How your smartphone could help unlock the mystery of the monarch butterfly's migration from Mexico. Butterflies are tagged with tiny transmitters to track journey north. cbc.ca/news/world/m... #CitizenScience #ecology #environment #STEM #SciChat

This week I finished listening to Is a River Alive?, written by Robert Macfarlane. He also narrated it, so the parts kayaking thru rapids - That's his actual excitement. (I waited in my car until the end of that bit.) How do you figure out if a river is alive? 💙📚

Former Native American concentration camp lies beneath current immigration detention center If you know anything about Minnesota history, then you know about Fort Snelling, said Robert Rice, the owner of Powwow Grounds Coffee Shop. 1/8

Applications are OPEN for MSU’s Entomology Research and Outreach Fellowship (EROF), a paid 12‑week summer research program for undergrads. Gain hands‑on lab and field experience while working with MSU researchers. Learn more and apply by 3/27/26: www.canr.msu.edu/ent/undergra... #Entomology 🧪🌍🍁

Today I finished up Doctor Who: Earth Aid. It was a full cast audio drama, featuring Sylvester McCoy's Doctor, written by Ben Aaronovitch & Andrew Cartmel. It looks like part of a series called The Lost Stories. Plus, they had interviews with the cast. 💙📚 📚🪐

Finished the audiobook of Mike Chen's Here & Now & Then, read by Cary Hite. (My book group read the book I listened to earlier, A Quantum Love Story.) This was more time travel. Secret agents prevent time mercenaries from mucking about ... only 1 gets stranded in the 1990s. 💙📚 📚🪐

The Gen X urge to walk on sunshine.

This is the best discourse going. 😆🥰 (I just played Weird Al for my 6th graders during Day 3 - & Day Last - of building/ testing/ improving straw rockets.)

Ha! Authors commenting (or even just liking) my reports on their books only encourages me to read more & report more. 😆🥰📖

Brilliant!

Sharing a couple of past #sciencevalentines (some of the best puns are thanks to collab w @carrotslittle.bsky.social )

Me, every time I get sick: I am not a hagfish - How am I producing this much mucus? 🙄

This whole thread, *and* the comments (mostly).

Finished the audiobook of Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution, written by Andrew M Wehrman & read by Timothy Andrés Pabon. Washington inoculating the army was of course more complicated of a decision than modern retellings indicate. 💙📚

Just finished up my SSR (silent sustained reading) book. It's hard to read a book in 30 minute chunks once a week. Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green is about how a terrible disease is tolerated. & how TB affected everything from clothing to statehood. & how there's hope. 💙📚

Science fiction convention again. Here are this year's shirts. (I also wore the Muppet shirt last year.)

When I was a kid, we spent a year in Oklahoma. One day that winter, they got an inch or 2 of snow - & everything shut down. They don't have snow removal equipment. I was out running errands yesterday in 1°F (& it's currently -10°F). Climate weirding (& denial) kills people.

I finished up another one of my Christmas books, We Will Rise Again edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz, & Malka Older. It's an eclectic (& hopeful!) mix of stories, interviews, & essays. How can we build a better society? There are lots of ideas. 💙📚 📚🪐

So I fell hard for linguistics while doing master's work to get an ESL teaching degree. (But I'm still teaching science, hopefully just better.) So this is beautiful. Maybe not comprehensible at my level of knowledge, & not great on my phone -- but still fantastic.

thread from a local who's been doing the work

Last night I finished up Woolly: The True Story of the De-extinction of One of History's Most Iconic Creatures, written by Ben Mezrich & read by the author. Bonus epilogue & afterword read by George Church & Steward Brand. I have questions. 💙📚

IDK if people are talking about Kai Cenat's public reading journey, but he's using his power for good. A lot of people can't read. At least not at what we consider adequate levels. And it is not their fault. Society as a whole severely pulled away from literacy advocacy.

OH is off to Ales & Advocates, originally billed as Bros & Brews. Which I immediately categorized as "trying to recruit college sophomores." GUYS, PLEASE CONSIDER VOLUNTEERING FOR CASA, Court-Appointed Special Advocates for Children. They got LOTS of white women already.

I need more glow-in-the-dark, sparkly, or clear dice. I also need to repack this so the lights are one layer of dice in, to shine thru. (I have some cool dice, like a d30, that are not cool colors. They're on the inside.) #uplift

I finished up A Quantum Love Story yesterday, written by Mike Chen & narrated by Patti Murin. It was the "cozy mystery/ romance" for the library's reading challenge. A workaholic & a foodie are trapped together in a 4-day time loop when a particle accelerator explodes. 💙📚 📚🪐

I love my goofy kids. (The warm-up question was to draw a food web for a Michigan forest.) #EduSky

Tried a comic on my phone, thru my library & Hoopla. It was OK, but phone-sized. Dog of War, by Mike Chen & Angel Hernandez, is a 5-issue Deep Space 9 story about ... a corgi. Quark is holding this dog for a secretive buyer, who's sent some collateral - including modified Borg tech. 💙📚 📚🪐

First bird of the new year - a Carolina Wren singing outside, before I even got up. I'm taking that as a good omen. 🥰 #birds

This whole thread! (Also, I got the exact same kit, also from my spouse, also for Xmas. I didn't wait nearly so long to put it together, tho.)

So I got Moderna's mNEXSPIKE vaccine yesterday. It's not the whole spike protein, just the tippy tail end. Ooo, doggy, my immune system responded. So today will be very low key. I got this version instead of the regular Spikevax because of my history of cancer.

Ug, this whole thread. I really wish the politicians who write laws for schools would work in a school for at least a couple of days. We always need more subs. #EdSky

Lots of snow & wind overnight but luckily we didn't lose power. But I don't know about driving anywhere today. ❄️🌨️💨 I mean, it rained all day yesterday (even some spots of thunder!) so there's likely a layer of ice under everything.

I stayed 'til 3 reading one of my Christmas books. (4 more to go, & probably a hundred more tbr.) Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series is lots of fun but I've been inconsistent on picking them up. So I read The Hanging Tree out of sequence. Still fun!

Finished up Spindle's End by Robin McKinley today. I chose it because Justine Eyre was the narrator, plus the winter adult reading contest has a "retelling of a classic" option. So this is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, complete with fairy godmothers & talking animals. 💙📚 📚🪐

23 December 1904 | Pole Adam Szybowicz was born in Krakow. An engineer. In #Auschwitz from 28 March 1942. No. 27408 He perished in the camp on 15 April 1942. --- 📖 "Poles at KL Auschwitz”: http://lekcja.auschwitz.org/en_2020_06_polacy/

Somehow I missed seeing Gremlins when it came out, so I finally watched it last night. It's a horror movie for kids. & omigosh, the toy marketing potential of Gizmo! So now I'm curious about when Jonathan Rand started writing his horror stories for kids...

If ChatGPT writes it, ChatGPT might as well read it - I'm certainly not the intended audience. 😑

We're short a paraprofessional, the helper that comes with a group of kids. Wow, what a difference between the biology class with the helper & the one without. I am not sufficient by myself. (So fingers all crossed we hire another person soon...) #EduSky

Just finished the audiobook of Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brian Sanderson, read by Michael Kramer. Almost 25 hours! & I don't know how to spell anything. & there's 2 more books, plus another 4 set 300 years later. But now I'm ready for book group. 💙📚 📚🪐

I put this together for my husband. (We met in the book group he was hosting, in the bookstore he co-owned.) It was fun, no tools required - Everything snaps together or is stickers. Mostly wood, too. But it's only been since this summer & some of the stickers are getting loose.

#MedSky #IDSky #PublicHealth There is a widespread outbreak of #norovirus, a GI virus that causes projectile vomiting & profuse diarrhea usually lasting 24-48 hrs. Wastewater levels nationwide in 🇺🇸 are high. It’s miserable & incredibly contagious. So many friends are texting SOS, so here’s a 🧵. /1

We had a snow day so I finished up a long-incomplete book, Mindset by Carol Dweck. It feels like it's a foundational book in education. Rather than relying on other people's interpretations, I read it myself. 💙📚 #EduSky

Finished up another audiobook book yesterday. Bryony & Roses by T Kingfisher, read by Justine Eyre, is great. It's Beauty & the Beast, if Beauty was a gardener & the Beast was somewhat sarcastic. I heart practical heroines, & fairytale retellings. 💙📚 📚🪐 @tkingfisher.com

I work in a school. We have a mandated number of active shooter drills every year. School kids are shot & killed every year. Mostly by other kids or by white men. We just get thoughts & prayers. It's not the shooting they care about, it's the opportunity to advance their political agenda.

The next question: Did he trust the US to protect his family, only for his family to still be trapped there?

I listened to a couple of John Scalzi short stories while running errands last weekend. His books are all on Audible (according to him at some convention) but my library has Hoopla & Libby. Both stories are fun, of course, & snarky. 💙📚 📚🪐

Just finished another audiobook: Pseudoscience & Science Fiction, written by Andrew May & read by Steven Crossley. (The write-up said Dr Andrew May but the picture of the cover didn't.) It wasn't exactly a general audience book? Each chapter has an abstract, for example. 💙📚 📚🪐

I got COVID in September, when school started back up, & I've had a lingering cough ever since. Not a fan.

You can still get a copy of the limited special edition of THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS from Inkstone btw! Signed, numbered, sprayed edges and other fancy touches. Excellent gift for the bookish people in your life (if I do say so so myself) inkstonebooks.com/product/sain...

Want to nerd out about fonts & kerning (done badly)? This is the discussion for you!