Dan Scott (he/him)

Photo showing a river with wood and a gravel bar.

Here's the inlet to this side channel, to give some sense of how big the Tolt is (200 ft wide at this location).

Beaver-chewed sticks laid by a beaver on top of an accumulation of logs in a side channel of the Tolt River.

A recently felled tree stump and log, with clear beaver tooth marks where it was cut.

Beaver building up a wood jam in a side channel of the Tolt. Beaver like really big rivers, too! They just need them to be split into bite-sized chunks.

Bonus, they're also felling pretty large trees here, too.

Is my mirror conscious? The being reflected in it is able to duplicate everything I do, even very hard things.

Turns out the 'ol radio is just about as good anyway. Thanks to my public radio stations for playing awesome music.

I don't understand why average is taught as the default estimate of central tendency. Median is a better default, with average used only when it has advantages over median.

Valuing STEM and the commodification of higher ed over liberal arts serves capital accumulation by producing a labor pool that is simultaneously more skilled and yet less aware of how they are being exploited or the consequences of that exploitation.

Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪

An aerial image looking down on a river, flowing right to left, that has two side channels diverting from its mainstem. The two side channels are blocked with wood.

#River scientists, need some group opinion here: Do you define an avulsion as a sudden, complete change in the distribution of flow conveyance between channels (i.e., one channel captures all of another's flow) OR any change in flow conveyance between channels, sudden or gradual, full or partial.

You ever just sit down and realize that the rise of 21st century fascism is capital's answer to climate change?

If USPS suddenly said you had to opt out of them reading all your mail, you'd be outraged, right? Right?

Poster graphic with two half-face photos of Trofim Lysenko and RFK Jr. An arrow points right to invite readers to swipe. Text reads: History doesn't always repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. American Lysenkoism.

A black and white photo of Lysenko inspecting a stalk of grain, with a red semicircle background. text reads: Lysenkoism: Trofim Lysenko was a scientist in the Soviet Union who rejected established genetic and agricultural science in favor or in favour of his own unproven, pseudoscientific ideas. As director of the Institute of Genetics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he used his political position to jail dissenters, squash criticism, and fabricate evidence to support his theories. The human cost of his anti-science? Famines that killed millions in the Soviet Union and in China.

A picture of RFK Jr in black and white mirroring the previous one of Lysenko. Text reads: Sound familiar? RFK Jr. is happy to exploit the same tactics as Lysenko to carry out his own agenda of deadly anti-science, from firing ACIP experts to demanding that scientists “make the proof” for his claims. We have seen the harms of putting ideology over science. Yet, RFK Jr. wants history to repeat itself. Lysenko put the Soviet Union through famine. RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine stance and attacks on our public health infrastructure could put the US through outbreak after outbreak of preventable disease.

Scientists have been crying "Lysenkoism!" since RFK Jr. took office, but what does it mean? RFK Jr. is reviving a dark chapter of history where ideology trumped evidence, with deadly consequences for millions.

Dissent is patriotic. We're fighting to #impeachrfk

Repost if you support Starbucks’ striking workers!!! #NoContractNoCoffee

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.

Or maybe go further and stop publishing in Nature? Seeking prestige in the first place is counter to doing good science. Rewarding prestige perpetuates the problem.

Publish only in diamond open access if you can.

Inclusivity is key to democracy. This means equal voting rights in our politics, but it can't end there. The economy also affects us in many ways.

What does inclusivity mean in the context of economics? It means inclusivity in ownership, the vehicle of economic power. It means worker ownership.

a penguin holding a brain with the words hey you dropped this ALT: a penguin holding a brain with the words hey you dropped this

Note from an irritated editor: AI is starting to infiltrate peer review, or at least it looks a lot like it. If you’re planning to use an LLM to review someone else’s work for a journal, rather just don’t accept the review invitation. It’s easy.

Wondering why this shit keeps happening? Why both sides seem so corrupt and atrocious? One (of many) reason is that workers don't have the power to elect people who will actually represent us! Think about that next time systemic reforms like ranked choice voting come across your ballot.

Worker ownership is proven to create far more equitable pay ratios. The average for worker-owned cooperatives in the United States is 2-to-1.

Unfortunately, it seems like almost no one really brings this up as the alternative. That is why we must continue to talk about it so that awareness expands.

An oblique drone image of a river the was recently flattened and covered with large logs.

#Drone folks - any considerations on a Mavic 3E vs 3M? I collect orthomosaics of rivers for ecogeomorphic mapping. I'm leaning towards 3M even though I'll rarely use the multispectral cams, since the cost is very similar to 3E, main cam is identical, and I can't see use case for the 3E zoom cam.

Don’t Stream Fascism: Cancel Spotify

Spotify is running ads for ICE. Until they stop supporting fascist oppression and hate, I won't pay them. If you pay for Spotify, #CancelSpotify and pressure them. This isn't polarization, it's right and wrong, and Spotify is on the wrong side. app.sosha.ai/s/M7eMx2vx

I study fascism. I’ve already fled America. On this week’s “More To The Story,” former Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley explains his recent move to Canada and calls the Trump administration’s takeover of the US government a “coup.”

Very excited to see a democratic socialist get elected to a major public office, but boy, our current state of authoritarian fascism is a looooong way from national democratic socialism, or even something resembling a functioning democracy. It'll take a LOT more fight to make progress here.

With a toddler in daycare and having recently experienced the long, sad period of back to back sicknesses you get from your toddler, I can confidently say: yes, this. Masks are awesome.

A river flowing through trees, grass, and logs in a floodplain forest.

A river flowing over steep cobbles and under logs.

For more context here, this is an image (from a few years ago) of what I mean by forest dispersing flow. The channel steepens just downstream of this forest (second image) - that looks to me like a headcut arrested simply by obstruction-forced widening upstream.

They do! Holy cow - never even occurred to me. Would take some absolutely beastly giant beaver to move these logs, though - I don't think even Casteroides ever got that strong, haha.

Avulsion (river) - Wikipedia

I got so sucked into this yesterday that I ended up editing the Wikipedia page on avulsions to correct the misunderstandings that avulsions are: 1) only full diversion from one channel to another (if so, how could multi-thread channels even exist?), and 2) driven by differences in slope.

A map view of a false-color aerial image of a river flowing towards the bottom of the image. The river has one main channel with 6 or more side channels flowing through floodplain forest.

Here's another one. Side channels in the floodplain have been there, and much shorter than the mainstem, for close to 30 years (inc. a 50-yr flood). Wood plays a big role here, but so does the vigorous floodplain forest, which disperses flow and inhibits headcuts that would otherwise drive avulsion.

A map view of a false-color aerial image of a river flowing towards the bottom of the image. The river is split into two channels, one of which is jammed up with lots of logs.

It's a buckle down, turn on some Chappell Roan, and measure some rivers kind of morning. This looks like a normal meander cutoff, right? Wrong! The channel that lost flow (left side of image) is expanding again, just a few years after what I thought was a full avulsion. What's the culprit? Wood?

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

"Humans are definitely not the only species to exhibit homosexuality, but we are the only species to exhibit homophobia."

Yes, so good! If the comment's purpose is really to convince the authors to make the suggested change, then making that comment constructive and kind is the most effective way to accomplish that.