Rebecca Bloomer

Everything a girl could ask for

Well now I wanna go find the specimens! 8 years right next door and I only made it to the herbarium for the first time a fortnight ago, which is sort of ridiculous.

Even better, that's ~150m away from where this particular plant is 🤩

That's really cool!

Flowering arabidopsis with multiple inflorescences and maturing siliques, growing as a weed in gravel.

Today in "model organisms, they're just like real organisms": watched birds nicking inflorences off this wee dude out my office window today. For their nests, maybe?

Incredible.

Ha, Ty is very kind about mine. The 5yo, on the other hand - brutal truthspeaker.

Lilja, clearly we are reserving our judgement for the dusty man in question here. Get with the programme!

Extremely Relatable Content.

My new favourite thing is going directly from pump class to pub quiz so this post-workout choice has my wholehearted endorsement. I cannot say the same for your gorgeous doggo, he looks Big Mad.

Fewer Marsden Fund grants after government cuts A major research fund has been forced to slash its grant allocation by more than $20 million next year.

More cuts to the Marsden Fund of @royalsocietynz.bsky.social. This takes it down to $10/capita in real terms when it was over $16 for most of this century. Australia's equivalent, the ARC, is NZ$42/capita, as is the US NSF (despite ongoing attempts to gut the latter).
www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Context: this knocks back Marsden funding levels next year a whole two decades to (inflation adjusted) the same level funding as the 2005 Budget.

Ty the foxy x working dog admires the view over Lyttleton Harbour to Te Ahu Pātiki/Mt Herbert at sunset.

If anything can improve on a day of statistically significant results, its adding a Port Hills sunset, an exercise playlist of xennial punk bangers and the world's best doggo for company.

University sector changes announced - Expert Reaction The Government will be changing aspects to New Zealand's higher education system, informed by a recently released report by the University Advisory Group. Changes include a new strategy for all of New...

Did you catch news that the Universities Advisory Group (UAG) reports were released, but the government binned or balked on many of the key recommendations?

The whole process went from shelved to buried yesterday morning.

www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2025/09/03/u...

Nope! The conference budget is more MapNet this year 😅 hope its going well though... I'm hoping for a permanent move to Ōtautahi for QRW

JULIE WHO ARE YOU SCHMOOZING FOR THESE

even the lysenko comparison is at this point an insult to lysenko

So if genome annotations contain errors and we take those genome annotations to annotate other genomes and then train AI on all the thousands of messy genome annotations than what's even real

Let's find a mate for Ned One in 40,000 snails have the spiral on the left side of the shell, and they can only mate with other lefties. Can you help Ned find true love?

A tiny silly fun thing in the midst of all the chaos... We're on the hunt for a mate for Ned, a 1 in 40,000 left-spiralling snail. www.nzgeo.com/stories/lets...

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: Making conferences in the plant sciences more inclusive through community recommendations The ROOT & SHOOT project in the plant sciences has produced guidelines to help scientific societies organize conferences that are more inclusive and offer more supportive environments to all attendees...

Plz share! (I am a co-author from NAASC) “An unwelcoming climate & culture at scientific conferences is an obstacle to retaining scientists w/marginalized identities. Here we describe..a professional plant science societies..collaboration to make conferences more inclusive.”
doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

A new book, called He Puāwai a natural history of New Zealand flowers. The dust jacket is black with 24 individual flowers arranged in rows, all different colours. The title is purple and the subtitle teal.

After a decade of photographing & writing, I finally have an advance copy of my book. It'll be launched 10 October in Wellington and should hit the shops 9 October. Many thanks to talented designer Duncan Munro & the wonderful people at Auckland University Press. #pukapuka #bloomscolling #bloomsky

Actual cackled at that.

Will.be | Coach Jezelf | Online Coaching Programma's Coach jezelf naar succes op je werk, geluk in je leven, een gezonde levensstijl en een positieve mindset. Will brengt je de kennis en ervaring van experten in de vorm van online coaching programma’s w...

Bonus points, you get to work with two great research groups between BSI and UoO, who will be amazing mentors.

How many PhDs is too many PhDs, asking for a friend 🤔

They were, and I had some Cliched Divorcing Millennial feelings listening to... most of it, honestly. Physically paying for going out on a school night today, but mentally fully worth it.

Majority of Govt's $231m tech institute funded through research funding cuts 'It will be a cornerstone of our plan to grow a high-tech, high-value economy.'

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/... Majority of Government’s $231m spend on Advanced Technology Institute funded through planned research funding cuts

We are now discussing whether the re-emergence of lead sentences starting with "Plants, as sessile organisms..." is due to LLMs trained on the literature or what.

There were signs about testing the tsunami sirens around Sumner - maybe that? Heard them go about 11am while walking over Godley Head earlier.

Frankenmoa and the fantasy of undoing extinction www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3607...

Okay but hear me out: brown emus

can sir peter instead spend a colossal amount of money conserving the near-extinct things we still have please and thank you