HAHAHA I love that they quoted me on this "It's like billionaires dropping their garbage on our heads" https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskatoon-space-debris-satelitte-reentry-1.7643516

Book Review "The Ant Collective: Inside the World of an Ant Colony" by Armin Schieb If you love insects, nature or ants you should get this book. It's dense with diagrams and illustrations that cover every aspect of the lives of wood ants, the famous ants of temperate forests who build pine […]

Reasonably sure Mastodon peeps like libraries and might like a peek at this wowzer I stepped into today. #dascdmx

Anton Petrov has an interesting video introducing some recent science studies that show how we are causing rapid evolution of species living around us through unintended selection. Species as diverse as foxes and salmon are getting smaller and breeding earlier, among other changes, to better fit […]

my latest feature in #currentbiology is about #fakenews and #deception in nature: https://proseandpassion.blogspot.com/2025/09/fake-news-in-nature.html #science #ecology #mimicry #pheromones #ultrasound #insects

For the #obsession theme for #JukeboxFridayNight I immediately thought of Kylie Minogue's classic "Can't Get You Out of My Head", which shares a similar riff with New Order's "Blue Monday". Here's the clever remix that blends them in the open. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVWQe6Cw9AI

Approximately a year ago, activists and colleagues took action against seabed mining in New Zealand, occupying the office of the lobbying firm. Today they were found guilty of trespass, convicted and discharged. “I’m proud to wear this conviction. We never take such action lightly but if […]

As of today, 73 countries have ratified the #globaloceantreaty 🌊 🐙 The threshold was 60, so it is a done deal. It is a major milestone and a significant win for life in the seas. 🐳 It will come into force in January 17. 🥳 Meanwhile, you can read about the ways the historic agreement can […]

It is WILD that we now live in a time where my job as an astrophysics professor has gone from "learn cool things about space" to "try to get someone to hold billionaires accountable for dropping shit on us from orbit"

Huh, how time flies. 6 or 7 years ago, at the OER Foundation, for whom I work as Open Source Technologist, we decided to replace our MailChimp with, eventually, a self-hosted instance of Mautic (https://mautic.org) to communicate with learners taking courses in our online open university courses […]

@joncounts I love kowhai so much that my friends got together and bought me this print when I finished my PhD at Canterbury. I still love it. I haven’t been in NZ at the right time of year to see them in flower since 2019. #newzealand

Inspired by this + fossil giant Eni's fusion investments to update my 'greenwashing habitable zone' conceptualisation of what techs seem to lend themselves to being the most useful for bullshitty climate delay Welcome to the zone, fusion, you finally made the cut Top right = The Altman Expanse

Time to add a few more games to the game library.... "The Made in NZ Steam Sale features 100+ games made by devs all over Aotearoa!" https://store.steampowered.com/sale/NZGames2025 Tips: ✅ Blackheart ✅ It's only money #gaming #SteamDeck #newzealand #aotearoa

I spun the camera on the tripod and took 30 random shots on one sheet of 4x5 film. #believeinfiln #filmisnotdead #filmphotography #photography #eastcoastking #pnw #blackandwhitephotos #monochrome #photographersofbluesky

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It's time for everyones favourite themed attraction... Ladies and gentlemen, I humbly present #canetoadworld

"If something isn’t getting a return, the government should sell it so we can afford to buy something that does." I give money to the government so that we can all have a better life, not so that the government can "get a return". #NZPol

This week is Sustainability Week at #LincolnUniversityNZ. Here’s the student magazine with all the details. I’m looking forward to today’s tree planting, 11–1, at the site of the university’s old Burns Building. Burns was damaged in the earthquakes and […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

'New research analyzing more than 3,000 tropical forest sites reveals that areas with fewer seed-dispersing animals store up to four times less carbon than forests with healthy wildlife populations.' https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/animals-that-spread-seeds-are-critical-for-climate-solutions/

Really good write up of the history and current directions we are going in #climatemodelling https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-climate-scientists-saw-the-future-before-it-arrived-20250915/

I did it! I did a blog post! This one's about migrating my website source code from GitHub to #codeberg https://ericrscott.com/posts/2025-09-20-migrating-to-codeberg/

I refer to clams as a cross between a cow and a vacuum cleaner. And like a cow, some species of clams fart out a fair bit of methane, due to methanogenic microbes in their guts! Their farts may account for ~10% of methane released in some environments. So to answer a question I'm sure many of […]

[Yesterday I saw this racist vandalism on an election sign on the outskirts of Lincoln town. The billboard is a photo of the Selwyn District's mayor, Sam Broughton, who is standing for re-election for what will be his fourth term as the mayor of NZ's fastest […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

The kōwhai trees are in fabulous full bloom across Ōtautahi-Christchurch city, NZ. They're blooming about a month late this year and are making up for that with a huge number of flowers. That's making the korimako and kererū in the Cashmere hills happy. The […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

Seagull on a marquee from underneath

On Monday evening we're going to try our first public online meet-up for #iNaturalistNZ. I'll give a short presentation on some of the many highlights from iNat NZ over the past year. We'll then open the floor and hopefully get folk meeting each other and talking about how we can work together […]

We found the perfect ball of moss #mosstodon

@joncounts then vote him out ;) I used to live there for 2.5 years while the cycleways were being built, and the Christchurch I arrived in was sooo different to the more pleasant city that resulted by the time I left.

There's a standout article in #thepress by Charlie Mitchell detailing how in the 1960s Christchurch city, NZ, came within a whisker of having a major motorway built through the middle of Hagley Park. That's the big park in the core of the city. The majority of local politicians were all for the […]

Here's #minuit, NZ's fantastic drum and base and weird band, with one of their early hits, "Except You". Vocalist Ruth Carr started out singing and playing drums, while they shifted to electronic drums for much of Minuit's music. I read on Wikipedia that this strange carnival themed video was […]

What we call things reveals a lot about our priorities and biases. Graphic via @reenamahajan.bsky.social

What idiotic process has led Science Direct #elsevier to think that there is anything positive about invading scientific article webpages with pop-up proposals of an inaccurate LLM "Reading assistant"? The point about reading scientific articles is the accuracy. Buffoons.

If a clam claps its valves in the sea and no one is around, does it make a sound? Actually, yes. Researchers were able to use a sensitive mic to pick up the sound of scallops "coughing" as they close their valves, expelling water. It could have use as a […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Bike-lanes don’t cause traffic congestion. Car dependency, foolish land-use sprawl, too many (& bigger) cars driving too much taking up too much space, highly subsidized driving costs, and not enough choices in how to get around, ALL cause traffic congestion. Think about it. THAT’S common sense.

Thank you so much again to @sundogplanets ! It was an absolute pleasure, and yet so terrifying, but still a pleasure to speak with you! #peertube #vod - https://video.firesidefedi.live/w/ptCAmdANWMBmmaLcT7gQif #castopod #fedicast - […]

*Liking the use of bamboo there https://youtu.be/vaG5tVnpkwc?si=NJBhqKGLZNdgCf9N

We are modernizing the user interface Pray we do not modernize it further

A few swamp hens (NZ: pūkeko) were out and about this morning, grazing on the new growth outside the wetland reserve. One was just next to the walking path, another two on either side of a drainage channel. #birdsofoz #lakemacquarie

I was thinking about how the Te Pāti Māori co-leader is only responding to media questions in te reo Māori this week to mark Māori Language Week. Yet, in Canada, no one would complain about only responding to media questions in French. #nzpol

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Ngahere: Forest, woodland, natural sanctuary

I thought I saw some auks, but it was just a skua flying backwards.

As a fairly covid-cautious person, this quote from the astrobiology textbook talking about the possibilities for lithopanspermia makes me shudder with horror every time I teach this section: “In a sense, Earth, Venus, and Mars have been ‘sneezing’ on each other for billions of years, offering […]

PCI is featured in this Nature News post, which presents some ideas to help fix the peer-review system: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02457-2

I’ll never not be enamored with tiny trees. (It’s actually a bit or a problem, walking-pace-wise, whenever I take my camera to the forest on sunny mornings/evenings.)

Africa’s clean energy dawn is here. ☀️ In the past 12 months, solar panel imports soared 60%, with 20 countries setting records—from Nigeria & Kenya to Algeria, Tanzania & Zambia. A rising Sun lifts all humans, and Africa is joining the global surge toward a solar-powered future. 🌍🔋 #EnergyTransition

I just found this interesting engineering video about how good chickens are at locking their gaze even when their body is moving. It mentions that mammals don’t need to do this as well because our eyes rotate more freely in their sockets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKz0_kSFSP0 #chickens […]

#3goodthings #ThreeGoodThings #birds #albatross Monday, Sep 15🍁 1. My last well-intentioned summer visitor has departed (to Paris!), and I finally feel unencumbered, able to breathe, free. 2. My key lime tree has begun to flower & fruit, even after 25 years in […] [Original post on sfba.social]

Sunflower #texturetuesday #bloomscrolling #nature #photography

Yo dawg we heard you like shells...the Stimpson chimney clam is a shell in a shell. These little bivalves bore into loose shells, building little igloo like chimneys of cemented shelly fragments once they grow past the thickness of their host shell! #clamfacts