Dragon Con Science Track

I thought that pelicans stretching their pouches over their own necks was the absolute weirdest they could look, I stand corrected

I was on a de-extinction panel at @dconscitrack.bsky.social with @dmos150.bsky.social and other amazing ppl called "We have wolves at home"

And now people send me MORE stuff from Colossal, like "hey saw this and thought of u"

The equivalent of "here, this tastes TERRIBLE! Try it!" 😂🤮

YouTube video by Evie Unraveling I Remade the SciShow Knitting Video (with accurate SCIENCE)

Did you attend our Fiber Arts Unraveled panel, or wish you had? I highly recommend this video on the science of knitting that goes into both the science of knitting, and the history of how "women's work" has intersected with the sciences www.youtube.com/watch?v=5btQ... #fiberarts

Science v Movies 2025 is finished. Time to start collecting clips for DragonCon 2026.

Feel free to send your "recommendations"

Familiar Quiz — Stealing from Wizards

Some folks missed the quiz we had up before Science v Movies at DragonCon and wanted it.

Here you go! Enjoy the nonsense and the learning. Let me know what you get!

stealingfromwizards.com/familiar-quiz

Photo of DragonCon badge with ribbons and assorted swag

As per usual, @dragoncon.org was incredible and the @dconscitrack.bsky.social killed it! Thanks for letting me geek about sleep, indigo dye, and so much more!

See y’all next year🐉

DragonCon Science Track: wow, these nerds have got some real zingers

A PowerPoint slide shown on a projector. The slide shows a busty cartoon woman in the left, with a white-throated sparrow's head (white-striped), and a female gender marker. On the right are two white-throated sparrows indicated as male, one white-striped, one tan-striped. The two male sparrows have voice bubbles saying "would" and "oh yeah".

More Dragon Con notes: everyone needs to appreciate this slide from @tkingfisher.com from her talk on the four sexes of white-throated sparrows at the Solve for X variety show in the Science track ( @dconscitrack.bsky.social )

Hello new followers and THANK YOU for coming to my panels at DragonCon, telling me you liked my panels, and in general being amazing.

If you can please do tate and review us in the app, and make sure Science Track gets all the bigger rooms it deserves!

1. I loved this panel.

2. I was the person who live-skeeted it...and remembered just how much I love doing that.

Oh, and did you get turned away from a panel you wanted to go to because the room filled up too quickly? Please add a comment in the ratings in the app to let DragonCon know. This could help us get a bigger room in the future so that we don’t have to turn anyone away.

Did you attend a Science Track panel this weekend that you loved? Go in the DragonCon app and rate those panels! Your ratings and comments help us to know what types of panels you love and we should do more of in the future!

I can’t believe the final panel on @dconscitrack.bsky.social was packed. Thank you everyone for coming to learn about sleep.

Also putting me on this panel was a personal attack 😂

Oh, and did you get turned away from a panel you wanted to go to because the room filled up too quickly? Please add a comment in the ratings in the app to let DragonCon know. This could help us get a bigger room in the future so that we don’t have to turn anyone away.

Did you attend a Science Track panel this weekend that you loved? Go in the DragonCon app and rate those panels! Your ratings and comments help us to know what types of panels you love and we should do more of in the future!

Lucid dreamers can hear and answer questions while still asleep, scientists find It's like communicating with an astronaut on another world.

Here’s a description of that study! www.livescience.com/real-time-co...

Panelist @sadiewit.bsky.social’s lab teaches people to lucid dream. Then, they can ask them questions while they are in REM sleep and the sleeping subjects are able to answer via their eye movements.

The difference between light sleepers and heavy sleepers is more about the timing that you go into deeper sleep cycle stages. Some people go into those deep sleep stages quicker than others, but everyone goes through lighter and heavier sleep phases every night.

Don’t worry too much about your sleep tracker data. There is a big disconnect between reported amounts of sleep and actual amounts of sleep. Your subjective feeling of being well-rested is a better measure of your sleep quality than what any tracker may say.

Why is it so hard for some of us to get up in the morning?
This may actually be differences in sleep rhythm, not amount of sleep. You may be waking at a time that is too early for you. Or, it could be conditioning — some people need more time to actually get out of bed in the morning.

Another way to help you fall asleep is to make sure you are waking up at the same time every day. If your sleep patterns are extremely different on weekends, it causes the equivalent of jet lag when you have to get back to your regular schedule on Monday.

One of the best ways to fall asleep is to make sure your bed is only used for sleeping and uhhh… adult activities. That way your body will associate your bed with sleep, which helps you feel sleepier every night when you get in bed.

My apologies if I seem to be skipping out on live-posting some sections of this panel. It’s Monday of dragoncon — even here on science track we can only manage so much.

Melatonin probably doesn’t do much to help people sleep — but if you feel like it works well for you, that’s because the placebo effect can work extremely well for sleep! Though melatonin has side effects and interactions with some medications, so please be careful if you take it.

The average half life of caffeine is five hours

Word of the day from @beebrookshire.bsky.social: Suprachiasmatic Nucleus — it’s the part of our brain that helps to regulate sleep cycles using light. Even in blind people, their suprachiasmatic nucleus still takes in light inputs to figure out when they need to sleep

Every person is different in terms of the amount of sleep they need each night and the time that works best for their sleep.

Studies show that if a person has been awake for 24hrs, a one hour nap can restore their brain function for a couple hours.

Sleep helps you consolidate memories, so if you have a long period of insomnia, you may find that you have gaps in your memory from that time period.