This is maddening esp. on top of what they're doing in Big Bend. The first wall is bad enough; an extra one behind it seems like a way to keep money flowing to contractors and flip a big middle finger to our national parks. I take a class to this exact spot for the unique biodiversity found here.

Organ Pipe monument closes roads to clear path for 2nd border wall construction

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument closes roads during work on the second border wall, as a tree-sitting protest continues in Lochiel.

tucson.com

Crazy to feel an actual earthquake in Florida a few minutes ago.

Actual botanists don't feel like they need to lie to their neighbors about their jobs.

Gabe Ortíz@tusk81.bsky.social · 7mo ago

“Minneapolis ICE shooter told longtime neighbor he was a botanist,” @people.com reports. "He said he worked with plants, as a botanist, so he lied about what he did," she said. people.com/ice-agent-jo...

Camellia season.

This is probably a minor thing to fixate on in the whole mess of nonsense that was Jurassic World: Rebirth, but I can't get over the Dunkleosteus head pulled up by fisherman in the beginning. Where the hell did inGen or whoever get its DNA from? 🧵 1/

We must all hang together or we will all hang separately.

Matthew J Kuiper@matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · last yr.

In which a Yale prof calls for jettisoning humanities to make way for science-only universities. “scientists… are being punished for the sins of [humanities scholars] because we all live under one roof. I cannot see a compelling reason for our continued cohabitation.”

Thunderstorm got me trapped in my little greenhouse with two dogs and a beer.

Atala, Eumaeus atala, at Selby Botanical Garden in Sarasota. Larvae feed on cycads!

"If you don't know anything, you don't have a problem." Measuring biodiversity and ecosystem health is crucial to knowing how rapidly decline is taking place and if anything we are doing is helping to mitigate our impact. If this passes, we will be flying blindly into oblivion.

Meade Krosby@meadekrosby.bsky.social · last yr.

The USGS Ecosystems Mission Area (EMA) leads federal research on species & ecosystems and houses the Climate Adaptation Science Centers. OMB spokesperson to NPR: EMA is "obviously irrelevant to science and is exactly the kind of waste President Trump ran on rooting out of the federal government."

As a Norm, this is officially the end of an era.

Jacob T. Levy@jacobtlevy.bsky.social · last yr.

"It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear." RIP, George Wendt www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXED...

I love this account.

Coral City Camera@coralcitycamera.bsky.social · last yr.

The crevalle jacks were really booking it today 🐟🐟🐟💨💨💨 #jackcrevalle #jack #school #bookingit #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #biscaynebay #bfi #noaa #aoml #coralcity #civicpridethroughbiodiversity #glennnevis #coralcityfoundation #ccf #kbcf #keybiscaynecommunityfoundation

That’s neat.

Daily Maverick@dailymaverick.co.za · last yr.

Adult Lego has taken the world by storm, from Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night to Harry Potter sets and the increasingly popular Lego botanical collections. There seems to be a Lego set for everyone. Now there may be a special Cape Floral Kingdom set joining the collection.

this is the way

Gabe Lerman ・ラーマン ゲイブ@gabelerman.bsky.social · last yr.

I've used tenbluelinks.org to great success

iNat says this is Ammophila pictipennis. How does this waist make any sense?

NEW: DeSantis directed the University of Florida to cancel a nearly-complete search for its next dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences — because the governor believed the finalists were not in alignment with the state's opposition to DEI

U. of Florida Calls Off Dean Search After DeSantis Intervenes

A spokesperson said the governor’s office stepped in after a right-wing group posted videos of the finalists on social media and claimed they were “radical progressives with disdain for Florida’s DEI ...

chronicle.com

Merch for UF’s national championship, which was played in San Antonio, Texas. Whoever chose the background was absolutely trolling this botanist. Saguaro-itis strikes again.

Efficiency.

Opinion | Why Did Elon Musk Go After Bunkers Full of Seeds? (Gift Article)

Gene banks are like a survivalist cache: our nation’s safeguard against all future challenges to growing the food we need.

nytimes.com

You can’t sell timber if no one is buying. This is like opening up drilling in the arctic. No one is bidding. Sure they’ll sell a little timber, but it will be taxpayer subsidized timber.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · last yr.

President Trump has directed federal agencies to examine ways to bypass endangered species protections and other environmental regulations to ramp up logging across 280 million acres of national forests and other public lands.

This is a bigger issue than people realize. Not just jobs lost. But their families losing benefits. Landlords losing tenants. Cities and towns losing revenue. This is how recessions start Ready Fire Aim is no way to govern.

A Siegel@asiegel.bsky.social · last yr.

More accurate, fewer words; "There are plenty of contractors going under". A friend furloughed 75% of staff (furlough w/paying for health insurance for three months), 50% exec pay cut, 25% rest of staff to keep as many people w/salary. PS: Wasn't 18F a government office, not a contractor.

Quote post with a picture you took in a National Park. Some UF Biology students who journeyed from Florida to study the biodiversity of the desert southwest- here completing an incredible hike of Arch Canyon, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. This class doesn’t happen w/o our public lands!

Matt Johnson, PhD@mossmatters.bsky.social · last yr.

Quote post with a picture you took in a National Park. Team of grad and undergrad researchers collecting plants at Guadalupe Mountains National Park, to study changes in plant genetics and ecophysiology over the 50 years since the Park opened. May 2024. (see also my profile picture)

Hammock season.

The point is this: Scientists are accused of being partisan. I say embrace it. We're not lying for political reasons. We are defending science as a way of knowing, and as a humanitarian endeavor to help even those groups that are disenfranchised by people in power. If that's partisan so be it.

So it turns out that compared to centralized distribution of digital information on the web, printed material in libraries provided a kind of distributed defense against the casual whims of an authoritarian government aiming to rewrite history.

Imagine if you're a graduate student who knows they are funded on a federal grant, but doesn't understand the distinction between disbursed and undisbursed funds. You might reasonably think you won't get paid next week even if there is a year or more of your support in a university account already.

Ethan White@ethanwhite.weecology.org · 2y ago

If you run a university research lab please reach out to your folks today to explain any impacts the OMB grant pause memo will have on them, both short-term (will they get paid next week) and medium-term. Communication with your folks is important even if you're still figuring out the details.

Phyllochrysa may have also been mimicking Selaginella, which was later identified from the Myanmar amber by Schmidt et al, 2022. This is a diagram I made for a blog in 2019, so it needs updating. Also, just a note: Myanmar amber is ethically horrible, and studies on it should no longer be supported.

Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸@paleobyliam.bsky.social · 2y ago

Phyllochrysa huangi • Liverwort Mimesis in a Cretaceous Lacewing Larva (Liu et al. 2018) Illustration by Dinghua Yang #paleoart #paleoentomology #sciart

For what it’s worth, North America has a native caffeine producing plant, Yaupon holly, a close relative of Yerba Mate. It grows abundantly as an understory tree in the southeast.

Yaupon tea - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Hmm… I just realized sometimes they use Parafilm for bananas.