That was the goal

#Academia: What is your advice to brand new Master's and PhD students joining a lab? How does one pitch a thesis idea? Where to start? How to begin a literature search without drowning in papers? (Resource links and personal advice are encouraged with the caveat that each situation is unique.)

I'll put in a rec for phylopic.org! Silhouettes of so many taxa with creative commons and public domain licenses. Great for figures and for teaching!

Academics: What are free resources you wish you knew about sooner or ealier in your career? (That are still helpful today.) Anything from paper access, scheduling time, writing help, etc. Not everyone gets access to this knowledge so let's share and spread what is available :) #academia

The weather is getting warmer here and my friend asked how I plan to swim during summer since t0p surgery. She asked what I was comfortable with and then helped me navigate questions (she grew up here). This is #trans support 🥰. I am so appreciative! Community is so important ❤️ #TransJoy

For CSV files, if I have to use a GUI it is either ModernCSV, SmoothCSV 3 or the CSV editor extension in VS code. All are cross platform and the last two are FOSS.

www.fpbase.org and public.brain.mpg.de/SpectraViewer/ (the latter does not seem to get updated anymore(?).

WebPlotDigitizer automeris.io

I started to keep a website to keep track of some more specialist stuff too sites.google.com/site/eurobra...

good stuff in here!

It's not a meritocracy and not a zero-sum game It's not a sprint nor a marathon it's interval training

Also the entirety of the Biology of the Reptilia is available for free online. This is the best resource for learning about reptile anatomy, especially extant reptiles. carlgans.org/biology-rept...

And if you've added a paper that later gets retracted, it'll tell you in a way even the most sleep deprived ECR couldn't miss.

I do my research for close to $0. Morphosource.org - free CT scans Meshlab - 3D object measurement Slicer - CT scan processing(segmentation) Morphology J- geometric morphometric analysis Zotero-citations Blender-3d object manipulation/coloring

BHL!! So, so many journals from the 1800s-mid 1900s, not otherwise digitized, massively valuable resource for the taxonomist or anyone doing a lit review: www.biodiversitylibrary.org

Seconding zotero, adding pomofocus.io and the concept of asking the publisher for a free copy of a book you are interested in teaching.

Learning how to work interlibrary loan!!! That was huge in my grad career, it felt like I unlocked the world!

To easily look up accurate species divergence times: timetree.org

That if you’re having trouble getting hold of a paper that you can just email the authors. They’re almost always falling over themselves to get you a copy.

Apart from Zotero? Running. Or some other form of exercise. Not entirely free but worth the investment to clear the head and lift the spirits.

If you have the bad habit of storing and analyzing tabular data in consumer tools like Excel, please stop. Use plain text formats like CSV where possible, or openly accessibly formats like ODS, HDF5, Parquet when the data set is very large/intricate.

Inkscape. I start generating publication-ready figures as soon as I collect the first key result and populate the figures as I go. Seeing how the story progresses helps me see what’s the immediate next step. Also, no experiments ever go to waste.

PAST is a solid and free stats program for those who are not into R. It was written for paleo, so it has ecological stuff in it too. www.nhm.uio.no/english/rese...

"Talking about doing an experiment is not doing the experiment. Saying you will do an experiment is not doing the experiment. Only doing the experiment is doing the experiment."

Not paid by Big Zotero, but I love Zotero. Big clicky button to smash to send items to Zotero or can add via DOI/PMC/Arxiv ref, Pyzotero integration if you need it. Shared libraries if you want them, open source and it's workflow doesn't make me cry (unlike Endnote).

Zotero for me and I love it - but In don't really have a comparison because it's the first one I used and never spent any time with anything else. I've also heard people have good user experiences with Citavi.

.. and of course importing BibTeX!

Google Colab notebooks. Niche resource, I know, but I used it to learn and teach Python code as part of a class on data analysis and visualization. Big advantage is that it allows easy shading between users. colab.research.google.com

Academics: What are free resources you wish you knew about sooner or ealier in your career? (That are still helpful today.) Anything from paper access, scheduling time, writing help, etc. Not everyone gets access to this knowledge so let's share and spread what is available :) #academia

What are your favorite hype up songs? If you are feeling low, overwhelmed, or struggling at work. What do you put on to sing to, dance to, lift your spirits, and/or hype yourself up? 2 of mine: 1. ain't no mountain high enough - Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye 2. proud - Heather Small #MentalHealth

What are your favorite hype up songs? If you are feeling low, overwhelmed, or struggling at work. What do you put on to sing to, dance to, lift your spirits, and/or hype yourself up? 2 of mine: 1. ain't no mountain high enough - Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye 2. proud - Heather Small #MentalHealth

I've recently been to two dance events where I got very nerdy about the kinematics of dance, anatomy of different movements, and even more people not being surprised that I find countless ways to connect my scientific interests into dance 😅. What can I say, I love both! Movement is fascinating!

A day later and no major national news org has covered what they're doing in Kansas. This is the flip side of the hyper focus on trans issues by the right. The national media ignores what's actually being done to trans people. This erasure is what contributes to the persecution.

Ok, but since then even more of the local dance community have started to learn some small everyday signs to be able to interact with me better in the loud dance rooms 😭💜 And yes, the CODA and I are friends despite our age gap. Communication transcends age :) I'm so grateful for this community!

🚨 Requesting help: I am looking for an agent who can facilitate more speaking gigs, podcast appearances, and interviews with journalists I want to more widely share my story and expertise as a trans geneticist who understands the reality and complexity of "biological sex" 🏳️‍⚧️🧬 Please signal boost?

Requesting an interpreter and not getting one always stings a bit. Socials in densely packed bars are equally difficult to poster sessions. I am excited, in this regard, to get back home to an asl community where going out still means we can converse with one another.

Also, I am HoH so I walk around w/ headphones on because I can't hear people talking w/out lip reading in these spaces. That said... If you see me: wave, tap my shoulder, and I am *super* happy to meet and chat with people whenever I'm out and about :)! #SICB2026

Some people are also born deaf/HoH, have had injuries (like ruptured eardrums) that cause hearing impairment, and so much more! Inclusion increases the people that can nerd out with you about your science :)

If you're at #SICB2026 I've got a poster this afternoon! Stop on by to chat about how cool #wobbegong #sharks are, #biomechanics, and more! #BestShark #anatomy #physiology #biomechanics #StationaryHolding

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2026 can bring joy and happiness to people 💜

Maine survey shows trans students face double the threats and violence as their peers mainemorningstar.com... #transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA

Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things

Chatting with a dance friend tonight. It was a few weeks ago that I realized from Nov to Nov I took basically no time off. Told him the burnout for Phd's is high and most dream of a bakery back-up. He immediately said, so yours is a dance bakery Ya'll!!! The accuracy 😂

Happy #WobbegongWed! Today is a reminder, because this photo is making rounds again: The #fish on the left is a teleost fish called a monkfish, while the #shark on the right is a tasselled #wobbegong. Easy to confuse, but the image on the left, I promise, is NOT a wobbegong shark <3.

Texas' new 'bathroom bill' is about to be law. What does it mean for you? www.chron.com/cultur... #transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA

Absolutely no one saw this coming or warned of it in the early days *cough cough*. studyfinds.org/chatgpts-hal...

Absolutely no one saw this coming or warned of it in the early days *cough cough*. studyfinds.org/chatgpts-hal...

Apparently everyone on bluesky today: baseball!!! ⚾️ Me tonight: becoming a ghost at open gym 👻 😂

Today, I saw someone stumble and almost trip. I immediately asked if she was ok. She said yes, took a small pause, her facial expression softened and she said, "thank you for asking". This isn't a 'I'm a good person' post. This is a 'why aren't more people treating others with softness' post.