Mae Saslaw

almost all the kronos quartet minutes are also terry riley

screenshot of my apple music top artists of 2025 1 kronos quartet 2 roxy music 3 belinfante quartet 4 john cale 5 tv on the radio 6 brian eno 7 ryuichi sakamoto 8 terry riley

normal guy has normal year

Point of clarification since your first post mentioned a gendered dynamic — when I "soften" emails on purpose, it's not because I'm a woman-ish and feel the need to be perceived as less aggressive, it's because I'm a New Yorker and probably do need to take it down a notch for most academics

I'd probably go with "Hi first name," just bc I think "hi" feels softer. Getting more formal with someone I'm already informal with feels like someone is in trouble, and presumably you're asking for a rec letter because you're comfortable with the person so I don't think you need to act otherwise

“AI is clearly sticking around so you have to get used to it” wrong. I don’t have to get used to shit. I am a practiced hater and I can keep this going for decades if I am required to

You’ve been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who’s coming to save you?

I think we’re good

my most butlerian jihad coded belief is that we should probably make it illegal – and more importantly, we should work toward a cultural consensus that it is immoral – to design a computer program whose interface uses the first person

I’d bet a Nature open access fee that it’s more profitable than a lot of stuff on the other side of the law, too

damn this is how i found out i went to high school with a guy who works for rfk jr now

def

this is the first post i saw about it

People should do check in's with themselves about what things they are not saying or doing because they are afraid of conservative backlash, including threats and bombardment

You need to pay attention to how you are being worked on and how fear is being used to govern you

We'll be live in an hour! Stop by for some great flash talks, Zoom link in QR code and alt text below ⚒️🪐🧪🧑‍🔬

a map of the state of new york on a lat-long grid. it has shading showing elevation, ground cover, and waterways. mapped faults are shown in white. the northeastern part of the state is covered in faults, as is the region north of westchester. there are no faults on long island and few near the northwestern border on the lakes.

#30DayMapChallenge Day 2: Lines
Faults are a gimme, so I went down a rabbit hole masking a raster with the state polygon and learned about non-exportable objects in R. Code included! ⚒️ saslaw.github.io/posts/MapCha...

Map of the globe with GNIP sites shown and colored by altitude. Canada and Central and South America have the most coverage. There is sparse coverage in Europe, and few active stations elsewhere in the world. Most stations are below 1000 meters above sea level.

I'm tagging myself in to #30DayMapChallenge with a map of all active @iaeaorg.bsky.social Global Network of Isotopes in Precipitation stations (Day 1: Points). I'll be posting these in blog form on my web site here: saslaw.github.io/posts.html
Let's see how many of these I make 🗺️⚒️

Topics in this session include: queer and trans field safety, N transport by caribou, methane plumes in an arctic analogue for Mars, and ostracod sexual dimorphism over the PETM ⚒️🧪

Flyer for The First International Symposium of Nonbinary Scientists PUBLIC SESSIONS Hear nonbinary scientists from around the world explain their research to the general public! November 1 16:00-17:00* Math, Modeling, and Networks of All Kinds November 1. 17:00-18:30* Biology, Microbiology, and Bioinformatics November 2 18:30-20:00* Earth, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences *All times in GMT. Use worldtimebuddy.com to find your time zone. Each speaker will explain their topic for five minutes, followed by a Q&A session ZOOM LINK FOR ALL 3 EVENTS: https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/88191862443?pwd=A2GEC8q8uLvupLxy5xotE1K4aMcmJs.1 Meeting ID: 881 9186 2443 Passcode: ISNBS2

Please join us this weekend on Zoom for the First International Symposium of Nonbinary Scientists! I'm excited to host a session for Earth, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences ⚒️🧪Zoom link in alt text!

GitHub - PaleoIPSL/PyAnalySeries: PyAnalySeries Reimagined: A Legacy Tool Reborn PyAnalySeries Reimagined: A Legacy Tool Reborn. Contribute to PaleoIPSL/PyAnalySeries development by creating an account on GitHub.

I don't think there's a super convenient method for R, but I found it pretty easy to generate curves using this tool and export to csv github.com/PaleoIPSL/Py...

atlantic article screenshot headline: no one knows how big pumpkins can get sub head: a decade ago, the worlds heaviest pumpkin weighed 2,000 pounds. now the 3,000 pound mark is within sight by yasmin tayag

this headline hums with ancient autumnal dread

now that’s a slump/grunt

I am compelled also to acknowledge the circumstances of my graduate years, and the years ahead. When the pandemic began, I was lucky to have the job security of a funded PhD. I have had the privilege to criticize my university and be heard, and I felt the momentum of the campus labor movement as my comrades and I organized for better conditions for graduate workers. The geoscience community has been actively addressing systemic inequities in our field, and over the past six years, I have seen meaningful positive change. I have, at times, felt optimism for the future of the planet and academia and my own life. I fear I am among the last people who will have these experiences in the United States. I can no longer earnestly discuss possibilities for work that might build upon what I have accomplished as a graduate student because I do not expect anyone to have the opportunity to continue these lines of research, although the following chapters briefly describe what could be. I acknowledge the collective grief of the scientific community as our progress is derailed and our lives are worsened. I acknowledge the target on my back that I earn by being a climate scientist and a labor organizer and a leftist. This future scares me, but it is too late to retreat or to try to appear compliant. As scientists we must continue to do the real work of seeking truth and knowledge despite our fears of the threats against us. What faith I have is in the Earth, in the awareness of time that we share as geologists. Whatever becomes of us and our institutions, we can dig in the dirt, we can read history in landscapes, we can hold onto rocks that knew a distant past and will know a future we will not see.

feels like as good a day as any to share an excerpt from my dissertation acknowledgements 🧪⚒️

four panel comic: 1: weird eocene mammal pakicetus: Indohyus, my brother, i've decided to search for more food in the waters 2: indohyus: you will regret this, pakicetus, the environment will force you to adapt pakicetus: i just need some shrimps lol i will be perfectly fine 3: 35 million years later .... whale: AAAAAOOOOOAHHHHH H 4: whale: WOOOOOOOOOOO deer: WTF

The entire "free speech on campus" moral panic was manufactured to blackmail us into making space in intellectual life for bigots and charlatans who couldn't get there on their own merits. Its a DEI scheme for fascism. Congratulations to everyone who took it at face value.

I think postponing the exam unfairly penalizes students who were best prepared. One option: move forward with the exam and offer some form of makeup, downside is more work for you, but the less prepared students find out how much they really knew and get a lesson in relying on tech

see, but that's that's really the most important part of the papers, the reading

two frames from Seinfeld, when Seinfeld and Elaine arrive at an airport to find their rental car reservation is not available. the original captions are "See, you know how to take the reservation" and "You just don't know how to hold the reservation." my edit reads "See, you know how to download the papers, you just don't know how to read the papers"

this came to me mid lit review 🧪

remakes of horror movies where the protagonists make good decisions and go home before the scary parts happen

For God's sake we all know postdocs aren't real, stop trying to scare PhD students with superstitious nonsense.

…To be fair, R and every other language has its day and we move on to the next, but I think we can agree that moving from one LLM black box to another is a different proposition, even if we and our students learn the principles well