🌿My two (botanical)-cents🔍 In this forum paper, I reflect on the value of plant-identification expertise and offer a few ideas on how we can better highlight the role of botanists and their knowledge. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

scholars should actually have read the articles they cite! Who knew?

😂

It is hard to overstate how critical @ncar-ucar.bsky.social is to climate science in the US and around the world. It's the beating heart of our field. Generations of scientists have trained there, and almost everyone I know relies on deep collaborations with NCAR scientists. It's end is unthinkable.

It’s simply not possible to overstate how important NCAR is to US and world science. We need to fight this with everything we’ve got.

The dismantling of NCAR should be the trending story on Bluesky, not the fucking Oscars leaving ABC for YouTube.

Superbly informative (and entertaining)

It may turn out this way; but there are competing forces at work, in which AMOC breakdown leads to increased rainfall over the Amazon; link.springer.com/article/10.1... 1/3

Very happy. A paper just out of the oven. It is a piece of work made possible only after many years of thinking about, and looking at, an old problem from multiple perspectives. And with the magical brushstrokes of our artists, Gabriela and Ariadna. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

doi.org/10.1016/j.hi... The Mismeasure of Neanderthals. Our latest paper, a critical review of Neanderthal iconography through time, with epistemological, paleobiological, ethical, and aesthetic contributions. Thank you for reading and for your comments.

🪏😱 We're digging up the best of Project 23! Hidden in the tar are fossils too small to see with the naked eye: pollen grains. These microscopic time capsules preserve clues about Ice Age landscapes, revealing what plants grew in ancient L.A. and how ecosystems shifted over thousands of years.

The second paper from my PhD has now been published ✨ This paper explores using a combination of fossil pollen and place-names to provide a broader record of past landscape change and the connections to anthropogenic influences in Leicestershire. Read the full article here: doi.org/10.1177/0959...

though it should be pointed out the ChatGPT was unaware until prompted that Borneo also has native Photinia/Stranvaesia and Raphiolepis species

Yep, LLMs make unbridled demands on power/water & are mega-plagiarism; but it's also useful to monitor where this is going. I have to admit to being surprised by ChatGPT's ability to generate appropriate criteria for evaluating plausible botanical source taxa for fossil 'Prunus' in lowland Borneo

This is horrific and exactly what those of us in Black studies, gender studies, women’s studies have been warning our colleagues in the sciences about. Their seeming neutrality will not save them.

I would like to see a curve of the proportion of each regional flora occupied by woody taxa with opposite-decussate leaves 🧪🌿

Well if you attended a scientific congress in, er, a white nationalist police state, this is the preparation you'd expect.

An amazing accomplishment, the 670 kyr long high Andes Lake Junin vegetation record www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪🌿

😂😂😂

this is far from over - bonnie prince billy www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON4T... (nice lullaby)

This cleverness fails for earth science papers generally, where the last author is often someone barely involved in the study, and the lab head is often 2nd author. Biologists continue to assume their conventions = science conventions

For those in Australia who prefer/need the old Bureau of Meteorology website, it can still be accessed via reg.bom.gov.au (for now).

"I don't need another productivity app"

This is excellent. We just need another 50 or 100 similarly minded billionaires. Though taxes are more accountable and probably yield less idiosyncratic outcomes

On the money as usual. It is actually bad

Has anyone written an R package or script with plottable data for all the Milankovitch curves? Wouldn't that be so convenient ⚒️🧪

Follow me into #PALARQUE ’s coring campaign in the Cape Region I'll be posting here this week! Co-led by my friends & almighty palynologists Saúl Manzano & Lynne Quick, the project explores fynbos Holocene & Anthropocene dynamics in the #Cederberg mntns., N Cape Region. Part of my 💜 belongs here! 1/

Which are more painful, desk rejections or rejections following peer review?

Die back and apparent recent mortality of Eucalyptus macrorhyncha (red stringybark) in the Mullum Mullum valley, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 🧪🌿.

Angiosperms "kindly" facilitated change-management workshops for sullen Gnetaleans and Cheirolepids 🧪🌾

I remember my dad jumping with joy as he brought in the morning newspaper with the all-caps headline, "NIXON RESIGNS". I miss him terribly but he'd be rolling and rolling in his grave now

One of the truly compelling features of using an LLM as a coding tutor, rather than, say, asking human coders for advice at Stack Overflow, is that the LLM is polite, never complains about your failure to provide a reproducible example, and is uninterested in being an arsehole.

by contrast, Decalobanthus peltatus (Convolvulaceae) belongs to a small (~20 spp) and recent Malesian/inner Pacific radiation of fast-growing vines. It probably arrived in Australia within the past million years or so

the cycad Bowenia spectabilis (Zamiaceae), Daintree rainforest, Queensland Wet Tropics. Bowenia has been kicking around Australia since at least the late Cretaceous 🧪🌿

Crab-like creatures are famed for having evolved five times in evolutionary history. But anteaters have evolved at least 12 times--in half the evolutionary span. Cool story by @jakebuehler.bsky.social for @science.org

Decalobanthus peltatus (previously within polyphyletic Merremia) is a megatherm Convolvulaceae vine colonising cyclone-damaged Daintree rainforest (NE Queensland). Totally feral on Pacific Islands, esp where not native (no surprise). See George Staples' superb revision tinyurl.com/42dk4pe2 🌿🧪

This is a lovely article. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

How good is this

Preparing to give a popular talk

Not a hint of exaggeration

Some of my best work

New Article: "Leaf venation network evolution across clades and scales" rdcu.be/epLNP Evolution of leaf venation networks, from fewer, corrugated veins to high vein density and smoother loops. Herbivory as a potential driver of venation architectural changes.

New work on speleothem growth demonstrating lack-of-glacial aridity in southern subtropical latitudes. Led by PhD student Calla Gould-Whaley 🧪 cp.copernicus.org/articles/21/...

Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine

For the last 3 yrs, I was the director for the Science of Science program at the NSF. We funded projects on science communication - science communication to the public, communication of public priorities to scientists, citizens engagement & participation in science. 🧵