I don't know what the implications are yet of getting rid of this whole division. But it could have some meaningful downstream effects for farmers and ranchers at some point. Guess we'll find out.
Brandon Bishop
@brandontbishop.bsky.social
Seismologist, investigates the Andes and subduction zones, currently complexly affiliated with St. Louis University and looking for new projects. Replies to my geoscience posts that include LLM content get your account blocked.
She basically found out from the new organizational charts that did not include her entire division, well before the letter that told her she was losing her job. This comes some months after a new chief took over the agency — a guy who until recently worked for Turning Point USA.
My sister was informed today that the career she's devoted 21 years of her life to at the National Resources Conservation Service (under the USDA) as an ecological site specialist is over, as they are dissolving her position.
This past week, I put in measures (via Cloudflare) so that AI bots wouldn’t be able to scrape from my website, but still allows other sites, such as the Internet Archive to automatically archive my site. It can be done.
Shannon Mattern@shannonmattern.bsky.social · 2h ago"AI companies are sending aggressive, anonymous bots to scrape websites at a scale that strains servers... But not all bots are bad. Long before AI, automated tools... such as web crawlers have helped preserve the web, support research, improve security..."
I continue to be irritated that I, a person, have to assert my humanity when it's the AI bots that suck.
Shannon Mattern@shannonmattern.bsky.social · 2h ago"AI companies are sending aggressive, anonymous bots to scrape websites at a scale that strains servers... But not all bots are bad. Long before AI, automated tools... such as web crawlers have helped preserve the web, support research, improve security..."
My college’s HR is now requiring us to post a job ad to our internal site for any student hire. As in, I can’t just hire that RA I wanted, I’m supposed to vet a bunch of random applications.
Perhaps I’m not understanding how this works. But these are unimaginable sums. Let’s say Iran wants a 5% fee, the low end of the demand Trump is accepting. Approx. 20% of global oil production goes through the strait. So 5%, 20% … this means Iran takes a 1% cut off the top of the export …
Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · 13h agoReuters: Iran wants fees of 5%-7% of the price of cargo from ships using the strait; Oman wants 3%. "Making fees voluntary, at least nominally, could be a way out of the impasse, although an implied threat of Iranian attacks could mean shippers would be unlikely to risk transit without paying."
That's really not the message I want to hear from the NASA administrator, to be quite honest
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 15h agoNASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on rockets crashing into the moon: "It's not a big deal right now. The moon has clearly seen better days."
Results from the #paleostream! We started with two #MonkeyCruise pieces in honor of Sam Neill! Limnopithecus, Europolemur, Ceratocaudia and Phoebodus.
Most people think Hades is the ruler of the underworld in Greek myth, but, in actual ancient sources, Persephone holds greater prominence and authority. In this post, I argue that she is the underworld's main ruler. #GreekMyth #Hades #Persephone #classics talesoftimesforgotten.com/2026/08/05/i...
Is Persephone the Main Ruler of the Underworld in Greek Myth? - Tales of Times Forgotten
Most people who know about Greek myth think that Hades is the ruler of the underworld. This is not wrong per se; early Greek poems do describe Hades as “ruler of those beneath the earth.” But, for the...
talesoftimesforgotten.com
quote cont. "...The epistemic requirements of scholarly inquiry may be fundamentally at odds with profit-driven, black-boxed systems whose training data, architecture, and governance remain inaccessible to most researchers."
I learned recently that the Cornell Ornithology Lab employs 170 people. Just a vast amount of resources directed at a tiny number of species.
I was never involved in something that complex, but a friend was awarded a $750k equipment grant by NSF. They ended up as PI because two others changed universities. The equipment is controlled by them, though there are other profs on the grant. In total they control $1m+ in equipment.
And grant hit rates are quite low. Also, unless you have an equipment grant, the amount you can spend on equipment is quite limited.
Oh, absolutely. And development offices don't want to raise funds for things like maintenance contracts, even though they are eating up a larger portion of budgets, left and right.
Repair costs for our analytical equipment has gotten out of hand as well. Just a preventative maintenance service for one instrument was some 20k. That eats up a significant amount of our total repair budget for just upkeep--not even "fixing" anything...
Don't get me wrong... I'm grateful for any of the support we can get, but to have a funding org ask me to do a 5yr project in 2yrs on half the budget is kinda... damn. The only way for that to happen is the scope of what can be done gets dramatically cut.
There is not an industry on planet earth that could have gone >2 decades without a cost of living adjustment and be healthy. But that is what science is like now. I just got notice that some of our service costs are going up ~9%. Microscopes are up >300% in price over the last 2 decades. etc...
Antiques Roadshow https://xkcd.com/3281/ (alt-text too long for a BlueSky message, see image alt-text instead) Explain xkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3281
god damn useless moon isn’t even sexy anymore. let’s throw shit at it
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 15h agoNASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on rockets crashing into the moon: "It's not a big deal right now. The moon has clearly seen better days."
The oddest fight happening right now in my mentions....
I have zero interest in teaching a machine anything about subduction. Why the fuck would I want to? Why the fuck would anyone want to?
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 7h ago“Once AI has ‘squeezed out’ all the expert data from humans, it won’t need any more input from humanity. That is the time AIs will start just self-evolving by themselves. Right now, the human is the bottleneck.”
hey, uh, can you help me and tell me what you see on the screen underneath the words "United States" when you click on this link? ibqcjb.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
The Department of Natural and Physical Sciences at Graceland University seeks candidates for a Tenure Track Assistant Inorganic Chemistry Professor position to start January 1, 2026. The candidate sho...
ibqcjb.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com
who is your least favorite senator and why? mine is probably mike lee and his fanatical quest to privatize public lands
American 盐铁论 time. For surprisingly similar reasons for the original 盐铁论.
I am... let us say ambivalent... about America taking a step back from international affairs due to a hypothetical reduction in US military expenditures. Those expenditures have mostly not been well used in for most of my lifetime.
Somehow things that would have been a background gag in a Verhoeven movie are now just real
