Clark Gray
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clarklgray.bsky.social
Clark Gray
@clarklgray.bsky.social

Professor of Geography and Environment, UNC-Chapel Hill
https://clarkgray.web.unc.edu/

Sociology 27%
Political science 27%
Pinned
Advisee brunch at Carolina Coffee Shop!
This is wild!

Seven-day-ahead weather forecasts in high-income countries are more accurate than one-day-ahead weather forecasts in low-income countries.

Reposted by Clark Gray

As the number on the list approached the total number likely to be recommended for funding (typically ~75%), each application was presented and discussed. These discussions tended to be rich and could be spirited as each program officer had opinions and also had competing favorites.

6/8
"She said that lenacapavir has become a kind of diplomatic carrot — and stick.

Friendly, compliant governments, like Eswatini, have received early shipments, whereas South Africa or Nigeria — countries that have fallen out of favor with Trump — seem to have received the short end of the stick."
The US is fast-tracking this important HIV drug — for everyone except South Africa
Why the Trump administration is cutting out a country that needs it most.
www.vox.com

The “malleability of students to what they study” seems exactly right to me but it’s so good to have empirical confirmation.

The riskiness of STEM focus feels like it doesn’t *need* to be true yet probably *is* true in most settings, whereas the political consequences probably vary across settings?
Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.
My hot take is that over the next 10 years, we're going to see more emphasis on and investment in the humanities at Ivy League and other fancy schools just as state schools and small privates continue to decimate and even eliminate the humanities.
"While other universities report that the humanities are shrinking, at Berkeley, the opposite is true. The music major is the fastest-growing major on campus. We are finding bigger classrooms because film is exploding. English is back to the numbers we saw 15 years ago. We are hiring" bit.ly/4ohKuOe
"The humanities really are a resource — a confidence for living in our times.” Dean Sara Guyer on the modern utility of humanities degrees
This interview originally appeared on the Division of Arts
bit.ly
Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪

Reposted by Clark Gray

No more paylines at the NIH
grants.nih.gov/news-events/...
Implementing a Unified NIH Funding Strategy to Guide Consistent and Clearer Award Decisions | Grants & Funding
grants.nih.gov
Policy should focus not on fertility targets but on how “societies can remain prosperous, equitable & sustainable under conditions of low fertility, population aging & population decline. That is a question better aligned with what we actually know—and with the uncertainties we must acknowledge”
The demographic future that we do not know about
The demographic future of the planet has rarely been as questioned as it is today. For much of the 20th century, the demographic transition theory provided a clear narrative: With modernization and de...
www.science.org

Reposted by Clark Gray

📣 Applications open for GENIUS 2026, a 3-day mentoring workshop at Penn State for rising third- and fourth-year students underrepresented in geography. 🌍

📅 May 27–29.

Apply by Feb. 15, 2026: www.geog.psu.edu/geniusworkshop
This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.

Reposted by Clark Gray

Here is a comparison for the world population.un.org/wup/countryp...

Reposted by Clark Gray

Sara Ghebremicael at @uncpopcenter.bsky.social presenting her work on conflict and climate drivers of migration in northern Ethiopia at Wittgenstein Centre conference
CDC has overhauled its website to assert that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim”
INCREDIBLE CURVES

Reposted by Clark Gray

New pre-print! Brazil Data Commons

arxiv.org/abs/2511.11755

Collaborative work led by Isadora Cristina with Ramon Gonze, Jônatas Santos, Julio Reis, Mário Alvim, and Fabrício Benevenuto.

Brazil Data Commons: A Platform for Unifying and Integrating Brazil's Public Data
Brazil Data Commons: A Platform for Unifying and Integrating Brazil's Public Data
The fragmentation of public data in Brazil, coupled with inconsistent standards and limited interoperability, hinders effective research, evidence-based policymaking and access to data-driven insights...
arxiv.org

Reposted by Clark Gray

Previously, the UN used each country’s own definitions of which areas were urban. That approach tells us that only 58% of the global population was urban in 2025. In contrast, the new 81% statistic is based on a universal definition of urban areas as relatively dense settlements of 5000+ people.
The New School is now a place where students cannot major in History, Anthropology, Sociology, Global Policy & International Affairs, Global Studies, Urban Studies, or Environmental Studies. And more pauses, closures, and mergers coming down the pike this week. The future is uncertain.
150 of the children at my daughter's school in Durham (she teaches 2nd grade) were out yesterday because their parents are afraid to bring them to school. Are you OK with that?

Reposted by Clark Gray

This morning Andy Tatem is speaking at the #humanplanetforum sharing our Global 2 new high-resolution population datasets - as the UN launches World Urbanization Prospects 2025.

Watch live: https://webcast.ec.europa.eu/geo-human-planet-forum-2025-25-11-19

Reposted by Clark Gray

When you gratefully negotiate away your corresponding author status because the open access fee is $5,000… or free, if the corresponding author happens to be from another author’s institution 🤔
WE JUST KEEP WINNING. (UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program RESTORED!!!!)
Today, launching the World Urbanization Prospects 2025 with new UN estimates and projections of urbanization for
237 countries and areas of the world & 12,000+ cities with 50,000+ inhabitants in 2025. www.un.org/development/... - see also new online datasets and plots: population.un.org/wup/
Launch: World Urbanization Prospects 2025 | Population Division
The World Urbanization Prospects 2025 will be launched on Tuesday, 18 November 2025 at 12:45 (EST).
www.un.org

"The Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University invites applications by environmental social scientists for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position." Interests: energy, water, health, hazards, SES, conservation, human dimensions of resources, adaptation, conflicts.
Jobs | Human Resources
Learn more about finding a career at Utah State University. Apply for open positions, and learn about the campus community and culture.
careers-usu.icims.com
📈🚨NEW: Extreme heat events are increasingly threatening to become mass mortality events. In @natclimate.nature.com today, we project tens of thousands of deaths in a single week across Europe if extreme heat domes coincide with rising global temperatures.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Increasing risk of mass human heat mortality if historical weather patterns recur - Nature Climate Change
The authors couple calculations of historical heatwave intensity at present and future global temperatures with exposure–response functions to quantify mortality from extreme heat events in Europe. Th...
www.nature.com
Major news: the highly corrupt
@elsevierconnect.bsky.social journal STOTEN finally lost its IF!! The journal was under the hands of the corrupt editor & #papermill #fraud Damia Barcelo. Will Elsevier finally retract all the shit it published?
Clarivate finally delisted this corrupt journal.
Between February and August 2025, 1 in 30 NIH-funded clinical trials lost grant funding, affecting over 74,000 participants, with disproportionate impact on prevention, infectious disease, and behavioral trials. ja.ma/4i4tSYx
America rose to preeminence because of three pillars that President Trump is now systematically undermining. We're so consumed by the daily outrages that I'm not sure we focus enough on the risk that Trump's long-term legacy will be a substantially diminished USA. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/o...
Opinion | America’s Formula for Greatness Is Under Threat
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Clark Gray

3/5 Using matched student–teacher data from North Carolina plus high-resolution weather data, I find each additional extreme heat day lowers test scores in classrooms taught by the teachers aged 54 and over. For younger teachers, I do not find an effect.