Brent 🍻🐜 📖
@brentsmith.bsky.social
Work in progress, books, fauna, flora and the like.
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
Grateful to the American Boccaccio Association for including notice of my #OpenAccess teaching module in their latest newsletter! The Black Death: The Medieval Plague Pandemic Through the Eyes of Ibn Battuta, is designed for introductory history courses. www.history21.com/owit-module/...
December 30, 2025 at 11:32 PM
Grateful to the American Boccaccio Association for including notice of my #OpenAccess teaching module in their latest newsletter! The Black Death: The Medieval Plague Pandemic Through the Eyes of Ibn Battuta, is designed for introductory history courses. www.history21.com/owit-module/...
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
I've just been reminded that it's the last Wednesday of 2025.
So here's a white-winged fairywren (with attitude) for the last Wrensday Wednesday 🙂
#wrensday
So here's a white-winged fairywren (with attitude) for the last Wrensday Wednesday 🙂
#wrensday
December 31, 2025 at 6:46 AM
I've just been reminded that it's the last Wednesday of 2025.
So here's a white-winged fairywren (with attitude) for the last Wrensday Wednesday 🙂
#wrensday
So here's a white-winged fairywren (with attitude) for the last Wrensday Wednesday 🙂
#wrensday
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
Just a year after un-damning 😉 the Klamath River, salmon runs are back.
Dam removal "also restored natural water temperatures, cooled the river earlier in the fall, reduced harmful algal blooms, and dramatically lowered levels of the deadly parasite C. shasta."
www.activenorcal.com/there-are-sa...
Dam removal "also restored natural water temperatures, cooled the river earlier in the fall, reduced harmful algal blooms, and dramatically lowered levels of the deadly parasite C. shasta."
www.activenorcal.com/there-are-sa...
'There Are Salmon Everywhere": Klamath River Sees Remarkable Recovery Just a Year After Dam Removal
Just over a year after four hydroelectric dams were removed from the Klamath River, salmon returning to nearly every corner of their historic habitat.
www.activenorcal.com
December 30, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Just a year after un-damning 😉 the Klamath River, salmon runs are back.
Dam removal "also restored natural water temperatures, cooled the river earlier in the fall, reduced harmful algal blooms, and dramatically lowered levels of the deadly parasite C. shasta."
www.activenorcal.com/there-are-sa...
Dam removal "also restored natural water temperatures, cooled the river earlier in the fall, reduced harmful algal blooms, and dramatically lowered levels of the deadly parasite C. shasta."
www.activenorcal.com/there-are-sa...
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
Alas! It is 31 years since the world was deprived of one of its more colourful culinary characters: Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey – better known as double bigamist, child abandoner, amphetamine user, dangerous driver, and celebrity cook Fanny Cradock
December 27, 2025 at 10:47 AM
Alas! It is 31 years since the world was deprived of one of its more colourful culinary characters: Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey – better known as double bigamist, child abandoner, amphetamine user, dangerous driver, and celebrity cook Fanny Cradock
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
December 25, 2025 at 1:40 AM
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
Finally got some photos of Australia’s “blue ant”, Diamma bicolor, which is not an ant at all but a shockingly large metallic blue thynnid wasp, wingless and solitary, that hunts mole crickets. Been meaning to shoot this thing for years.
December 22, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Finally got some photos of Australia’s “blue ant”, Diamma bicolor, which is not an ant at all but a shockingly large metallic blue thynnid wasp, wingless and solitary, that hunts mole crickets. Been meaning to shoot this thing for years.
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
So reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) can't fly, but they are VERY MAGICAL.
For example, their EYES CHANGE COLOR during the year & they're one of the few large mammals that can see UV. Golden brown in summer, deep blue in winter.
Let's talk about the unique visual adaptations of Rudolph and company.
For example, their EYES CHANGE COLOR during the year & they're one of the few large mammals that can see UV. Golden brown in summer, deep blue in winter.
Let's talk about the unique visual adaptations of Rudolph and company.
December 20, 2025 at 11:36 PM
So reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) can't fly, but they are VERY MAGICAL.
For example, their EYES CHANGE COLOR during the year & they're one of the few large mammals that can see UV. Golden brown in summer, deep blue in winter.
Let's talk about the unique visual adaptations of Rudolph and company.
For example, their EYES CHANGE COLOR during the year & they're one of the few large mammals that can see UV. Golden brown in summer, deep blue in winter.
Let's talk about the unique visual adaptations of Rudolph and company.
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
Adelaide Springett was so ashamed of her tattered boots, she took them off for this 1901 photograph.
She was 8 years old and recorded as lodging with her mother at the Salvation Army Shelter in Hanbury St.
She was 8 years old and recorded as lodging with her mother at the Salvation Army Shelter in Hanbury St.
December 19, 2025 at 12:56 AM
Adelaide Springett was so ashamed of her tattered boots, she took them off for this 1901 photograph.
She was 8 years old and recorded as lodging with her mother at the Salvation Army Shelter in Hanbury St.
She was 8 years old and recorded as lodging with her mother at the Salvation Army Shelter in Hanbury St.
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
The most quietly savage put-down I’ve come across from Venezuelan Spanish is la inteligencia los persigue, ellos son más rápidoso. It means “intelligence is chasing them, but they are faster.”
December 19, 2025 at 12:30 PM
The most quietly savage put-down I’ve come across from Venezuelan Spanish is la inteligencia los persigue, ellos son más rápidoso. It means “intelligence is chasing them, but they are faster.”
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
Just hangin' around.
A silvereye, seen along the Riverwalk at Gympie.
(2023 photo)
A silvereye, seen along the Riverwalk at Gympie.
(2023 photo)
December 17, 2025 at 11:18 AM
Just hangin' around.
A silvereye, seen along the Riverwalk at Gympie.
(2023 photo)
A silvereye, seen along the Riverwalk at Gympie.
(2023 photo)
Not the largest chilli I’ve ever grown.
December 14, 2025 at 1:45 AM
Not the largest chilli I’ve ever grown.
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
Today, December 6th, is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. I wrote about the event that precipitated its creation, and its role in my own life, on its 25th anniversary. buttondown.com/metafoundry/...
thirty-six years later
Engineering Cairn, UBC (December 3, 2025) I wrote and first shared this piece in December 2014. It’s been lightly edited and updated, including new links for...
buttondown.com
December 6, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Today, December 6th, is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. I wrote about the event that precipitated its creation, and its role in my own life, on its 25th anniversary. buttondown.com/metafoundry/...
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
🦝 Transactions of the Zoological Society of London..
[London]: Published for the Zoological Society of London by Academic Press.
[Source]
[London]: Published for the Zoological Society of London by Academic Press.
[Source]
December 6, 2025 at 7:23 AM
🦝 Transactions of the Zoological Society of London..
[London]: Published for the Zoological Society of London by Academic Press.
[Source]
[London]: Published for the Zoological Society of London by Academic Press.
[Source]
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
“Planning is political, especially in a country where it has been used to facilitate settler frames of land commodification and exclusion.”
An in-depth history by Rachel Gallagher of urban planning as a colonial tool.
An in-depth history by Rachel Gallagher of urban planning as a colonial tool.
Settling the city: urban planning as a vector of settler colonialism - Overland literary journal
The key tools of urban planning, like master planning, zoning and state acquisition of land, are derivatives of the state’s perceived need for centralised control. Urban planning assumes there is a bl...
overland.org.au
December 3, 2025 at 1:02 AM
“Planning is political, especially in a country where it has been used to facilitate settler frames of land commodification and exclusion.”
An in-depth history by Rachel Gallagher of urban planning as a colonial tool.
An in-depth history by Rachel Gallagher of urban planning as a colonial tool.
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
In time for the festive season, my latest paper charts the 25 million year story of how mistletoe and songbirds somersaulted across the Americas, diversifying as they went. Strap in for an epic ecological tale #MistletoeMunchersFromWayBack 1/12
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Evolutionary dynamics of dietary specialisation – insights from Neotropical mistletoe‐dependent frugivores
Mistletoes occur worldwide, with most relying on birds to disperse their sticky seeds to suitable hosts. There has been considerable ecological research on these interactions, emphasizing those birds....
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 2, 2025 at 4:53 AM
In time for the festive season, my latest paper charts the 25 million year story of how mistletoe and songbirds somersaulted across the Americas, diversifying as they went. Strap in for an epic ecological tale #MistletoeMunchersFromWayBack 1/12
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild:
Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat
Scrub Python
Bilby
Capricorn Yellow Chat
Mako
Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat
Scrub Python
Bilby
Capricorn Yellow Chat
Mako
Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild:
Tarantula
Dolphin
Black Bear
Bald Eagle
Moray Eel
Tarantula
Dolphin
Black Bear
Bald Eagle
Moray Eel
Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild:
Coastal brown bear
Coastal black wolves
Giant sunflower star
Olympic ermine
Musk ox
Coastal brown bear
Coastal black wolves
Giant sunflower star
Olympic ermine
Musk ox
November 29, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild:
Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat
Scrub Python
Bilby
Capricorn Yellow Chat
Mako
Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat
Scrub Python
Bilby
Capricorn Yellow Chat
Mako
Chances of a single affected kid believing him? www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/aus...
November 26, 2025 at 2:26 AM
Chances of a single affected kid believing him? www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/aus...
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
Community time bank, such a cool idea, New Mexico at it again:
Spending Time at a Las Cruces Timebank
Community Timebanks
YouTube video by 505OMATIC
youtube.com
November 24, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Community time bank, such a cool idea, New Mexico at it again:
Am trying to remember why I got out of bed this morning.
November 21, 2025 at 10:09 PM
Am trying to remember why I got out of bed this morning.
Spoonbills on Minjerribah.
November 4, 2025 at 5:22 AM
Spoonbills on Minjerribah.
National Koala Monitoring Program 2025 results are in. More data and refinements to the CSIRO modelling has resulted in a greatly increased population estimate. Listed population (Qld, NSW and ACT) estimate has gone from 95,000 – 238,000 to 398,000 – 569,000.
nkmp.org.au/populations....
nkmp.org.au/populations....
National Koala Monitoring Program
nkmp.org.au
November 3, 2025 at 9:22 PM
National Koala Monitoring Program 2025 results are in. More data and refinements to the CSIRO modelling has resulted in a greatly increased population estimate. Listed population (Qld, NSW and ACT) estimate has gone from 95,000 – 238,000 to 398,000 – 569,000.
nkmp.org.au/populations....
nkmp.org.au/populations....
Tidying up the office and found this little one, temporarily relocated 2m away and she lingered for a good half hour watching and smelling the going ons.
October 29, 2025 at 8:44 AM
Tidying up the office and found this little one, temporarily relocated 2m away and she lingered for a good half hour watching and smelling the going ons.
Reposted by Brent 🍻🐜 📖
Also at my friend's dam - this pair of lovebirds 😀 Galahs. Male on the left, female on the right. You can tell by their eye colour. I wish all birds were so easy.
October 21, 2025 at 7:07 AM
Also at my friend's dam - this pair of lovebirds 😀 Galahs. Male on the left, female on the right. You can tell by their eye colour. I wish all birds were so easy.