youtube.com/watch?v=ns3y.... Incredible duet, Rufus Wainwright and Sara Bareilles.

See my feature on "Best books on the Aztecs" on @five_books . I went with some oldies but goodies. fivebooks.com/best-books/a...

🧵The cosmogram crowd are at it again. Sigh. Cool new site, Aguada Fenix, is interpreted by Takeshi Inomata et al as a big cosmogram. The article is here: science.org/doi/10.1126/..., with a journalism article in LiveScience here: livescience.com/archaeology/.... What's wrong with that? 1/6

This sounds like a good rationale for the tremendous success of cities, all over the world, for the past 6,000 years. "Cities are cool and lots of people enjoy living in them". Yes, indeed.

MDPI, not only predatory, but clueless. "Dear Dr. Smith - We contacted you 31 Oct, regarding a Special Issue, "Inositol Phosphates in Health & Disease, 2nd Ed." in the "Biomolecules". Based on your expertise in this field, we think you could make an excellent contribution."

#joselobo on ipcc, policy advise, and history grounded urban science #mpigea

Indiana University has fired the staff director of the student newspaper, after disputes in which university leadership tried to pressure him to prevent students from publishing news.

My Aztlander zoom lecture on Calixtlahuaca is now on YouTube: youtu.be/ROBc5t2QZGo?...

Kino in the afternoon sun

Nap in the sun

Wow, Unforgotten is a 2025 Bronze Winner, Prix de la Photographie de Paris - UNFORGOTTEN: ANCIENT CITIES FROM A DISTANT PAST px3.fr/winners/px3/... Maybe this was because of my excellent essay. Ha ha, in my dreams. Bill Frej's photos of sites are gorgeous, well worth a look.

Went hiking in the woods near Pine, AZ, saw some javelinas, and had a birthday picnic at a state park. Home now and tired.

The cactus is blooming this morning. I can’t seem to upload the video of bees having a good time in the flowers

I'm giving a zoom lecture on our excavations at Calixtlahuaca, for the Aztlander group. Monday, Sep 15, 8:00 pm Eastern time. Contact the Aztlander folks, or email me, if you want a link.

Lots of small ceramic figurines from Yautepec. For some reason, many authors insist that anything anthropomorphic must be a deity. But when they wanted to depict a deity, they included deity attributes so there was no doubt. See my paper on Aztec domestic ritual: www.academia.edu/13087249/_Do...

I am an archaeologist at Arizona State University. I am into premodern cities, comparisons with cities today, methodological rigor, Aztecs, and Kino the dog. I have found Bluesky to be boring, although there are a few feeds here I like to follow. But I post more at the other place.

New paper, me and a zillion coauthors, Alissa Ruth is the lead and organizer, "Online student engagement in social science research laboratories: Expert advice on the opportunities and challenges." I guess I am one of the experts. www.cur.org/journal-arti...

Some images of the Calixtlahuaca bird. The city was originally called Matlatzinco, but the conquering Mexica gave it the name Calixtlahuaca. The bird may signal the name of the ruling dynasty.

Is there a term for making up fake hypotheses to make one's work sound scientific? These authors make up three bogus hypotheses about Aztec whistles - hypotheses that no one has ever proposed, & suggest they are important research issues. 10.1038/s44271-024-00157-7 Weird. Photo is Yautepec whistles.

After Kino swims in the pool, we keep him off the bed. But he finds another soft place to snooze after dinner.

Me and Kino, out for a walk.

Afternoon sunbathing

Some doggie friends from our time in Cuernavaca. The girls would carry these guys around in a market bag.

#internationaldogday. Kino is all in.

"Because of the symbiotic relationship between academic institutions and the scholarly publishing industry, the context surrounding scholarly publishing both defines and limits what it must be, therefore constraining change to incremental steps that never result in substantive alteration."

Sunrise over the Superstition Mountains today

The fun thing about managed retreat is: if you don't do it, it very quickly becomes unmanaged retreat.

Cool that a book I contributed to is a winner of the New Mexico Book Association's 2025 award for book production and design, in the Scholarly/Technical category. The photos are incredible, and my essay isn't too bad ("Late Lessons from Early Cities"). www.nmbookassociation.org/2025.html

The Director of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center sesync.org, reviewed a book from a conference sponsored & hosted by that organization (ihopenet.org/2022/07/18/n...), in Science. science.org/doi/10.1126/.... Not surprisingly, it was a glowing review. Sounds fishy to me.

Went to a nice memorial event for Cindy’s cousin, Patrick Shoemaker. Our host brews beer, and he made a special Shoemaker stout, Pats favorite kind of beer.

Is this a black billed magpie? They are all over the place near our hotel near Denver

This stone relief, now in a chapel wall in Calixtlahuaca, gives the year in both the Christian calendar ("1563 año") and the Aztec year-count (six reed). Its a late chapel (18th C?), so it was clearly taken from elsewhere. I'm giving a zoom lecture on Calix Sept 15.

Tldr, it was Napoleon

Critics of #ColossalBio are not jealous curmudgeons; we object to their hubris and PR campaigns that are a naked pursuit of notoriety and profit, at the expense of intellectual honesty; the biotech maybe be transformational, but their marketing is a classic hype cycle built on a foundation of lies…

“The dire wolf fits the Jurassic Park model of de-extinction beautifully. It is clearly for spectacle” Colossal’s bold de-extinction claims have drawn criticism from many scientists, but the billion-dollar firm is not backing down go.nature.com/458Q4L2

Kino had fun at Camp Bow Wow today.

It didn't occur to me till just how much Kino looks like our excavation pup in Yautepec in 1993.

Working on a ceramic report from my early research on Aztec-Period Morelos. Here is a polychrome serving bowl (Xochicalco) a cacao goblet (Coatetelco) and a pulque pitcher fr an undetermined site. Most of my work is with fragmentary sherds, and these whole vessels help identify the sherds. 1/

You’ll all have seen the many announcements and PR pieces from #ColossalBiosciences. There are reasons to be concerned about the general message promoted by CB, one being that it is seen >by some< (US politicians in particular) as meaning that we can devalue conservation. A 🧵 1/n

Kino is enjoying the morning sun

Another use of the phrase "low-density urbanism" without calculating a density! Aargh! journals.plos.org/plosone/arti.... This is an excellent paper about REGIONAL population. There are no data on the population density of individual settlements. So, why do they say this is "low-density urbanism"?

“Red before black, back on track. Black before red, end up dead.” Hope that helps 👍🏻

This short video by @weatherwest.bsky.social provides a clear explanation of the meteorological factors contributing to this heartbreaking disaster and how climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of heavy rain.

True story.

One of the reasons im getting bored with Bluesky www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...