some great content on the Mongolia reddit (this counts as productive "research", right?)

Only a third of Americans even somewhat support drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Source: @yaleclimatecomm.bsky.social

🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity! We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have: (1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs) (2) better hand dexterity (3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵

One way to increase american beef supply would be for gov to lease /buy water rights on the southern high plains, fund farmers transition to grazing systems. solid community models already in place. Or increase grazing on CRP lands Both would be plusses for grasslands, probably carbon, just sayin'

I'm reposting this, but the message is really just there is no such thing as a good or ethical corporation

This is who is paying for the destruction of the White House East Wing, per @wsj.com Altria Group Inc. Amazon Apple Inc. Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. Caterpillar Inc. Coinbase Global Comcast Corp. Hard Rock International Google HP Inc. Lockheed Martin Corp. Meta Platforms Inc. 1/3

Re-uploaded with good audio! Here's the new link: youtu.be/3MBUeBuG5Jc

Great Tailed Grackle: Native to HEB parking lots Travel in plagues Makes a weird shriek that sounds like rusty gravel Beaks as black as their souls Opportunists Lifespan 10-15 years Extremely intelligent

Know your Halloween props

An ethanol trilogy by our friend Chris Jones @theswinerepublic.bsky.social , part 1. open.substack.com/pub/riverrac...

Ugh. Not good for New Mexico or some extremely imperiled grassland critters (lesser prairie chickens, monarchs, chestnut-collared and thick-billed longspurs all mentioned) www.kunm.org/local-news/2...

Can't believe we have tiny little pinprick grasshoppers showing up at this time of year in new mexico. Really do not understand grasshoppers / any insects

Takes some skill to make soybean farmers and ranchers mad at the same time

So good. If you want to know what's up with energy in 2025, this is it

1. Rising electricity bills are becoming a hotbutton issue, but pundits and politicians often talk about them in ways that are misleading or flat-out wrong. A new paper from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory examines actual data on retail electricity prices. The results may surprise you. 🧵

Prof. Jens-Christian Svenning's inspiring talk held 2 weeks ago for Naturnahe Weidelandschaften e.V. is online now. No one else can argue as clearly & precisely for integrating grazers into modern conservaton. Great thanks to you, Jens! @jcsvenning.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqHS...

Thinking this morn about animal "flight distance" stories. I.e. how animals respond to humans. I think it's fascinating but easy to forget that the ~entire planet is evolutionarily terrified of us. This video for example: www.youtube.com/watch?v=84Mv...

“When I think of sea turtles, the first word that comes into my mind is resilience,” said Jeffrey Seminoff, a research scientist who specializes in sea turtles at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. *note: leatherbacks still in trouble

A kind of terrifying question on my mind is: do people in this situation think they are not lying? Like does Johnson go home and say, ah, another honest day's work? Or is it more like, the ends justify the means?

If no geologists chime in on this, I will be forced to unilaterally rename our epoch

Suspect this is an ancient debate, but is there some good reason why the Holocene gets an epoch (versus being just another interglacial / warm phase)? Keep looking and I don't understand

This is fascinating all around The bit here about losing most details within an hour is something I've reflect on because of journalism. It's wild what ends up being in your notes vs what you "remember." www.vox.com/podcasts/464...

“an amazingly diverse environment from the knees down” is a great grassland quote if i ever heard one

some grasslands i don't often here about (.25% of pre-ag extent) www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The beloved children’s series Reading Rainbow has a new chapter and it’s one that feels both fresh and familiar.

Good news: carbon intensity has declined Bad news: carbon emissions increased, due to the rapid rise in world GDP Also bad news: the chance of staying below 2°C remained low, at 17% Better news: chance of going above 3°C has gone down substantially, from 26% to 9%

My heart was jubilant while reading this story this morning - more than 100 Chinook salmon have passed the former Klamath River dam sites as well as the fish ladder at Klamath Lake and are naturally spawning in Oregon headwaters for the first time in over a century! 🐟🧪🌎 www.opb.org/article/2025...

I saw a tragically AI-generated version of this poster, so I have recreated a 100% human-made version for all your protest sign needs.

Welcome back monarchs on Sunday, No kings next Saturday. A sign like this should work for both.

Passing along the excellent (and timely) radio show happening now on KRZA in Taos spinitron.com/KRZA/

Wow, nature is too cool! Structures on stinkbug hind legs that used to be interpreted as ears are actually chambers with fungi. The bugs coat their eggs in those fungi to protect them against parasitoid wasps. 🧪 Defensive fungal symbiosis on insect hindlegs | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

As droughts become longer and more intense, their toll on ecosystems could be far greater than we thought. Our new paper in @science.org shows how prolonged & extreme droughts cause dramatic, cumulative losses in ecosystem productivity across the globe www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This article has some rather telling / fascinating quotes about the water sitch (in the context of data centers) in Texas: www.myhighplains.com/news/your-lo...

📣 Job alert! 📣 The Narwhal is offering a one-year fellowship for an Indigenous journalist in B.C., in collaboration with the Indigenous Journalists Association and IndigiNews. See the post for more details — applications are due Nov. 2. Spread the word! thenarwhal.bamboohr.com/careers/40?s...

I'm on all these grassy listserves. Love the daily flood of practical stuff happening. This morn: -Ranchers in loess canyons doing a collab burn to beat back juniper encroachment (rain depending) -Tallgrass restorers trading tips on autumn olive control -Midwest folks talking cross state collabs

Still thinking about this story this morning. Supposedly the creature comforts of even the poorest Americans keep us from revolting as the scales tip further. www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

Baby orca mini breach! 🦑

Going to go to one of these protests as a locust

Cerrado often gets framed as "less famous than the Amazon." True but understates its own global significance --Home to dozens of Indigenous / local communities --Considered the most biodiverse savanna in the world; 5 percent of the plant and animal species on the planet

Incredible photo from @chicago.suntimes.com ‘s Anthony Vazquez. Pointing what looks to be a teargas launcher at someone’s head at nearly point blank range is incredibly dangerous. This is why I prefer a ballistic helmet in the field.

"Humans aren’t very efficient movers—until you put us on a bicycle, when we become some of the most energy-efficient land travelers in the animal kingdom." www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-hu...

I love this so much. Funny, sweet, hopeful, and kind of bad-ass. youtu.be/bw5zxdSObso?...

OAK OPENINGS PRICKLY PEARS

my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵) www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...

Trying to articulate the issue I find with the "yields above all" approach to ag: to me, how we've get yields seems structurally related to how much of yield is wasted (e.g. on ethanol) Yield and low prices come from efficiency. Efficiency / low prices drive farm and industry consolidation.

Terry McDonell and @lancerichardson.bsky.social discuss Peter Matthiessen’s moral ambiguity and interest in Bigfoot.

Interesting thread. Nature as "reservoir of metaphors."

The nuance here is the idea that steppe empires eventually drove cohesion of surrounding nation states (if not alliance across nation states). I.E. The Mongols made Russia, China, Iran as we know them. Same theorist argues that the process eventually peterturchin.com/wp-content/u...

My pseudo-contrarian PoMo opinion on Sapiens is: all big history books share an issue -- ~no one knows enough to think know what they get right and wrong. Dawn of Everything / Debt - valuable perspective, but look around, experts poke holes in those too. What's right? Who knows!