Vanessa Tobias

No, he's a mutt. He's mostly chihuahua and miniature pinscher, but with short legs.

A photo of a small tan dog wearing a red t-shirt that has a cartoon pot of honey on it. The pot says “hunny” across the middle.

Happy Halloween from Penzey the Pooh

I started the day looking at a paper introduction I started rewriting last week, hoping I made more progress than I remembered, but then being disappointed that it still needs exactly as much work as I thought. At least this is something I can focus on and hopefully tune out the distractions.

The people they want to traumatize are the people who fly into a hurricane to help keep the rest of us safe.

I didn’t even hear about the last author thing until I was a postdoc. I think I actually laughed when my supervisor requested to go last on a paper. I really wish we could get past the order mattering, too. If we can’t predict how someone else might interpret the order why worry about it?

A photo of a small tan dog wearing grey, white, and red socks on all four of his feet. He is lying on a cream colored couch.

It’s Saturday. We deserve a little doggo on our feeds as a treat.

My heart is breaking for my colleagues at all these sites, even as we feds wait to hear what else might get cut. Also a ton of other fed and non-fed scientists have careers that ran through these programs. I can’t imagine the future we’re losing by not continuing to support them

As this article points out, 2,050 is probably just the beginning of the cuts.
On a personal note, I worked at the USGS Great Lakes Science Center for a couple of semesters during my MS. I learned so much there and the people were amazing to work with. I’m gutted by the proposed cuts there.

Same.
There aren’t any zeros in the union column. And it seems unlikely that they think only R3 and R5 have too many employees.

A white woman wearing a green headband with frog eyes on it, sunglasses, and a pink N95 mask.

Infrognito mode.

Five small, green, yellow plastic frogs in front of two stickers that say “resist” and have cartoon frogs on them.

I didn’t take any pictures of the protest today, but here’s a recreation using things people gave me.

It's day 15 of the shutdown and our first missed paycheck.

For feds 👇

🍽️Too good to go app (surplus food from local eateries/stores at a ⬇️ prices)

🗺️https://myfedbenefitshelp.com/shutdown-assistance-map/

💵https://www.sanders.senate.gov/resources-for-federal-workers/

🧑‍🏫https://wearewellfed.com/

I'm writing a grant application to fund features and improvements to Literature Mapper, a plugin for QGIS that makes maps of Zotero citations. Has anyone out there used it in it's current state? Or would you use it if only... ?

micheletobias.github.io/maps/Literat...

#gischat

Ok everyone, I’m assigning you your resistance homework for the week.

Everyone ready?

Do something silly that makes you smile. I just waved at a dog that had its head out the car window because it made me happy. Don’t let the assholes take your joy.

One more sick day for me. If you get this cold, please try harder not to share it than the person who shared it with me did. It’s miserable.
Miscus with her cheese toy to brighten up your feed.

A photo of a small tan dog sitting on a couch. He has one ear standing up and the other flopping down.

I’m hanging out on the couch with this guy today because RTO with no telework is only really good policy for viruses.

A photo of a stage set for the opening act of the play & Juliet.

Yesterday was awesome.
Morning: took a tap workshop class at my dance studio.
Evening: saw &Juliet on tour.
I highly recommend both for a break from doing science in ::waives hands around:: all this.

A photo of a small tan dog with his tongue out, sitting in front of a large display of pumpkins.

I’m grateful for being exempt & knowing I’ll get paid on time, but it is really hard to just keep working through a shutdown. It’s like we’re being gaslit into thinking everything is normal and not total chaos around us.

Penzey being stressed out with pumpkins for my fellow feds.

I should probably say “appears to be an epic violation.”

This is an epic violation. Pretty much every fed knows this because we get notified about the Hatch Act all the time. Even people who count fish and are nowhere near the political side of government get this stuff drilled into us regularly.

Same.

A photo of a small tan dog using his teeth to rearrange a blue blanket.

Confirmed- we’re exempt from furloughs & working through. The good part is that we get regular pay checks. (Exempt =/= excepted, which means working but not getting paid till the end.) The bad part is everything else.
Pic of Penzey rearranging a blanket for maximum coziness for my fellow feds.

A photo of a small tan dog looking over his shoulder at the camera. His eyebrows are lifted so he’s doing a classic puppy-dog eyes.

My office is funded by interagency agreements so we usually keep working through shutdowns. We’ll find out tomorrow morning if that’s the case again this time.
Here’s a cute picture of Penzey the dog for my fellow Feds on this shutdown eve.

I’m loving that I get to mentor a bunch of early career scientists who are making posters for a local conference. I’m having the best conversations with them and it’s fun to see people getting excited about finding patterns in our long-term fish monitoring data.
🧪👩‍🔬🌎 🐟

Minor revisions! This paper is about extracting DNA from fish that are preserved in formalin. DNA is totally not my expertise, but I learned a lot helping out with stats and graphs. It’s so fun to be part of these collaborative science projects where I get to learn new stuff.

Thank you!

Congrats! That never gets old, at least it doesn’t for me.

A tired-looking white woman poses with a bandaid on her arm in front of a display of gift wrap.

Celebration photo in the party aisle for getting my covid and flu shots today!

If you don’t like an account on here, you could just block it and move on.

Barataria Preserve - Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve (U.S. National Park Service)

It’s a little bit out of town, but I love Jean Lafitte National Park.
www.nps.gov/jela/planyou...