New Published Research: Long-term Viability of Flatwoods Salamander Populations
This article highlights how long-term monitoring of Reticulated Flatwoods Salamander (Ambystoma bishopi) populations on Eglin Air Force Base led to the development of population models that were applied to estimate viability under future climate changes. This work was part of my dissertation research and was conducted with collaborators at Virginia Tech...
Swinhoe’s Pheasant (Lophura swinhoii), male, family Phasianidae, order Galliformes, endemic to the lower foothills of the central mountain range in Taiwan
my close friend from uni was a cis girl who had the audacity to wear pants and cut her hair short and like nobody at this school, a place OBSESSED with ‘respecting everyone’s gender identities,’ would call her ‘she.’ after MONTHS of this she started wearing a fucking pronoun pin to work and i dont even think that fixed it. me, im sorta androgynous; i have shaggy self-cut hair and go by a neutral name, but i always say my pronouns are she/her, and people ive worked with for months and have introduced myself in front of fifty times will STILL reflexively say ‘they’ for me. i respect the progressive circles i run in, but this IS evidence of misogyny. people’s definition of “woman” or “girl” is so narrow and high-maintenance that even the tiniest deviation from the norm gets you forcibly defeminized. but it’s a compliment, right? like who would wanna be a girl anyway?
it's interesting to me to see like. within queer communities the thing where if you said "things are really fucking stressful and awful for us right now and it's giving us a lot of really terrible feelings that don't have an outlet" ppl are like "yes, true" and then if you're like "it's far easier and safer to vent that frustration and fear on accessible members of your own community than it is to try to vent it on the people who are actually in power" they would be like "yes, true" and if you said "it feels better to justify venting that frustration and fear and anger if you can frame it in head as very important and righteous, rather than admitting that it's a coping mechanism being utilized by a fallible human being undergoing very difficult circumstances" they'd say "yes that's also true"
but if you're like "this is relevant to your own current behavior" with the implication that the intracommunity thing they're currently big mad about is actually not as important and righteous as they're casting it in their head, it's like "no no. not MY behavior. mine is rational and I am correct. the issue I am fighting with other queer people about like rats in a sack IS actually the most important issue to be addressing right now"
and like
this is stuff I have to constantly watch out for in my own behavior! it is absolutely absolutely a thing, and absolutely something we ALL deal with and are capable of engaging in. it's ramped up in intensity the last year or two and I don't think that is a coincidence. I wish we were more capable of this level of analysis of this stuff without getting defensive.
and like, again, it isn't like it's evil. I don't think it's GOOD to do, but as I said, it's the completely understandable behavior of a human being under considerable stress. we need to cut ourselves a break in order to be able to be honest about what we are doing sometimes.
Transphobia is about to be signed into law in the UK. We can fight this.
I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.
Last year we broke the record for an LGBT+ mass lobby of Parliament. Will you help us break it again? Join us on 25th June 2026 to demand be
The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.
Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.
A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:
Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.
Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.
Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns
Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.
I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.
It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:
Worried about what to say?
Bring your personal worries about transphobia being signed into law, and trans friends being excluded from public spaces. You are a living person who deserves dignity. Remind your MP of that. You will also get guidance and brochures from Trans Solidarity Alliance that outlines our demands. This is mine from last year.
Money issues?
Trans Solidarity Alliance provides a travel bursary that you can sign up for via the link.
Got a refusal or no response from your MP?
Come anyway! You can request a same-day appointment with your MP through a process called greencarding. They will come and see you if they’re already in Parliament. Even if they don’t, they’re made acutely aware of your cause because you showed up in person. This is my greencard from last year.
Here is the EHRC Code of Practice in full. It's a tough read, but some highlights are:
Organisations can’t provide trans-inclusive, single-sex services, or they risk being sued for discrimination.
e.g. domestic violence support for women including trans women, men’s rugby group including trans men (12.68).
Trans people will have nowhere safe to pee.
If you’re a trans man, businesses can't allow you to pee in the men's, and you can also be ejected from women’s bathrooms if you’re perceived as a man. Vice versa for trans women. EHRC suggests a ‘third space’ bathroom, which is discriminatory and unworkable for most businesses. (13.130-133)
Sports organisations must exclude trans people from single-sex competitions (13.73).
A women’s only sports competition must exclude trans women because of their biological advantage or face potential lawsuits (13.74), but a trans man who has undergone testosterone treatment can also be excluded based on fairness rules (13.81).
Trans women are stripped of the legal definition of ‘lesbian’, and therefore no longer have legal protections if they’re discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation. (2.50, 2.92).
Here is the Good Law Project's better explanation of the EHRC Code.
I have also made a PDF printout of QR codes for the government petition, email your MP tool, and mass lobby link to pass around your communities. DM me and I'll send it to you.
I am reading an interview with a historian that set out to weave the type of textiles that was sold to plantations for use by enslaved people using period appropriate looms.
But because I knew nothing about weaving, everything had to be explained to me, down to the most basic tacit knowledge: things that an eight-year-old girl in 1828 would have known, because when she was not winding yarn around a quill to help her mother, she was working on the family’s loom herself...
The great challenge of our work as scholars—at least, those who are interested in historical reconstruction or the histories of any craft tradition—is that almost none of what we want to know is written down—because it didn’t have to be and it didn’t need to be articulated. So to be in a situation where expert weavers had to talk to me like I was a child was one of the best things that happened to me in the course of my research for this book.
SW: ... That’s really awesome. You’ve taught this class now for two semesters. What have you learned from your students?
SR: Their expertise as makers has clued me into historical experiences most scholars have glossed right over. A 1930s Federal Writers Project interview with a formerly enslaved octogenarian might reference a grandmother’s sewing prowess, but then a student will say, No, you can’t just skim over by that! Do you know how many hand stitches it takes to do the seam of a dress? If you’ve never handsewn a skirt (and I haven’t), you might need to be reminded of the labor involved. One student reproduced a 19th-century skirt as her final project, and it was all about the stitches. Their reading of primary sources picked up on things that I missed.
And this took me in new directions in my own research. You might remember a discussion of sewing labor in the final chapter of Plantation Goods and the implication of a cloth’s width for a woman’s work routine. If you know how to cut the pieces for a shirt from a 32-inch-wide piece of fabric, it is going to mess everything up when you’re given a bolt of 28-inch-wide cloth. I had seen letters from slaveholders in the 1830s and 1840s complaining about the narrowness of the cloth and how enslaved women didn’t “understand” these fabrics. This wasn’t transparent to me as a historian. Only with students talking about the expertise involved in cutting cloth into the components of a garment did I realize what a difference it made when, say, a New England weaver was haphazard and turned out fabric four inches narrower than the usual variety. That error would reverberate in the lives of people 1,000 miles away who might face extreme forms of violence because they couldn’t meet their daily production quotas. Or they might experience other kinds of privation—a lack of rags for postpartum women, for example—because a wider fabric left scraps while a narrower one did not.
i'm still deeply into making fake porcelain things -> here's a little fox. also featuring hollow filigree joints which i have wanted to make for a long time but haven't had the right project or motivation for.
Doing a museum themed stamp rally for WHA at Denver Fanexpo!
Here's my prize piece, based on Monet's "Bridge over a pond of water lilies" :D
I think it turned out rather nice <3
sometimes people experiencing psychosis and/or mania will come up to you on the street and talk in confusing or upsetting ways. your job is to either have a regular human-to-human conversation with that person or politely leave. your job is not to call 911. do not call 911. you might kill that person if you call 911.
I don't even have the energy to screenshot and respond to your tags- what the actual fuck is wrong with you? "the cops are scared and rightfully so" "mental health calls are the scariest for cops" OH so this isn't about the safety of psychotic & manic people this is about piggy feelings?
and no, actually, this is not USA specific and no, actually, people from other countries should not ignore this post. police violence and sanism weren't invented in the US and they are certainly not unique to here. if you (or anyone) thinks that this bullshit doesn't happen elsewhere then you are not listening.
This is legitimately useful reframing. A while ago I started replacing the word "cop" in my vocabulary with "a man with a gun." It really puts things into perspective.
This homeless person is making me uncomfortable. Should I call [a man with a gun]?
My neighbor is having a loud party. Should I get [a man with a gun] involved?
There are some teenagers skateboarding. Do you think [a man with a gun] would get rid of them for me?
It makes it very clear what you're saying. I can call a man with a gun to threaten or hurt someone mildly inconveniencing me. You're not calling the cops, you're calling A MAN WITH A GUN into a situation that does not warrant a firearm handled by a volatile lunatic who will not be held accountable for his actions.
If you are in the US, call the non-emergency line instead (211) if you feel you must call somebody else to the scene. They can connect you to the County Crisis Line.
County Crisis will usually send a social worker (or therapist-in-training) to the scene. Those folks are very good at what they do, in general, and they are not going to be armed. They will try to get the person in question connected with support services, housing, and may be able to get them home if they seem lost.
Some counties may still need to send cops to the scene alongside the social worker, but you can usually ask about policies like that.
Also, it might be helpful to look up if your area has a non-police emergency line. For instance, the city of Denver has STAR, which stands for Support Team Assisted Response.
we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason
i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3
unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it
i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map
i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs
this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.
crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.
Submit your art to the 2026 Berkeley Frog Fest. One of the prizes is a field research trip to survey the Western spadefoot. The award categories include one for “Most frog.” I am not associated with this event in any way I just think there are people on this website who will Want to Know.
jbbartram-illu
blakekathryn
baratheonpilled
stormborns
janainaart
annaxmalina
yousharknotpass
