ICYMI If you're wondering what to make of new "AI models" for weather forecast or climate science, I've got you covered. I talked to a number of researchers and found that the story is pretty different between the two fields, but in both cases it's more complex than it looks on the surface.

You know you're in the Moenkopi Formation when every bedding surface sports fossilized ripple marks. #RockinTuesday

On today’s show, a collaboration with Tax Notes, we listen in on the secret tapes that show how the wealthiest Americans avoid taxes.

An unapologetically angry post about what’s being done to US science:

Y'all: If you're interested in #geodynamics, #earthquakes, or #tectonics, our Tectonic Geodynamics textbook is currently on sale for $65 @princetonupress.bsky.social and a new set of lecture slides along with PUP instructor resources are at www-udc.ig.utexas.edu/external/bec...

Grain flow on the lee face of a dune, fed through breaching (Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley National Park) 🧪⚒️

Yesterday morning at Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley National Park. Not a bad way to start the day

TFW years of hard work finally pay off

We have been using one of these Impulse Labs stoves for a while and cooking has never been this much fun. In addition to the 10 kW power, it also has precise temperature control, so you never have to worry about, for example, overheating the oil.

"For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints in elite higher education." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...

The post-Orbán Hungarian parliament members and the new prime minister Péter Magyar were sworn in today. Representatives of the winning Tisza Party were clearly enjoying the day 🇭🇺https://youtu.be/KAWVMJZgdHc?si=5WNQRiS8LAxtfSZp

Noooooo, not the pebbles!

Yo, anyone want to be a Bird Identification Machine Learning Software Engineer for the wonderful Cornell Lab of Ornithology, home of the Merlin app?!? It’s remote! I do not have these skills but maybe you do! #jobs jobs.hr.cornell.edu/us/en/job/WD...

🚨New paper about the second largest tsunami ever recorded, just published in @science.org A short 🧪⚒️🌊 thread #EGU26 @ucalgary.bsky.social @ucalgaryscience.bsky.social doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Discovered new podcast to kill time when making figures. Which is fact checking popular self help and pop-psych airport books. It's a joy.

One good thing that happened recently is that David Mohrig gave me one of Gary Kocurek’s original drawings that Gary made for his 1988 paper on bounding surfaces in eolian deposits

The past 15 months have marked a dark chapter in US science; one that will require significant effort to repair. But I'm not interested in duct tape and bandaid solutions. Our system had problems before Jan 20th, 2025. So, @standupforscience.net is doing what we do best: TAKING ACTION. 1/7

Congrats to Shang Tian and Dongfeng Li, our paper on Arctic river sediment it out today! We highlight how small Arctic rivers have increased sediment and changed disproportionally faster (over the satellite record). New machine-learning approach on landsat data. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

And Orbán just congratulated his opponent and admitted that his party lost the elections 🎉. To be fair, that is something that certain politicians on this side of the ocean are unable and unwilling to do

Things are looking promising in early results from the Hungarian elections. I can’t believe that the Orbán regime is about to end.

Today, Hungarians are voting. These elections loom large the world over. Viktor Orbán is a central figure in the international far right and his loss would be blow to familiar figures like JD Vance and Donald Trump, who are his pupils. snyder.substack.com/p/the-hungar...

Our new paper in Nature takes a critical look at what happens when you drill into a magma body. We find that by understanding that response properly, you can unwind the processes and get back to what the conditions of magma storage really were. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What an amazing antidote to doomscrolling. Never thought that complex logarithms could be this interesting

Excited to announce Groundsource - an open-source dataset of historic flood events! This has easily been one of the coolest projects I've worked on recently! Thread 🧵 for details and all relevant links. 1/n

Gorgeous thin section images of inversely graded grain flows in the Navajo Sandstone, by Jim Elder ⚒️🧪 smallpond.ca/jim/sand/sam...

"migration rates are a highly nonlinear function of channel curvature and they cannot be predicted" migration rates:

Did some vibracoring over the weekend on the barrier island between the Gulf of Mexico and East Matagorda Bay, to study how barrier islands are impacted by hurricanes

3D-printable time: An evolving meandering river as a 3D model where time is the 3rd (vertical) dimension 🧪⚒️

Here is a piece of the Yazoo River:

I know that there a ton of significant issues with AI and the companies that are behind the technology, but this is an excellent writeup of how thoughtful use of AI tools can speed up scientific work. I have been using Claude Code since January and it has been incredibly useful.

Good to see 'segmenteverygrain' being used as the starting point for a model that reconstructs 3D grain shapes from 2D data onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... ⚒️🧪

The trove of files released by the Department of Justice, illuminates Epstein’s deep interest and entrenchment in the scientific community. But the files also underscore how he used his power and money in ways that kept women out of places where they might succeed. https://bit.ly/4qWgPLz

TFW you have to read a paper about sequence stratigraphy

I’m so confused. I thought it was the illiberal left that demanded safe spaces and used cancel culture to silence anyone who threatened to disturb their snowflake ideological purity. Can someone help me out here? www.texastribune.org/2026/02/19/t...

Among the many good friends of Jeffrey Epstein the one who infuriates me the most is Steven Pinker. I read “How the mind works” soon after it came out and I was impressed. I hate to think about how many years it took me to realize who this guy really was.

So far in 2026, I have successfully stayed outside of the recommended weekly training effort ranges #running

If anyone’s opinion on AI can be trusted to have merit, it’s Terence Tao. 🧪⚛️🧮 This interview between two mathematicians is as awkward as you might expect it to be, but what they are discussing is a promising new direction.

I gave a talk last week at the University of New Mexico and one thing people seem to have remembered from it was this old animation that shows how migration rate depends on curvature in meandering rivers. It was created using Manim, a Python package written by @3blue1brown.com

This beautiful book by Stephen Welch explains really well some of the key concepts in ML/AI, often from a historical perspective. The YouTube videos are not bad either: youtube.com/@welchlabs?s...

Excited that this paper, led by former PhD student Natalia Varela (based on her dissertation), is now out! We use the occurrence & characteristics of thin, silty turbidites from the Ross Sea to interpret Antarctic Bottom Water outflow since ~3.3 Ma. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Hello Bjorn! #EpsteinFiles #BjornLomborg www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

My advice to undergraduates: Do *not* sign on to a PhD just because it's a 'next step' and you don't know what else to do. A master's program is a much better option in that scenario. You can find out if you genuinely enjoy the endeavor and, if not, it's only 2 years and you get a great degree! 1/2

“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.” Props to Anthropic for studying the effects of their creation and reporting results that are not probably what they wished for www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...

Just an incredible and unusual landslide at Niscemi, Sicily, Italy, as captured by @planet.com SuperDove satellites 🧪⚒️🛰️

Want to know how we used AI to classify and identify dinosaur footprints? Check out this breezy summary of our new study by coauthor Paige dePolo in @uk.theconversation.com Including a tutorial for our free DinoTracker app, which YOU can use to study tracks. theconversation.com/identifying-...

I added a page to my website that hints at the idea that I am interested in experimenting with artsy stuff when exploring landscapes with rocks and rivers zsylvester.github.io/art/

The US Winter Storm Seen from Space – January 25, 2026 Watch the 2026 U.S. Winter Storm unfold from space in this stunning satellite timelapse created with just a few clicks using the QGIS Timelapse Plugin.

"You look around and think, 'Yep, this is it. Paramilitary deportations, apocalyptic foreign policy, and private corporations looting the federal government. This has to be the Fourth Reich.' Not so fast. It’s only the Fourth Reich if it comes from the Reich region of Germany."

A man was murdered today for filming the American Gestapo. There's no other way to put that. I watched the footage, it is horrifying. The only reason ICE initiated violence was because he was standing in place filming their lawless actions.

Exploring Death Valley w/ @zzsylvester.bsky.social for fall field trip this week