Sounds exciting! Now just stop working with Wiley (or any for-profit publisher that sells our stuff to AI) and stop charging APCs for open access, and we'll really be talking. It's long past time to reconsider the (not-for-profit) society publishing model at AGU. Relevant: bsky.app/profile/paol...

UPDATE: Kp8 (EIGHT!)

“Nobody knows what magnets are”

I want to see an aurora WITH MY EYEBALLS

Very disheartened by the UNL chancellor's decision to recommend the Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Department for elimination, despite the opposition from the Academic Planning Committee's vote. Both the opposing and in favor summary noted the value EAS provides to the discipline, and both sides

They are really planning to go through with these cuts at Nebraska, despite recommendations not to. Unbelievable. If you want to hire highly qualified, very successful earth and atmospheric sciences faculty in teaching and research, quite a few are probably looking for jobs for next year.

Rosalind Franklin died at 37 of ovarian cancer attributed to radiation exposure from the methods she & her assistant used to photograph a cross-section of the DNA double helix. Meanwhile, Watson won a Nobel off that work & survived to the ripe old age of 97 by simply: stealing those notes!

This is all to say that yes Watson was a dyed in the wool bigot, but we shouldn't forget that was he was also a huckster.

James Watson was a deeply hateful human being who stole the credit for the work he was celebrated for, and apparently was unable to refrain from offensive comments on almost any public occasion.

It's really important to note that not only was Watson a racist and misogynist but his contribution to the double helix was listening to a Rosalind Franklin lecture and getting mad because Francis Crick wouldn't invite him to his sex parties.

To be fair, the actual difference between these groups (criminals dressed as thugs doing violence for profit, and officially recognized thugs who do violence for fun) is paper thin to nonexistent.

Feeling this today

They fired me from the paleontology department cause I kept drawings the dinosaurs too sexy

This is going to be a completely niche comment for allergy sufferers, but wow, the OTC version of azelastine tastes really weird. They have obviously added sweet flavoring to it to mask the horrendous bitterness. I'm not sure how I feel about it!

as a bird artist, in honor of tonight’s game i have attempted to draw the gorgeous blue jay as accurately as possible. as always please let me know if you have any constructive criticism

This is an extremely bad idea.

Melissa is the worst Atlantic storm you could imagine, and it’s making landfall in Jamaica as I write this. Very few places on the planet have experienced conditions like some portions of Jamaica will in the coming hours. Our thoughts are with the Caribbean. Details below or at theeyewall.com.

WHOA

I have designed a (if I may say so) pretty awesome Mineralogy lesson using asbestos grain mounts, and I'm pretty excited about it, but I also had to make asbestos grain mounts*. That was a little harrowing. *in a fume hood with abundant safety precautions, but still

By the time the eye makes landfall, the island has already been battered by the leading edge for hours. I hope people have access to shelters on high ground and are as safe as possible, under the circumstances. It's awful to watch this in slow motion from afar (but worse to be in it).

Recharging the aquifer around here in eastern PA would be nice! Our property is normally riparian and very squishy. But the creeks and pond have been bone-dry for weeks now, and the smell of decomposing little fishes and tadpoles is sad and unpleasant.

My feed this morning reminds me of that tennis match the BBC liveblogged. I take it there was a game of perpetual baseball last night?

What we're witnessing with #Melissa is ultra rare in the history of known hurricanes in the Atlantic. This level of sustained intensity and feasting on every joule of ocean heat content without any real disruption is incredible. Not hyperbole: Jamaica is facing a generational catastrophic event.

Mar Awa III, patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, also born in Chicago, gave Pope Leo a Cubs jersey.

This is the news I've dreaded all my life, and it's here: Humanity has failed to avoid dangerous climate change. We have now entered the overshoot era. Our new goal is to prevent as many irreversible tipping points from taking hold as we can. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The most recent recon data suggests that Melissa continues to intensify. Central pressure now down to 907 mb and a dropsonde released in the northeast eyewall measured a mean wind in the lower 150m of 185 knots (213 mph). This hurricane is truly in rarefied air as far as Atlantic hurricanes.

Lightning flashes within the powerful eye wall of Hurricane Melissa. Incredible imagery this morning of Melissa, a Category 5 storm, south of Jamaica.

10/27 5am EDT: #Melissa has strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane with 160 mph winds and a 917 mb central pressure, confirmed by the Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters. Conditions in #Jamaica will rapidly deteriorate later today and tonight. See hurricanes.gov for the latest details.

Yikes. That's a 242 mph wind gust just measured inside Hurricane Melissa.

"Seek shelter now", the National Weather Service warned this morning. Sending stay safe, take care wishes to everyone in the hurricane's path.

A true catastrophe is likely to unfold in Jamaica, as multiple days of rain followed by a direct hit from a top-end hurricane push the limits of what the country has seen historically. Details on the forecast, which aren’t much changed today below and at theeyewall.com.

[Melissa forecast analysis, Friday 10/24] The forecast is looking increasingly dire for Jamaica. Model guidance has increasingly clustered on a direct hit - Jamaica has only had close calls from five category 4 hurricanes on record - with catastrophic flooding a major concern.

(Everyone, we have gone over this. Marie Antoinette was a privileged child, but she was not telling poor people to just find and eat some cake. She was telling the _bakers_ to give out their cake if they had run out of bread to give to the poor. Historical accuracy in your analogies, please!)

Whether it's Obama wearing a tan suit to a press conference or Trump dumping brown liquid on protesters, both presidents have made some controversial earth-tone color choices.

Good evening. We estimate that between 4.2 and 7.6 million people turned out for the No Kings Day demonstrations held around the country on Saturday. This makes Oct 18 very likely the biggest single-day U.S. protest event since 1970. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/second-no-...

Eastern Taiwan's ill-fated Taroko Gorge is under evacuation orders due to a landslide barrier lake that formed today (8/17). The debris is 25 meters tall and as you can see in the attached photo of the Swallow's Grotto (via the national parl FB page), water levels were already high this afternoon.

Thought I would check the Kilauea webcam. What a view to wake up to! Thinking of all the USGS Volcanoes team and hoping federal agencies can get back to their jobs soon. www.youtube.com/live/BqmpkUd...

Kīlauea episode 35 has arrived. The double fountain shot is from one of the HVO interns, Christina. All are taken from the public viewing areas.

Have you ever wondered what it's like being a mineralogy curator? I wrote a blogpost for @originalgcg.bsky.social about what I get up to at work 🧪⚒️ #geology #minerals #museums geocollnews.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/s...

Disastrous storm surge struck western AK Sunday. All 6 NWS upper air sites in the area have chronic issues (see alt-text). In addition to no releases from 2 sites, 2 sites are releasing only 1x per day instead of 2x. 2 have intermittent issues, 1 of these (Nome) had no releases 10/9 or 10/10 (1/2)

This is bizarre. What do folks think research is? Exploring a new idea, by reading ~100 articles in chronological order and discovering the holes in their reasoning, is actually really fun IF you like the subject and doing research. (And if you don't, that's ok, it's just not your career path.)

Oh no!!

We could get rid of half of the radiative forcing of climate caused by aviation if we could get airlines to stop making contrails, mostly by flying a few thousand feet higher or lower. New open-access paper from a climate physics perspective. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

MIT, as one of nine schools that were asked to agree to adopt conservative priorities and policies in exchange for funding perks, REJECTS the Trump administration deal. wapo.st/4niC09b (gift article) #AcademicSky

Phew. (I also thought Dartmouth already said no, which would make MIT the second school, but that doesn't matter!)

I enjoy baseball, and also have slightly silly/weird superstitions about local teams right after I move to a new place. The Isotopes had their first season when I lived in ABQ, the Red Sox made the playoffs and then won the World Series after I moved to Boston...

Peter Mulvey, Dar Williams, Jeff Foucault. Also Barenaked Ladies. Fight me, it's true.

Just randomly remembering one day when I was in my car in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the local classic rock station randomly played the old Wheel of Fortune theme song, in its entirety, between other songs like it was just another song

Remember, kids, people should still measure U-series in stuff!