Zoltán Sylvester

James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
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Moqui marbles - concretions from the Navajo Sandstone in Utah (images created from a photo taken in the field) 🧪⚒️

Dang, hard disagree. The best papers to write and read are works of art, not merely a list of data and statements.

Don’t let LLMs take this away too, for gods sake.

Yes, the first image is the 'tab20b' (discrete) colormap in Matplotlib; I was just experimenting with some continuous ones as well because they look aesthetically interesting

Wow, fascinating! I didn't know about this, and it is, of course, totally relevant to the grain coloring question

It's kind of *fun* to use color to show grain size

An image of gravel, with the largest grains shown in yellow, and the smallest ones in purple.

Yes, it's grain id. The only purpose of the color is to make it easier to see whether neighboring grains are segmented correctly. So, in theory, the larger the contrast between neighboring grains, the better. That said, it's kind of to use color to show, for example, grain size:

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Trying to decide which Matplotlib colormap is a good colormap for differentiating grains in an image

Tectonic plate puzzle anyone? 🌎

Made by me, one at a time. I’m planning to have a really limited number available before the holidays - if you want to find out when I do, sign up to my newsletter! I will share them through it first.

Sign up > www.luciaperezdiaz.com#newsletter
(No spam, I promise)

You are still in control but the coding agents have a much better understanding of the context of your project than a simple search or chatbot

Have you tried something like Cursor or GitHub Copilot? It’s a whole new world

As I said before, I am not a big fan (to say the least) of using AI for writing or generating images / movies, but it has completely changed the game when it comes to coding. Again, this does not mean that you don’t need to know anything about coding or that the work is less complicated/intense.

Time for a certain organization to do the same

Joyce Carol Oates @Joyce... 17h O So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates— scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend's or relative's accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the "most wealthy person in the world."

Elon Musk ' @elonmusk X.com Oates is a liar and delights in being mean. Not a good human.

lol she got his ass and he knows it

A cutting board built from pieces of wood of different colors do that it looks like stratigraphy cut by three normal faults. There is a dyke as well that pre-dates the faulting.

The same ‘geological’ cutting board as in the previous image, shown from a different angle

A set of 5 coasters in their holder; each coaster has a number of wooden layers that mimic stratigraphy and a few of them are cut by faults

The coasters on a table so that you can see their layering better

I got this cutting board and these coasters from Kurtis Burmeister’s Etsy shop and they are among my favorite objects in the house www.etsy.com/shop/Burmeis...

I just blocked all emails from MDPI journals in my email app. They are relentless. They are the worst.

The official home of the Python Programming Language

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-...
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The perplexing (to me, anyway) phenomenon of laminated loess deposits (Bignell Hill, Nebraska)

Two laminated pieces of core from the Castile Formation with alternating light and dark colored laminae that can be matched over a distance of 24 km

It’s remarkable how laterally extensive these laminae are - here are two pieces of core that originally were 24 km apart (from Kirkland, 2003, Sedimentology)

How ‘the big one’ near Seattle could trigger an earthquake in San Francisco Are two of the deadliest earthquake zones in North America linked? It's possible—but controversial.

A new study argues that in the past, Cascadia quakes have triggered the San Andreas to go off, and that it could happen again.

But other experts, while recognizing that may technically be possible, want more evidence.

Read more at NatGeo:

www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...

“I kept asking all these questions like, How do we know that? The other scientists [would respond] - Yeah, how do we know that?” Virginia Tech sedimentologist Brian Romans knows how scientific ocean drilling can be a particularly good mechanism or vehicle for pivoting in a career – that’s because he has many examples to share a...

I was recently interviewed by @drlauraguertin.bsky.social as part of her 'Tales from the Deep' series focused on the people involved in scientific ocean drilling ⚒️🧪⛴️ –– lots of great stories from many others there to check out
archive.storycorps.org/interviews/i...

No Kings rally at Zilker Park, Austin; the city skyline in the background and a sign that says ‘Chinga tu MAGA’ in the foreground

Beto O’Rourke speaking at the No Kings rally in Austin, Texas

A sign that says “Get in the mindset - Be More Woke (BMW)”

An inflatable Elon Musk, doing what he does best

Today was a good day. #nokings protest, Austin, Texas

It can not be exaggerated just how wild the climate of the Pleistocene was in which we evolved. All of recorded history is in pixel at the very top of the very last zigzag, all the way to the right of this graph. From a new paper on sea level over past 4.5 million yrs www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Next week at the #GSA2025, I'll be presenting my newly developed Python tool, 𝒑𝒚𝑪𝒐𝒓𝒆𝑹𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒐𝒓. We apply it to quantitatively re-examine the correlatability of Cascadia deep-water turbidites, previously interpreted as synchronous deposits of paleo-earthquakes.

Abstract: lnkd.in/gJ_KHH2j

White 3D printed map showing a linear mountain range trending north / south and a little bump to its southwest, and then a lumpy mountain range to the south of both.

Headed out into the field. Josh printed out 3D maps of the region for reference. ⚒️

Did you know that sand records its transport history as it moves across Earth's surface? We developed a new tool to investigate billion-year-old rocks by looking at microscopic features on zircon sand grains. Check out our new paper in @geosociety.bsky.social to see how!

doi.org/10.1130/G537...

Yeah there is no point of keeping me any longer

Marathon times over the years

~15 years for me since the first one; I am pretty sure I have now stopped improving :)

“Like putting on glasses for the first time”—how AI improves earthquake detection AI is “comically good” at detecting small earthquakes—here’s why that matters.

It was a pleasure to contribute to this article, which talks about how AI contributes to seismology - indeed, we have seen tremendous progress in the use of machine learning to detect small events.

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