Laura Hollister

It’s #earthscienceweek so I thought I’d go into a bit more detail on how educators can use to our Quick Quake tool to demonstrate how @earthquakes.au seismologists quickly calculate the location and magnitude of an earthquake. It works on macOS machines with Apple Silicon too.

Never forget this: The forces rigging our economy, undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, and stoking hatred are counting on you to give up. Cynicism is how they win. Stay clear-eyed and ready for the fight ahead.

Meanwhile, ed tech companies are salivating--eager to sell "solutions" to families whose schools will now struggle (even more than they already have) to meet their kids' learning needs.

(Here are a few of the ed tech ads I've been tracking over the past few months)

Good people need to start outing their ICE family members, neighbors, and community members.

They need to be made into pariahs in the places decent Americans gather.

Business Insider headline reads: UPS is telling customers that their packages coming to the US are marked for destruction.

About a month ago, the Trump administration got rid of the de minimis exemption, whereby packages valued under $800 could slide in without import duties. Now there's a backlog as the government can't process all of this paperwork, leading to UPS just destroying packages

He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam now faces deportation.

After spending 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, evidence hidden by the prosecution reversed his conviction. Rather than finally enjoying freedom, ICE abducted him for deportation

Depraved.

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

This Is Fascism

For Expertise to Matter, Nonpartisan Institutions Need New Communications Strategies To avoid irrelevance when they are needed most, experts and nonpartisan analysts must rethink not just their channels of communication but also their theory of influence.

"Institutions should embrace collective storytelling between those who hold deep knowledge and those with the cultural fluency and media reach to deliver it effectively." Amen to that!

There are reports that the *entire* office of special education at the US Dept of Education has been cut. These hardworking folks ensure kids with disabilities get equal access to a quality education.

America’s children deserve better than this.

Signing of the Declaration of Independence

Opposing a power mad despot is literally the most American thing an American can do. These guys got a lot wrong but they nailed that one. It is fundamental to the core of this country.

Northwest Chicago Suburb: ICE Agents Rip 15-Year-Old Girl from Car, Slam Her to Ground She Screams “I’m 15!” as Man Kneels on Her Neck

This makes me so sick to my stomach.

New Maps of Natural Radioactivity Reveal Critical Minerals and More - Eos High-resolution airborne radiometric surveys are covering more ground than ever to provide insights into unseen geology, mineral resource potential, and possible health hazards.

The new open-access data are presenting a wide variety of opportunities for revising geologic maps, addressing questions about critical mineral resources, and inspiring innovative geophysical approaches.

Last chance to pre-order my 2026 #geology themed calendar!

12 months. 12 destinations through #GeologicalTime

👉🏻 www.luciaperezdiaz.com/product-page...

#SciArt #EarthScientists

A lovely Dartmoor country lane.

A country lane on the edge of the Quantocks.

A country lane on Dartmoor at Sunset.

A Cornish country lane in summer.

Aren't country lanes brilliant?

www.tom-cox.com/once-upon-a-...

a row of error messages are displayed on a white background ALT: a row of error messages are displayed on a white background

Seriously. It is often a comedy of errors trying to get a picture of any animal, especially if it moves

“It is exactly because problems continue to grow that we must speak out now. The repetition that somehow things are set in stone needs to be urgently, vociferously, and vigilantly countered”

zenodo.org/records/1706...

10/🧵

“Not only AI enthusiasts, but even some scholars whose expertise concentrates on identifying and critically interrogating ideologies and sociotechnical relationships — such as historians and gender scholars — unfortunately fall prey to the teleological belief that AI is an unstoppable force.”

9/🧵

“(…) jargon infused with technology industry hype, such as shown in Table 1, does not meaningfully explain. (…) We strive to remain critical of the vocabulary the technology industry coopts and deploys, and to remain respectful of scientific terminology.”

zenodo.org/records/1706...

8/🧵

🧵 Thread with my favourite quotes from:

📝 Guest, O., Suarez, M., Müller, B., et al. (2025). Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia. Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

1/🧵

Wow! I had an experience like that once with the wolf that trotted in front of my car in Wyoming. I had to reach down get my camera out of the bag try to get it turned on and it was all very fumbling and comical like something out of a movie! 🤣

a woman holding a cup of coffee with the word exactly below her ALT: a woman holding a cup of coffee with the word exactly below her

Exactly and a great example.

I get it. It’s so difficult to argue when somebody wants to look at extreme cases only and not talk about gray areas in between.

This is often said. I might've even said it at some times.

But honestly it's not true.

They win because they cheat. If we had free and fair elections without barriers

It'd be a different world. IMO.

MAGA Implodes over Kristi Noem’s “Stare Down” with Man in Chicken Suit A good New York Times piece on Portland nevertheless demonstrates how the conventions of objective reporting fail to accurately capture the bad faith driving pro-Trump propaganda.

The full argument is in this link. 7/7
newrepublic.com/article/2016...

The conventions of political reporting today are not well equipped to handle this concerted use of pretexts for instrumental purposes and the bottomless bad faith they employ. Grasping the industrial-scale deception at the core of MAGA politics is essential. 6/

newrepublic.com/article/2016...

This MAGA propaganda is deeply sinister. Stephen Miller has been lying about Portland/Chicago relentlessly. It's core to his project: He's trying to establish quasi-absolute power for Trump to simply invent pretexts by fiat to justify whatever abuses he launches. 5/

newrepublic.com/article/2016...

There's a huge gap between what MAGA media is depicting in Portland and what local journos are reporting. The term "provocateurs" is a euphemism. It implies they're doing plucky political theater designed to needle and provoke as opposed to manipulate and deceive. 4/

newrepublic.com/article/2016...

NYT piece calls these MAGA types "provocateurs." It describes "dueling versions of reality." Both are common MSM tropes.

But these are not provocateurs. They're propagandists. Only one side is employing deliberate deceptions on a vast scale for instrumental ends. 3/

newrepublic.com/article/2016...