The first ever images of baby planets forming in the discs of dust and gas surrounding their respective stars. How thrilling that we can actually observe the birth of other worlds from so far away! www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025... www.eso.org/public/unite... HT @drfunkyspoon.bsky.social

Here are four outstanding books I’ve read this year ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Each one tackles how we shape our natural world. And how, in turn, it shapes us. Each one does it in its own unique way. I highly recommend them all. @ferrisjabr.bsky.social @chloedalton.bsky.social @johnvaillant.bsky.social

Join me Sat Nov 8, 1PM at Boston's @museumofscience.bsky.social for a family-friendly presentation about our living planet, based on my book Becoming Earth. We'll learn how life transformed Earth over billions of years, making it the world we've known. Blue Wing Stage (w/ a view of the giant globe!)

Boston / Cambridge / Somerville / Medford folks — would greatly appreciate you spreading the word about this event tomorrow at Tufts

Wednesday Nov 5 I’ll be at my alma mater Tufts with Pulitzer winner and MIT KSJ director @usha.bsky.social discussing the importance of science journalism in this moment and the lessons and tools it offers us all Free and open to public w/ registration www.tuftstickets.com/event/lighti...

We recently hosted a spooky season celebration. I tried to make most of the decor from recyclable / repurposed materials to reduce waste. 🎃👻🦇🧵of a few favorites: Spell book (paper, clay, mod podge, fake eye, paint)

Made some Miyazaki soot sprite cake bites. Chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream, chocolate shell, and sprinkles. Susuwatari (ススワタリ, 煤渡り), also known as soot gremlins or dust bunnies, are fuzzy, golf ball-sized sprites, featured in My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away.

Happy 15th birthday to @theopennotebook.bsky.social, truly a phenomenal project. Whenever early-career science journalists ask about resources, this is my #1 recommendation: comprehensive, innovative, and accessible

PSA: There's a relatively new and super useful Gmail feature: a "Manage Subscriptions" tab in the lefthand menu under More. It instantly shows you all the email lists you're subscribed to, including spam, and allows you to unsubscribe from most with the click of a button

Cucurbita pepo is one of the oldest domesticated species. Over millennia, it has proved astoundingly versatile. Just as Brassica oleracea gave us broccoli, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts etc, C. pepo morphed into the pumpkin, zucchini, delicata, pattypan, acorn, yellow squash and more!

Autumnal reminder: The majority of canned pumpkin sold in American supermarkets is not the familiar round orange carving pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo). Rather, it's Dickinson pumpkin, a large, often oblong and beige cultivar of C. moschata, which has better flavor and texture (Photo: AP)

We grew a squash. An heirloom called sweet meat that grows particularly well in the PNW. It is very large 😳 Just 1/4 filled up my biggest roasting tray. Fortunately we are hosting a celebration of autumn / spooky season this weekend. I’ll be making a stew, pie, cake, and savory sides.

It's pub day for the latest edition of Best American Science and Nature Writing! Honored to have my work featured along so many other writers I admire, incl @rossandersen.bsky.social @rebeccagiggs.bsky.social @bengoldfarb.bsky.social @sarahzhang.bsky.social Emma Marris & more. Congrats to all!

It's pub day for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2025, and the whole Best American series. I'm so proud of this book and all the brilliant, beautiful writing @susanorlean.bsky.social selected for it. bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Scoop: Trump has started demolishing the White House's East Wing facade to build his ballroom. The president had claimed construction of the $250 million building wouldn’t ‘interfere’ with the existing White House structure. /W @ddiamond.bsky.social wapo.st/4hqBNiU

📣 Educators: Since my book was published, I've really enjoyed connecting directly with teachers, students, & academics of all kinds. I'd be honored if you would consider Becoming Earth for your class & I'd be happy to visit when feasible 💙📚 🧪 penguinrandomhousehighereducation.com/2025/03/03/f...

The absolutely stunning Red Rock Canyon, featuring rusted cliffs, shaggy green desert springs, shadow-walking tarantulas, stained glass butterflies, ancient rock art, and neon sprays of lichen

Saturday Oct 18, I'll be at the Las Vegas Book Festival on a panel about nature writing w/ essayist & author Barret Baumgart, moderated by Dierdre Wolownick (who happens to be the mother of climbing legend Alex Honnold) Historic Fifth Street School: Empowered Tent: 12:15 PM lasvegasbookfestival.com

The world’s first Cactarium and one of its resident tortoises, Tank. Palm Springs, CA.

Views from the 8,516 ft high Mountain Station on Mount San Jacinto, which is accessible by aerial tram

Stargazing in dark sky areas of Joshua Tree National Park

Streets are still closed off in front of the Portland ICE facility at 8:30pm. Protesters have gathered on a side street. Dance party in progress.

Kristi Noem confronts enemy combatants in the Portland war zone today.

Um, ICE just coldly shot an unarmed PRIEST in the head w a pepper ball when he (and everyone around him) clearly posed no threat. For the crime of … complaining about government policy. Core 1A speech. With cameras rolling, they’re sniping priests for sport.

Gonna be thinking about this lede for a minute.

Make some shelf space for this one. Peter has produced an epic work of superb synthesis: rigorously researched, bold in vision, eloquently told, and always illuminating — one of the best nonfiction books for understanding our current moment in the context of Earth history. Highly recommended ⭐ 🌍 💙📚

Spotted a roosting Western screech owl

Many birds build nests. Beavers construct dams. And goliath frogs, the largest frogs in the world, appear to create their own meter-wide ponds by excavating sand, moving stones up to 2/3 their body weight, clearing debris, and piling some of it to form walls 😮 🐸 www.science.org/content/arti...

"Margaux Blanchard" may go down as a kind of minor Stephen Glass of the AI moment. Whoever, or whatever, they are, they seem to have used AI to fabricate multiple articles with fictitious sources published in Wired, Business Insider, and other publications pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/d...

Locust borer (Megacyllene robiniae), a type of longhorn beetle, disguising itself as a wasp

First time getting decent photos of the striking and swift North American sand wasp (Bembix americana) visiting the garden. A friendly native pollinator and pest-devourer with zebra-inspired body armor and jade relics for eyes

"We all knew that the wonderful world that had been built for us was coming to an end. So our games were urgent. Necessary. We simply had to have fun...we pretend[ed] that there was nothing wrong and continue[d] to play. The world would have to take care of itself." -The MANIAC, Benjamín Labatut

Larva (n), an animal's juvenile form preceding metamorphosis, from Latin larva/larua meaning ghost, spirit, or mask. Linnaeus so named them bc larvae are so different from their adult forms and thus 'mask'/conceal them. So a butterfly is a caterpillar's dream, a caterpillar a butterfly's ghost 🐛👻🦋

Eggplants were so named in the ~18th century because certain white varieties (not quite as widely grown today) look so similar to bird eggs. In the 18th and 19th centuries, they were also sometimes known as garden eggs or vegetable eggs. 📷 Horticulturalist RJ, Wiki Commons

Fun fact: the potato and tomato are so closely related that you can graft one onto the other, forming a single plant known as a pomato or tomtato: sauce above, spuds below! 📷 Thompson and Morgan UK

other nations, parallel minds, flitting feverishly between the blooms

Japanese pickles, tsukemono (漬物), are my favorite type of pickles, and this spread from Murata in Portland, OR is especially stunning: Daikon (yellow half moons), Carrot (orange slivers), Lotus root (white tinged pink cross sections), Crosne aka Chinese artichoke (knobby red), burdock root (brown)

Update from the Experts! A very kind & generous native bee expert has been helping me ID the species I observe in my backyard in Portland, OR. Turns out these fluffy, green-eyed, ginger beauties are oblique longhorn bees (Epimellisodes obliquus), recently reclassified taxonomically

Earlier this year I traveled to Australia to report on a unique, localized geoengineering effort: Scientists are investigating whether they can help save the Great Barrier Reef by changing the weather, generating fog and brightening clouds @nytimes.com Magazine 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/m...

Native bees! All photographed recently in the garden. At the moment I’m especially enamored with what I believe are male Western leafcutters: ginger and fuzzy with big green eyes!

Salamander blowing bubbles. Most likely a rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa)

STRATA is officially out in the world today! Very grateful to @wwnorton.com for publishing this book, and to @sarahmgilman.bsky.social for gracing the pages with her beautiful illustrations. So looking forward to sharing this with readers! Find upcoming events here: laurapoppick.com

No single item of food is inherently "healthy" or "unhealthy." That simply does not make sense. Health is, by definition, holistic. One's *overall diet* could be characterized as healthy or not, but even that must be considered along w/ exercise, sleep, mental state & much more.

Gorgeous Trillium Lake in Mt Hood National Forest, Oregon. Glow-bellied salamanders, tart huckleberries, wildflower meadows, native bees and butterflies, refreshingly cool and swimmable water, and glorious bowl-you-over mountain views. How lucky are we to live on a planet with all of this.

Much thanks to everyone who replied! Here's the updated list: OTHER MINDS: A curated list of fiction featuring animal narrators, protagonists, and perspectives

The Marmost infotel.ca/newsitem/mam...

The two young blueberry bushes in the garden were bursting, so I picked every single ripe berry and made a crisp with oats and pecans

Thank you so much to everyone who has been responding to this! We've got a great list going. I will update the list with relevant additions and reshare at the end of the week. 📚💙 🙏

I’m looking for examples of literary fiction/novels for (or beloved by) adults that have animal narrators or that otherwise make a serious effort to portray the experiences/inner lives of (ideally non-anthropomorphized) animals & other nonhuman beings. Here’s what I have so far. What would you add?

One major problem w/ Yelp, Amazon, Goodreads and other online crowdsourced review systems is that so many people fail to understand the distinction between expressing an idiosyncratic like/dislike of something vs composing a public review that is actually meaningful and helpful *to other people*