Today on WFMU: On Techtonic w/Mark Hurst: Big Tech is building giant data centers in places where water is already scarce. Residents are being told to drink recycled sewage. Paul Mozur, global tech correspondent for the New York Times, describes what's happening (6 p.m. ET). www.wfmu.org/upcoming

Yes really — the “we asked this guy. He doesn’t actually know jack shit but he’s rich” model of reportage really needs to go

Some nice staphylinid gems from the unsorted drawers - Xenodusa, Lissobiops, Megalopinus, Trichophya.

Sorting some staphylinids while tuning in to #ECN2025

Finally sat down and figured out how to use the 25-year-old imaging system at work this afternoon. There's a dance in the old dame yet!

A walk in the forgotten wetland under the overpass, a father-daughter outing to an active shooter event, plus rain lilies, film photos, and a kitchen counter moth promising a Roger Dean dream, in this week's Halloween x Todos Santos Field Notes: fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/an-ofrenda...

Drop In Presents Happy Birthday Uncle Bob #2! with Frank In Queens Saturday 6PM ET It's time for the 2nd annual Robert Pollard birthday edition of Drop In! 🎂 @wfmu.bsky.social #guidedbyvoices #dropinonrocknsoulradio #robertpollard

I had been to this site 7 or 8 times before since moving here a couple months ago and never found anything. That's how it goes, usually. If a spot looks good, keep going back under different conditions and seasons.

Day 4 of our Okefenokee NWF collecting trip took us to Mixons Hammock east of Stephen C Foster State Park. We canoed the two miles and then sampled mossy patches and magnolia litter in cypress swamps. Not the most productive, but we found many linyphiids for study.

Another undescribed species of Arianops, and only the second sp. known from West Virginia! #Pselaphinae

headless horseman tachyine

Day 1 of our Okefenokee NWF trip completed. We canoed to Billy's Island (~2mi.), collected spiders all day via litter sift and vacuum, and canoed back to camp. Very productive and hopefully we collected some lost species.

“'I think we should have principles as business owners and stand up for what’s right,' [owner William McCormick] said. The actual shirt, he explained, isn’t really new. 'It used to just say Fuck Nazis. We just clarified who the Nazis were.'"

I hate to be a doomer but the pandemic broke me in this regard I think. After watching like a third of the country proudly say they wouldn't inconvenience themselves even if it cost other people their lives, where do you go from there

rushing to integrate undercooked, misrepresented, and misunderstood technology into every corner of our lives just so a handful of terrible people could make more money might have been a bad idea

it's never occurred to them. they have zero idea that in the lawless, anti science, brutal world they seek to usher in, defective weirdos like them would have been used for food and firewood

A well-timed emergence from a day spent in a windowless building.

Nice early fall foliage, and the beautiful / kinda-rare Pterostichus trinarius (usually more of a spring species in my experience). #Carabidae #WestVirginia

#NoKings Charleston WV

Best sign I saw today

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

twice a year the entire U.S. press becomes a marketing extension of a single billionaire-owned retailer, and nobody in any position of editorial power thinks it's weird or gross

“The Luddite Club, a nonprofit group that supports taking smartphone breaks, has 26 chapters, nearly all of them at high schools or colleges.”

okay not 2 brag but for the last 4 years i've done a solid month of halloween hits @wfmu.bsky.social and if u need some tunes for your haunted house i got you... and if u want to get me back??? donate @wfmu.bsky.social & support freeform radio.... archives forever at wfmu.org/playlists/ne

one more keyence post, OBVIOUSLY you gotta capture the elegant eyebrows of the rhysodid

This little brown beetle wearing a mite hat is Cryptophilus angustus - a pleasing fungus beetle that is often confused for several other families of tiny beetles

Sampling a variety of dead grasses today. #Kentucky #Beetles

Almost forgot today is Ball Hoffman Day. Happy bday to the late great taxonomists George Ball (Carabidae) and Richard Hoffman (Diplopoda and everything-Virginia), both born on 25 Sept., 99 and 98 years ago, respectively.

The Box O' Beetles is my favorite "outreach" tool. These are mostly specimens without data from our collection, but I snuck in some goodies. "Find the blind cave beetle" might be a fun activity.

Aw yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about. #Osoriinae

this is hilarious. Serious cognitive disadvantage indeed.

#LiteratureNotice Maruyama et al. The second species of the enigmatic genus Microblattellus Ferrer, 2006 ( #Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae) from Cambodia: A possibility of termitophily in the genus doi.org/10.11646/zoo... #Beetle #Beetles #NewSpecies #DarklingBeetles .

I set these beetles on the couch so I wouldn't forget them tomorrow, and if this isn't a cozy sight to behold, I don't know what is...

#UrbanStump Charleston, WV

RIP Hermeto Pascoal (June 22, 1936 – September 13, 2025) youtu.be/lZbfNtDCHdM?...

Hermeto Pascoal poem spoken on stage tonight

This quietly got published amongst all the horror of late 2020, and I feel like it got overlooked. Beautiful color plates for every mecopteran in Virginia! Flint et al 2020. The Insects of Virginia Number 16.

It's getting to be Harpalus (Pseudoophonus) season, nocturnal grassy lawn carabids that eat your weed seeds. Just surveyed my yard here in WV with a headlamp and got a surprising diversity. You'll have to take my word for it, but there are four species here!

A nice, buggy morning walk at the South Carolina Botanical Garden. Nothing too rare, but life practically everywhere you looked!

Holy moly, this is great. Sappy lonesome country song about an insect. (just heard on the Fool's Paradise program on @wfmu.bsky.social)

Confused writing is usually a symptom of confused thinking. As we struggle to clarify writing, we clarify our thoughts. AI writing aids rob us of that struggle, leaving clean-looking text and thoughts still confused for lack of inspection. Writing is not just a product; it is a diagnostic tool.

Stenus, with its deadly labium protruded #Staphylinidae

I've wanted a standing scope setup ever since seeing one in Ichauway's ent lab a few years ago, and today I made it happen. Won't work for everything, but for perusing vials/trays and sorting raw samples it is mighty nice.

All Children Left Behind

Never seen this before, but if your vial cap is loose enough for all of the ethanol to evaporate, it might also be loose enough for dermestids to get in and raid it after it dries out! Found in a box of bycatch that had been sitting ignored for 20+ years.

Jewelweed seedpods explode when touched.

enshittification | noun | when a digital platform is made worse for users, in order to increase profits