Mary Marek-Spartz

I bought the markers, the tissue boxes, the folders, and 24 sticks of glue
I need to label his water bottle
Put elastic shoelaces on his shoes he can’t tie yet

And figure out how to explain to my kindergartner that I’m sending him somewhere he will have to practice what to do under gunfire

4yo was digging through my closet and my partner says “Don’t dig in there! Those could be gifts from Mary for all we know.”
4yo: my name is "all we know".

A map of weather balloon launch sites across the contiguous United States.

Here's the current state of weather balloon launches across the contiguous United States as of Thursday.

During normal operations, weather balloons are launched twice per day.

Six sites are reducing launches to once per day.

Four sites have now nixed balloon launches altogether.

4yo: *frantically scribbling over a picture of Robert Louis Stevenson in his coloring book with a pencil*
Me: why are you crossing him out?
4yo: because he’s a president
Me: he was never president
4yo: Oh…*erases pencil scribbles*
🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

A very sassy tortie cat curled up on the couch staring unblinking and unashamed

I got up for thirty seconds to grab something and when I came back she had stolen my spot and was giving me the most smug look imaginable.

Raspberry Pi computer hooked up to a keyboard and small monitor displaying 10 million digits of Pi on a messy kitchen counter

For #PiDay my partner set up one of our Raspberry Pis to return any number of digits of Pi that our math-obsessed 4-year-old specified. He chose 10 million. @raspberrypiorg.bsky.social

Welcome to the Bluesky account for Stand Up for Science 2025!

Keep an eye on this space for updates, event information, and ways to get involved. We can't wait to see everyone #standupforscience2025 on March 7th, both in DC and locations nationwide!

#scienceforall #sciencenotsilence

Playing store with my 4yo and I hand him a play 5-dollar bill, and he says “Aww, Abraham Lincoln is the cutest”

Canopy Temperature Reveals Disparities in Urban Tree Benefits Using canopy temperature as a proxy, we show that urban tree health and function varies across Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN Trees in more urbanized areas and areas further from blue/green spaces exhi...

Full paper is available open access here: doi.org/10.1029/2024...

Twin Cities DSA (Democratic Socialists) serves hot chili and banana bread in front of the giant loon at University and Snelling. People get off the light rail, get fed, get back on…DSA is now based in Minneapolis, not Spruce Tree Centre.

Driving to the hospital in labor and having to reroute around anti-mask, COVID-denying protesters at the governor’s residence, to have my baby at a hospital that was severely understaffed and panicked, Mother’s Day weekend, 2020.

I got an email on behalf of “EAB” the other day that wanted me to take a survey and I quickly lost interest after determining it was not about Emerald Ash Borer.

My toddler brought home flu A earlier this month. Many of his friends had it and were in and out of the ER with a horrible cough. Our whole family is vaccinated and it was a minor head cold for us with no cough. My spouse had no symptoms at all.

Juniper the cat lounges on her back under the table

Imagine being this unbothered…

Graduate research highlights previously unrecorded benefits of prairie strips Three years of butterfly surveys across the LTER Main Cropping Systems Experiment show that plots with prairie strips harbor unique species and have a greater abundance of butterflies than plots witho...

Three years of butterfly surveys across the KBS LTER show that agricultural plots where 5% of cropland was converted to prairie harbor unique species and have a greater abundance of butterflies than plots without prairie.

lter.kbs.msu.edu/2025/01/grad...

#prairiestrips

Oh god, this is great. Proportion of types of livestock to people? For some reason that’s the first thing that came to mind.

always RT weevils with 3-dimensional photonic crystals

Raster that looks like a stingray, black and white

I made a matrix of where watersheds in our dataset of ~90 sheds are contained within another watershed and unintentionally made a pattern that is not at all useful, but looks like a stingray! It reminded me of the Accidental aRt account. Anyone else remember that? Should we bring it back?

Called the pharmacist and they said you can get Novavax every 6 months, but don’t need a boost if you have had the full mRNA series previously. Now I just hope Novavax is still available in 6 months…

👋📍🗺️

No, but my position is funded entirely on a grant from NSF T_T

The last decade has been the Democrats clinging onto the rulebook going "but a dog can't play basketball!" while a dog fucking dunks on us over and over

I keep thinking of this tweet from 2018

My 4 yo has been listening and finally asked “Why did people vote for Trump?” I told him that some people want bad things to happen to other people because they think it will make their lives better, but it won’t. That’s the only way I could think to explain it to him.

Question about #COVID vaccines: I managed to find #Novavax in late September. I’ve only had mRNA vaccines previously. Do I need a second dose? It will be 8 weeks this Friday. I looked up the guidance, but am not confident in my interpretation of the table enough to build my case with the pharmacist.

Same. I wish I could harness a fraction of the energy my son has at 9:30 pm on a Tuesday night, I’d be unstoppable.

I’m shocked by how misinformed the men in my life are on abortion bans. Most of them support the right to choose - but they don’t understand that the bans put lives at risk. One said to me “I’m sure they don’t impact those who WANT to start a family”.

They do - and here’s why 🧵

4-year-old: yesterday was Vegetarian’s Day!
Me: Oh…*out of curiosity* What is a vegetarian?
4yo: They take care of pets!

From Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota — which has not, in fact, burned down.

I don’t think I will ever be as relaxed as these two