fossildetective.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

My typo of the day: Environmenial Sciences. Doing all of the organizational work that falls outside of your nominal service assignment.

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

Almost exactly 9 years ago I was here interviewing for my job.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Got asked to review a book proposal, which is a fun first for me, so I said yes even though I am already far too busy.

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

Please let the GEO/EAR community know: Program Directors and Mission Support who’ve been at NSF under two years were just terminated via Zoom. Even those of us whose offer letter stated one probationary year and whose government data states “permanent”.

submitted 6 days ago • 31 comments

NEW: NSF confirmed that they fired 168 employees today, out of their staff of ~1,500 feds. This includes some people who'd finished their 1-year probationary periods, which were extended to 2-years last month without explanation. More to come.

submitted 6 days ago • 30 comments

Keep convincing myself I'm not sick despite having a bad headache and gastro-flu like stuff yesterday and now I'm at work getting ready to teach class feeling absolutely rotten.

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Got reviews back on the huge manuscript.

submitted 13 days ago • 2 comments

I opened this paper on bird feeding traces to send to @bigfacecats.bsky.social and I'm glad I did because of this figure. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

I've been doing the art class long enough that some of my less bad bits are featured in the current exhibition at the arts center.

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

I am deeply saddened to have learned of the death, on Feb 5, 2025, of Elisabeth Vrba—a fantastically creative scientist and a warm, wonderful human being. She leaves us a legacy of original macroevolutionary thinking that is still fresh and illuminating.

submitted 14 days ago • 9 comments

New paper out: "Exploring the morphology and taphonomy of Archaeoniscus brodiei—a gregarious, Early Cretaceous isopod." Download for free here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...?

submitted 14 days ago • 2 comments

⚠️ Effective Monday 2/10/25, NIH indirect rate capped at 15%. Applies to existing & future grants. —> Deep budget cuts & program closures coming to a university near you. Is this the break the glass moment for university administrators who have been silent so far about the attack on science?

submitted 17 days ago • 102 comments

Y’all I think God is trying to tell me something.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

Mentioned today that I sometimes refer to myself as "king of the rejects" and my therapist just put her head in her hands.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

I've never cleaned out my email in the 8 years I've been doing this job and I feel like this is a pretty good K/D ratio overall.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Been a while since an art update. I still find objects hard!

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

This lives on my desk at work. I don't always actively register it when I get in, but i did today.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

A fossil of the chelicerate arthropod Chasmataspis for #FossilFriday. From the Ordovician of Tennessee, it is thought to be closely related to eurypterids despite sharing similarities with horseshoe crabs. Looking at it as part of finishing up an MS project that a student stepped away from. 🧪⚒️

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

I have stress/anxiety dreams every night but never the same one twice and last night I dreamt it was May 20th (I figured it out when someone said it was my birthday) but I had no memory since January 29th when I went to sleep and I didn't realise it wasn't real. Possibly the worst one yet.

submitted 25 days ago • 3 comments

So far had two conversations with grad students concerned about the NSF situation.

submitted 27 days ago • 2 comments

I tried to do a bird in art class. I'm sorry.

submitted 27 days ago • 2 comments

NSF's Undergraduate Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology program has been abruptly archived. The deadline was tomorrow. People were submitting proposals. This program is designed to support the American scientific workforce. I cannot see the point of this level of self-sabotage.

submitted 28 days ago • 18 comments

No, I don't need a bloody copilot for this document, thank you. Writing is, in no small part, a tool for thinking. If you outsource that element to a machine that cannot think, you shouldn't be surprised if, at the end of the process, neither you nor your reader are any the wiser.

submitted 29 days ago • 341 comments

Got just warm enough to go outside.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

A very unusual 450 million year old horseshoe crab from the Ordovician of Michigan for #FossilFriday. Been working on this one for a long time; the elongated head is unknown among any other horseshoe crab and the staining hints at the preservation of internal structures. Hope to submit it soon! ⚒️🧪

submitted 31 days ago • 5 comments

Time for my annual spending too much of my own money buying cookies for my class phylogenetics activity (this year free of peanuts, as my constant checking for allergies finally bore fruit).

submitted 32 days ago • 1 comment

Being brave today, responding to emails that require ~scheduling~.

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

Sometimes I wish I could focus on things I didn't really want to do. I have to come up with rubrics for EVERY assignment to get this graduate Professional skills & scientific ethics syllabus through committee review and it's taking me forever because I just can't hyperfocus on it.

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

I vouch for Virginia as a journalist, if you’d like to talk to her.

submitted 34 days ago • 2 comments

Fuck it. Trans folks need MATERIAL SUPPORT. @distributeaid.org is launching an HRT Harm Reduction Toolkit that provides 1 year of medical supplies needed to take injection-based HRT. We were planning to go live in January, but I'm not waiting. Fund the kits here: distributeaid.org/hrt-harm-red...