Two fungi Purple Jellydisc and Hairy Curtain Crust #fungi

My new year's resolution is to get 3 manuscripts submitted to journals and two of those through to publication. The main one is a greenhouse experiment that I started planning in fall 2022 and I really want to be done with it

Spending a full day in the lab would be so much easier if I could get lunch somewhere near campus. Sometimes I bring lunch but it's not ideal since there's no fridge in the break room. Sigh.

I'm so glad I have a good advisor. Being able to take a week long vacation has been wonderful, feeling ready to take on the revisions and lab work

There's a chapter (published Nov 2025 so there's no excuse) saying that all mycorrhiza are in Glomeromycotina, which is just false. They discuss ECM and ERM which are mostly in Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. What does one do to get this corrected? Will emailing the authors or publisher be better?

Good morning, it's 51 F in my lab this morning. Will the university ever turn on the heat in my building? Reporting live from my desk in a parka and knit bonnet

Moths are drinking moose tears? Nature is amazing esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Anyone have a good tip to actually get work done? I cannot bring myself to do another round of revisions on this paper, or work on finals

Very interesting article! Perhaps a pathway to reduce emissions from inorganic fertilizer? Harnessing entomopathogenic fungi: A meta‐analysis on their role as plant growth promoters - Crosby - 2025 - PLANTS, PEOPLE, PLANET - Wiley Online Library nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

WE WANT TRAINS! The public is sending a message: Amtrak is setting ridership records, carrying 34.5 million passengers in fiscal year 2024-25, while ticket revenue is $2.764 billion. www.trains.com/pro/passenge...

COP30 takeaways so far: I'm much more hopeful after attending a full day of this. I've heard about so many adaptation and mitigation measures in so many countries that I feel like we can really come together as humans and make the necessary changes to not only save, but lift up vulnerable people

No matter how hard people try to convince us having empathy is wrong, it is right. No matter how hard people try to convince us that diversity is a weakness, it is a strength. No matter how hard people try to convince us that love is limited, it is unlimited.

Dean of academics: "We can't cover tuition because the USDA doesn't allow it for non-citizens" Me and the four other US citizens in the program:

It's 56 F in my lab today and we have a mycorrhizal colonization training so I'm going to freeze until at least 12:30 😭 Why can't facilities turn off the AC???

The business cards came in! I'm gonna network up a storm at COP30 😎

democrats of all stripes should be rallying around kat abughazaleh asap. it doesnt matter where you stand ideologically. trying to jail dissenters is fundamentally unamerican and 100% fascist. democratic leaders at all levels should be making noise about it. you dont need a poll or focus group.

Proud to say I've managed to shoehorn Kernza into yet another class presentation

Today in 1949, A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold was first published. That book had an enormous impact on how I think about land and helped create the idea of a “land ethic.”

Making good slides takes so long, I hope literally anyone in the class appreciates the design and narrative

Someone broke into my dad's car this weekend and stole nothing, not even a bound copy of my thesis. If only they had read "Hardwood Regeneration in Kalmia latifolia Thickets", maybe they would leave the criminal life and become plant-soil feedback researchers instead 😞

One thing I've noticed now that I'm in an Ag program is that a lot of my peers know nothing about the natural world. I think including some ecology/environmental science classes in undergrad ag curriculum would help move us towards more sustainable ag in the future

“‘I often wonder, even though the teaching of Sacred Scripture is so clear about the poor, why many people continue to think that they can safely disregard the poor,’ Pope Leo XIV states in his first magisterial document …” www.americamagazine.org/vatican-disp...

nothing but respect for my Antichrist

I got badged for four days at COP30 and (against all odds) we got a place to stay! If you'll be there and want to meet for a coffee let me know 😄

🚨 Please repost widely!🚨 I am recruiting a PhD student to join my lab next fall to work on forest and climate change ecology projects in southern Appalachia! Come join me in one of the most beautiful, biodiverse, and understudied parts of North America. Details below and happy to answer questions

Amazing, love to see progress in conservation www.unesco.org/en/articles/...

RIP 🤍 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

"Some have chosen to deride the increasingly evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming, and even to blame the poor for the very thing that affects them the most." BBC News - Pope Leo condemns climate change critics www.bbc.com/news/article...

Happy Monday! I hope everyone is enjoying the work that was scheduled for Friday, continued into the weekend, and still needs time on Monday 😅

It’s getting very dark very fast. 🇺🇸 www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nsp...

Has anyone studied the effects of having food in the workplace? The nearest food to my work building is half a mile away, which isn't far but I think we'd all spend more time on campus if we could get a coffee during the day. I'd also spend more time working if I weren't freezing all the time.

🚨HEY NASHVILLE — THERE’S A SPECIAL ELECTION GOING ON — WHY ARE Y’ALL NOT VOTING? All schools in Davidson County will be closed on October 7th and Dec 2nd for an election… no one is showing up to? (H/T @LisaQuigleyTN)

We're halfway through early voting for the special election primary and less than 4000 people have voted in Davidson County, TN. None of the candidates mention climate change on their websites, but Aftyn Behn wrote a substack post on it so she's the best candidate (low bar) on the environment

Finally learning to do GIS work in R instead of ArcGIS Pro, this is great! Data management is easier, I have a record of the data cleaning/analysis in the script, and it runs faster. Highly recommend

It's badging time, who all's going to COP30?

I found the olympic gold medalist of mental gymnastics tonight. Our bible study covered the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and one person (a nurse) claimed that we don't need to give to the homeless because paying taxes funds some social programs. Talk about missing the point of the story.

Starting to question whether my research ethics professor is going to put any thought into this class, we're going on 5 weeks of the same assignment with slight variations. The question has gotten nonsensical at this point.

The Holy See went pretty hard in their NDC. "Environmental justice - implicitly proclaimed by the prophets - can no longer be regarded as an abstract concept or distant goal" is a banger of an opening sentence

Realizing I promised my advisor I'd have all our abiotic data processed by the end of this week. Hunkering down to get it done today

Sad to find out that Cheekwood gardens has a financial relationship with CoreCivic. They were never a high quality botanical garden, but it was a pretty place to walk and look at trees. Oh well, no walking place is worth the horrors of the private prison industry.

Hey middle Tennesseeans, early voting for the special election primary starts today Find your way to a polling station over the next two weeks #Tennessee #Nashville

Tried to leave the university but it's raining sideways out there. Back to data entry I guess

Pro tip for any undergrads who will be working or volunteering with a research lab: Have neat, legible handwriting. Please don't make the grad students track you down to ask if the cryptic symbol you wrote on a datasheet is a "3" or a "5" or an "8"

The great thing about art is that Matisse had no conception of what a grad student office in 2025 would be like, and yet he painted something that really captures the feeling of working in one

Given that professors are being fired for teaching in their field, we have to conclude that Texas A&M is no longer a functional university.

Just found out I technically haven't been working for the university this past month because they make grad students sign new contracts every 1-4 months. My last contract was for July and the one I just got is September through December. They tricked me into a month of unpaid labor.

Just finished reading "Stop Saving the Planet! An Environmentalist Manifesto" by Jenny Price. Would not recommend. It reads like an extended blogpost, is poorly formatted/repetitive, and doesn't answer the main question in the introduction. Leans on broad generalizations and annoying catch-phrases.

Trump's claiming Chicago and Baltimore are more dangerous than Afghanistan