Emilio M Bruna

Go and apply! Trevor does awesome research and is a fantastic mentor.

One of the things I most miss about Twitter is people from around the world coming together to tell Alexi Lalas to please shut the fuck up.

Three books by W. Bond and collaborators: Fire and plants (1996), Fire in Mediterranean ecosystems (2012), and Open ecosystems (2019).

I'm very sad to say William Bond, of the University of Cape Town & Fellow of the Royal Society (@royalsociety.org ), has passed away. It is a great loss. He was an enthusiastic ecologist and a critical thinker. I learned a lot, and I still had a lot to learn from him. RIP. 😢

🧪🌎🔥🌿🌳🪴🌐 #PlantScience

Tweet from chris Rufo: “Part of the trick in politics is to figure out how to set off a "feeding frenzy," which promises a payout to a large number of individuals. Right now, everyone on the Right wants to get an angle on the Somali fraud story. Which is good. Narrative leads to action.”

Tweet from rufo: “The Somali fraud story reveals a truth that liberals would prefer to ignore: when Nordic welfare-state culture and Somali piracy culture collide, the result is mass looting of the public treasury.”

Tweet from rufo: “The problem is that Nordic peoples have a difficult time conceptualizing the clash between high-trust and low-trust cultures. Hence, mass migrant rape in Scandinavia and mass migrant fraud in Minnesota. Catastrophic naïveté.”

In retrospect it shouldn’t be a surprise that Rufo pivoted so quickly from “I am the scourge of the intellectual elite” to “I will be your palatable stephen miller by using the language of the intellectually elite”. It’s where the attention (and money) are.

My biggest lol was under the grants and awards it recommends I apply for:

National academy of sciences (membership)

I have wracked my mind trying to figure out what that is.

Rep. Cammack’s represents the Florida 3rd, which is home to UF. Foreign-born faculty, staff, and students have made this university what it is, and without UF the economy and well-being of her district - and the state of Florida more broadly - would collapse. This is simply disgraceful.

Remember Preston Damsky -- the University of Florida law student who wrote the "award-winning" white supremacist essay and later made threatening antisemitic social media comments?

He was initially expelled from UF, but a U.S. district court has now ruled he must be reinstated immediately

my guess is they took key words from publications but then tokenized instead of keeping them as is (or took titles, tokenized, and took top N)

- Improving Efficiency, Reliability, and Flexibility of Coal-Based Power Plants

- The UK new investigator awards

and my personal favorite...

- The US Antarctic Research Program

I do not think UF is getting its money's worth.

BTW the keywords are used to generate a list of "suggested funding opportunities" for a fill professor studying tropical plant ecology that include:

- USDA Solid Waste Management Grant Program

- Aquatic Invasive Species Grants to Great Lakes States

- ABPP Battlefield Restoration Grants

...

...Tryblionella acuminata
Lonicera acuminata
Conchophthirius acuminata
Feldmannia acuminata
Kunzea acuminata
Chamissonia acuminata
Periconia acuminata
Rhynchanthera acuminata...
(continue for many more genera).

So do I fix? Move on to more important stuff? Rant on bsky? And WTF is "specy"?

... "acuminata" is only a useful keyword for me if preceded by "H." or "Heliconia" because I don't work with:

Lingulella acuminata
Notholca acuminata
Agaronia acuminata
Ustronia acuminata
Lauroppia acuminata
Eriochloa acuminata
Crepis acuminata
Corydalis acuminata
Nitzschia acuminata ...

...they used as keywords all the singletons spit out by the tokenizer. This means some keywords are so broad they are uninformative ("Tropical", "Plant") and some are useless because they are *only* informative as dyads...

Case in point: species epithets....

list of keywords auto-generated by academic analytics software, including useless ones like species epithets

Another example of shitty AI tools imposed on us by university admins making life more complicated. The expensive software bought by university to create the portfolios we are required to use for tenure / promotion / annual eval portfolios includes our "research keywords". Fine, except...

Dear Biology professors, prep for this if you teach Evolution.

Felicidades!

K m

Just read this and already one of the coolest papers I’ve read in a while.

Mexican soap operas aspire to this level of batshit bonkers

Memories like elephants.

I am married to a Brazilian and can confirm that they have an almost supernatural ability to carry a grudge in silence for decades knowing that one day they will triumphantly dance on the emotional grave of their enemy and/or husband. It’s super hot.

PPS One more thing...

Citizens of any country may apply!

(However, UF PhD grads and current UF postdocs are not eligible.)

PS I say "let's develop a proposal" because "Successful applications will be based on partnership between the applicant and mentor that builds on the strengths of both. Evidence of joint development of the proposal is key."

Co-mentorship welcome and I'm happy to help ID partners. Let's go!

- 2-year fellowship

- annual stipend of $70,000

- annual allowance of $20,000 for health insurance, research, professional development, & travel.

Are you looking for a postdoc? Let's develop a proposal for the University of Florida's "Ewel Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ecology and Environmental Science in the Tropics and Subtropics". Applications due January 11, 2026.

postdoc.aa.ufl.edu/current-post...

For context, this is more than DOUBLE the salary of any School Director at UF.

It’s more than any College Dean but one makes (Schools are under Colleges).

It’s more than any Center Director makes (Centers are campus wide).

If I were a school director…

(NB: w/ exception of med school/uf hlth)

Newly appointed Hamilton School director to be paid $500,000 - The Independent Florida Alligator As director, Canady will earn $500,000 — nearly double what he was making as a justice on the Florida Supreme Court.

AYFKM

“Charles T. Canady, the next director of UF’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, will earn a $500,000 salary”

www.alligator.org/article/2025...

The Rialto Theater Marquee reads “DETAIN BOFA DEEZ”

Raleigh, NC

How dare you minimize the liberation of Granada