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Kim Wood

@drkimwood.bsky.social

4.6K followers 300 following 960 posts

Associate professor at the University of Arizona. Hurricane mortician. Open science + Python + scicomm + 🐈 enthusiast. Personal account. Occasionally salty. Always tired. Helpful to a fault.

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Kim Wood @drkimwood.bsky.social · Aug 8

With the climatologically active part of the Atlantic hurricane season around the corner, I've reproduced my explainer on the six "ingredients" for tropical cyclone formation on Medium as an experiment in using that platform. medium.com/@drkimwood/t...

The six “ingredients” of tropical cyclone formation

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) defines a tropical cyclone as

medium.com

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Steve Bowen @stevebowen.bsky.social · 7d

***New Paper Alert***

While the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season feels like a decade ago, here is a paper that does a deep dive into the headscratching "mid-season lull".

This line-up of co-authors is incredible, and very humbling to be part of it.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

The Remarkable 2024 North Atlantic Mid‐Season Hurricane Lull

Following an active start, the 2024 Atlantic hurricane was quiet during the climatological peak with only 1 tropical storm and 1 hurricane The lull was not anticipated by seasonal forecasting age...

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 16h

NEW: I spoke to clergy and faith leaders who've joined protests at the Chicago-area ICE facility.

Three say they've been shot with pepper balls, sometimes while praying.

All say ICE is also violating their religious freedom, and one is arguing it in court. religionnews.com/2025/10/07/i...

Religious protesters say ICE threatens religious freedom in Chicago

(RNS) — Despite potential danger, religious leaders and faith activists have been a visible presence at Chicago-area ICE protests, some waving signs with slogans such as ‘Love thy neighbor’ and ‘Who w...

religionnews.com

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 1h

This is a REALLY good video that gets into the *specifics* of how AI is degrading our information environment and putting truth further out of reach for the average person / the population as a whole

🎃 🧟 Prof. Dr Beth Singler 👻 🎃 @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 8h

I walked into the lounge last night to find my teenage son watching this. We have long admired @kurzgesagt.org and found their videos to be extremely illuminating. But this one in particular I think is so important right now!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN...

AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel

YouTube video by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

www.youtube.com

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🎃 public HELLth guy 🎃 @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 1d

they just slapped a surgeons general warning on RFK like he’s a pack of cigarettes

Dan Diamond @ddiamond.bsky.social · 1d

“Secretary Kennedy is entitled to his views. But he is not entitled to put people’s health at risk.”

Six former surgeons general condemn RFK Jr.

Opinion | Six surgeons general: RFK Jr. is a threat to the health of Americans

It was our duty in office to warn of dangers when we found them. We’re doing that again today.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Kim Wood @drkimwood.bsky.social · 22h

Tucson is (barely) in the cone for Hurricane Priscilla! ... this storm won't be anything like a hurricane when whatever's left of it reaches the southwest U.S., but its moisture is expected to support thunderstorms during a month (October) that otherwise tends to be pretty dry over here.

The National Hurricane Center's forecast cone for Hurricane Priscilla issued at 8am MST on Tuesday, October 7, 2025. Within the cone, the 3-day time frame is shaded in very light gray and the 4-5 day time frame is transparent with white dots.

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Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory @lamont.columbia.edu · 1d

📣 Postdoc opportunity alert! Join our dynamic community of Earth, environmental, and climate scientists as LDEO postdoctoral fellow. Principal criteria: scientific excellence + clear plan to investigate problems at forefront of Earth science. ➡️ Apply by Nov 7: lamont.columbia.edu/about/postdo...

LDEO postdocs traversing a volcanic dike on the Olomana Trail in Oahu. Credit: Brandon Shuck

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 1d

“.. On closer inspection, however, it turned out that the image was not a photograph of a real event in Portland, but instead a fabrication created by combining two photographs of scenes that unfolded in South America nearly a decade apart ..”

@theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

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Clemens Vasters 🇪🇺🇩🇪 @clemens.vasters.com · 1d

Techmeme front page:

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Doctor Logic @saraluckelman.bsky.social · 1d

A fascinating read.

Nome @nome.bsky.social · 1d

A life update: this wound up paying off. I'm still applying to several jobs that are hopefully careers, but I've got my survival needs covered by a job at the airport that I'm apparently pretty good at.

And instead of being in an office alone, which was driving me mad, I see 20k people a day.

Nome @nome.bsky.social · Aug 12

There is a line around this building to get to the line entrance to wait to get into this job fair.

At the airport. For airport jobs.

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Alan Gerard @wxmanms1.bsky.social · 1d

The NWS upgraded the June Enderlin, ND tornado to an EF-5 today. If you want some science background on that tornado event and a highly relevant conversation with @tlyza89.bsky.social about tornado ratings and trends, links are in this post. open.substack.com/pub/balanced...

open.substack.com

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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 1d

"99.97 percent of families, even when given the option, chose to let their children learn about LGBTQ+ people."
Nice result, and it reinforces everything Montgomery County said to SCOTUS before its theocrats made their dehumanizing ruling. open.substack.com/pub/erininth...

Only 0.03% Opt Out Of LGBTQ+ Education In Maryland After SCOTUS Gives Them A Right To

After SCOTUS gave families a right to opt out of LGBTQ+ education, Montgomery County, Maryland is reporting only 43 families took them up on it.

open.substack.com

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Dr Kat Day (she/her) @chronicleflask.katday.com · 1d

Daughter of Robin Williams, Zelda Williams 💔

zeldawilliams
20m
From Create Mode
••
Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I'll understand, I don't and I won't. If you're just trying to troll me, I've seen way worse, i'll restrict and move on. But please, if you've got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. It's dumb, it's a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it's NOT what he'd want.
To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to 'this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that's enough,
, just so
other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening. You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it.
Gross.

And for the love of EVERYTHING, stop calling it 'the future. Al is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed. You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.

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MeidasTouch @meidastouch.com · 1d

Letting the health care tax credits expire would devastate American families — and we’re making that crystal clear by giving you the data.

We’ve built graphics showing how much costs would rise in every GOP district.

Let’s start with Mike Johnson (R-LA):

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Kim Wood @drkimwood.bsky.social · 1d

"To forgo the shiny new AI tools and embrace the Herculean process of learning is not easy, and it takes a ridiculous amount of time. But it’s up to us to decide whether or not we value the process." Yeah, this clever, humorous, and insightful essay from a student columnist is worth your time.

Scott L Greer @scottlgreer.bsky.social · 1d

Thoughtful essay

“we are in danger of forgetting the greatest untapped resource on any college campus — the professors. We are surrounded by human experts, yet we are being encouraged to take our questions to robots”

AI ate my homework: My experience with the University’s AI toolkit

I don’t understand AI enough to properly dislike it. And I’m curious as to why the University is pushing this tool so much if it inherently devalues learning. So I immersed myself in artificial intell...

www.michigandaily.com

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Kim Wood @drkimwood.bsky.social · 1d

Though warmth in the Caribbean Sea is not at 2023 or 2024 levels as of yesterday (5 October 2025), it's noticeably beyond what's been observed via area-wide sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in other years since 1982.

Line plots of area-averaged sea surface temperature in the Caribbean Sea as of October 5, 2025. Black shows the 1991-2020 average, red shows 2023, orange shows 2024, and blue shows 2025 (so far). An inset map depicts October 5th's map of anomalies, where the dashed box represents the averaging region used to make the line plot values. These are computed from NOAA's OISST dataset using Python.

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Environmental News Bits @envnewsbits.bsky.social · 2d

Katharine Hayhoe has entered the chat

Read the full story at Worth Magazine. She’s the climate communicator even skeptics will listen to. Katharine Hayhoe doesn’t just talk science—she talks values, faith, family, and the future we all share. That approach has made her one of the most influential…

Katharine Hayhoe has entered the chat

Read the full story at Worth Magazine. She’s the climate communicator even skeptics will listen to. Katharine Hayhoe doesn’t just talk science—she talks values, faith, family, and the future we all share. That approach has made her one of the most influential voices in the climate conversation today. She’s the Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy, a Distinguished Professor at Texas Tech, and the author of…

envnewsbits.info

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 1d

Finally, I continue to absolutely beg journalists to pay attention to how Guthrie and FDEM have positioned themselves as the implementer of DeSantis’ immigration agenda in Florida if only because it is quite likely to be replicated nationally.

disasterology.substack.com/p/disasterol...

Disasterology: September 2025

This newsletter is a compilation of recent disaster ~things~ that I think are cool, important, or otherwise of interest to people who are intrigued with disaster (broadly defined).

disasterology.substack.com

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Matt Lanza @mattlanza.bsky.social · 2d

12 years is a long time. A good stretch. But the EF-5 “drought” has ended.

Also, this is a lesson to the Monday morning quarterbacks that this took *3 months* to confirm. Good analysis takes time. So save your hot takes immediately after an event.

IEMBot Grand Forks @fgf.weather.im · 2d

#FGF issues Public Information Statement (PNS) at Oct 6, 9:30 AM CDT ...Enderlin Tornado #1 Upgraded to EF-5... Link

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Paul Guinnessy @paulguinnessy.bsky.social · 2d

Physics students are told their degree is a ticket to anything but during their time at university, it's rarely elaborated on. So Toni Feder has gone out and interviewed physicists with varied careers away from the field (Posts the physicist whose job title is digital experience director...)

What can physicists do?

Interviews offer a glimpse of how physicists get into—and thrive in—myriad nonacademic careers.

pubs.aip.org

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Frames @oxinabox.bsky.social · 3d

as a girl with a PhD in natural language processing and machine learning it's actually offensive to me when you say "we don't know how LLMs work so they might be conscious"

I didn't spend 10 years in mines of academia to be told ignorance is morally equal knowledge.

We know exactly how LLMs work.

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 3d

Chicago: The feds gassed the cops.

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 3d

CPD just relieved feds from this line too. Then a moment later the feds gassed the whole area, including the cops.

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KOJAMF🤘🖤🤘 @kojamf.bsky.social · 3d

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

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Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · 3d

Sometimes I think about how from 1935-1975ish, Bell Labs produced an insane amount of revolutionary science and technology, including 11 Nobel Prizes, the transistor, UNIX, C, the laser, the solar cell, information theory, etc. The secret? Provide scientists with ample, steady, no-strings funding.

sites.stat.columbia.edu

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The One True Kat @theonetruekat.bsky.social · 3d

I’ll see that “pack it out” challenge and raise you a “take an extra trash bag and pick up some extra trash if you have the chance”. The parks and wildlife will be better for it.

Dr. Adeene Denton @spacewhalerider.com · 4d

PSA for folks visiting any National Public lands (parks, forests etc) during the shutdown: PLEASE take everything you brought in with you, including trash! Don't leave it in the bins if you can avoid it - those are emptied by National Parks/Forest workers. If they're furloughed that job isn't done.

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Andrea Junker @strandjunker.com · 3d

“Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”

Diary of Anne Frank
January 13, 1943

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