A tomato plant growing on the side the road. Yellow flowers can be seen.

Rogue tomato plant growing on the side the road.

Ugh so idiotic :(:( I get a lot of my Chinese teas from Song tea, still waiting to hear what they're going to do this year :/ they have a lot from Taiwan too so maybe they're focus there.

Amazing!

You would think I would know how to grow tomatoes since I did a postdoc on them 🫠

Oh shit!

Tomatoes, dahlias, and peppers growing in seed starting trays.

Why are my tomato starts spindly? Peppers and dahlias are growing in the same conditions and look fine. The tomato leaves are not lush, and the lower ones curl and fall off :(

Just landed in Las Vegas for Google Next, hit me up if you’re here!

Great point :) but I can only drink oolongs and puerhs so much, it would be hard to give up super fresh Japanese greens 😢

Unrelated to global trade, eagerly watching the small handful of US tea breeding programs, would be awesome to get more specialty farms here!

Loss of the de minimis is going to really hit small scale tea imports hard :(:( at least we can bring all those USA tea farmer jobs back to America 🙄

A hand holding a red book titled Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962 by Yang Jisheng

Studying up for the next few years.

Small seedling leaves emerging from soil blocks in seedling tray.

First dahlia seedlings from my future breeding program! These are open pollinated from last year, but I’ll do some intentional crosses this year.

Pretty wild how completely defenseless the entire academic system is to a fascist government.

a cheery green plant grows out of volcanic rock. rock formations and moody clouds glower in the distance.

Solanum galapagense (Galápagos tomato/“tomatillo”)
Isla Santiago, Galápagos

Ha exactly

A ceramic sun sculpture glowing from the 1000º heat of the kiln. Flames are rising above it.

My raku piece from the firing yesterday.

A close up of a Raspberry Pi Zero W computer board.

Finally have my own network so I can set up my Pi-hole again. The web is polluted, essential to fight back, especially when everybody wants a piece of our data to help take away our fundamental rights. Already blocking 18% of all queries 😇 pi-hole.net

Such interesting flower structure!

The NSF changed my life. Even if you’re an idiot who doesn’t value basic research, for me the path from academia to industry wouldn’t have been possible without their help.

I'm so disappointed my PRFB didn't make the woke Marxist list, everything in academia is so competitive these days 😢 not even an honorable mention 😔

Are there more variegated leaves in Eastern forests compared to the Pacific Northwest or is it just in my head?

Honestly I didn’t expect much but still surprised how quickly every federal agency is doing everything he says and sort of guessing what else he might want and doing that too.

What’s going on at the NSF?????

Of course the darker motivation is that these people don't believe in knowledge or curiosity at all.

I get that the evil plan to destroy academia is to force more scientists into private industry to maximize profits, but industry needs academia too! So many startups are based on fundamental academic research and a foundation of open source research is good for everybody. Amazingly shortsighted.

Nothing like some action to fight the feeling of helplessness!

Feeling a lot of rage today.

As if being a postdoc isn't hard enough, truly feeling for the PRFB fellows and anybody else relying on gov research money right now. Also wild how most people have no idea what's going on. Tell your friends!

Also truly insane that adjacent to one of the last remaining sites is a golf course that's twice as big as the preserve, and to add insult to injury they named it after the tree.

Pine branch with young cones.

Torrey pine (Pinus torreyana)! Somewhere around 3,000 left in the wild :( They're so beautiful, maybe because of the coastal hills and cliffs where they grow.