So... odd question (following something a postdoc asked me) I wonder about, with the common institutional switches research life entails: Do you use a personal (e.g., Gmail) or institutional email as your corresponding email on papers? I, personally, used the institutional one. #AcademicSky

We know how the sun will die, and we know more, the more we study the demise of other stars. This case study shows us that long after a star collapses, it may gobble up the remnants of its shattered planet. Ain't that a mental image. 🧪 Link: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Check the comments for details on the different projects. If you want to see thriving marine ecosystems in the future, we need people to work on these (my occasional bashing of corals to the side).

Another cruise comes to an end (effect of cold seeps on the overlaying water column). The #sunrise catching us up on the way back to port after days at sea. Now to store all the gear and get going on processing all those samples. 🌊📷

Magnus is mostly done (the base still needs a bit of work), so that means I can start a new project, right?

The concept of the arsenal ship (a large vessel carrying a huge amount of missiles) has been around since the mid-1980s, and every once in a while, someone is talking about building some. Last ones were the South Koreans... but there really hasn't been much news in the West about it since 2024.

About 33.4 million years ago, one of the major shifts in the Earth system occurred: the Eocene ended, and the Oligocene started. With that, sea level dropped globally, resulting in a massive truncation worldwide, an unconformity in the record. 🧪⚒️ Link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I'm looking at the manuscript, there are one and a half chapters left to wrap up this book, and it is looking back at me. The characters are at their happy (for now) end, the plot has been resolved, just need to get it to the final note... and I can't get my head clear enough to write. #Writing

No, #Reviewer2, I haven't cited that chapter from 1979 that was never digitized fully, from a limited print book on a completely different topic I would never have known to look for. I can't even get it! Do you really want me to cite something I can't read?

Sometimes we have to present the observations with a model you can't test all the way because time/resources/tech that doesn't exist yet, then the community can build on that. I don't get reviewers who say, "You can't publish that, it's only a hypothesis, it wasn't sufficiently thoroughly verified".

I guess we need to talk about self-reinforcing feedback loops. That is, when a process kicks off, and induces its own continuation in some way. Like Antarctic ice melt, which allows warm water into the shelves, which in turn accelerates ice loss. 🧪 Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It's been a minute since I got any traction with a Sword & Sorcery title (other than the Drizzt books, but I have long-term character investment there). Will @refeist.bsky.social's Rides a Dread Legion be the first one I finish in a while? The grumpy old folks in the 1st chapter are promising. 💙📚🪐

There are very few energy sources in the deep sea to support biology. Seeps (hot and cold) are one of the primary ones, forming local hotspots. The cold seeps form pokemarks, which can expand into channels if a current catches them. 🧪🌊 Link: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

#WeekendReading: Something topical for a change, Mohamed et al., on climate change and migration dynamics, with Somalia from 1990 to 2020 as a case study. 🧪 Link: www.frontiersin.org/journals/cli...

One of the reasons to move out of Twitter is that they set things up so no one was seeing my posts. Kind of suck that this is now happening here now. Go, check your settings, and get the feed YOU want.

Read a long piece today about AI companions and AI porn. Not the first one on the topic, but was a bit more depressing than usual. The adult industry models seem to have some interesting learning features, but the end result might just be more lonely people, having a harder time making connections.

Possibly, the only correct way of serving Mentha (نعناع, נענע) tea. (This was the only reason my late Libyan grandmother allowed any Bierkrugen in the house)

One of the things I really like about #SFF is that the rules of our reality do not need to be adhered to. I retrospect, how that interacts with detective fiction was not something I considered, which is an interesting place this analysis goes to. 🧪 | 📚🪐

Hi, @bsky.app, whenever you get to it, a feature I would greatly appreciate would be "save draft" for a post or even autosave... for all those times one works on a threaded post, and the browser decides to shut itself down.

This is one of those papers that I don't fully agree with (issues of perspective), but I'm still very happy that exists. Taking the time and looking at a discipline like carbonate sedimentology and how it evolved is important for perspective. 🧪⚒️ Link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

One of my favorite, semi-invisible, worldbuilding aspects - naming conventions for ships (the hours that went into that for my own works...)

How, the F@#k, did this happen twice in one day?

A chat with a friend about learning that one of the local schools here canceled a field trip tomorrow due to the heat (it's been 29°C today) got me to go on the Meteorological Service website to check their long-term predictions... It's going to get so much worse.

Bright side - someone read my PhD work, and papers, and found an application to it. Dark side - it's in O&G exploration. It's still an interesting paper about the subsurface structure of the region and its tectonic evolution. 🧪⚒️ Link: pubs.geoscienceworld.org/aapg/aapgbul...

Reviewer 1: Very interesting data, valuable contribution, needs a bit of work. #Reviewer2: I have some comments 📜, but could be very important paper. Editor: Reject. 🤷 #AcademicSky

We are getting better and better at convincing cells that actually, they want to be other types of cells and differentiate into roles we want to give them. Like here, stem cells were isolated from fatty tissues, cultured, and used to help regrow bone. 🧪 Link: boneandjoint.org.uk/Article/10.1...

Active cemo - here we come! Xanthommatin is the pigment that allows octopus to blend with their environment and vanish. We now figured out how to make it in the lab (with genetical engineering and biosynthesis) and manipulate its color. #SciFiScience 🧪 Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It's labeling time. (context, preparing vials for water sampling on an upcoming cruise, since we won't have time to do that on the boat) #OutToSea

Weird convergence, started watching the new seasons of Hazbin Hotel last night, which has Vaggie thinking about changing her name, and then ran into this paper about how the words women use for their genitals relate to self-image and sexual pleasure. 🧪 Link: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

On the one hand, I can't say this isn't exciting and would allow for some interesting science on long duration... on the other hand, I wouldn't want to be the one trying it out first. www.deep.com/vanguard/

One of the reasons we need paleo-studies to understand climate change is that they allow us to explore the outcomes of perturbations. Case in point: Repeated pulses of CO2 (in the Triassic) --> Shifts in the terrestrial environment and vegetation. 🧪⚒️ Link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I do wonder, is it impossible to make a browser-based interface for a spreadsheet software that won't drive me to the brink of murderous rage? (Yes, if it's up to me, I work only locally on the machine. But when sharing files, that's not always an option)

When I was growing up, someone told me that green potatoes are toxic because they have cyanide in them. That's, of course, absolutely wrong. Green potatoes are poisonous because they have solanine in them. 🧪 Link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Very few things are as unnerving as "We need to update the scale because the magnitude of the events keeps getting greater" when it comes to something as destructive as hurricanes.

I keep running into more scientists who paint #miniatures. I wonder if that has to do with scientists' obsession with small details. ...or it could be because we're all massive geeks, but that's unlikely, right?

The fate of silicon in the ocean is something we surprisingly still trying to wrap our heads around. Part of it is integrated into the shells of marine organisms (e.g., diatoms), but when they die, some dissolves back, and some apparently turn into clay. 🧪🌊 Link: www.science.org/doi/full/10....

It's finally updated on the website, so I guess I'm really working there now... still doesn't feel real that I have a (tenure track) permanent position.

I think this paper about the relationship between screen time and ADHD (and related brain structure) is very interesting... but at the same time, I'm looking at the plots and grind my teeth. These are really terrible correlations (and possibly data biases). 🧪 Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

There is something incredibly relatable, for me, about Yor's (from Spy x Family) ongoing struggle to figure out how to be a "normal"/conforming person and not just pretend to be one, while having no idea who or how to ask to acquire those "skills" as an adult.

There was a study commissioned by the US Department of Defense about memes (and their possible weaponization)... and a 1680-page collection that came out of it in 2008 somehow found its way to ResearchGate. No idea if it's real-real, but it's wild. www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul...

Tepee structures are upward-buckling fracture rims that form a network of polygons on the ground in the super-tidal zone. They form by crystallisation forces of cement (or maybe also gas escape). The Rea Sea shore is apparently full of them. ⚒️🧪 Link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Not going to do #Novelmber this year. I have three manuscript drafts on my desk (one of which I need to finish, but that's only two more chapters) I've been procrastinating on. November is going to be about editing (and finishing those two chapters). #WritingCommunity

The more time I spend on small boats, the more a lot of (visual) #SciFi shuttles feel ridiculously small. Many of them are the size them are the size of a van, dwarfed by a modern fighter jet or patrol boat (see photos). There is a worldbuilding element there... but no one talks about it.

Fog nets are the real-world technology that inspired things like Star Wars' mouistre farms or Dune's windtraps. Given water scarcity in some regions, it's a tech we constantly try to improve on. This take - using the Japanese art of Kirigami. 🧪 Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sometimes, because I didn't have access to it, or just because I missed it, I skip a book in a series, and I usually don't go back even after I caught up on that (because I know the plot). Mirror Dance is one such book, but I think about going back for it - I have a craving for some Vorkosigan. 💙📚🪐

#WeekendReading: Hu et al., trying a new approach to figure out past alkalinity and phosphate levels (at least diagenetically) using carbonate-associated phosphorus. 🧪⚒️ Link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

End of an era. www.bbc.com/news/article...

After the ice age, when sea level rose, they flooded the gaps between the Maltease Islands. The current and flows around the islands piled sediment into various drift bodies, but many of them are now hidden under more recent sediment. 🧪⚒️ Link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Done with Weber's The Short Victorious War, the series is definitely getting better, and there was a point I actually had to put the book done for a moment, fearing what will come next. 💙📚🪐 Not sure what's next on the menu, time to browse the backlog.

For a talk I'm giving in a few weeks, I'm looking into the conflation of attitude towards queerness and towards climate change. Turns out, LGBTQ+ individuals worry more about climate change and think it's more of a threat than cishets. 1/3🧵🧪 Link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....