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Silvia Secchi

@profsecchi.bsky.social

7.5K followers 2.4K following 2.6K posts

Natural resource economist, geographer, meanderer, informed agitator, immigrant. Trans rights are human rights. 💧Dall’acqua salata a quella dolce e zozza💧 My views are my own and do not represent my employer. I do not enjoy having to state the obvious. .. more

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Environmental science 35%

Economics 21%

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Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · Nov 7

Seems like a good time to remind ourselves that in 1931, when Mussolini forced academics to sign an oath of allegiance to the fascist regime, only twelve refused.

Academic freedom and fascism: A new book on the Italian professors who said NO in 1931

Inclusive searches & sources @UvA Romance languages (32) Earlier addressed in the Library333 series Inclusive searches & sources @FMG Library – with posts on the Academic Freedom Inde…

blognostrumuva.wordpress.com

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Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 3h

Honestly Portland can Streisand-effect autarky frog costumes and even improve their design, the drone strikes tho 😬

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 3h

CC @louiseseamster.bsky.social

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 3h

They have a rubric. Half the grade is for specificity of the question(s) (are they based on the reading assigned, and they demonstrate that the student has read the paper) and half on relevance to the course content (the questions refer to material previously covered in the class).

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 3h

Since my family is from around there, for me I think it would be Barumini

Su Nuraxi di Barumini

During the late 2nd millennium B.C. in the Bronze Age, a special type of defensive structure known as nuraghi (for which no parallel exists anywhere else in the world) developed on the island of Sardi...

whc.unesco.org

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 4h

Cities really do have their own energy and this is such a lovely representation of Portland's.
May the Portland frogs live long and multiply.

The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 4h

Things are happening at Portland's ICE facility tonight.

Read more of our protest coverage here: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

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Reposted by Mattias Hallquist, Fabián Muniesa, Shelly Lundberg , and 3 more Mattias Hallquist, Fabián Muniesa, Shelly Lundberg, Silvia Secchi, Michael H. Whitworth, Albin Wagener

The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 4h

Things are happening at Portland's ICE facility tonight.

Read more of our protest coverage here: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

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Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, David M. Schultz, Mary Feeney , and 7 more Richard S.J. Tol, David M. Schultz, Mary Feeney, Rosemary A. Joyce, Dustin Mulvaney, Gernot Wagner, Silvia Secchi, Bessma Momani, Leah Stokes, David Darmofal

jael holzman @jael.bsky.social · 5h

SCOOP: The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada — the Esmeralda 7 mega-farm — has been canceled

The news was quietly dropped via a sudden website update with no public word from any of the companies involved or a statement from the agency

@heatmap.news

Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Has Been Canceled, BLM Says

It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.

heatmap.news

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Reposted by Silvia Secchi

Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 5h

"The main problem behind the idea of energy transition is that we project on the history of energies & materials ways of reasoning that are derived from the analysis of technical substitution.

We make as if solving the #climate challenge was just an issue of diffusing a new technology"

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Energy Transition Myth (w/ Jean-Baptiste Fressoz)

open.spotify.com

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Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 6h

This is one of the reasons why one of my regular assignments for students is to write questions on the readings we do, for the class to discuss as a whole. You can generally tell how deeply they engaged with the reading from the questions, and good questions are awesome for class discussions.

Amy Hoy @amyhoy.bsky.social · 6h

my initial thought when LLMs started becoming a thing was that it could be like an ELIZA on steroids, and ask you a bunch of questions that could help YOU write

unsurprisingly not a single LLM exists to ask questions and even if you tell it to, they can't

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Reposted by Silvia Secchi

Amy Hoy @amyhoy.bsky.social · 6h

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Reposted by Silvia Secchi, Daniel Kuehn, Timothy D. McBride , and 1 more Silvia Secchi, Daniel Kuehn, Timothy D. McBride, David Darmofal

The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 6h

The Trump administration confirmed that the U.S. bailed out Argentina.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he had directly bought Argentine pesos in global currency markets in a bid to relieve pressure on the nation’s embattled President Javier Milei, a supporter of President Trump.

The U.S. just bailed out Argentina, Treasury Secretary confirms

The US Treasury has finalized a $20 billion financial rescue of Argentina, including a currency swap arrangement with the country's central bank.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 11h

Yikes!

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 12h

In Brazil there are huge issues in the Cerrado for direct land use change and in the Amazon for indirect land use change.

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 13h

In Brazil it is a bit of a different story - the government has been pushing for biofuels since the 1970s as a response to the energy crisis so there are lots of programs to promote them. Historically the crop of choice was sugarcane - better than 🌽 energy wise but problematic for deforestation.

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Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 16h

We should be getting people out of those houses on stilts on barrier islands and similar flood prone places, they cost tons of money to the public for repeated flood losses and aren’t good for the environment. That’s the crux of the issue.

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Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 16h

The framing of this piece is just terrible. The issue is that due to climate change and pathetic zoning laws people build and sell homes at inflated prices in places where it doesn’t make sense b/c of subsidies.
The shutdown is exposing a massive moral hazard problem. Very NYT framing though.

For Homes by the Water, Closing Just Got More Complicated

www.nytimes.com

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Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 16h

Carter was big on biofuels because of the energy crisis (doesn’t mean he was right)

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 18h

The way they made the energy math work (sort of) is to feed livestock the Dried Distiller Grains so they went from a waste product to a byproduct. But there hard limits on how much you can feed that stuff, it can make animals sick.

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Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 19h

Lots of wasteful steps!

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 19h

… even if it’s rigged with subsidies. In the meantime we have had almost 20 years of corn ethanol and associated pollution, and now the industry is pushing to use 🌽 ethanol as a Sustainable Aviation Fuel. This again requires tons of public subsidies for ludicrous conservation practices & pipelines.

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 19h

BTW if you want to understand how the PR campaign works look at the complete failure of cellulosic ethanol (and hence of the whole EISA policy structure). Cellulosic was sold (w/ the complicity of many land grant academics) as a clean long term solution but still can’t compete in the marketplace…

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Reposted by Dustin Mulvaney

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 20h

I wrote several papers about how bad corn ethanol was going to be around 2010, so I am not surprised.
We should always remind ourselves that biofuels are complements not substitutes for fossil fuels, b/c they are used in ICEs and have limited scalability.
They are a big ag and big oil PR mechanism.

T&E @transportenvironment.org · 1d

NEW: Biofuels globally emit more than the fossil fuels they replace, our latest study shows.

The first-of-a-kind study looks at global biofuels production today and the potential impacts of government biofuel targets.
🧵⤵️

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Reposted by Olivier Honnay, Silvia Secchi, Anthony Burke

T&E @transportenvironment.org · 1d

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Reposted by Silvia Secchi

Brett "Solidarity 2025" Banditelli @banditelli.org · 1d

Good news for heron fans. Not such good news for pocket gopher fans.

Reposted so more stabby stabby, less me breathing into the mic. 🪶

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Reposted by Silvia Secchi

Laura Martínez 🥑 @miblogestublog.bsky.social · 1d

Listen to Bad Bunny, YOU PEOPLE

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Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 1d

It’s horrific regardless, no?

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Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · 1d

Maybe I shouldn't feel it, but I have extremely high second hand embarrassment. Dear lord.

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Reposted by Mark Bray, Julie L. Lockwood, Joseph Schafer , and 2 more Mark Bray, Julie L. Lockwood, Joseph Schafer, Alan Richardson, Silvia Secchi

RutgersAAUP-AFT @ruaaup-aft.bsky.social · 1d

This week, our colleague Dr. Mark Bray came under attack by Turning Point USA’s Rutgers chapter for his public scholarship. Rutgers AAUP-AFT and the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union condemn this campaign and stand in solidarity with our colleagues. Read our full statement here: https://loom.ly/BDXasRY

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Reposted by Will Jennings, Silvia Secchi, Matthew P. McAllister

Popehat Agitates And Irritates @kenwhite.bsky.social · 1d

The White House Antifa Roundtable is one of the best displays I’ve seen of this-is-how-bad-it’s-gotten — just a sewer of open fascism, dementia, morons and freaks, and incoherent rage.

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