Joe Mason

Joe Mason

@moreorloess.bsky.social

UW Madison Geography, opinions are mine. Geomorphology, soils, dunes, loess, in the Midwest, Great Plains, northern China. He/him. Living on Ho-Chunk lands.

2,579 Followers 1,247 Following 6,752 Posts Joined Jul 2023
2 minutes ago

The image is from the front page of the Casper, Wyoming, Morning Star, with several different stories about Reeb's murder including one saying the mayor of Casper and governor of Wyoming were heading up the memorial fund. Would that happen today?

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2 minutes ago

James Reeb was a classmate and friend of my father at St. Olaf College, which I learned when my dad attended a Christmas service at the James Reeb UU Congregation in Madison. Reeb's death was a couple weeks days after that of Jimmie Lee Jackson, murdered in Selma by Alabama State troopers.

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2 hours ago

Just walked past another diesel pickup, parked and idling away that now much more expensive fuel.

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3 hours ago

Also, drivers - don't assume I can read your mind and know you're aiming for half a foot ahead or behind me, and then get mad when I try to get out of your path while yelling at you.

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4 hours ago

The last of the old minesweepers built in Sturgeon Bay and Marinette, Wisconsin

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4 hours ago

Hegseth is one of the most obviously phony people I've seen in public life.

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4 hours ago

Is it the newest releases? Often you get extensions that don't work on new releases.

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5 hours ago
Preview
US military spent $9 million on crab legs and lobster in the months before Iran war Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also authorized the $100,000 purchase of a Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, according to a watchdog report

Since I was a kid I've been hearing about "people on welfare (or food stamps, etc.) buying lobster" like it was the crime of the century. www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...

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1 day ago
a striped tablecloth with baguettes, four plates with a pastry each, cups of coffee, jam, cheese, and a mystery bag of green bits

third bread (also taroudant)

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1 day ago
A hand holds a round piece of bread in a piece of paper against a patch of southern Moroccan town

first bread

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12 hours ago
March 11, 2011 tsunami washing ashore on the Sendai coastal plain, sweeping into a coastal village. I visited this spot a few months later in August, 2011.

15 years ago right about this time of day, the Tohoku-oki earthquake was unleashed, with as much as 100 meters of fault slip documented at the Japan Trench. The resulting tsunami rocked Japan and the world, claiming ~18,000 lives. It was one of only 5 M9 quakes ever recorded. ⚒️

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15 hours ago
Preview
Academic Staff Assembly calls on UWPD to cancel Flock Safety contract The organization passed a resolution that calls for all contracts with surveillance technology companies to be made publicly available and for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department to ...

“The University of Wisconsin-Madison Academic Staff Assembly passed a resolution on Monday calling for UWPD to end their contract with Flock Safety and publish all other contracts with surveillance technology companies, like Motorola Safeties and Rhombus.”

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15 hours ago
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An impressive view of the tornadic supercell that produced massive hail in Illinois earlier today.

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15 hours ago

there are still plenty of low-paying jobs for melancholics, like security guards and third-shift janitors.

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15 hours ago

Hmmm....

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16 hours ago
A shaded relief map showing a large area of coppice dunes (small bumps) and the braided channels of a dry wash to the north.

More of the demo: An area of coppice dunes (nebkha) and a dry wash east of the headquarters of Jornada Experimental Range, New Mexico. The grassland-shrubland regime shift story. Data from @opentopography.org. Example of why I often like a basic gray hillshade to bring out landforms.

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16 hours ago
Map of canopy height from a lidar point cloud. Sharp boundaries separate Olympic National Park with unbroken forest and canopy height up to > 80 m, from area with clearcut patches and forest with much lower canopy height outside the park. Three dimensional view of the sharp boundary between Olympic National Park and the area outside the park that is a patchwork of more or less recently logged areas. The Bogachiel River is toward the back of the image.

Edge of Olympic National Park along the Bogachiel R southeast of Forks, Washington, visualized with a lidar point cloud from @opentopography.org . Left: Canopy height (m), Right: 3D view of point cloud. Used lidR and lidRviewer. Class demo of lidar for tomorrow.

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19 hours ago

I guess what I was wondering is whether it's confined there or is there some other external control that could explain the change in sinuosity? Or does it just flip back and forth with no obvious explanation?

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20 hours ago

Okay, pretty convincing, but do you have an idea what explains the shift in the middle to mostly lower amplitude variation of curvature and migration rate, and then back again to higher amplitude?

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20 hours ago
A plot showing measured curvatures and migration rates along a meandering river and correlated using dynamic time warping. The two curves are quite similar, although the migration rate curve is shifted downstream by about two channel widths.

"migration rates are a highly nonlinear function of channel curvature and they cannot be predicted"

migration rates:

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22 hours ago

can't stop thinking about friends who were displaced by bombs in Syria and have made new homes in Beirut and the uae just to be bombed again

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22 hours ago

Wisconsin will never live down having elected and re-elected this guy.

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22 hours ago

They are falling short of their potential, given their current mass balance

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1 day ago

Didn't know that about Earl Grey, but I was big on trying new caffeine sources in the past, including yerba mate, kola nuts, and all kinds of tea. Now I have be more careful with caffeine though, and sticking with a single source (usually home espresso machine) makes it easier to get the right dose.

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1 day ago

Also: for my PhD I spent six months just in the field collecting samples. Running and analysing said samples took much more than that (and the observations that were key to interpreting all those data were made 2yrs 11 months into my 3yrs of funding).

This was not a particular outlier.

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1 day ago

The word "Hussite" instantly draws my attention. Same for "Bogumil" and "Cathare".

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1 day ago

Paleoflood records indicate at least 2 natural spills of the lake in the last 4000 years. Such a spill now would mean catastrophic flooding for downstream communities.

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1 day ago
Flood hazard map for Spirit Lake Nation
Population density for Spirit Lake Nation

The entire south side of the lake is part of the Spirit Lake Nation-Mni Wakan Oyate and their communities have been significantly affected by the flooding. Here are a few images from their Hazard Mitigation Plan. I am not doing their story justice here. www.spiritlakenation.com/data/upfiles...

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1 day ago
Aerial imagery of Devils Lake, ND in December 1993 shows a small lake with several basis and lots of agriculture and prairie land Aerial imagery shows Devils Lake ND in July 2025 with a much larger lake than 1993, and a large Lake Alice to the north that is nearly absent in 1993.

Devils Lake (ND) flooding occurs because there are no natural outlets to the lake until it reaches an elevation of 1458 ft. Back in 1993, it was ~1422 ft. At that elevation it covers ~69 sq. miles. Today, the lake surface is at 1449 ft, and it covers 213 sq. miles.
ND is flat.

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1 day ago
Preview
Most Saharan dust is generated by 'hidden thunderstorms' high above the desert When Saharan dust reaches the UK and Europe, as a huge country-sized cloud did over the past few days, it can transform the sky. Tiny particles drifting in the atmosphere scatter blue light while allo...

phys.org/news/2026-03...

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