On this date, 112 years ago, members of the Colorado National Guard and private security opened fire on striking miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, in the southeast of the state. 21 people were killed, mostly women and children.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_...
A wild thread:
490 million years ago, the seafloor which would become the city of Baltimore was a serpentinite-hosted hydrothermal vent complex.
Those vents laid the ultramafic structures that would, in 1812, be discovered as America's first chromite mine.
It is sad!
It's also a damn good visual metaphor for the whole of American science since at least the early 2000s.
It’s in keeping with the basic idea of the original Colorado River Compact, which was to manage the basin’s water through some negotiation and compromise, rather than strictly following the letter of the law. But the legal foundation of prior appropriation hamstrings negotiations at every turn. Farmers account for the overwhelming majority of Colorado water use—almost a third goes to cattle feed alone—and thanks to how the system was initially designed, their prices are absurdly subsidized. One recent study found that while municipal districts pay an average of $512.01 per acre-foot, agricultural irrigation districts paid an average of $30.32 per acre-foot. Fully a quarter of all Colorado water diversions, all to farmers, cost nothing at all. Such a subsidy is difficult to unwind.
TIL that while Colorado basin municipal water districts pay an average of $512 per acre-foot, irrigation districts pay an average of $30--and fully a quarter of all water diversions, all going to farms, pay nothing at all prospect.org/2026/04/17/w...
There’s a policy paper we read comparing the social license approaches of three mines in the upper Midwest. The success story one in Wisconsin finally gave me hope that we can do community-first, environmentally conscious mining (though sadly not enough success stories yet…)
'Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving the university after administrators told him in January that he couldn’t teach Plato’s Symposium in his philosophy class; they said the ancient Greek philosopher’s work violated the system’s restrictions on gender and sexuality content.' 1/3
One of my major goals in my mineral resources & green energy transition class next year is to get this very crucial point across!
If a company does not have the support of the locals, it can be very difficult and expensive to try to keep it going. One of the ways to get buy in is to maintain high environmental and social performance standards. The people need to believe you aren’t just gonna go in and fuck everything up.
I have been thinking about this lately, so it’s nice to see an article about how fast tracking mineral projects in the US may end up actually slowing or stopping projects all together as mining companies risk their “social license to operate”
www.mining.com/fast-trackin...
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Gorgeous! Didn’t realize how much I needed to get to know Baja and its volcanoes!
For folks interested, I thoguht I'd map all the places my students focused on for their hazards paper. Fairly geographically diverse, but definite bias towards coastal Southeast US!
maps.app.goo.gl/XUSF23gGiEue...
This means a lot coming from you, thank you!
I actually gave the students a choice of final assessment, thinking some would prefer the familiarity of an exam, and was surprised how many of them wanted to apply their new knowledge to a paper!
Happy to share rubric! First time I did this and honestly I’m really pleased with the results.
I met with each of them during our 2nd to last lab period together, and discussed their plans.
Amazing to see how in a few short weeks they churned out compelling, well researched profiles of communities. Gives me a lot of hope my vlass is actually teaching them something about hazard mitigation!
Students had to research the occurence and drivers of three unique hazards in their "home" area, explain the sources of vulnerability to these hazards, and then forecast how risk is liekly to change in the future. The paper had to end with mitigation recommendations.
Genuinely impressed and touched by my students this term.
For my intro hazards class, I assigned a final research paper in lieau of an exam. I decided the theme of this paper would be "Hazards at Home." I required my students to describe the impact of hazards on some place they call home.
Before and after satellite imagery of the landslide this morning at Nizhny Ubekimakhi in Russia. Note the impounded lake on the east side of the landslide block, which is about 1 km wide. @planet.com @davepetley.bsky.social @glacierhazard.bsky.social
We are looking for a new volcano-petrology postdoc to join the NERC-funded large grant ‘ex-x: understanding dangerous eruptive transitions’
Based at Bristol University!
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRA042/s...
Congrats!!! I’ll be joining you in grading freedom by Tuesday!
The idea that universities ”tend to exclude conservative intellectual traditions” is off base on two fronts: 1) how are “conservative intellectual traditions” relevant to the most of the popular majors and faculty research areas, such as computer science, engineering, the natural sciences?/1
Mission-focused institutions are the way we do much of that, thinking about how to build and sustain, celebrating public and gov’t wins.
The challenge is that as science has been politicized by the right, normal pro-science comms have taken on a “political” cast.
Thin Section Thursday!
Plagioclase and pyroxene in basalt (Cross polarized light). Pyroxenes are mostly brightly colored, plagioclases are gray. Contributed by Bernhard Seubert.
You can contribute too! Send image(s) and short explanation to akoziol1 at udayton dot edu. #thinsectionthursday
The Senate just voted to allow mining upstream from a pristine wilderness area in Minnesota, the Boundary Waters. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/c...
Proud to see this great work from my colleague @seismofra.bsky.social — exciting results and a big step forward! 👏🏻
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
I am really, really tired of the framing of late Holocene climate research in the Yucatan and Guatemala Highlands.
Pick a new framing. The ~31 million people living in area today area *perfectly good* reason to study Holocene climate there without the weird "Lost Maya" framing.
A huge part of academe is likability- sorry it's true!- and mean arrogant sexpest assholes who hate their students are pushed out. You have to enjoy being around other people and be kind to your colleagues to have genuine long lasting impact.
Would be curious to see how a more careful volumetric profile than an assumed best-of-fit ellipse - perhaps mapped in a real 3D volume using Raman spectroscopy - would enhance or degrade these findings...
