Stephen Murphy (smurph)
smurph.bsky.social
Stephen Murphy (smurph)
@smurph.bsky.social

Professor at U Waterloo - Sch Environment, Resources & Sustainability. Ecologist, EIC Restoration Ecology, Botanist, Protected Areas, Grasslands. https://uwaterloo.ca/environment-resources-and-sustainability/blog/you-break-it-we-fix-it .. more

Environmental science 40%
Agriculture 29%

Ooooo..... yaassssss

We need a new bsky account "WeRateMatt"

One single post will do.

10^1000000000000000 out of 10
we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad
we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

Been yelling this message from the rooftops for years:
Coordinated Global Response Needed for Growing Sovereign Citizens Movement, Report Says: www.hstoday.us/subject-matt...
Coordinated Global Response Needed for Growing Sovereign Citizens Movement, Report Says - HSToday
The sovereign citizen movement has become an escalating national security challenge, which requires a coordinated global response, according to a new Lowy Institute Policy Brief.
www.hstoday.us
Working on a story for Science about cuts to Canada's government researchers and labs. If you are affected by this please reach out (either on here or via my website). Anonymity is an option. 🧪
🥇🥇🥇

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

Observations made on the flowers of wood crane's-bill, the subject of our recent @journalofecology.bsky.social Biological Flora species account, inspired the foundational work of naturalist Christian Konrad Sprengel in the field of pollination ecology. jecologyblog.com/2026/02/10/t...
The plant that inspired pollination ecology
Markus Wagner, UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Sandra Varga, University of Lincoln, and Richard Jefferson, former Natural England grassland specialist, discuss their article: Biological Flor…
jecologyblog.com

Per Jeffrey, I occasionally get ones that simply repeat the abstract of one of our papers, my UW brief bio, my blogs on UW explaining what my students have done, my bluesky profile, & once it was 16 repeats of "smurph smurph smurph smurph..." (that last one was funny AND creepy AND terrifyingly sad)
Best new email from someone interested in the lab: “I am very interested in the research conducted in your lab, especially your work on [mention their recent paper/project]. “
HORRIFYING -
Dismantling USAID & cancelling >80% of aid caused ~750,000 deaths by mid-2025

🧸Most were children
⌛️ Many died within the first year

😰 Preventable deaths were mainly from:
- HIV, TB, malaria
- Maternal & fetal deaths
- Malnutrition

news.westernu.ca/2026/01/u-s-...
Expert insight: U.S. withdrawal from WHO could affect global health - Western News
History professor Mitchell L. Hammond explains how the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization could affect global health and disease threats.
news.westernu.ca

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

ok, I think we all need a dose of adorableness today like a NEWBORN GIRAFFE www.sltrib.com/news/2026/01...
After a few years of benign neglect I am rebuilding bionames.org, which is a database of 5.4 million taxonomomic names for animals, linked to half a million DOIs and 278K PDFs. Dream is for every species name to be linked to its original publication using a persistent identifier #PID
BioNames
bionames.org

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

The Tyee Is Recruiting Our Next Editor-in-Chief thetyee.ca/Tyeenews/202...
The Tyee Is Recruiting Our Next Editor-in-Chief | The Tyee
Founding editor David Beers is passing the baton to a new leader. Is it you?
thetyee.ca

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

It’s going to be a wild year on campus! 🦋

WWF-Canada is excited to announce the recipients of this year’s Go Wild campus grants. These grants will support on-the-ground projects to protect and restore nature at post-secondary institutions across the country.

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

Best new email from someone interested in the lab: “I am very interested in the research conducted in your lab, especially your work on [mention their recent paper/project]. “

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

"LLMs identified relevant conditions in fewer than 34.5 percent of cases."

www.404media.co/chatbots-hea...
Chatbots Make Terrible Doctors, New Study Finds
Chatbots provided incorrect, conflicting medical advice, researchers found: “Despite all the hype, AI just isn't ready to take on the role of the physician.”
www.404media.co
'The geopolitical centre of gravity is shifting towards China' - worth reading this analysis of UN votes by @focaldataHQ hs-3959436.f.hubspot...

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

"Catherine Fife, NDP MPP for Waterloo, is calling for an immediate pause on commercial water-taking permits in Region of Waterloo. Fife warned the water shortage is already stalling housing construction & putting jobs at risk." #onpoli www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/06/n...

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment
Summary for Policymakers
zenodo.org/records/1853...

is now available
"TikTok’s Terms of Service now explicitly include tracking of location and citizenship status (among other identity markers, such as sex)." newrepublic.com/article/2059...
How TikTok 2.0 Became a Weapon for ICE
In just one week, the company has gone from being Gen Z’s preferred social media platform to a tool for spying on Americans and the suppression of information.
newrepublic.com
1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

blogbirder.blogspot.com/2026/02/fiel...
Eliminating field recording errors in the field is something I constantly work on. Here, I share my thoughts on this, running through a myriad of common errors.
Field Recording Technique; Honest Mistakes, Loud Clothes, and the Long Road to Listening Properly.
Field Recording is a wonderful discipline and there is much to learn at all levels. This is one of the things that draws me to it, there is ...
blogbirder.blogspot.com
📢 Job opening! We’re excited to announce six open Researcher positions. 🪲🦋

4 PhD and 2 Postdoc positions in forest biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research!

Interested in forest ecology? Get in touch! 🌲🌳

www.greenjobs.de/stellenanzei...

#forestecology #researchposition #conservationbiology
4 PhD positions and 2 Postdoc positions (respective place of work in the text) in forest [...]
Julius-Maximilians University Würzburg (JMU) and its partner Universities Georg-August-University of Göttingen (GAUG), Leipzig University (UL), University of Bayreuth (UB), Universität Bremen (UB), Un...
www.greenjobs.de

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

you know what's cheaper and safer than a ring camera? a fake camera. I've had one since my last porch theft three years ago and it even fooled the eye of a cop trying to get me to snitch on my neighbors. you can't subpoena a recording that doesnt exist.

I once had to be flown (govt expense) to Regina to deliver a talk on a completed research project that was mainly online and had an audience that was 99% in Guelph (40 min down the road from me) - all because the project was overseen by the SK offices & I had to do it there in person. (Harper era)
Two things I’m not sure is widely understood:

1. Many public servants no longer have their own desks and work in transient government co-working spaces

2. Many describe a Kafkaesque existence of going to physical offices only to spend their time on video calls with the people sitting next to them
Federal public servants called back to office 4 days a week starting this summer | CBC News
The federal government expects its employees to return to in-office work for a minimum of four days a week starting this July.
www.cbc.ca
I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail
Bluesky Map
Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.
bluesky-map.theo.io

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.
VC, founder, dumbass
VC, founder, dumbass

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

Since Valentine's Day is approaching, I'm reposting some of my past Valentine's comics.