From a colleague: The unstaffed USGS booth at the world’s largest mining and exploration conference, the 2025 PDAC in Toronto. ⚒️🧪 - ThreadSky

watershedlab.bsky.social • 4 days ago

From a colleague: The unstaffed USGS booth at the world’s largest mining and exploration conference, the 2025 PDAC in Toronto.
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Comments

jonomtdoom.bsky.social•4 days ago

The madness continues.

adamwright.bsky.social•4 days ago

kristencook.bsky.social•4 days ago

That's really sad 😢. I'd assume that they paid for the booth already a while back, so they sent up some materials and asked some kind person to set it up for them. Makes for a stark illustration of what's going on.

momus.bsky.social•4 days ago

If it slows some of the ecological disasters they've got planned for Alaska, it's not all bad news

justsomeisotope.bsky.social•2 days ago

Whoa. That's stark.

benjaminbraddock.bsky.social•4 days ago

is this real? actual question, not sarcasm

watershedlab.bsky.social•4 days ago

Yes

blurplebleb.bsky.social•4 days ago

Surely the geology can survey itself, said the billionaire to the billionaire

blurplebleb.bsky.social•4 days ago

*pardon me, said the billionaire to the 20-year-old neo-Nazi staffer

sicksad-w0rld.bsky.social•2 days ago

This broke my heart

majsky.bsky.social•4 days ago

But who set it up?

thatnicelotionlady.bsky.social•4 days ago

Convention staff

sethineugene.bsky.social•4 days ago

Probably someone who had leave time and lives in driving distance decided to attend on their own and did it.

bptt.bsky.social•4 days ago

We’re not allowed to volunteer our time for the agency we work for.

patranoid.bsky.social•4 days ago

📌

ibitpichu.bsky.social•4 days ago

sad

zuckerb-sux.bsky.social•4 days ago

One of Elon’s (Mr. Swasticar) geek squad set it up as a joke.

mikeboothlab.bsky.social•4 days ago

All conference attendance for USGS staff was banned a couple weeks ago, even if already approved (including for staff that organized conference events).

karlkr.bsky.social•4 days ago

Randy Marsh is gonna make it big at Tegrity Farms anyways.

ladyevenstarbpe.bsky.social•4 days ago

🤬

coyotequeen.bsky.social•3 days ago

fuck i missed the pdac protest :(
https://www.villagereport.ca/village-picks/outraged-by-toronto-mining-convention-demonstrators-disrupt-opening-day-proceedings-10315488

this-guy.bsky.social•4 days ago

Who set the booth up?

fatgayfriend.bsky.social•4 days ago

Events logistics are often third party contractors who take stuff to events and set up so your staff aren’t dragging boxes of leaflets and banners cross country and back. Or some events will do some of it for you if you send them stuff ahead of time.

runnercarm.bsky.social•4 days ago

Did the colleague say it was unmanned the entire time or like maybe they were out taking a break, eating, restroom…

bptt.bsky.social•4 days ago

Travel got abruptly canceled the other week with no heads up, and our travel card limits got reduced to $1.

r5-to-philly.bsky.social•4 days ago

Knowing how conferences work, if they were planning ahead they would have shipped the box.

So someone at the conference that was allowed to go or maybe worked with them but not USGS unpacked their box and threw that stuff out including the table wrap

hydrogeo.bsky.social•4 days ago

That’s sad. Don’t even put up a table if you don’t have staff for it.

oraclekate.bsky.social•4 days ago

I think they were making a point

ladyevenstarbpe.bsky.social•4 days ago

What happened here IS an actual crime. Everything Musk is doing is illegal and unconstitutional and eventually, if not stopped, will hurt everyone in the US, and many in the world. The USGS is necessary for maintaining the safety of the PNW, and the layoffs are devastating.

northofhome.bsky.social•4 days ago

It seems the articles for the table were sent in advance and then the staff/travel was cut.

northofhome.bsky.social•4 days ago

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/03/06/multiple-researchers-fired-from-la-crosse-usgs-science-center/81421388007/

ladyevenstarbpe.bsky.social•4 days ago

🤬

patmorley.bsky.social•4 days ago

Oboy.

reidangela.bsky.social•4 days ago

Hilarious

davekeonscousin.bsky.social•4 days ago

The less surveying they do, the fewer cases there will be.

krystyntully.com•4 days ago

Wow. This is not an environmental conference. It’s the biggest mining industry event of the year. And here I thought minerals were important to the US right now …

susanne-janecke.bsky.social•4 days ago

Exploration mining geologists at Usgs were terminated by that “expert” DODGY team under Musk

bptt.bsky.social•4 days ago

Yep, GGG Science Center reportedly lost a lot of staff.

hamalisk.bsky.social•4 days ago

MAGA want to speedrun into a resource curse economy, although one where only oligarchs benefit because there won't be any taxes or regulations.

malenya.bsky.social•1 day ago

The unstaffed USGS booth at the Philadelphia Flower Show

jgholmesburg.bsky.social•4 days ago

Love how optimistic they seem to be by saying they’ll be there next year

fatgayfriend.bsky.social•4 days ago

They mean at the barricades

generousbrooklyn.bsky.social•1 day ago

FFS

solarwindsarah.bsky.social•4 days ago

This is so sad, I've just come back from a field trip of an area in N. Africa and the USGS are the only one's who have ever mapped the area. Invaluable resource. To defund knowledge on mines, minerals, aquifers....profoundly stupid thing to do :-(

brantman.bsky.social•4 days ago

"Profoundly stupid" is our new national motto, clearly one we will continue to earn for the foreseeable future.

nominalindltd.bsky.social•4 days ago

It won't be long before we pine for the days when we were merely "profoundly stupid"

it's going to be a long, difficult climb back up to even that

indifferentnegro.bsky.social•4 days ago

What an international embarrassment!

mark-dingman.bsky.social•4 days ago

Hilarious!

I was at the convention after the USSR imploded: visitors from Mongolia & Uzbekistan were better represented.

I’ll bet the DRC is better represented.

#failedstate