dinosaur-ears

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The Golden Goose Award is given for research that sounds absurd or frivolous but ends up having major impacts. It's a celebration of "basic research" and a warning about how government cuts to science can deprive all of us.

Some examples I like:

2012 Award: Bone Grafts from Coral. Some researchers were studying the composition of corals and made models of their "skeletons". The nephew of the guy who took the scans was a medical student and noticed that the coral structure was much better than the other materials being considered for bone grafts.

2012 Award: Medical Advances from Jellyfish. Some researchers wanted to know why and how jellyfish glow. They isolated Green Fluorescent Protein from jellyfish, and it became one of the best, most used genetic tools we have.

2013 Award: Thermus aquaticus. Some researchers were curious if anything could live in extreme environments, like hot springs. They found bacteria that live in hot springs in Yellowstone, and years later s protein from those bacteria because the key to PCR, a method for DNA replication that basically underlies all genetics now.

2014 Award: Rat Massage Research Helps Premature Babies Thrive. Researchers studying rat pups found that they had low levels of some key markers when they were separated from their mothers. First they tested things like pheromones and temperature, but eventually ended up simulating mothers' licking with a soft brush. This work resulted in a message protocol that improves premature (human) babies' health and survival.

2018 Award: Bursa of Fabricius. A student was curious about the function of a particular chicken gland during dissection. He eventually discovered that it's an immune system organ, and over his career his work on it has helped to influence our understanding of human immune diseases and cancer treatments.

2022 Award: Tiny Snail, Big Impact. Some researchers started studying cone snails as a relatively low-barrier-to-entry side project, and discovered that part of their venom was useful for pain management in humans. The work has also helped scientists to map our nervous systems and better explore neural diseases like epilepsy.

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Master doc that contains different resources and support for many countries including Palestine, Congo, Haiti, Hawai’i, etc ((op is underneath the link))

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Why, in four days, has the conversation gone from "Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons" to "did we destroy enough to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons"? The goalposts are shifting so quickly I have whiplash.

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So much of my experience of being bi is straight people who view themselves as allies dismissing and diminishing me.

You're "super accepting" but I need to stop "making things complicated"? You believe "love is love" but can't understand "why everybody needs a label these days"? You support gay people because they don't have a choice (i.e., the correct choice would be straight)?

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Last night, I saw fireflies.

I'd only seen them a handful of times since I was a kid, and I knew they were declining. I'd been quietly mourning that my son might grow up without their magic. 

Then, in my own back yard, I saw more than I'd seen since I was 6 or 7, a symphony of light in the grass, the trees, the air. 

They're still in decline. So much is still in peril and we have so much to do. But this was a valuable little reminder for me that they're still here and worth fighting for. And so are we.

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today's bug thing is this giant beetle sculpture!

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Any other Americans hopping mad that we, the only country who has dropped atomic bombs, think we get to decide who's allowed to have atomic weapons?? The world should have taken OUR atomic weapons, but we get to police the world I guess 🤷🏼

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Okay time for another strained metaphor

Sentinel species are species that are more sensitive to particular environmental stressors or show signs more quickly and obviously, so monitoring their population sizes and health can tell us about problems in the environment before they affect human health. Think "canary in the coal mine."

I feel kind of like a sentinel among humans in this way-- some of us are more predisposed to depression, to anxiety, to burnout; the environment makes us sick first. Everyone suffers from things like lack of connection, support, and rest, but some people break down first.

What I'm trying to get at is: I think instead of stigmatizing mental illness and individualizing the problems, we should pay attention to the needs of most prone and try to build a society that makes fewer people sick. I think we ignore the mentally ill to our own peril.

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It's Juneteenth yall. And I'm not letting this day go unmarked.

Black people fight for everybody. We stand in solidarity with women, lgbt people, poor people all over the world of every skin color and background. Every religion and nationality.

Today, stand with us. Be with us. Tell a black person you love them. Hug a black person (with consent). Ask that hot black girl out today. Make a black person smile. Black lives matter to everybody and you matter to us.

Stand with us on Juneteenth like we stand with you all year round, and I hope a happy Pride month continues for all of us

💝

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if you don't do anything else today,

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.

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I love the stereotype that sustainability and zero-waste is a trendy young liberal thing because I distinctly remember my die-hard Republican, Silent Generation grandfather grousing that we lived in a "disposable world" where nothing was intended to last and nobody bothered to fix things anymore.

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It seems like I've been told my whole life that my emotions are a liability.

"too sensitive"

But in a world with so much pain, so much beauty, so much joy, so much cruelty, so much tenderness

I can't help but wonder if things wouldn't be better if we allowed ourselves to feel more,

to turn toward one another in our pain and our joy until our shared humanity is undeniable.

I've worked incredibly hard to rediscover my sensitivity after years of numbing, isolating, denying, and dissociating. I think I walk more carefully in the world now, and I wish others would do the same.

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The Bethesda Declaration was written and signed by hundreds of NIH employees to call for an end to politicized changes made to the NIH, and over 27,000 people have signed in support of it.

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12 years ago today, I posted on Facebook that I had started dreaming again.

I hadn't been dreaming for years, likely due to stress and sleep deprivation from college, my shitty college job, and my toxic relationship.

But in June, just after the semester ended, a few months after moving out of my apartment on foot, while my father was still dying of cancer, I found enough rest and enough room in my brain to dream.

Things get better, even if not all at once.

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Susan Carlton’s “This poem can be put off no longer,” from the anthology Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out (1991).

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The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.