I genuinely love this. Astronauts, like kids, know that you do not leave your stuffies behind.

Since it's Tsunami Preparedness Week, I'll share that I got to participate in a real-life tsunami evacuation in Hawaii last year. We had a 5 hour warning, so plenty of time to get through the traffic and reach a safe place. It was an experience!

CHRISTINA KOCH GREETING HER DOG AFTER RETURNING FROM THE MOON IM GONNA CRYYY 😭😭😭

After decades (!), there is finally a permanent nuclear waste storage site, in Finland. Deep in Mesoproterozoic rocks (migmatite-gneiss for those who care ⚒️), hundreds of meters below ground, there is finally a safe resting place for these radioactive byproducts. 🧪 www.pbs.org/newshour/sci...

This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew. Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right. Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman

Ever wondered why North is at the top of our maps? If you're assuming there are logical, scientific, Nature-driven reasons for it - yeah, me too. In fact, they're often whimsical, arbitrary or just plain ridiculous! Hold onto your hat. This may turn your world upside-down. 1/

😃Made my Day 😃

If all goes according to plan, in a few hours, a crew of astronauts will begin a journey that will take them on a loop around the moon. Here's a video that NASA put together to help people visualize the journey through space, first orbiting the earth before looping around the moon and flying home 🔭

In honor of (hopefully) today's launch of NASA's Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon in more than 50 years, here is a to-scale graphic of exactly how far away the Moon actually is. (Click image to expand.) You could fit about 30 Earths between the Earth and the Moon!

Given that ....'looks around at everything' No April Fool's today please.

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When you're in Tucson at UA and the Elite 8 game is about to start.... you go to the watch party.

It's no wonder that people in the past, walking in the dark woods at night, came up with so many fascinating ideas of the world around them.

I enjoyed reading this article. In part because over the years I've done work at most of the mines discussed. A lot of that work was directly related to water/groundwater.

A good article on the supply and demand issues for copper. It doesn't cover the history of destruction of mines and the very valid reasons that it takes so long to permit a new mine. I'm very conflicted on this - I've spent a lot of time working at copper mines, I've seen the good and bad.

Also, I learned about the Yurok Tribe's live condor webcam, as part of their program to restore condors to the region. Great views of these huge birds! (Condors are carrion eaters. The cams are focused on feeding locations.) www.yuroktribe.org/yurok-condor...

🎶I like loess butts and I cannot lie...🎶 Had to be done 😆 #loess #sorrynotsorry

Extreme (relative) heat. Right now it's 81, which would be a warm day in June and beats the monthly record by over 10 degrees. But it also started out at 27 degrees today. So, the temp swing today has been 54 degrees (so far - it'll probably get hotter). and the relative humidity right now is 6%

Lousy Smarch weather

This is hands down the best thing that you will read all day. And if someone doesn’t put out a t-shirt that has a picture of a dolphin on it with the caption, “You don’t question Gerald”, then what are we even doing here?

Apropos of nothing... Here is a nice video describing Project Plowshare... the investigation of using nuclear explosives for peaceful benefit - digging big holes, making oil flow more freely, etc. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYeK...

Enjoying the lawn at spring training.

My semi-annual viewing. ...Arizona share.google/eT7dixuDsvBi...

A young American, a younger Mexican, and a grizzled Aussie set out from Chihuahua in a single-cab, 4 on the floor, truck for the high Sierra Madre near the border of Sinaloa. It was a 12-hr drive on terrible dirt roads. I was the American. I road 'bitch'.

Today the 12yo has decided it’s Pinocchio Anole Awareness Day! He says he imagines the lady anole sitting there, being normal, surrounded by males with increasingly improbably long noses shouting, “No, my nose is perfect!” It’s World Wildlife Day but he says that’s too vague & so he’s claiming it.

GUYS. They're going all out and I cannot wait! #TheVampireLestat

"I'm 40 years old; I can't be dealing with this" is such a mood

I am so looking forward to this!

The 12yo has declared it Lowland Streaked Tenrec Awareness Day! This spiky Madagascar mammal has poor eyesight & gets around by echolocation. They communicate with each other using high pitched squeaks made with specialized quills called a “stridulating organ.” I swear I am not making this up.

The *super* frustrating thing is that most leverage for reform via professional societies and any reform-oriented positions are locked behind having a traditional academic job, or at least having a separate salary paid for by a grant secured by someone with a traditional academic job.

So true... for me 19 years in consulting and now 6 years as a Municipal Project Manager (read this to say... landfill/environmental 'engineer'). In grad school I felt like I had to fight with professors/advisors to help me go a non-academic route.

Congrats to Roger Naylor on the release of his new and expanded book Arizona Boots and Burgers: A Guide for Hungry Hikers, which pairs 70 hikes with 70 restaurants worth experiencing. "This is my love letter to Arizona, disguised as a hiki... https://rsjon.es/2026/02/20/congrats-to-roger-naylor-on/

Wrote some mean shit about NBC. www.sfgate.com/olympics/art...

@xenolith.bsky.social captured this AMAZING video of a scorpion snagging and stinging a moth near our Stovepipe Wells camp. The alluvial fan around the camp was experiencing a superbloom supporting a big hatch of moths which this scorpion took full advantage of! youtube.com/shorts/FtYHz...

Wisdom the Laysan albatross is back! She's at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, part of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Originally banded in 1956, she's at least 75 years old, has flown >3 million miles (lifetime Premier 1K® on United), laid 50 to 60 eggs, and fledged ~30 chicks. 🪶

The 12yo has selected an improbable animal & declared it Sea Pansy Awareness Day! These violet soft corals are a colonial animal which anchors itself onto the seabed using a stalk, or peduncle, looking rather like a succulent plant…. & it filter feeds & releases bioluminescence in case of trouble!

The 12yo has declared this Wunderpus Photogenicus Awareness Day! The fabulously named Wunderpus photogenicus is exactly as described. This wonderful & gorgeous octopus is a quick change artist who can rapidly change colour and shape to mimic other sea creatures to blend in or look more dangerous!

The 12yo has declared this Kodkod Awareness Day! Also known as the güiña and native to Chile and Argentina, the kodkod is the smallest wildcat of the Americas. Look at its little face!

another year of us not running a super bowl ad

Today, according to my 12yo, it’s Aquatic Caecilian or Rubber Eel Awareness Day! Prompted by the question, “What are those other amphibians who aren’t frogs or salamanders again?”

As someone with experience in leadership in a professional society: litigation (win, lose, or settle) is an existential threat to most professional societies. In these times, they have no budget for it and the leadership probably doesn't have relevant training. This drives decisions (good and bad)

Most human cultures believe nature is good for us. Now scientists are studying biochemical compounds emitted by plants to protect themselves from insects, bacteria, protozoa and fungi -- which seem to be protective medicine for people too. My story for Nature Outlook: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Olympic curling has to be the sporting highlight of the Scottish geological calendar. 🥌 All the stones come from Ailsa Craig in the Firth of Clyde. The distinctive black spots are (mostly) the very weird and rare amphibole arfvedsonite. #ThinSectionThursday

Today the 12yo has declared it Greater Lophorina Awareness Day! Formerly a subspecies of the superb bird-of-paradise, not to be confused with the birds-of-paradise and certainly not to be confused with the flowers of the same name… if you haven’t seen its mating display, today’s the day:

Nature’s perfect predator ☺️

Wildlife photographer of the year – people’s choice 2026 www.theguardian.com/environment/... 🧪🌎

Did you know that Olympic curling stones come from just one tiny island in Scotland? Granite from Ailsa Craig has been used to make Olympic curling stones since 1924. Below, you can see a thin section in cross polarised light. Learn about the stones: britgeoheritage.blogspot.com/2014/02/gran...

The Green River flows ‘uphill.’ Geologists think they finally know why. www.popsci.com/environment/...

You may have seen pictures, but have you ever seen video of a gigantic jet #TLE from space? Astronaut Jeanette Epps captured this incredible sequence on July 20th, 2024 for the DTU/@science.esa.int Thor-Davis experiment. 🧪🔭 youtu.be/xN2J7_rOBJY Credit: ESA/NASA/J. Epps Processing: Simeon Schmauß