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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · 6d

this is the exact opposite of what you're asking but a good story: yalebooks.yale.edu/2025/01/21/c...

"Finally, after eighteen years of walking campus wearing silly masks, I seemed to hold no interest for the crows. I am mulling these results."

Crows Remember a Face…for a Long Time! - Yale University Press

John M. Marzluff— Ornithologists often undertake long-term observations of favorite birds to understand their behavior and ecology fully. In this way we have learned why young Florida scrub-jays help ...

yalebooks.yale.edu

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Reposted by Neil Banas

Sardonicus @sardonicus.eu · 7d

Allan Grant, Fire Resistant House, 1949

The USA and the Democratic Party, or at least what it looks like to the rest of the world.

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Reposted by Neil Banas

Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 8d

Which whale species did I see? Leatherwood et al. (1982, p. 10) is hard to beat...

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · 27d

Don't we all initially mistake for potatoes the fine 12th Dynasty heads we dig up while, as part of the punishment exercise, digging up potatoes.

One might say this mistaking _is_ the punishment exercise.

Sdanley Bat 🦇 @stanleybad.bsky.social · 29d

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Reposted by Neil Banas

m john harrison @mjohnharrison.bsky.social · 27d

Tcikets. Tcikets for the Steam Fair.

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Sep 12

It is literally tautological for the funders of research to equate "unfunded" with low quality and lack of seriousness. It's just an assertion that "we don't want to pay for what we don't want to pay for" masquerading as an argument.

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Sep 11

"According to our expert assessment, none of these #geoengineering ideas pass scrutiny regarding their use in the coming decades. Instead, we find that the proposed concepts would be environmentally dangerous."

www.frontiersin.org/journals/sci...

Frontiers | Safeguarding the polar regions from dangerous geoengineering: a critical assessment of proposed concepts and future prospects

Fossil-fuel burning is heating the planet with catastrophic consequences for its habitability and for the natural world on which our existence depends. Halti...

www.frontiersin.org

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Sep 5

Also: how many years is it at your institution between "We are closing the X Department bc we are doing too many things" and "Why aren't our staff bidding for this major funding initiative in X? We want to see more grant activity."

I'm going to generously say 10. Too short to easily fix, anyway.

Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Sep 5

There is a broken metaphor here. Institutions are not multitasking individuals. When a university "does fewer things really well", this doesn't mean individual researchers find their focus and manage their commitments differently; it means layoffs and department closures. "Do" is a euphemism here.

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · Sep 4

'The new chief executive of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has warned university leaders that their institutions might need to start doing “fewer things but doing them really well”, stating he is wary of a “crumbs for everyone” approach to funding.' 1/2

UKRI chief: ‘Do fewer things in research but do them really well’

Ian Chapman backs ministers’ calls for more research specialisation by universities in first public comments since taking over at £9 billion-a-year research funder

www.timeshighereducation.com

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Sep 5

well, figuration and symbolic thought are great if you're happy to churn out "employable" graduates chasing job-market trends, but I try to focus on fundamentals in my teaching: chewing on a bone while staring at the sky. Students really respond.

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · Sep 5

this term in university teaching ive experimented with a return to engaging with groups only through figurative painting on the walls of underground caverns,

the results have been ASTOUNDING. never going back to writing systems again

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Sep 3

I predict Chrysler Building hats are going to have a comeback in 2026. They go with everything and would improve your mobile signal.

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Aug 30

grant proposal submitted.

black and white engraving of "Offering to Molech" (1987)

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Newfound Planets @i-find-planets.bsky.social · Aug 24

Look! A planet! It is hiding from us. A yak-like thing lives there and dreams of the horrors.

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Aug 18

#mondaymoth

Ian Beavis @ianbeavis.bsky.social · Aug 17

In a head-on view the feathery antennae of male Gipsy Moth look like bat ears. From today's Grosvenor & Hilbert Park moth morning

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Aug 14

love it.

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Aug 11

I used to live on a continent where "canal" meant "joined-up rivers and lakes" but now live in a place where they are built and operated by Wile E Coyote. See below.

(It's the same feeling when you start out on a walk along a leafy if manicured river, and then the river goes over a bridge.)

Coates is Odd This Day @oddthisday.bsky.social · Aug 10

Today is the 47th anniversary of this clearly unimprovable photo, from a story so absurd that it shouldn’t be true, but is: the day a team of workers from British Waterways pulled the plug out of the Chesterfield Canal, and all the water emptied out

A man with a spectacular 1970s mullet, wearing big wellies and a v-neck jumper over a T-shirt, looks at camera as he stands on a boat which is itself standing on the muddy bottom of an empty canal. He is holding up an enormous wooden plug on a long chunky chain

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Aug 11

The second half of the review suggests that to reap the benefits of societal collapse, you need the collapses to be piecemeal and local, not, like, the whole global system full of nuclear weapons at once.

Which is a downer, but maybe it just means get started? I wonder who's going first?

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Reposted by Neil Banas

Ghostcards @ghostcards.bsky.social · Aug 6

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Aug 5

are you going to give them feedback on their reviewer review process? If so, I'd be happy to provide an evaluation of your comments

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Aug 5

I think most science papers _are_ written in the same voice as the grant appls that funded them. "Confident and bland" is explicitly what we're trained to produce, and it's as fun to read as it sounds!

Bazerman suggests there's 300 yrs of defensiveness behind the "confidence" genre convention

Shaping Written Knowledge - The WAC Clearinghouse

wac.colostate.edu

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Reposted by Neil Banas

Oxford University Museum of Natural History @morethanadodo.bsky.social · Aug 4

These delicate models were created by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, Czech artists who specialised in glasswork and ran a business spanning 300 years and nine generations.

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Reposted by Neil Banas

Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · Aug 3

And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I’m a crow

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Jul 31

microthread: eels beyond the "fish event horizon", which TIL there was one of.

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw.bsky.social · Jul 31

Starting around 1000 CE, the English began building lots of mill dams, and this blocked the migration pathways of lots of fish! Oh no!

But eels can live out of water for a while, & travel overland if need be. So they could migrate around or over medieval dams.

Eels FTW! 1/2
🗃️🧪

Meme. Image of a medieval mill and eel trap from the 14th C. Luttrell Psalter. This is a small illumination on the bottom of a folio (page). You can see the mill and dam and an overshot mill wheel. Upstream there are two eel traps, made of wicker. It's a place where "the daily grind" takes on real meaning.

You can see eels in the traps, so you know that there is good fishing happening! It has been suggested that this mill represents one that Sir Geoffrey Luttrell actually owned, and so likely those eels were due to him in rent. There are flowered decorations around the mill, as a part of the folio's border decor.

You could imagine the miller opening up the mill door every morning, stretching, and thinking: "Another beautiful day grinding corn and wrangling eels for Lord Luttrell!" Or he might instead wish to leave it all behind and start a new life as a riverboat gambler named Beauregard T. Sharp. You never know with millers.

Meme text reads:
"Dam you salmon!
Give me my eels!"

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · Jul 29

this is an amazing hybrid of #climate #impacts #mapping and #scifi narrative. I've never seen anything like it.

Mark Sample @samplereality.bsky.social · Jul 29

Not enough weather for you? No Time to Discourse is a speculative atlas of (endless) North American climate disaster

No Time to Discourse

A speculative atlas that explores climate disaster across North America through interactive mapping and procedurally-generated flash fiction.

notime.now

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