I hardly got any calls or texts about the state supreme court race this year, a big contrast with last year. Only one canvasser came by our house. I guess Democrats didn't need those reminders this year.

Milwaukee Has Become Proving Ground to Save Rohingya Language

I’m a Black environmental writer and historian of Mexico and the Americas, and I just started a Substack! Check me out there @roguechieftan

First link to preorder Energy, Society, and Environment: A Critical Introduction. Blackwell-Wiley, out September 2026. www.amazon.fr/Energy-Socie...

There are innumerably many reasons why any exchange of nuclear weapons is horrifying to contemplate. But I want to dispel rumors that newer science suggests that large-scale consequences would be much less severe than perceived during Cold War era. That simply isn't the case.

While it is true that there are genuine scientific uncertainties surrounding the details and dynamics re: how hypothetical nuclear exchanges of different size and location, and subsequent mass fire/firestorm events, would actually play out, *that is very much beside the point.*

Finally: This also applies to use of non-nuclear weapons against nuclear & petrochemical facilities in densely populated regions. While consequences for global climate in such a scenario are lower, the risk of large scale radiological or other toxic contamination is very real.

«Ses facultés mentales sont en train de s’effondrer» : Trump accusé de démence après ses propos insensés sur l’Iran

I can't believe we have reached this point, but this bears crystal clear emphasis: Our global climate system ensures that even "limited" use of lower-yield "tactical" nuclear weapons against civilian or industrial targets would have major regional-to-global scale consequences.

This wedge-shaped house between Johnson St and the railroad track has been sitting by itself since I first moved to Madison, I believe. I looked at a single room they were trying to rent, I think it was on third floor, looking out that window. I was not interested no matter what the rent was.

There are more books than you can imagine in the library behind this Google Gemini promotion. Amazing archives over in the Historical Library. Go in there and research something. Dig through journal articles. Do it yourself. That *should* be what's promoted here.

These two msgs from Trump & Vance — about defending & destroying civilizations — are two sides of the same white Christian supremacist ideology. bsky.app/profile/jaco...

At the world’s most beautiful polling place. #Wisconsin! Go vote! Support @christaylorwi.bsky.social !!

The "years of corruption, extortion, and death" in his genocidal post will be used someday to describe his own years in office, and as a warning against his kind of politics, I'm confident of that. It's getting from where we are today to that point that I'm deeply worried about.

Here I am commenting on an essay where the student has chosen to write about the very part of Wisconsin where I sat at the kitchen table listening to my father-in-law talk about what farming was like when he was a kid and how he once blew a hole in the swamp to see how deep the peat went.

In Wisconsin tomorrow, we can see if our state university system president gets fired, then watch returns from our state supreme court race, while waiting in dread of what he might do next.

NSF LTER program “archived”. LTER=“Long Term Ecological Research”. This program has been incredibly successful, incredibly frugal for what they accomplish, and…of course…targeted by evil know-nothings. My heart is breaking.

As a solo traveller one of the nice things I noticed after 3 months in Paris is how accommodating they are to solo diners, I’ve had zero issues with where my table is or with the service, unlike some restaurants in Canada where you are treated almost as an embarrassment,…

This post is actually a passive-aggressive reaction to "everyone on Bluesky is 38", "retirement home for aging millennials" etc.

Depluralize a movie One easy piece

Stop calling things ecosystems when they're not anything like an ecosystem. For example, X is not an ecosystem. It's a social media platform owned by a Nazi and now full of fascists and hangers on, like the guy whose screen-captured post just set me off.

Just quickly read through a review of a new book about Willa Cather, and being me, starting thinking about the site we sampled in 1999, "up on the divide" where Ántonia lived with her family. Which I believe, could be wrong, is the Blue-Republican River divide north of Red Cloud. At least that's 1/3

People don’t seem to be nearly freaked out enough about US-Israeli bombing Bushehr nuclear reactor and what it could do to the entire Gulf region. This is worth freaking out about.

Penn sedge flowering in our backyard.

A prairie pasqueflower opening on Easter.

First semester, UW Madison, 1976. Could have gone in a lot of directions. And why do I still have this document, and not so many many others? Document taphonomy...

Tulips looking out the porch window.

I assigned this article for my American West course in 2024 and had forgotten it until this morning, when I reassigned it. I'll introduce it by talking about visiting Organ Pipe Cactus as a kid. The photo here of the border wall looming over the pond is haunting. www.hcn.org/articles/the...

An opposition party would not be on vacation right now. They would have coordinated message to the public about the fact that a President in cognitive decline is threatening more war crimes. They would be BLASTING the message on all available platforms.

A lot of the students in my Geography of Wisconsin course are from here, and do projects on the places they grew up. There are also international students, and to be honest, I really like reading what they've learned about the Ho-Chunk Nation, the logging era, or dairy farming in Marathon County.

All of the NSF directorates I've gotten funding from over the years would get cut back drastically in the proposed NSF budget, except one, which is already getting eliminated illegally before Congress even considers the proposed budget.

My joke answer: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

If we still used movable type, we would constantly be running out of exclamation points.

Got a nice pic of star MSc student Liz Howe giving a demonstration of her research project with the LI-6800. Measuring gas exchange and #phenology of #spring #wildflowers across elevational gradients. @li-corenv.bsky.social

My students and I also led a wildflower tour today for @wildonesnatives.bsky.social Appalachian Highlands. Many ephemerals were done flowering, but Trillium rugelii was just starting up. Also saw a juvenile great horned owl!

My book cover is now officially on the @uchicagopress.bsky.social website, coming out on October 20! Planning some cool events involving beer, fiddlers, and lantern light. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Chapter 5 is worth waiting for…in the late 1860s tens of thousands of young women picked hundreds of thousands of pounds of hops every August and September. After picking all day, they were ready to party.

If we define "lab" to incude field research, a big orange water cooler and some crescent wrenches are what we turn to again and again.

Realistically, though? The more common Die With Zero route is a sequence of, say, falls or diagnoses along with a cascade of morbidities and reductions in activities of daily life (ADLs), which necessitate nursing home care, which EASILY eats $100K/year.

If I speak-

After grading and/or commenting on many undergrad essays and project reports and grad student theses this semester, I am ready to make sweeping comments about how these young people can't do __________, need to learn to ______, etc. All of which would reflect my own biases more than anything real.

What will happen to the 82 USFS experimental forests around the country? Many sites have decades-long experiments that are tracking how forests are changed by timber harvesting practices and climate change. As I say here, “you can't just pick up an experimental forest site and move it to SLC.”

Nothing like a good old late night early April Wisconsin thunderstorm with cold driving rain at 37 degrees with a wind chill of 28. #wiwx

I feel like I have to acknowledge my personal role in declining engagement on bluesky. I know a lot of times I'm not even trying to get likes, just entertaining myself. I don't even use memes. Really, it's all my fault. I will try harder.

For many years, news stories have had headlines that weirdly place "map" in opposition to "digital" or "modern." I've come to suspect that the general public's idea of "map" is something from the 17ᵗʰ century. Does anyone know of studies that give actual data on the public understanding of maps?

Could have stayed here, on one of our family vacations in midwinter when my dad could get off work. But we usually camped (and sometimes froze) when we were this far south. Tucumcari or somewhere in Kansas were more typical $10/night motel stops after driving straight through from Illinois.

Cloud-free view of the whole area burned by the Morrill Fire in Nebraska, plus smaller adjacent fires to the northeast. Sentinel 2 image from yesterday. The marker is at Crescent Lake and southeast of there, Blue Creek. For scale, most of the irrigated circles are 0.5 mile (0.8 km) in diameter.