Dr. Adeene Denton

Who Gets to Feel Good in Archaeology? Over the past decade, there has been a lot of attention drawn to the benefits of archaeological fieldwork on the mental health of participants (e.g., Finnegan 2016, Rathouse 2019, Everill et al. 20…

🏺 My latest blog post is about mental health in archaeology - with so many wonderful projects illustrating the positive impact of archaeological fieldwork, how come so many archaeologists continue to struggle with mental health and well-being in the sector?

animalarchaeology.com/2025/08/05/w...

I've seen enough. Welcome back, Project Horizon (US Army, 1959).

“But the fact that agents felt comfortable apprehending a man on church property — and were willing, Lopez says, to raise a weapon at her even after she identified herself as a pastor — left her shaken.”

Extremely compelled by squub. I feel like "scram" and "squub" are on two ends of some sort of spectrum

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You can find the US Department of Energy's report on Operation Morning Light as part of the National Security Archives, where there's loads more information and tons of (low-quality) pictures: nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/eb...

The debris was scattered over 600 km across the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Alberta, and Saskatchewan in the dead of winter, 1978, and led to the joint US-Canadian cleanup effort known as Operation Morning Light:

Screenshots from The Man from Uncle, which ran from 1964-1968. Napoleon Solo talks into a speaker and asks his partner, Ilya Kuryakin: Ilya? We're in need of your special talents. Are you free? Through the speaker, Ilya responds: No man is free who has to work for a living, but I'm available.

The sort of energy I bring to the workplace:

Oh yeah and obviously I have seasonal affective disorder now but you get that free when you cross the Indiana border so that doesn’t count

I like to believe my years of living in the Midwest did not affect me but then every once in a while when I’m cooking I’ll think “I should put corn in this” and kill bill sirens start going off

Enjoyed the 2015 movie so much it caused me to get into the original show!

"We choose to blow up the Moon": Revisiting Cold War ideology through "A Study of Lunar Research Flights" — Adeene Denton On June 19, 1959, the Air Force Special Weapons Center based out of Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, published a new, comprehensive report. Its unclassified title: “A study of lunar research fligh...

Yes, Project A119, I've written an article about that too: www.adeenedenton.com/writing/2019...

Please remember that every absurd idea a republican suggests about space is an idea the US Army already had in the 1950s

Threat, Haven, or Fantasy? US Moon Base Concepts from 1959 to 2020 and Beyond An Introduction.

Everything old is new again, and that includes putting a nuclear power plant on the Moon before other powers can do it!! medium.com/@adeene.dent...

I've seen enough. Welcome back, Project Horizon (US Army, 1959).

Well, the movie had to make time for all the shots of him being tormented by his genius!! And then also construct the narrative entirely around that!

Now that I've said all that, time to go back to work and not think about the looming dread 🙂 👍

The Hater's Guide to Oppenheimer — Adeene Denton Is Oppenheimer a good movie? Maybe. Probably, even. But I’ve been angry about it for a month now, so it’s finally time to write a (somewhat biased) review so I stop annoying my friends and family. A...

Anyway, I already said all this and more other places: www.adeenedenton.com/writing/2025...

I'm so sick of genius being permissive of destruction, especially in science. What a waste of my time!! I, and many others, am committed to a constructive, collaborative vision of science futures. So when I get compared to a prototypical destructive genius... yeah, my answer is "I'd rather die."

Many scientists could and did object to the war, to their professional detriment! Many scientists can and do object to the way science is used to assist in building state power!!! Oppenheimer made a choice to collaborate, and that choice is now used to service the narrative of his genius.

What I hated most about Oppenheimer was its implication that the bomb is inevitable, that the course of history has been written and all the scientists are powerless to stop their own work. That's a tragic story, and classic cinema, but the reality is worse.

So many stories are about "what if there was a singularly brilliant guy, and that brilliance made his horrific accomplishments somehow inevitable," but that's not how this works! Every "genius" operates in a society!!!

The lone genius scientist/great man theory of science is a fucked-up ouroboros that gets told in western histories, as well as portrayed in stories by the media, and then real scientists attempt to embody that same myth - each step perpetuating the next.

Seeing folks on here tearing apart the idea of "genius" reminds me of when a dear friend, after becoming captivated by Oppenheimer (2023) and Nolan's interpretation of great man theory, told me "Adeene, you could be just like him" and was horrified when my knee-jerk reaction was "I'd rather die."

This societal trope drives me insane. It's not that there aren't brilliant people; but the West loves stories of knowledge through Revelation by a Chosen One. Einstein was brilliant, sure, but so was his first wife whom he worked with. Newton was brilliant, but so were the mathematicians around the

Screenshots from The Man from Uncle, which ran from 1964-1968. Napoleon Solo talks into a speaker and asks his partner, Ilya Kuryakin: Ilya? We're in need of your special talents. Are you free? Through the speaker, Ilya responds: No man is free who has to work for a living, but I'm available.

The sort of energy I bring to the workplace:

So, a microcosm example of how this will not be true:

If NASA astrophysics funding gets cut by 2/3rds (the budget request!), then 'coming back and being okay after the midterms' looks like a new congress agreeing to TRIPLE THE NASA ASTROPHYSICS BUDGET.

In what world is that realistic??

It's quick and easy to help Spark Space do their valuable, needed work - share widely, donate what you can, and sign up for recurring weekly or monthly donations to ensure that they have a stable base of support as they continue to bring internet+electricity to students and remote workers!

A black bird with a yellow beak is in some grass. It is labeled with a large question mark, with the caption: we just don't know

Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose The Trump administration has asked NASA staffers to draw up plans to end at least two satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to current and former NASA employees.

Exclusive: The Trump administration has asked NASA staffers to draw up plans to end at least two satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to current and former NASA employees.
By @rhersher.bsky.social