We have no way of knowing if fish have an internalized concept of sexuality, but most fish are broadcast spawners, releasing clouds of gametes into the sea in a vast, depraved orgy.
Deep-sea ecologist investigating how humans shape and reshape the sea floor. Conservation technologist developing open-source tools to understand our changing oceans. Ocean educator creating novel programs to help students interact with marine ecosystems.
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We have no way of knowing if fish have an internalized concept of sexuality, but most fish are broadcast spawners, releasing clouds of gametes into the sea in a vast, depraved orgy.
Seems like whether or not the windows to the Lincoln bedroom can open would be pretty easy to verify.
Baltimore is a great city.
If you chose to play Baldur's Gate 3 instead of waiting for the president to show up for his super secret announcement, you would be halfway through character creation by now.
He's 42 minutes late and counting.
I hope they're standing on the shady side.
Yup! Though practical salinity is such a good teaching tool, because it allows us to fill an entire semester with *why* it's unitless and what the heck even is salinity anyway.
September 2, 2025. David Samuel Shiffman was out Trekked by Andrew D Thaler.
National Reconnaissance Office has the best logo game in government.
Really.
There are absolutely moments where you suck it up and vote against monstrous candidates by voting for candidates who suck less. That moment is not 3.5 years and an entire mid-term away from an election where there will definitely be a huge primary.
That answer is 1982. Both logos are Starfleet ripoffs.
Stop deleting your funniest posts.
Also, did you know what's left of Air Force Space Command was redesignated Space Operations Command (SpOC)?
When... when do you think Air Force Space Command was started?
AMOC is a climate-driven overturning current that supports northern Europe's warm climate. It's collapse would result in a colder Europe. The Gulf Stream is powered by the rotation of the Earth. For it to collapse, the planet would have to stop spinning. That, the physicists tell me, would be bad.
i found a pile of them once when i was cleaning an old lab closet that clearly hadn't been organized for a few PIs' tenures. they had separated out the ones with cool stamps and postmarks into a different pile than the plain ones!
It does seem like a missed opportunity not to include some institution-themed art on the cards. I can imagine 1990's era scientists proudly displaying their collection of colorful reprint requests.
Here's a fun bit of science history for you: Back before we could just download PDFs, if you wanted a paper and it wasn't in a journal in your library, you wrote to the author for a copy. So universities made these nice little post cards for requesting article reprints.
Semi-regular reminder that the AMOC and the Gulf Stream are no the same thing. The collapse of the AMOC would be Catastrophic. The collapse of the Gulf Stream would be Apocalyptic.
Five principles to enhance conversations about conservation conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Deep-sea ecosystems of the North Atlantic Ocean: discovery, status, function and future challenges. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Scientists reconfirm rare shark sightings after 50 years in PNG news.mongabay.com/short-articl...
The U.S. wants to mine the ocean floor. Can anyone stop them? thinklandscape.globallandscapesforum.org/96923/can-we...
Announcement of planned procedure that was likely risky but is now complete and the president can deadlift 350 lbs.
Silly Little Guy Posting: Finally, after over a year, I have finished painting both armies in the Skaventide box. And now, I guess, we play the game.
as @drandrewthaler.bsky.social knows: “Science on Bluesky is kind of the best part of Bluesky. A smaller social network is not necessarily a negative. The engagement is tremendous.” 🧪🛟
Yup. 48 hours ago it was a fun little chuckle. Now...
They don't like that they can't always reach their kid or use the LifeO tracking apps.
Yeah, our county instituted those lock bags during school hours, and the kids seem to really like them. The only complaints have been from parents.
you seem exhausting.
Apology accepted. Don't let it happen again.
what an odd thing to say.
This weekend is wild. Like, the health story probably that he told to take it easy for a bit, and somehow they fucked the couch so bad that we all think he's dead and being Weekend at Bernied.
Thanks!
*and by done, I mean there are still months of revisions and rewrites, and I have to find an agent, and then even more revisions and rewrites.
Holy Mola. It's done*. Finally finished the first draft of Tidewater, a near-future hopeful yet bittersweet exploration of tradition and progress in the DelMarVa Tidewater, in the wake of climate change and the shadow of an active spaceport. And there are ponies. So many ponies.
Today, by hook or crook, I am finishing the first draft of Tidewater. Looking at 90,000 words for the final target.
You can just bake a pain de mie.
(and, even a lot of the Warhammer 40K books are surprisingly good)
The best SciFi I've read has, from the most part, all come out in the last 5 years. Some really stunning works (including The Actual Star). The genre seems more vibrant than ever. Even if you just want pop SF pulp of space bros shooting bugs, they publish like 600 Warhammer 40K novels every year.
theonion.com/ten-percent-...
theonion.com/ten-percent-...
Moore is definitely doing the potential candidate junkets, too. I also wouldn't be surprised to see Van Hollen making a run.
Man, I really do need to revisit my telepathic multi-dimensional whale novel.
I am firmly in the "something is going on" camp.
Live your life so that the greatest journalist of your era doesn't put "He sat down one of the most tragic asses in American history" in your obituary.
Apropos of nothing in particular, you should give H.L. Mencken's obituary for William Jennings Bryan a read: www.positiveatheism.org/hist/menck05...
Work in Progress: The final two horrible little rats from the Skaventide box. Been working on this massive army for over a year. Soon, the rats will rise, yes yes.
So that's why they want to mine the nodules!
*Civically minded environmentalist emerging from a 25 year coma* "The Riverkeepers dude did what?!"
"The elevation of prominent vaccine-denier Robert Kennedy Jr. to the highest public health office sets us on a dangerous path toward new epidemics of old diseases. We can’t allow the voices of reason, hard-won experience, community and civic duty be drowned out by fear mongers."
I wrote this for our local paper about the nomination of RFK Jr. 6 months ago and being right feels pretty fucking bad, man. The Truth About Vaccines is Written in Stone: www.stardem.com/opinion/edit...
I am annoying Andy Harris in solidarity.
Thank you!
All I have is cope.
I think they all know that when Trump isn't on the ballot, there's about a 10% drop in MAGA supporters who just don't show up.
Thanks!
I get all my craving tools and consumables from BeaverCraft, which is a great little woodworking company out of Ukraine. beavercrafttools.com
Thanks!
Thank you.
Had that happen out here in rural Maryland. Never happened to us in Baltimore City or Vallejo, CA, though.
For a while, Andy Harris had people answering his phones, but not recently. I hope that means he can't handle the volume of constituent complaints. Don't have much faith in my congressman, but as an MD, he should be ashamed of what his party is doing to the CDC.
I guess I just carve spoons now. Coffee scoop. Reclaimed mahogany.
Since there are so many new folks on Bluesky who do not know the deep lore, it is my duty to inform you that Jay Graber's first name translates to "Blue Sky", and somehow that is a complete coincidence. That's how you know the site has the sauce. We have arcane linguistics.
she slayed www.cnbc.com/2025/08/29/b...
The U.S.′ deep-sea mining plans could hurt global rules-based order and benefit China, policy experts warn www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/u...
I was walking in a park in Vallejo when someone came up to me with a geiger counter, pointed to the clicks, and said "see that? that's Fukushima!". Friend, we were in the Mare Island Naval Shipyard where they decommissioned nuclear submarine reactors.
Nodules on the seafloor have growth rings like trees which can be tied to the paleoclimate and ocean chemistry over tens of millions of years is such a wild, cool thing.
It would also have to explain why the nodules show evidence of sequential growth in situ, in which common events can be dated across different oceans. ⚒️🧪🌍🌊 agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
I can neither confirm nor deny that there is evidence that polymetallic nodules are the spent fuel of UFOs but if such evidence did exist it would certainly be classified.
I can neither confirm nor deny that there is evidence that polymetallic nodules are the spent fuel of UFOs but if such evidence did exist it would certainly be classified.
exactly.
You might enjoy my (free) short story re:deep-sea mining (contains zero aliens): "A trawler crawls across an abyssal plain, carefully cleaning microplastics off the ancient mineral-rich nodules, when the crew finds something that shouldn’t be possible." #solarpunk susankayequinn.com/books/slimy-...
I have already read it and I loved it! Fantastic short story!
I've gotten a lot of weird questions about deep-sea mining throughout my career but, friends, I was not ready for "could the nodules be spent UFO fuel?"
Apropos of nothing, I put this copy of Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz in our friendly neighborhood little free library two years ago and it has not moved in two years.
Proenneke is a legend.
Thanks. I was going for vaguely leaflike.
Thank you!
Thanks!
Generically stressed about the CDC and, well, everything, so I made a spoon.
Finished.
Deep-sea rocks packed with valuable metals may also be making oxygen in the deep, dark ocean—raising new questions about the cost of mining them.
There's the former standing desk in my old office back at the Virginia farm, probably in 2015 or so.
Years ago, I made a mahogany standing desk. It was one of my first "fine furniture" projects and boy did it take a lot of abuse over the decades. It finally gave up the ghost, so I'm turning it into a stand for my daughter's fish tank.
Important update: Frog on a lilypad.
I’m on a podcast! 🪨🪸🦑 Thanks @feltman.bsky.social for having me on to @sciam.bsky.social’s show. We talked about “dark oxygen” and whats happened in the 12 months since the discovery making headlines. Listen (& then watch our mini doc starring @drandrewthaler.bsky.social @jjmarlow.bsky.social)👇
"By contrast, in 2025 thus far, Bluesky has driven "a hundred times as many page views" to Southern Fried Science as Twitter." arstechnica.com/science/2025...
My one quibble with the coverage is that @whysharksmatter.bsky.social didn't so much "sour" on Twitter as I bullied him relentlessly in group texts and during our weekly game night until he finally exited the Torment Nexus.
We can't relocate ourselves out of a global science deficit.
The top three science funders are the US, China, and Japan. The three fund more science than every other country, combined. In 2024, the US funded more scientific research than China and Japan, combined. The US also funds more science than every other country except for Japan and China, combined.
Trump Bypasses UN Rules to Accelerate Deep-Sea Mining for EV Minerals www.webpronews.com/trump-bypass...
David (@whysharksmatter.bsky.social) is offering a free online crash course in scientific writing and publishing. Here’s how to join! www.southernfriedscience.com/im-offering-...
Mongabay shark meat exposé sparks call for hearing and industry debate news.mongabay.com/2025/08/mong...
The Risks of U.S. Deep-Sea Mining www.csis.org/analysis/ris...
Yeah, there's a prevailing myth that Facebook outcompeted it, but the numbers don't support that. It was the trial and the massive impact of large numbers of users loosing access through their school.
I started this morning with a little woodworking before work and for some reason I always forget how much better my day goes when I do.
(yes, MySpace soldiered on for a while after that and reinvented itself as a music platform, but in an era when most users' only access was through the school internet, it was a fatal blow to the platform)
MySpace functionally ended when it was effectively banned from schools within days of a student's mother used it to bully another student into killing themselves. This is like if MySpace itself had been the bully.