Maria Box

I guess what ultimately confuses me is that the parts AI promises to automate away-- reading, writing, formulating theories, coming up with new ideas-- are the parts of research I most enjoy. Yes, they frustrate me to the point of tears sometimes, but overcoming it and producing science is... fun!

"To exercise one’s capacities to their fullest extent is to take pleasure in one’s own existence[...] Life is an end in itself. And if what being alive actually consists of is having powers [...] then surely the exercise of such powers as an end in itself does not have to be explained either."

What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun? My friend June Thunderstorm and I once spent a half an hour sitting in a meadow by a mountain lake, watching an inchworm dangle from the top of a stalk of grass, twist about in every possible…

Lately, in the face of the AI debate and struggling to wrestle my own data into manuscript format, my thoughts keep coming back to this essay on play, thought and existence by David Graeber.

thebaffler.com/salvos/whats...

okay, Ill bite.
What do you think the point of reading for and writing a literature review is? The process of reading and writing is crucial for THINKING. Your ideas are shaped by all of this, offloading it to gAI, no matter how "good" you think gAI is at it defeats the purpose entirely.

Holocene Hydroclimatic Variations Over Western and Central Asia as Inferred From Speleothem Isotope Evidence Enriching δ18Op trend over WA and ACA with precipitation decreases over WA and WCA but increases over ECA during the Holocene These δ18Op enrichments mainly result from decreases in precipitation...

"Holocene Hydroclimatic Variations Over Western and Central Asia as Inferred From Speleothem Isotope Evidence" | Pleased to be among the authors of this new article in @agu.org #JGRatmos led by my former student Liang Ning: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

my folks in Alice Springs are already dealing with flooding and supermarket shortages as major highways are cut off 😬 shame that the most remote, understudied regions are left the most vulnerable as global heating continues

From the depths of the Ice Age, there's nothing quite as romantic as mammoth.
Cueva El Pindal, Asturias. 🦣♥️

Our recent publication featured in @awi.de news! 🔥 Full paper currently available as in press here: www.nature.com/articles/s43...
Will share more on it once the final version is online 🧪⚒️🌏

Some tropical land may experience stronger-than-expected warming under climate change A sediment record millions of years old revealed that the tropical Andes heated up dramatically when atmospheric CO2 levels were similar to today’s.

🌡️ A sediment record millions of years old revealed that the tropical Andes heated up dramatically when atmospheric CO2 levels were similar to today’s www.colorado.edu/today/2026/0...

Lina Pérez-Angel (now at Brown U) & Julio Sepúlveda led the team.

A new web interface for Berger et al's insolation calculator has been released. Check it out! django.elic.ucl.ac.be/berger/insol...

If anyone needs a BOOP, Pebble is right here for you! He is a professional BOOPer
#TerrierTuesday

a dehumidifier box that has partially frozen. water is accumulating on the hydrophilic beads in the top of the box rather than dripping through

we can use speleothem growth intervals to reconstruct the timing of continuous permafrost cover, because spelothems can't form under continuous permafrost. this is because the frozen ground stops water infiltration, as demonstrated by a dehumidifier left by the window of my badly insulated UK flat

Bitter fight over 2020 Microsoft quantum paper both resolved and unresolved --The Register, 31 Jul 2025

2025 Headline of the Year nominee (July)

oh definitely! you can find speleothems growing on brick windows, concrete bridges and roman aqueducts. let water drip with enough co2 and calcium in the right conditions and it'll start precipitating calcite. it just might take a long, long time...

and then you can harvest the calcite as a building material... guess I know what I'm doing if this whole academia thing doesn't work out 😂

good point! I bet they love the minerals in that water. though we best not advertise this to the people breathing in the vapor for their health... 😂

you should see the photos of me crawling around underneath these things pointing out stalactites 😂 I'm sure everyone thought I was up to something

merry christmas to you, seb and pebble!!

anyways, merry christmas from a very happy phd student. may your holidays be filled with speleothems (er, gradierwerkthems?) in unexpected places

now just for fun, compare the bad salzuflan gradierwerke coralloids (left) to coralloids from a frozen cave in northern mongolia (right). just makes you wonder what that cave must have been like in the past!

even the recently-built frames (2007!) had impressive concretions. I wonder whether the minerals in the brine encourage calcite formation...

there's also plenty of little stalactites beneath the frames, including some that are discoloured by the iron within the constructions!

these large frames were built to distill salt. mineral-rich water is pumped over frames of reeds, where it rapidly degasses. naturally, this forces the precipitation of the calcite in the water, leading to some impressive calcite growth

a large wooden frame outdoors for vaporising brine

coralline calcite growths on a wooden frame

still in germany, and today i discovered my new favourite urban speleothem collection: the gradierwerke at bad salzuflen

YouTube video by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Caroline Leland at AGU: Temperature Signals of Siberian Pine and Larch in North-central Mongolia

At #AGU25, tree ring scientist Caroline Leland of LDEO shared her research on dshared research on climate sensitivity of wood from Siberian Pine and Larch in North-central Mongolia to improve or build upon reconstructions of long-term climate. ➡️ Lamont at AGU25: https://lamont.columbia.edu/agu25

Amid the miasma of institutional and Edtech-commercial hectoring on the imperative rapidly to embrace GenAI tools for research and writing, a simple pearl of wisdom to share with students and colleagues in 2026 (or even 2025).

Earth’s frozen regions are sending a clear warning about climate change – but politicians are ignoring it The warning lights from the cryosphere have been flashing red for several years and governments and policymakers ignore this at their peril.

“We cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice.”

theconversation.com/earths-froze...

t'was the week before Christmas, and all through southwest Germany... trees are blossoming? 😬

Geology imperilled - GEOSCIENTIST In recent years, universities across many western nations, including several in the UK, have closed Earth science courses and downsized their geology departments. The University of Leicester is the la...

Cuts to geology programmes, departmental mergers and shrinking university support threaten the long-term health of the discipline. Now, Jan Zalasiewicz examines the developing situation at the University of Leicester: geoscientist.online/sections/vie...

#Geology #Geoscience #HigherEducation

I was too busy conducting field research to take good pictures in Frankfurt. Took some scientifically interesting mead and gluhwein samples though 😅

Bouncing between Mainz and Heidelberg for the next few weeks, with a detour to Frankfurt on the side. Here on work. Of course. Taking a thorough survey of regional Christmas markets is just a side project...