than what 4% would have been”

“Long story short, the math wasn't mathing for me. I ended up being the third pick. I think because I came in like that, a lot of people, I think it was the agents, they tried to slander my name a little bit, put it in the media that he's too this, he's too that. Ended up backfiring. It all worked out in the end”

“With the union, we pay dues. All the players in the NBA pay dues. We all pay like $10,000 out of our salary that goes to hiring lawyers, hiring staff, CEO, everything that you need to lead a company that works for us. So all of that is our resources that we all pay for, that we agree to. Once I learned that, I just started using it”

“I'm talking about you can get private investigations done. They give referrals for financial advisors. All type of stuff. Foundation wise, health insurance, whatever you need. They have a liaison that's paid to make sure that you get it done. So I put it on their desk like, ‘I need you to get this done.’ And they do because that's their job”

[Jerome Adams @JeromeAdamsMD]

Ground hog day, but again it seems poor timing (along with measles, Ebola, screwworm, bird flu, hantavirus, and more) for DOGE to have cut 25% of the CDC staff who normally respond to this sort of thing… 😳

[MyRadar Weather @MyRadarWX]

One year ago, an incredible "gigantic jet" – an extremely-rare type of upper-atmospheric lightning – was photographed from the International Space Station. This was from the same storm system that would eventually cause the devastating Camp Mystic flooding in Texas.

This is the clearest photo we have EVER seen of a gigantic jet from above.

Nichole Rhea Ayers is a major in the U.S. Air Force and a NASA astronaut. She launched to the International Space Station as a pilot of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission on March 14, 2025. The crew returned to Earth via a splashdown offshore of San Diego on August 9, 2025.

On Thursday morning, July 3, 2025, she captured an unbelievable photo of an ultra-rare GIANT JET. The International Space Station was over Mexico and the southern U.S. at the time.
It looks like the instigating thunderstorm was happening somewhere near Sabinas in Coahuila, Mexico around 1:30 a.m. Central time.

Gigantic jets are a subset of “blue jets,” which themselves are a type of TLE — or transient luminous event, often referred to as “upper-atmospheric lightning.” There are different types of TLEs, including red “sprites,” “elves” and blue jets.

Blue jets are the rarest. Elves and sprites occur high above thunderstorms, but jets bridge a key gap between a thunderstorm and the stratosphere high above. Sometimes they even reach up to the base of the mesosphere — the height at which meteors burn up!

They begin as a cloud-to-air discharge that emanates out the top of thunderstorms, but immediately grow to MASSIVE sizes — up to 30 miles tall! They shoot upwards at speeds of 6 to 90 miles PER SECOND, but only last two or three tenths of a second. They are bright blue (almost like a neon sign, since they are plasma after all). The blue color is believed to stem from “excited” nitrogen.

It’s believed that blue jets start as an ordinary lightning strike in the top of thunderclouds, where abundant positive charge is present. Sometimes there’s a negative charge in the clear air above. Instead of the negative charge flowing down to balance out the positive, sometimes the positive shoots upwards into the clear negative skies above. The result? A positive discharge that propagates upwards.

Gigantic jets are even more spectacular. Emerging research suggests they begin as a discharge between negative charge in the mid-levels of the cloud and the positive tops of clouds. That leads to a *negative* “leader” of electricity that shoots upwards and escapes the cloud before it can actually discharge and “balance out” charge within the cloud.

You can tell this one was a “gigantic jet” because of the reddish tops that resembles the stem of a carrot. That’s a sign the gigantic jet reached even higher altitudes — perhaps 50 to 60 miles above the ground.

Atmospheric electrodynamicists (the fancy term for folks who study lightning) are learning about all sorts of never before-discovered lightning discharges. Most of what we know comes from photos like this! In recent years, scientists have coined new terms for curious, fleeting discharges — “trolls”, “pixies”, “ghosts” and “gnomes”.

The existence of upper-atmospheric wasn’t known until July 6, 1989, when a researcher named R.C. Franz left a camera running overnight to capture the night sky. For decades, pilots had reported seeing strange red and blue flashes above thunderstorms, but it wasn’t until Franz obtained photographic evidence that scientists were able to delve deeper into the mystery.

Nowadays, most of what we know comes from photographers who happen to get lucky — especially since the flashes usually last only a couple milliseconds. Ayers’ photo is truly a one-of-a-kind capture that will hopefully shed more light on how TLEs behave.

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

"History can be written of monsters, and in them," reads China Miéville's "Theses on Monsters." https://t.co/Eq9dVd4cCf

[Arnold Schwarzenegger @Schwarzenegger]

Happy Independence Day!

There’s a story from the end of the Revolutionary War I want to tell as we celebrate America’s 250th Birthday, and it’s one everyone in the world can learn from.

George Washington, at that moment, after commanding the American forces to victory, was the most powerful man in the new country. Many people talked about making him King of America.

Across the ocean, King George was sitting with an American painter, and asked what he thought Washington would do now that the war was ending. The painter said he believed he would go back to his farm.

The King said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

As the war officially ended, Washington came to speak to Congress and said, “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of Action.” He returned his commission they’d given him in 1775 - after more than 8 years of leading the Americans to victory without pay, and he was home at Mount Vernon for Christmas.

Of course, he was elected as our first President a few years later, and after two terms, showed the same selflessness again when he willingly gave up his power and went back to Mount Vernon again.

That’s true greatness. He had all the power in the world. But power, alone, does not make you great.

Washington’s greatness came from being a true servant - to a cause much bigger than himself. His greatness was his complete lack of selfishness.

The whole story of American Independence is a story of selflessness. It’s a story of people who set their self-interest aside and worked for each other.

We’ve all heard the line about “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

Apparently, Ben Franklin might have actually never said that.

But that’s fine, because the same mentality is right there in the last line of the Declaration of Independence, published on this day 250 years ago:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

We mutually pledge to each other.

No one was in this alone. No one was in it for themselves. This was a group of people with different backgrounds who were in it for each other.

Today is a reminder: greatness comes from what we do for each other, never what we do for ourselves.

That’s a lesson that applies no matter what country you call home.

It’s a lesson that doesn’t require any law passed by a politician, because, let’s be honest, if you’re waiting for selfless politicians, I really hope you are not holding your breath.

All of us have the power to be there for the people around us. For our families and friends. For our neighbors. For everyone.

All of us can reach for greatness.

It’s as simple as looking beyond yourself, seeing past the mirror, picking your eyes up from your phone, and pledging to be there for each other.

Happy Fourth. May you all find your own version of greatness today by lifting each other up.

Lift up your neighborhood. Lift up America. Lift up the World.

[Jessie Singer @JessieSingerNYC]

all the celebrities barricaded together in a giant arena during a historic blackout-risk heat wave IS a good set up for a dystopian sci-fi novel

[Carolyn Barber, MD @cbarbermd]

An active-duty Air Force Major was arrested at the U.S. Capitol after calling for Trump’s impeachment.

Jason Watson claimed the administration’s actions in Venezuela, Iran, and immigration enforcement violated the Constitution and said Trump and JD Vance “must be impeached, convicted, and removed.”

The Air Force says it is investigating.

[Croatian Football  @CroatiaFooty]

🇭🇷 🐐 From a scared little boy who used football as an escape during a war.

To arguably the greatest midfielder to ever grace the football pitch. And for many of us, it's not a argument.

[Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA]

Something Bill Nye told me that night about Jaylen: “He’s trying to get the kids in the communities that he plays in to embrace school and academic achievement, especially science,” Nye said. “It’s really gratifying that he wanted to meet me and share this vision of a better tomorrow through science education.”

https://t.co/3Diqrzyh8F

[Tina Smith @SenTinaSmith]

I know the President is flying to North Dakota today to visit the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library… but it should be noted this visit comes only two months after he ignored Roosevelt’s descendants who asked him to save the Boundary Waters.

Roosevelt was the first American President to protect the Boundary Waters back in 1909. He was a staunch conservationist and thought of public lands as the birthright of every single American, and he was a huge Minnesota enthusiast (below you’ll see Roosevelt delivering his iconic “Speak softly and carry a big stick” speech at the 1901 Minnesota State Fair, just four days before President McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt became Commander in Chief).

President Roosevelt’s descendants wrote: “Theodore Roosevelt was active in preserving our greatest wilderness terrain on both the East and West coasts - it became one of the greatest enduring legacies of his life. It is now time for all of you to get in the Arena with him. We implore you to do your own parts to ensure TR's common-sense approach to conservationism is as strong today as it was more than a century ago. There is no better way to do this than to preserve the greatest wilderness terrain in the middle of America's Heartland: The Boundary Waters.”

Yet Trump signed the legislation selling out the Boundary Waters two months later.

[Strong Women, Strange Worlds @StrangeWorlds2]

Every book has its time.

[Washington State Cougars @WSUCougars]

A Patch with Purpose, Next is Now.

@WSUPullman @WSU_Cougar_Pres

#GoCougs

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

The Trump administration just killed a federal program that hundreds of small farmers relied on to survive, and the damage is already landing.

The program paid farmers full market price for their crops, then routed that fresh food to food banks and the families who needed it. 

In California alone, it supported roughly 870 farms across more than 50 counties, moved 23 million pounds of food, and put over $60 million directly into local economies. For many, it was the most reliable buyer they had.

Then the White House pulled the plug, right as farmers were buying seeds for spring. Contracts already in motion were canceled mid-delivery. Three years of funding these growers had planned around vanished overnight.

Without those federal dollars, the future is more uncertain than ever for these farms and the millions of hungry families they feed. 

That is the pattern. Slash a program that feeds seniors and supports farmers, save almost nothing, and call it winning.
https://t.co/vz4VR896Mm

[matt bernstein @mattxiv]

in a time of unimaginable cruelty towards people living with AIDS, when nurses would leave trays of food on the floor outside their hospital rooms, princess diana transformed public perception by simply hanging out with them and treating them like people

[#WOMENSART @womensart1]

Susan Point is a contemporary Musqueam Coast Salish artist from Canada, who works in the Coast Salish tradition #WomensArt