"When the whole world is tropical, what words will we use to describe and define ourselves?...This binary between crisis and non-crisis demonstrates one of the many ways in which our classification systems fail in the face of climate breakdown" pioneerworks.org/broadcast/su...

"I want this job" part 3. Auspicious timing, and Philly is an incredible (and still relatively affordable) city.

Franklin was extra good this week so on top of his morning hikes I made him a mini dog-safe chicken pot pie and now he has a new favorite food.

TT job posting at UW Madison: History of Science with focus on water & sustainability 💧💧💧

Dream postdoc just dropped. One-year postdoc ($70K) at Yale's @yalewhc.bsky.social for the Franke Seminar in the Humanities on the incredible theme of ROT: Politics, Aesthetics, Regeneration. Taking folks from #histSTM, food studies, environmental humanities, etc. App due 12/8.

Black bulgar #fungi

If you continue taking away my punctuation towards the ends of paragraph-long Victorian sentences I am going to LOSE MY MINDDD

There's a nice writeup on skeleton leaves BY @eayers0.bsky.social here @publicdomainrev.bsky.social : publicdomainreview.org/collection/p...

"Today’s Quinhagak youth will grow up with an understanding of their history that previous generations didn’t have...“Some of them have their mouths wide open when they first open a drawer,” she said. “I tell them, these are from your ancestors.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/c...

One good thing about working with people across oceans is that when you wake up your inbox is filled with an entire chain of incredible, exciting news (that has already been clarified in back-and-forths) - a nice offset to the usual string of frantic student emails. ❤️

Looking forward to this evening's book launch event for Bill Rankin (chair of my dept & office neighbor)'s gorgeous Radical Cartography: How Changing Our Maps Can Change Our World. Get your hands on a copy! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/577193...

🦇🩸⚰️ Happy Halloween! 🧛🩸🦇 Same-sex sexual behaviours in bats were first documented in 1895! Here's a more recent study: www.italian-journal-of-mammalogy.it/Same-sex-sex... #Halloween #HappyHalloween #histsci #histbio #STS #GLAM #queer #lgbtq #queernature #PrideInSTEM 🌈🗃️

Citing a Trump executive order banning "gender ideology," the VA is withholding coverage and treatment for male veterans with breast cancer, an increasing condition among veterans exposed to toxic chemicals during service. 100 male veterans a year are diagnosed with breast cancer.

Remind me to pitch a giant Frankenstein 210 thing in 2028

US Department of Agriculture says no food aid benefits will be issued next month reut.rs/3WohHMk

Do I like baseball? No. Do I remotely understand it? Absolutely not. Do I know what direction the ball's going in when I "throw" it for my dog? It's always a surprise. But I read whatever @bolman.bsky.social writes, so here we are! pioneerworks.org/broadcast/br...

I guess I'll finish writing my GD moss book

What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?

I’m not dead. I sleep sometimes. Sleep comes very close to death, everyone knows that. The dead walk in dreams, everyone knows that. They come to you alive, and they say things. They walk out of death into the dreams.

“‘Over the next three years or so, unless Congress steps in, the Park Service will be pretty seriously damaged, you might almost say dismantled,’ says former NPS director Jonathan Jarvis, who served as the agency’s head from 2009 to 2017…

A German newspaper commissioned this piece by Ai Weiwei, but then refused to publish it. It's worth reading in full. | "What I Wish I Had Known About Germany Earlier" hyperallergic.com/1050197/what...

Man, that Canvas outage yesterday (on the first day back from October "break") was DRAMATIQUE.

And UCI has a very robust STS community outside of the history department; you can find them in tons of departments #histSTEM

A couple of job postings in the #histSTM #histsci #histmed realm: Asst Prof in Social Studies of Medicine at Cambridge, due Nov 17. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...

Thank god my students read Teddy Bear Patriarchy last week www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/m...

Franklin loves fall - cooler temps, still warm enough for swimming, 🐿️ + 🍂 to chase, downed sticks from the nor’easter, a warm lap to dry off + snooze in.

"This man has collector’s mania and is not to be trusted with specimens,” the warning said. It was never acted upon...The museums, it seemed, were a kind of crime scene long before the butterflies went missing." www.theguardian.com/global/2025/...

And a beautiful + productive October break trip to @nybg.bsky.social to do some work on bryophytic history with Laura Briscoe + Enrique Ramirez - me coming out on this very soon.

Behind on posting about the weekly discussions + days in collections we’ve been having in my seminars, including another lovely visit to vertebrate paleontology to think through evolution + extinction.

This is concerning for a whole host of complicated reasons that don't fit easily into short posts, but works its way into my book + into some other projects I'm working on with friends... www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

"ENCODED: Change the Story, Change the Future questions who is uplifted and memorialized in American history — who is American, really? — and what might happen when Indigenous artists reclaim space for themselves." hyperallergic.com/1049466/indi...

🚀 Big news from BHL! 🌱 We’ve launched our Transition Fundraising Campaign to help BHL navigate the move to independence and secure a sustainable, global future for open biodiversity knowledge. #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL #OpenAccess 🔗 Read more and donate: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/10/dona...

BREAKING: USC HAS JOIN THE RESISTANCE! That’s four (MIT, Brown, Penn, USC) of the nine schools Trump targeted. Stay tuned! 🍿 #DefendHigherEd #StandUpFightBack

A telling aside in this interview with Joy Harjo: "I am now leaning toward cremation, especially because of the travesty of injustice playing out at Auburn University...I would not want my remains sitting in a plastic box in a university classroom." orionmagazine.org/article/joy-...

“Their data tells a clear story. The ice is forming later, melting earlier and getting thinner each year, and the snow cover is lighter. What was once a glacier 17 years ago has melted into the sea. As the ice disappears, more heat gets absorbed by the dark fjord water, contributing to warming”

Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world.

Preparing myself for Smithsonian week in my Museums: Power + Politics course this week, the flex "wtf is happening right now" week of the semester. Looking for seeds of hope. hyperallergic.com/1045848/docu...

Two-thirds of National Park Service employees have been furloughed during the ongoing government shutdown, worsening an already severe staffing shortage. With limited personnel remaining, essential maintenance, law enforcement, and visitor services are significantly reduced.

Putting the (overused) Frankenstein metaphor aside, this is just so weird. "Using a small blade, he sliced off a pencil-eraser-size piece of hide from its armpit and put it in a tissue-collection kit furnished by a U.S. livestock-cloning outfit called Trans Ova Genetics." nymag.com/intelligence...

Didn't know that Roxie Laybourne worked on moss before moving into ornithology - a trend I've seen more than once. What a powerful career. www.themarginalian.org/2025/09/30/r...

I love horseshoe crabs. theamericanscholar.org/blood-blue-s...

Our new CFP is up and it is monstrous.

Also bonus @artcrimeprof.bsky.social arm + leg cameo

Being a part of the Whitney is so cool because I get to eat delicious lunch AND hear my incredibly smart and talented colleagues talk about the research that plagues and delights them

Absolutely fascinating presentation by @eayers0.bsky.social today at the weekly Whitney Fellows’ lunch - the way I look at natural history specimens will change as a result of this talk.

Weirdly pretty gutted by this - thoughts (as a former primate person) coming soon.

These AI-based writing "suggestions" (in emails, Word / Google docs, etc) are SO ANNOYING. They make writing simpler, sure, but also shittier. The number of blue lines I have to ignore is distracting and impeding my writing. Driving me absolutely crazy.

#Postdoc at U. of Vienna in philosophy of science, with focus on scientific modeling, interdisciplinarity &/or philosophy of engineering, w/ Prof. Tarja Knuuttila. English & German language proficiency required. Deadline: Oct 9th #philsci jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

Job at UC-Berkeley: Asst. Prof. in Global History of Technology, apps due 10/10 (so soon). #history #histSTM #histsci #histphilsci aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05065

AI in schools has been terrible + crazy (although I've always been kind of interested in thinking about this stuff), but one thing I SORT OF appreciate is the turn towards critically discussing our teaching methods - grading, reading, assignments, etc. www.newyorker.com/culture/open...