Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle began #OnThisDay in 1831. The five-year trek around the world profoundly shaped his ideas about the natural world; he later said the journey was "by far the most important event in my life." #histsci

This is a great expression of the thing I keep saying about text-generating algorithms: “Hallucination” isn’t some kind of glitch. ALL their responses are hallucinations. Sometimes they align with reality, sometimes they don’t.

Took a bit of time the other day to visit the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton). Two different exhibitions include work by Lawren Harris, who is possibly my favourite Canadian artist. This one is typical of mid-career Harris. 'Mountain Sketch', 1924. 1/9

Make a Bond movie academic A View to a Kill: Evolutionary trade-offs in owl sclerotic ring development

#FossilFriday Wiped out from delivering presents, little Cambrian arthropod Sanctacaris (aka "Santa Claws") takes a very long (508 million year) rest. Specimen at @romtoronto.bsky.social

I reckon the closest we’ll get to seeing snowflakes in Western Australia at this time of year is seeing our endemic Flannel flowers (Actinotus leucocephalus), which bloom through December. Wishing everyone a safe, happy, and restful festive season 🎄⛄️🎅 #ozflora #wildoz #nativeplants #Christmas

Light holiday blogposting, part 2: More in my series on Latin names for gardeners. scientistseessquirre... It's -15C outside my window - great day to think about gardening??

My wife is a taxonomist.

The nichest philosophy of science joke ever. I am almost embarrassed that I got it...

There is an unfortunate error in this newly published @globalchangebio.bsky.social paper. The caption for this image reads "upper panel with dragon icon symbolising all tetrapod" but this is incorrect. That is either a wyvern (with two wings and two legs) or it is not a tetrapod (6 limbs).

Today on a desert slope, I found frosted Christmas stars: a rare succulent (Apteranthes burchardii) that produces starbursts of blossom after it rains:

In 'The Scientist's Guide to Writing', I offer this as an example of writing that's fairly technical (for public-facing writing) but also beautiful. Reading copyedits and just struck again by how lovely this passage is.

Light holiday blogposting, part 2: More in my series on Latin names for gardeners. scientistseessquirre... It's -15C outside my window - great day to think about gardening??

Nerd alert! Here’s a last minute gift idea- just sayin 🎄🎉 Chapters - all NB and PEI locations, A&LMcCain Gallery, Florenceville-Bristol, Dog Eared Books Oromocto, and on Amazon. A collection of climate cartoons

Light blog-posting for the holidays: Part I in a series of short posts on Latin names for gardeners. Yes, it's winter where I am; but gardeners never stop thinking about their plants!

The origin story for Schweppe's Ginger Ale is more interesting than I thought!

Saw someone the other day refer to "decision-based evidence making" and I can't stop thinking how spot-on-the-nose that is. And the fact that I can't remember which issue it was referring to - and there are SO MANY possibilities - just hurts.

Finding good subjects to test a future macro lense for my phone next week... Golden eye lichen (Teloschistes chrysophthalmus) will be a good one! 💚

One of the writing examples I use in 'The Scientist's Guide to Writing' has to do with the formation of new stars in such regions. LOOK WHAT THESE REGIONS LOOK LIKE. (Just now reviewing copy edits for the book's 3rd edition, so this image clicks right into my brain.)

Terrifying headline if you don’t realize they are sports teams.

Shots of our new book in the wild starting to come in! @bgmerkle.bsky.social

Happy "teaching evaluations reveal" to those that celebrate. I think it is important to talk to students honestly about evals and break down some of the numerous studies that show that teaching evals A) don't actually measure achievement of learning outcomes and B) are largely discriminatory (1/2)

This one is included in my collection of Environmental Cartoons, Save the Earth(lings)- available at Chapters/Indigo locations in NB and PEI, ALMAG Florenceville-Bristol, Dog Eared Books Oromocto, and on Amazon 💕

Just because you can do something in cowplot doesn't mean you should....

Cladonia lichens looking like an array of fancy satellite dishes. Northwest Territories, Canada. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends

Shots of our new book in the wild starting to come in! @bgmerkle.bsky.social

On my far-too-late realization that science is done by people, and that people are idiosyncratic (and sometimes weird), and that this matters in all kinds of interesting ways.

I don't think I've ever seen "graffiti" used as a verb before. (In Italian the verb form would be graffire, which makes me think of an arsonist-plagued giraffe.) It's fun to see language evolve right before your eyes - even in a bathroom.

Cladonia #lichen. Northwest Territories, Canada. #fungi #fungifriends

Fabulous society. Join! And not just Canadians. The annual meeting is my favourite of all conferences and we love to have our non-Canadian friends join us.

Digging into copyedits for the 3rd edition 'Scientist's Guide to Writing'. I have a terrific copyeditor who I am sure will repeatedly save me from myself! BUT: Chicago style now uses a capital letter after a colon if the post-colon phrase could stand as a sentence. And I hate it. 1/2

On my far-too-late realization that science is done by people, and that people are idiosyncratic (and sometimes weird), and that this matters in all kinds of interesting ways.

Ooh, look, a parcel from the University of Chicago Press! Whatever could it be?? @bgmerkle.bsky.social 1/3

This is excellent: Tips and Tricks for Writing Constructive Peer Reviews Perhaps the most excellent part is this subhead: "Remember that peer review is not meant to crush souls". Right? Peer review should improve papers (and OK, gatekeep a little) - not make an author regret their career choices!

Whatever else an LLM might be, it is very definitely (IMO) not an "author".

Eyelash fungus (Scutellinia sp). NWT, Canada. #fungi #fungifriends #mushroom

If you enjoyed a book(s), here are 10 things you can do to exercise your enormous power as a reader and radically help the author. And every action here is free: 1. Post about the book on your socials, even if you think your following is small. Every single voice matters. 2. Review on... (cont.)

Or just don’t use acronyms. Acronyms are almost always bad for readers because of the cognitive and memory load. Acronyms are nice for typing when you’re in a hurry and don’t want to keep repeating lots of words. So just use find and replace to clean up your manuscript before submitting.

Experimental mathematics. Perfect agreement of data with theory! https://xkcd.com/3180

Micraster Echinoid, an extinct species of sea urchin from the Upper Chalk of the long Late Cretaceous, approximately 80 million years old. found on Lepe Beach today, Hampshire, UK

We love to fetishize "top" researchers and give them special big pots of money. But we get far more science by spreading money among all researchers (closer to the NSERC DG model). This old post is magically relevant again... scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/w...

You can do this right now: Think of a person who wrote a paper you love, whose work influenced or helped you, or has made your professional life better. Search up their email address. Shoot them a quick email of thanks. It means so, so much. This is a rough time of year, share some joy.

Canadian scientist here. I don't want this. I want you to fund our excellent early career scientists who do great work in Canada. Fund them properly and that will help 1000x more than recruiting handfuls of cherry picked bigwigs from Harvard, Stanford and MIT who will leave after a few years.

Yes! It's exciting to see, now, a completed book in readers' hands. Mind you, we'll keep pestering you about it. The WRITING is completed, the TALKING ABOUT IT is not🤣

This.

This Cladonia lichen has got moves. Northwest Territories, Canada. Photo covers about 2cm in height. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends

Jeremy Fox's new book, 'The Ecology of Ecologists', is now shipping. I've read it (and I blurbed it) - it's a thought-provoking treatment of how the field of ecology works as a science. You want to read it! dynamicecology.wordp... 🧪🌎

This is pretty accurate! But misses one wrinkle: I understand I door temperature only I F, and outdoor temperature only in C -- even for THE SAME TEMPERATURES

If you're ever feeling bad, know that the building that houses the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, one of the richest departments in one of the most prestigious schools, designed by world-famous architect I.M. Pei, does not have a way to take the stairs from the second to the third floor.

This from Data Colada, about detecting U-shapes with quadratic regression, is extremely good. (Happens to be about AI, but that's not important to anything argued). Nice intuitive explanations of why quadratic regression may not be doing quite what you think it's doing. datacolada.org/131 1/2