Screenshot. Pull quote graphic of Trump delivering his speech in front of a large flag. Text reads: "Taken together, Trump’s three moves: declaring an emergency through war rhetoric, invoking a mandate to power from the public and God, and demonstrating the awesome power to define reality and remake the nation shows us that Trump—at least rhetorically—spoke as a dictator, not as a president."

Three steps to dictatorship: declare emergency, claim the will of God, claim absurd powers. 🙄 #TeamRhetoric

I see authors sheepishly announcing books, or apologizing for good news.

Friends: we’re enduring an onslaught of censorship and bigotry. I am PROUD that you wrote anything. Please yell about what you're doing. Art is a fuel to keeps many of us going.

Two 3-day weeks to start the semester. What day is it? What time is it? What class is this? Where am I?

A birds-eye view of a desert landscape. In the center is a saguaro cactus. Its root system has been dug up and exposed, so there are long yellow roots radiating out on all sides, starfish-shaped. Two people stand nearby, and a shovel lies on the ground.

Love this image from Saguaro National Park in Arizona of the root system of a saguaro. Desert plants are sometimes mistakenly thought to rely on deep taproots, but for many, it's these shallow lateral root systems that sop up water very quickly after a rainstorm. 🌎🌵 Image credit NPS.

NIH appears to have canceled/postponed all of its study sections—the independent review panels that approve federal grants for health research.

Such grants fund the work/salaries of 300k people at more than 2,500 institutions

Post post-flapped.

7 months ago and here we sit now. Raged, resigned, and post-flapped.

I’ve decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief. I’m going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching), but for now I’d like to share a very small sample of the work I’ve been so proud to support (thread)

Update: I needed more luck than y'all gave me.

Satire will save us all. The end.

Yes I'm back to posting like it's 2007 on Twitter. Whataboutit?

Straight up gagged a colleague today. Not in a performative way. I said something and could see their throat close in response before the coughing and spluttering started... oops.

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Why do academics and applied folks in sustainability and environment-related fields respond to years of terribleness by either quick rage or equanimity? It feels weird to be in the latter camp. But a lot of us are rather unflappable. I wonder about the possible rhetorical impacts.

Diving into Cours3ra. Wish me luck.

Love when students pop into my office to happily update me about their change of major which now incorporates exactly what they learned in my class last year. :) Where's my superstar teacher trucker hat.

Do all the things and then eat works really well for the doing all the things part. Not so well for the crash after eating though.

Procrasticleaning is sooo last week. On to procrastiadministratoring.

Less Talk, More Walk: Why Climate Change Demands Activism in the Academy Abstract. As climate scholars, it is our professional responsibility to engage in climate politics. First, we need to engage in radical scientific analysis: we must ask questions that get at the root ...

On the eve of COP28, I'm re-upping this piece I wrote for Daedalus.

As climate scholars, it's our professional responsibility to engage in climate politics.

THe climate crisis is here. It's time for all hands on deck. 1/2

ClimateSky 🔌💡 GreenSky PoliSky

direct.mit.edu/daed/article...

Reading some pop psych on Flow from 1990 as my plane book. The teacherly sophism of it all makes me happy.

I just want the course hybrid (I want the class to make), crosslisted (I want the class to make) at a time when there are no conflicts with other courses (I want the class to make).

'Humanities graduates are just as employable': do the sciences really lead to more jobs? The UK government wants more students to study science subjects – but employers want humanities graduates too

A British Academy analysis from 2020 shows "those taking arts, humanities and social science degrees end up in jobs in eight of the 10 fastest-growing sectors of the economy more often than their Stem graduate counterparts."
www.theguardian.com/education/20...

So, there's a conversation happening on the birbsite right now about a teacher whose students used AI to rewrite part of one of her articles and decided that the AI version was more "straightforward."

And my immediate reaction is "what nuances is it removing to make it that way"...

We are far from on track to meet our climate goals, and much more work remains. But the positive steps we’ve made over the past decade should reinforce to us that progress is possible and despair is counterproductive.

It’s also clear that we can control how warm the planet gets over the coming decades. Climate models have consistently found once we get emissions down to net zero, the world will largely stop warming; there is no warming that is inevitable or in the pipeline after that point.

There is increasing evidence that the world has warmed faster over the past 15 years than it has since the 1970s. Surface records, ocean heat content, and the Earth's energy imbalance all support an acceleration of warming, as I argue in today's @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/o...

The day after being doubly boostered I went down hard. The day after that I did all the things! Boomeranged by booster.

Forgot about the partial eclipse visible in the Piney Woods today. Totally blew it off. But I noticed the wierd quality of sunlight while coming home from the grocery store. Didn't put it together until later. Genuine, unmediated experience of an eclipse!

Here’s a second shot of the eclipse where you can see “Baily’s beads”… the sun shining through the mountains and valleys on the moon.

Four proposals (of various types) in one week is a new high (low? I don't know). Mea culpa neglected grading.