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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 1d

*muffled screams of joy with mouthful*

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 1d

I cannot stop laughing imagining this little dude chirping with its mouth full.

Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 1d

The greater noctule bat can, and DOES, hunt and eat freakin ROBINS in midair.

...and then it chews while continuing to echolocate.

Heheheh it "talks" with its mouth full. www.sciencenews.org/article/bats...

Mic’d bats reveal midnight songbird attacks

Sensor data reveal greater noctule bats chasing, catching and chewing on birds during high-altitude, nighttime hunts.

www.sciencenews.org

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 1d

The greater noctule bat can, and DOES, hunt and eat freakin ROBINS in midair.

...and then it chews while continuing to echolocate.

Heheheh it "talks" with its mouth full. www.sciencenews.org/article/bats...

Mic’d bats reveal midnight songbird attacks

Sensor data reveal greater noctule bats chasing, catching and chewing on birds during high-altitude, nighttime hunts.

www.sciencenews.org

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 1d

Through NO FAULT of their own.

I recall one went for an informational interview with someone to talk about a job, and they said "what's your dream job"

And they couldn't understand why she got upset.

Because she'd HAD her dream job. She HAD IT. She'd worked so hard for it.

And here she was.

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 1d

...and it wasn't because they paid especially well. They didn't.

It's because the jobs allowed them to use their expertise to directly benefit people. Often in kind of invisible ways. Like studying wild pollinators, or helping countries build science infrastructure.

And then they got canned.

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 1d

"It was an exciting opportunity to do applied pollinator research, which is what I want to do for my career.... I feel lucky to have my new job, but I’m definitely still in mourning."

This is something I've seen from a lot of former Feds. They LOVED their jobs....

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/s...

She Studied How Logging Affects Pollinators

www.nytimes.com

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 1d

1. Scientists flossed mice. And delivered a vaccine through the floss!

2. This could mean people could self administer vaccines, something vital in a pandemic.

3. Ok but wait you want me to FLOSS!? Like let's not get wild here...

www.sciencenews.org/article/flos...

How flossing a mouse's teeth could lead to a new kind of vaccine

Flu viruses often enter the body through mucous tissue in the nose. Researchers are developing new ways to protect such areas.

www.sciencenews.org

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Reposted by Bethany Brookshire

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 2d

repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself

violent alien @blipstress.bsky.social · 2d

An actual hot take: Too many authors are afraid of editors watering down their voice or whatever and not afraid enough of editors letting you put any old slop on the page.

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away" as another outgrowth of the rage for enemas and all things poo in the 19th century: Welcome to my TED talk.

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

*munching an apple*

"An Apple a day keeps the doctor away" is an English proverb from the 19th century.

Potentially a marketing concept, it could be read as a pean to the importance of fiber, and suggests that doctors suffered from overwhelming constipation calls.

In this essay I will...

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

May I recommend: bsky.app/profile/did:...

Ann Finkbeiner @annfinkbeiner.bsky.social · 3d

just fyi: "triturated rat-shit" = finely ground ratshit, and I can think of a number of uses for that phrase.

Ann Finkbeiner @annfinkbeiner.bsky.social · 3d

Emily, newly pregnant, reads Montaigne and writes me letters about him. The combination of his mind and Emily's -- you'll just have to read this for yourself. If for nothing else than the phrase "triturated rat-shit." www.lastwordonnothing.com/2025/10/08/t...

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Reposted by Bethany Brookshire

Ann Finkbeiner @annfinkbeiner.bsky.social · 3d

just fyi: "triturated rat-shit" = finely ground ratshit, and I can think of a number of uses for that phrase.

Ann Finkbeiner @annfinkbeiner.bsky.social · 3d

Emily, newly pregnant, reads Montaigne and writes me letters about him. The combination of his mind and Emily's -- you'll just have to read this for yourself. If for nothing else than the phrase "triturated rat-shit." www.lastwordonnothing.com/2025/10/08/t...

Portrait of Michel de Montaigne, all robes, braid, ruff, and mustache until you look at his eyes, seeing right through you

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

A word like this we need the WORLD to know.

Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

I literally heard about this because I met two friends of hers last night.

HOW have I not yet met this person I bet she's amazing.

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

Anyway should you encounter snarge in your life, here's a handy-dandy flowchart on how to collect it and where to send it, and yet more evidence that my weirdo insistence on carrying alcohol wipes everywhere is in fact in service to science.

www.faa.gov/airports/air...

www.faa.gov

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

There are walls, cannons, lasers, drones shaped like falcons. REAL actual falcons.

(Also they're called birdstrikes...but sometimes they are also BATstrikes. Ooofs)

www.wired.com/story/its-a-...

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! The Midair Collisions Menacing Air Travel

When winged wildlife slams into aircraft, disasters can happen. Inside the world of bird-strike countermeasures, where “snarge” is the enemy.

www.wired.com

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

And of course there's what I knew about: The industry devoted to PREVENTING snarge from happening.

Keeping birds (and other animals) off plane runways, where the vast majority of these strikes occur.

This is esp challenging as many coastal airports in particular are near marshes!

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

Anyway when they get snarge, they COLLECT it and they send it to people whose job descriptions include identifying a species of bird down to the single partial singed feather.

www.sciencefriday.com/segments/fea...

Feathers And Snarge: Identifying What’s Left After Birds And Planes Collide

There’s a CSI lab for birds that strike airplanes. The species that hits most often? Not the one you’d guess.

www.sciencefriday.com

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

Apparently "snarge" and a portmanteau of "snot" and "garbage", and it's usually like...a smear... usually the plane is fine.

Unless it's not! Recall the plane in the Hudson. www.wired.com/2010/05/ntsb...

The bird is, of course, VERY not fine.

www.wired.com/story/its-a-...

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! The Midair Collisions Menacing Air Travel

When winged wildlife slams into aircraft, disasters can happen. Inside the world of bird-strike countermeasures, where “snarge” is the enemy.

www.wired.com

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

Today in I CANNOT BELIEVE I did not know about this word until now:

I learned about snarge.

Snarge: What is...er...left...when a bird and a plane collide. The bird bits, specifically.

Obviously I knew about birdstrikes but SNARGE?!

www.sciencefriday.com/segments/fea...

Feathers And Snarge: Identifying What’s Left After Birds And Planes Collide

There’s a CSI lab for birds that strike airplanes. The species that hits most often? Not the one you’d guess.

www.sciencefriday.com

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 3d

This is the best Nobel Prize coverage I've ever seen www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/on-...

On the Red Carpet of the Nobel Prizes

INTERVIEWER: Chemical engineer Dr. Chesel Amniotiv is looking resplendent in orange gabardine, with cobalt accents of actual cobalt. Let’s see if w...

www.mcsweeneys.net

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 4d

For real even in the introduction, George Jetson has an annoying commute...in the sky.

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 4d

Hahaha I saw that. Amazing.

Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 4d

"You have been hired as a sop to a Trump administration that is actively hostile to the actual free press, and you will be made to oversee wave after wave of layoffs until you quit"

@lopatto.bsky.social If this doesn't keep Bari Weiss up at night, nothing will. www.theverge.com/business/793...

Memo to Bari Weiss Re: CBS News: You’re doomed

Bari Weiss has sold her company, The Free Press, to manage the decline of broadcast news at CBS. How many ways can it go wrong?

www.theverge.com

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 4d

1. I love this.
2. You just KNOW in the future some scientist with an ego is gonna be like "honey I CAN'T go fully off grid what if I win the Nobel Prize?!??!"

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Nobel committee unable to reach prize winner who is ‘living his best life’ hiking off grid

Fred Ramsdell was among those honoured with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine but might not know because he is somewhere in Idaho and uncontactable

www.theguardian.com

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