Wake up, smell the cat food in your bank account…

also: ringworm, puff adder, and funny bone

No, they are a fungus

Fish sticks?

Life is more than optimization of cost

but learning and doing is what makes us human and creative. $80 just makes you a consumer

Love my 2024 leaf. With solar panels charging it, it feels like cheating

Radiohead in Portland 2017

I prefer quick desk rejection to a long review process followed by rejection. Move on and try again :)

Wow. Incredible. the birds singing in the background make it that much more surreal

I think the toilets like this that say “ask a team member for a demonstration” are hilarious and disturbing.

The Simpsons - A World Without Zinc YouTube video by jasefest

youtu.be/U1iCZpFMYd0

Predicting multiphase flow and tracer transport for an underground chemical explosive test - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Predicting multiphase flow and tracer transport for an underground chemical explosive test

Co-authored a paper on simulations of gas transport in volcanic tuff from a chemical explosion 🧪🪨⚒️. Great work by @johnportiz14.bsky.social and the rest of the multilab team. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

TV party?

Took two trampoline frames worth of metal to iron recycling (169 lbs). $3.24 paid for an ice cream treat

Bird _hates_ scrabble

Two scientists walk through a cluttered old-fashioned science laboratory. The female scientist says “Analogue instruments! Paper records! Chalk boards! I thought you'd agreed to modernise the laboratory?” The male scientist replies “That's what i'm so excited about: we have moved to cloud-based storage for our data!” They step out onto a balcony. She says: “Please tell me you haven't built a library zeppelin” This is exactly what he has done. It floats across the sky and he adds “It's got a fax machine!”

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

The one reference listed for radioactive waste disposal in salt is junk (it claims WIPP is in a salt dome). And is followed in the same paragraph with two references to pseudo-science about wellness spas. Not a very scientific article by EOS standards.

Equalisation of trouser and pant, too

Scientists crack the case of "screeching" Scotch tape Micro-cracks travel along the peeling tape at supersonic speeds, producing shock waves and sound pulses.

Scotch tape has been a household mainstay for nearly a century, but it still holds some scientific surprises.

Stacked area chart of US annual electricity generation from 1950 through 2025. Total generation rose dramatically and pretty steadily through around 2007, then flattened until around 2021, and is now rising again. Coal generation accounted for about half the total until 2007 but has fallen dramatically since then, though it ticked upward in 2025. Gas, wind, and solar have grown dramatically in the last two decades, although wind has grown only slightly since 2022.

Log-scale line chart of US electricity generation by source from 1950 through 2025. Generation from coal, hydro, gas, and petroleum all grew dramatically during the earlier decades. Nuclear grew even more dramatically from 1960 through the mid-1970s, then more slowly through about 2000. Geothermal grew dramatically until around 1990 but then plateaued, remaining a minor contributor. Gas resumed its growth from 1990 until nearly the present. Wind and solar grew dramatically in recent decades, although wind has grown only slightly in the last few years. Percentage contributions in 2025 were gas 40.2%, nuclear 17.4%, coal 16.3%, wind 10.3%, solar 8.6%, hydro 5.5%, biomass 1.0%, petroleum 0.4%, and geothermal 0.3%.

EIA has posted electricity generation data for 2025, so I've updated these charts. Solar and coal are up from 2024, gas is down, other sources are pretty flat. The upward trend in total demand is now unmistakable. 🔌💡

growing up in Nebraska, I remember the grass between the yard and street being called the Devil's strip. Folks said it was "harder than the devil to grow grass there"?? I had no idea the term originally came from streetcars

Pencil drawing of two crows in a tree with heavy snow fall. One crow is pulling a PRIVATE PROPERTY sign off of the tree. The crows are now on the snowy ground. One says "Hold on tight!" the other replies "To what?" looking down at the sign it is standing on. The first crow pushed the second and it slides down a hill screaming AAAAAHHHH. Perspective from between the legs of the crow going down the hill. Snow streams by as it continues to scream AAAAAAHHHHHHHH. The first crow watches from the top of the hill as the second screams "I'll never forgive youuuuuuu". The second crow's scream continues "uuuuu–oh I've stopped. That was thrilling!" It is covered in snow, face is plastered with the stuff. In the distance at the top of the hill, the first crow is crying "my turn! my turn!"

Hold On Tight

The 3 hardest things to learn as a scientist:
1. Trust the data.. especially when it’s not what you expected,
2. Trust the data.. allowing it to change your direction,
3. Trust the data.. but not too much: test with new data at every turn.

a dog in a work shirt and hard hat captioned i specialize in roofing

I will never apologize for a post

Teenagers snowshoeing in a ponderosa forest on the east side of Sandia Peak outside Albuquerque

Went snowshoeing on Sandia peak with the scouts. Just barely enough snow, but had a good time

Those subway 12” cookies are fookies

Take me down to the Parallax city where the far moves slow and the near moves quickly

This balance of having the confidence to tackle hard things while keeping open and honest about one’s limitations and ignorance is only now settling with me as I get older. I was intolerable for decades.

What an odd AI graphic to make as the cover