Here's a way to us Helen Sword's "Writing BASE" exercise to think differently (and better, I think!) about mentoring students in writing.
Mentoring writing is really hard! Finding ways to make it easier (and better) is worth a bunch of thought.
Join us at the #SWEEET Symposium on May 14 (1:30-5pm) at #CSEE2026! We're tackling three barriers facing equity-deserving researchers: parenthood, fieldwork access & socioeconomic challenges. Featuring talks by Drs. Courtney Robichaud, Rachel Giles & Diane Srivastava. We hope to see you there!
A small goose, dark neck and head with a thin white necklace, brown back, white underneath. It's swimming on flat grey-brown water of a flooded river.
Lol. I just did exactly that! (with bonus Brant goose at Morell Park - he wasn't there last year!)
I'm in good company then! Canada geese are a dime a dozen here, they're sort of our default goose. Even if the Brant wasn't just objectively better, I'd still be happy about it.
Oh, absolutely, this is one of my main hobbyhorses! It's possible that my students are tired of me harping on it... scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/f...
A small goose, dark neck and head with a thin white necklace, brown back, white underneath. It's swimming on flat grey-brown water of a flooded river.
Very handsome Brant (goose) on the flooded Wolatoq/Saint John River today. Not very common here; on its way to breed on coastlines in the high Arctic.
Would it be uncouth to say “check my website where I have dozens of blog posts on writing that might be helpful to get you started”?
Newspaper Headline: "Influencers Are Spinning Nicotine as a ‘Natural’ Health Hack" Subhead: "The influencers, many of them aligned with the Make America Healthy Again Movement, say the medical establishment has unfairly demonized the compound."
Deep sigh. Yes, nicotine is "natural". So are aflatoxin, ricin, cocaine, and botulinum. Please don't equate "natural" with "good for you".
Gift link if you really want to raise your blood pressure by reading about this stupidity... www.nytimes.com/2026...
An American Dipper in the river with water flowing over top. The stream is clear and smooth with feather detail visible through the water.
American Dipper foraging in the Clackamas River at Milo McIver SP, Oregon #birds #photography #birdphotography #nature #wildlife #pnw #oregon #stunday #birdoftheday #abcd
You need to see these wasps!
I've composited (badly) a margarita, showing a pale yellow frozen drink in a shallow glass rimmed with white rock salt. Next to that is a yellow waxy substance in a plastic tub with a metal knife coated in it.
What does a MARGARITA have in common with MARGARINE?
PEARLS!
Let's take a weird dive into linguistic & chemical history!
It starts with Greek 'Margaritēs' (μαργαρίτης) which means "pearl," likely from Iranian "marvarit" via trade in jewelry from Persia.
Designing poll questions isn't trivial, but everyone likes to think it is. This is the kind of damage that can result.
If you want polls to mean something, work with an expert!
Congrats!
It's a challenge to set these up with enough structure, but enough freedom too. I've strayed to far in either direction. Sounds like you've found a sweet spot.
I love the someone picked Calamites! Gosh I'd love to walk in a grove of those. Although I'd need to borrow your time machine even if the recovery plan succeeded, I guess? As in - save from extinction for how long? Great assignment!
A bag of "Turtle Chips"
I don't understand. Are these like potato chips, which are made from potato? Or are they like buffalo chips, which come out of the hind end of a buffalo? Either way, I have questions.
Talented American animal artist Dorothy Pulis Lathrop was born on this date in 1891. Just look at this charming crayon drawing of a flying squirrel from the late 1930s:
Grad school: to be successful in a future career you're going to need to focus on THIS ONE THING for the next 5 years.
The actual career in question: you can't focus on one thing for more than 30 minutes at a time and you have to keep switching between 1000 things endlessly
Cover of book "Dr LUCY ROGERS UP - A Scientist's Guide to the Magic Above Us" It's looking up with butterflies, condors, kites, clouds etc.
It's out now!
Please send me pics of my book (Up - a scientist's guide to the magic above us) out in the wild (be imaginative if you've got it on audio book or e-reader!)
If you hadn't yet got it, it's available at all good bookstores (UK).
uk.bookshop.org/shop/DrLucyR...
I write a lot about "developing writers" - by which I mean writers who are still learning their writing craft. But that's all of us! We are all developing writers; we are all, still, always, learning. https://
scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/we-are-all-developing-writers/ 🧪
Shelf-stable (I do pack it hot, but the sugar content is so high that might not even be strictly necessary)
Ooh!
they do have a pretty funky baculum (penis bone).
I've never cut THAT bit off a dead raccoon, but I have definitely stopped at dead raccoons to look for beetles and flies. Oh gawd am I even weirder than RFKJr???
That might seem depressing ("I'm 40 years in and still haven't figured this out!"). But I prefer to think it's the opposite ("I'm better today than yesterday, and I'll be a little better still tomorrow").
Talking with early-career writers, it's sometimes evident that they assume I Have It All Figured Out. I mean, I wrote a BOOK about writing! But the truth is very far from that. I am still learning!
Snippet of text with abundant long s's, so that it seems to read "...I anfwer, that it had been fo, fuch a Flood would have been more likely to fcatter fuch Sheels as it brought in indifferently all over the furface of the Earth...
Reading parts of John Ray's (1673) "Observations topical, moral, and physiological" (1673) and I'm sorry, but I cannot read the long s's without snickering at "fuch a Flood" and the "furface of the Earth". Someday maybe I won't be 12 years old inside - but today is not that day.
The argument against footnotes and in favour of endnotes was that they were more expensive to typeset. Seems unlikely this holds any more. Would be very good to go back.
I write a lot about "developing writers" - by which I mean writers who are still learning their writing craft. But that's all of us! We are all developing writers; we are all, still, always, learning. https://
scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/we-are-all-developing-writers/ 🧪
But seriously: you can't just straight-up believe poll data! Decades of experience with student teaching evaluations makes that notion an easy sell for me.