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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson
@brianolson.bsky.social
440 followers 300 following 140 posts
California geologist, earthquake hazards scientist, Christian, and frustrated Angels/Ducks/Browns fan. Peace & Humpty-ness Forever! “Older than some people, but younger than some buildings.”
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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Dec 13
Hi, I’m Brian Olson—geologist, earthquake nerd, & SoCal resident. With 25+ years in engineering geology, I tackle hazards like liquefaction, landslides, & active faults. Expect posts on quakes, geology, travel, Disneyland, & how the Angels break my heart. 🌍🏰⚾
Person leading a geology field trip discussion on a sandy beach, gesturing with arms outstretched while holding printed materials. A group of participants stands and sits attentively, some wearing hats and backpacks. The scene includes a clear blue sky, dunes with sparse vegetation, and utility poles in the background. Selfie of a person wearing a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and a backpack in the Ridgecrest desert, documenting ground displacement after a M7.1 earthquake. In the background, a colleague wearing a cowboy hat and vest kneels on the ground, closely examining and measuring surface features. The arid landscape includes sparse vegetation, distant mountains, and a dry lakebed under a clear sky. A person in jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and a trucker hat measure the dip of a bedrock surface using a Brunton compass. There is a large bedrock outcrop on the right with sparse desert shrubs in the hillside to the left. A man wearing jeans, an orange safety vest, facemask, and white hardhat crouches down next to a trench wall exposure of layered sediments looking for evidence of faulting. The wall exposes a coarse-grained unit above and a finer-grained unit below. Two cylinders have been driven into the soil wall in the background to collect samples for luminescence dating but have not been removed yet.
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Sep 8
DAS Bump!

My summary of this morning’s session: “Forecasting Earthquakes with Continuous Data: From Lab to Field”. Sounds like a SCEC German punk band. #scecmeet
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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Sep 8
Tom Rockwell (Distinguished Lecture) kicking off the 2025 SCEC meeting! Small offset per event (smaller magnitude) produces narrower damage zone in nearby rocks. Serves as a proxy for max magnitude per rupture event. #scecmeet #scec2025 🧪
Tom Rockwell standing on the stage in front of 4 chairs. On the left is a large projection screen showing one of his slides that includes a photomicrograph of fractured mineral grains. A slide from Tom’s talk showing an annotated aerial view of the San Andreas Fault near Little Rock and a photomicrograph on the right showing pulverized mineral grains from a sample collected several meters from the main fault plane. Summary slide of Tom’s talk labeled: General Summary of Physical Damage. Includes three categories: small displacement (less than 1 meter), moderate (1.5 to 2.7 meter), and large displacement (3 to 6 meters).
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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Sep 8
Opening presentation of this year’s SCEC annual meeting in Palm Springs! It seems SCEC is a “large Enterprise” working to develop & share cutting-edge earthquake system science to enhance California’s resilience & to educate and inspire future scientists. #scecmeet #SCEC2025 🧪
Digital image off the USS Enterprise from the Star Trek franchise. Small pictures of the science researchers are in little circles around the edge. The bottom of the slide says: “To boldly go where no SCEC has gone before.”
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Jun 10
Well, given that he's not running for governor again becuase he reached his term limit....
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Jun 10
Kristi Noem, standing next to the president in the White House, urges Californians to not elect Gavin Newsom again
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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · May 11
Ha!! Next time I’ll include a random non-sequitur limerick somewhere in my draft and it’ll be your job to find and remove it. 😆
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Reposted by Brian Olson
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Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · May 9
“NSF watchers fear that a smaller, restructured agency could be more vulnerable to pressure from the White House to fund research that suits its ideological bent.” www.science.org/content/arti...
Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund
www.science.org
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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · May 8
Did they work the graveyard shift and were heading home?
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Reposted by Brian Olson
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Celeste Labedz @celestelabedz.bsky.social · May 8
I'm guessing there was a real reason that the new pope served as the bishop of Chiclayo, but I'm going to pretend that whoever was doing the bishop assignments misheard it as Chicago and was like "great we can just promote one of our Chicago guys".
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · May 8
There are new ducklings ALL over Disneyland these days. They had to stop the parade the other day to let them cross the street.
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · May 8
Hey-OOOOOO!!!
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · May 8
"They picked a globalist pope!" - Yes, he's the leader of the GLOBAL Catholic Church. Duh!
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 17
It’s me! I’m “one scientist”! 🧪
Screen shot of an online article from the Los Angeles Times about this week’s magnitude 5.2 earthquake and the early warning notifications. The text says, “Geologists at the California Geological Survey’s office in Los Angeles also received early warning notifications on their phones ‘so we were prepared for some shaking,’ one scientist posted on social media.”
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 14
Gulf of Mexico in my heart.
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 14
Not on my end. Lame.
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 14
That's not unusual when you are that close to the epicenter. At some point you are close enough that the seismic waves are faster than the computers can calculate and send the warning message.
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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 14
Us geologists here at the @cageosurvey.bsky.social LA office all got our early warning notifications on our phones so we were prepared for some shaking. Did you get one too?

Download @myshakeapp.bsky.social to be ready next time. #earthquake
Screenshot of MyShake notifications for a magnitude 5.8 earthquake (later revised to 5.2) in San Diego County. The alert reads: “Earthquake - Drop, cover, hold on. Mag 5.8 EQ in San Diego Country Estates, CA 92065, USA on 4-14-2025 at 10:08am PDT”. A second alert under the first says: “Earthquake Alert Earthquake Detected! Drop, Cover, Hold On. Protect yourself. - USGSShakeAlert.”
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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 14
Felt the long-period shaking here in downtown LA from the M5.2 earthquake near Julian, CA (San Diego County). Epicenter is near the Elsinore Fault, which would be the primary suspect, but we'll see once more data comes in. #earthquake #Julian 🧪 @cageosurvey.bsky.social
This ShakeMap shows the ground shaking intensity from a magnitude 5.2 earthquake that occurred on April 14, 2025. The epicenter is marked with a black star and located just south of Julian, California, in San Diego County. The shaking intensity is represented using the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale, with colors ranging from green (light shaking) near the epicenter to blue (weak shaking) farther out. The strongest shaking (MMI V to VI) was felt in the mountains and foothill regions northeast of San Diego, including areas near Mira Mesa and Encinitas. Seismic instrument locations are shown as triangles, and community-reported intensities are marked with small circles. Cities across Southern California and northern Baja California, including San Diego, Oceanside, Riverside, and Tijuana, experienced weak to light shaking. The scale at the bottom links MMI levels to estimated damage and ground motion levels, helping to interpret the impact across the region.
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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 7
You’ll forgive my concerns over a possible upcoming recession. I lost my job and almost lost my house in the last one.
barchart.com Barchart @barchart.com · Apr 3
JUST IN 🚨: Global Recession odds rise to 60% according to JP Morgan
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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 6
So encouraged by everyone we saw at the Hands Off rally yesterday in Santa Ana (Orange County)! #HandsOff

Rise Up. Wise Up. Eyes Up.
A crowd of protesters at a rally. One of them is holding up a black sign with an outline of the United States with the words “Rise Up!” written inside. A group of protestors on the sidewalk. One is holding a cardboard sign that reads “It’s so bad, introverts are here! Hands off our Constitution.” A woman sitting on the curb with a white sign that reads “Thisis just not OK!”
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Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social · Apr 5
What do the Republicans and the oligarchs fear most? Solidarity between poor rural whites and Black urban folks.

They have always feared it. It’s time to come together, friends. Our futures are bound up together.
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 5
Heading out to our local Orange County Hands Off rally shortly. #handsoff
Two t-shirts, a blue one reading “ano more Kings” with a cartoon drawing of King George III sitting on a stool with bags of money from Schoolhouse Rock. The second is a white shirt with multicolored balloons on top the word “No”.
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 5
Talks went very well and a great time was had by all!
Photo of Wendy Bohon giving a presentation at the Geological Society of America, Cordilleran Section meeting in Sacramento. She is in a hotel conference room standing behind a wooden lectern with her arm lifted and extended towards the projection screen. On the screen is a map of California showing the largest potential earthquake shaking intensities for each area of the state. Photo of Brian Olson giving a presentation at the Geological Society of America, Cordilleran Section meeting in Sacramento. He is in a hotel conference room standing behind a wooden lectern addressing the audience. A sign at the top front of the lectern reads “Holiday Inn Sacramento” and another sign at the bottom reads “The Geological Society of America”. Title slide of Brian Olson’s presentation that reads “Liquefaction Hazard Zone Mapping in the Greater Sacramento Area, Sacramento and Yolo Counties, Northern California.” At the top left is a multi-colored version of the California gear from the state flag with text to the right that reads “California Department of Conservation, California Geological Survey”. In the lower left is Brian’s name, job title (Senior Engineering Geologist), and CGS’ social media handle of “@CAGeoSurvey”.
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 5
Sand worms?
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Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 4
Anyone have any insight into why this M3.1 in the Sacramento delta is SO deep? 🧪
Map of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento River delta and surrounding areas. A white circle is shown north of the city of Antioch representing the epicenter of a magnitude 3.1 earthquake. A white box with details about the quake is shown in the lower left corner. It states this earthquake was 13 kilometers west of Rio Vista, CA occurring at 8:37am on April 4. The hypocenter is listed at 24.6 kilometers and is highlighted in yellow for emphasis.
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brianolson.bsky.social
Brian Olson @brianolson.bsky.social · Apr 4
The context is “0.5 inch(es) of settlement is expected.”