Austerity cuts in the UK have persistently hollowed out the everyday infrastructures that can protect people from heat stress, including cuts to the maintenance budgets of parks and the closures of libraries and swimming pools.

Reflexive Reflexivity “We advocate for *robust reflexivity,* a practice that critically reflects on reflexivity itself.” ‪By @catherinetrundle.bsky.social and colleagues Open Access: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Maja Vahlberg:“I watched a reindeer stay in the same patch of shade for three days straight without grazing, a quiet sign of the strain the heat was causing,”

NEW RESEARCH: Parked cars can account for 10 percent of the surface areas of some cities. It turns out that their albedo (reflectivity) can significantly contribute to the urban heat island effect. Dark-coloured cars are the worst, making the air around them 3.8°C hotter vs nearby asphalt road. 🧵

Brutality of climate harm and dangerous heat. Especially harmful to the poorest & most vulnerable. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

New Article: a methodological guide to ethnographic document analysis. A non prescriptive but practical resource for dwelling with documents #ethnography #qualitativemethods

Brilliant research on depersonalisation, the way our economy can reduce capacity for existentially recognising others, and the empathic failure built into the profit motives of tech.

Our latest plug for the value of anthropological theory in applied contexts. Writing led by my colleague Andrea Kaiser Grolimund @swisstph.ch with collaboration from the Alive Africa project team. Funding: @erc.europa.eu Does One Health need an ontological turn? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The first peer-reviewed article coming out of the @uclaheatlab.bsky.social, co-authored with four of the students in my lab. Incarcerated folks are at the frontline of climate change. Incarceration makes people more likely to experience heat-related illness and death (1/5)

It was great to be part of compiling this teaching tool, following a workshop at @soasuni.bsky.social last year. The writing exercise I propose (entitled the 'Speculative Dictionary of Climate Emotion') is in the section on 'Grappling with Distress'. culanth.org/fieldsights/... #climatecrisis

"We have to try to protect time & space to be inefficient with each other in as many places as we want to have healthy relationships. All the places that we have contact with each other, every single one of our relationships holds political power, responsibility & ideally some degree of reciprocity"

Trump is making workplaces more dangerous for workers. He's frozen all rulemaking at OSHA, including a rule that would make sure that people who work in extreme heat are able to take breaks and drink water.

‘How did we miss this for so long?’: The link between extreme heat and preterm birth. Heat waves are making pregnancy more dangerous and exacerbating existing maternal health disparities. grist.org/health/ferti... #Birth #PrematureBirth #Climate #Fertility

“On the streets of Paris, thousands of trees are being planted…” Replacing concrete with greenery has a key role to play in reducing the impact of extreme heat, saving lives and making cities healthier places to get around.

As many parts of South Australia exceed 43 degrees Celsius today, it’s timely to consider potential heat impacts on physical and mental health. Priority populations include lower SES groups, rough sleepers, older persons, and people with a mental health condition. www.uclahealth.org/news/article...

This is one hell of a fantastic long-read by @roycerk2.bsky.social - just, please take in the entire thing Nuclear advocacy out of Canada and the US has become an active part of the Australian conservative push to extend coal/gas power and kill wind and solar plans... drilled.media/news/aus-nuc...

Hey #AAA2024 -- many, many of you belong on this Climate Social Science starter park. If you aren't there and want to be, please let me know! And if you are there and don't want to be, of course, let me know that as well. #anthrosky go.bsky.app/S6w6yNz

📢 Join my team! The new @uarizona.bsky.social Heat Resilience Initiative is seeking a Program Coordinator to help address the global challenge of extreme heat by advancing heat research, education, and outreach. arizona.csod.com/ux/... #universityofarizona #heatresilience #extremeheat

"as deadly, hundred-degree heatwaves become commonplace, we have to learn to see shade as a civic resource shared by all. In shade, overheated bodies return to equilibrium. Blood circulation improves. People think clearly. They see better. In a physiological sense, they are themselves again."

🍄⚡Fungal batteries! "You can store the fungal batteries in a dried state and activate them on location by simply adding water and nutrients. Once it's served its purpose, the biodegradable battery digests itself from the inside." 🍄⚡

Simple way to explain to others how climate change = increased fire risk. Increased rainfall variability + warmer temperatures = increased fuel aridity.

"The challenge in front of us is to learn how to be critical of our public institutions, without relinquishing hope that these institutions can become less harmful than they were in the past. This present moment of nuclear renewal calls for social uprising and protest—and also civic engagement."

“Everything but human connection can be automated, so the prophets of automation have every incentive to denigrate it. It only makes sense that their ‘new frontier of persuasive technologies’ would be put primarily toward that end.” robhorning.substack.com/p/emotional-...

Generally, people tend to assume planetary albedo is all about snow and ice, but clouds are much more important, at least now during and interglacial. And still they're one of our biggest problems in #Climatemodels.

Excellent long read on the impacts of a total fire suppression approach in the Southern California mountains since 1919, that, in working against the ecological cycles of interdependencies between fire, plants and soil, creates enormous stockpiles of fuel and less permeable soil.

Good Nature piece on the debate about accelerating warming in recent years, and what exceptionally high 2023 and 2024 temperatures might mean: www.nature.com/artic...

"Heat is the waste product of computation. To quell this thermodynamic threat, data centers overwhelmingly rely on air conditioning. In North America, most data centers draw power from “dirty” electricity grids. cooling accounts for greater than 40 percent of electricity usage."

Looking for climate and health research funding? We're funding teams to investigate how climate mitigation solutions affect health in low- and middle-income countries. 🗓️ Pre-applications due: 18 February 2025 Learn more ⤵️ wellcome.org/grant-fundin...

Great article showing why so many urban heat shelters fail: Subtle social expectations of activity with public spaces. Most heat shelters don't allow people to just rest. Just hang out for hours. Innovative approach in Barcelona, including micro-shelters.

"By engaging with our communities we can nurture ourselves—and each other—in ways no diet ever could achieve" @eyatesd.bsky.social

"This plaque commemorates an oak tree that graced this site for forty years. If was felled by the bureaucracy in December 1990 to make way for one more car." I found this guerrilla memorial a while back at Vic Uni Wellington, NZ. Thank you, whoever put it there.

Special Issue: Trauma-Informed Anthropology Teaching Anthropology

Still grateful for and honored by this piece, posted here ICYMI Human Interaction Is Now a Luxury Good www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/o...

core, routine domestic cognitive labor vs episodic domestic cognitive labor. Mothers notice when kids nails need cutting and towels need washing, coordinate playdates (high frequency stuff), fathers notice when dishwashers need repairing and coordinate house insurance (low frequency stuff)

"burnout is something that exists by design"

"EPA’s monitors work by measuring a single point. The EPA estimates broader regional air quality by using some form of interpolation, but this approach can leave significant gaps. The spaces and gaps seem to generally be inhabited by communities of color"

1/17.📢The Ways of Repair : #LossAndDamage online 💻symposium will take place over 9⃣ sessions between the 20th and 29th of January 2025 🥳. ✏️See the schedule and sign up here: www.waysofrepair.com/program#:~:t...

“With extreme heat making it perilous to work during the day, farmers and fisherfolk worldwide are adopting overnight hours. That comes with new dangers.” grist.org/food-and-agr...

"How anger at the rollout of renewables is being hijacked by a new pro-nuclear network": www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Fascinating, hopeful case: legally enforceable rights just granted to the Snohomish River watershed in Everett City, Washington State. “Voters in Everett…enshrined the watershed’s rights to exist, regenerate and flourish.” insideclimatenews.org/news/0512202...

2 important takeaways: infants and young children have low freedom of movement, cant easily express their discomfort or distress, making it more difficult for caregivers to recognize and respond to their heat stress 18-35 year olds less likely to have aircon, and work more outdoors.

Neil Postman’s Seven Question are useful here (Neil was on my dissertation committee):

Students should study the humanities not because it makes them better workers but because it rips you open and breaks your brain and changes everything you thought you knew. I *promise* you this. I *promise* it has this ability, no matter how smart you think you are. I have seen it countless times.

“If you take nothing else from this class I hope that it’s an understanding that this culture has set up a systemic focus on efficiency + productivity that tries to remove all the friction of life in pursuit of some metric,… which is always just out of reach… That’s crap.”

Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa / New Zealand (ASAA/NZ) statement on the abolition of Marsden Fund Humanities and Social Sciences panels www.asaanz.org/official-sta...

"What cutting social sciences and humanities from the Marsden Fund dramatically reduces is the ability of researchers to produce inconvenient evidence" Prof Tom Baker newsroom.co.nz/2024/12/06/m...

Reserach showing how fallout from global #nuclear weapon testing is a key to why wild boar in Germany remain more highly radioactive after #Chernobyl contamination slowly decreases (38 years later) among other animals distant from the zone. #NukeSky #HistSTM www.sciencealert.com/wild-pigs-in...

My job has kinda destroyed my 🧠 this year, so I haven't published much — but I do think I've partly extemporized a bunch of talks that speak to the moment. First, this DH keynote on bldg sociotechnical networks for tumultuous times + resisting AI inevitability [1/6] wordsinspace.net/2024/08/09/s...

"What my students paradoxically fail to realize, in their zeal to be responsible, is that describing things by certain characteristics rather than others merely because those characteristics are countable is a profoundly subjective decision."

Humboldt Foundation International Climate Protection Fellowships: emerging leaders and academics with climate expertise from developing countries can apply for a 12–24-month research project in Germany.