Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

#Politics makes strange bedfellows. 8647.

Open access article, and the "non-technical summary" section near the beginning gives an overview everyone can understand. 🧪🦖

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-paleontology/article/troodontid-specimens-from-the-cretaceous-two-medicine-formation-of-montana-usa-and-the-validity-of-troodon-formosus/3E58F1FDA3FE53DE569E0D0B20E79F22

Very short version: #Troodon was considered a valid #genus for well over a century, until it was merged with #Stenonychosaurus about a decade ago, and due to specimen quality Stenonychosaurus took priority. Now careful examination indicates Troodon is a valid genus again.

This process is familiar from other famous #dinosaur genera, most notably #Brontosaurus and #Apatosaurus. Even *living* animals are hard to classify a lot of the time; nothing between #kingdom and #species is really set in stone. The tension between "#lumpers" and "#splitters" never ends.

Troodon is special. Maybe it was intelligent, in a way we'd recognize as such, and maybe it wasn't. But it was almost surely *smart*, and quite possibly social, and likely an omnivore. Does that remind you of anyone?

Maybe I'm fooling myself, when I feel a kinship across deep time. And maybe I'm not.

This is how #waterwars start. It's going to be really bad.

For anyone who doesn't know, the #Gunnison, #SanMiguel, #SanJuan, #Yampa, and #White #rivers are all tributaries of the #Colorado. So the entire #Southwest is in *deep* trouble. The #RioGrande and #Arkansas are equally important: much of #NewMexico and southern #Texas depend on the former; and #Kansas, #Oklahoma, and of course Arkansas itself on the latter.

As rough as it will be in Colorado, downstream it will be worse. We have the #headwaters for all the major rivers across about a quarter of the country ... and our water-sharing agreements were written during an unusually wet period. The fighting will begin in the courts, but I'm not at all sure it will stay there.

Seriously: there has never been a time in the entire history of the #Catholic #Church when the #papacy wasn't a #political position. The new #Pope's politics don't line up exactly with the #American political spectrum, and neither did the last one's, but that hardly makes them #apolitical. You can't "politicize" someone who's already there.

On a friend's post, a FOAF says, "Don't #politicize the #Pope." Uh ...

"Like anybody actually KNOWS this."

"Yes, we do know this. 'We' in the general sense, that is: clearly you don't, but smart people do."

I said I was cutting down on the rage. I made no promises about snark.

#MountSaintHelens, 1980. The big boom really grabs your attention, of course. I think the first part of the video, where nothing much seems to be happening until you realize the *entire mountainside* is sliding down, is even more awesome.

Anyone who knows me knows how I love #mountains, and how purple I get talking about them. It's one of the few parts of my life where I indulge in mysticism. I love them for their permanence, their impartiality. They make no demands. They expect nothing. They *are*.

They don't hate us, they don't love us—they're not even indifferent, because indifference is a choice. I like to think they'd feel a kind of indulgent affection for the small scurrying life on their flanks, if they could. I know they don't.

But they're not immortal. They're born, they grow, they age, they die. We live on their shattered bones.

Unimaginable violence drives their life cycles, and by extension ours. Heat, pressure, collision, miles of rock folding and shattering. Bubbles of the mantle rising through the cracks, and sometimes escaping to give us the *tiniest* glimpse of the power below our feet.

#Volcanoes live fast and die young, compared to the more common kinds of orogenesis, the slow folding and slipping that builds entire ranges. They often nestle among their older, calmer cousins, unremarked until—

—well, until.

All mountains are alive, and sometimes they remind us. They will kill us if we give them the chance, with no malice at all. We have choices they don't. The danger will never stop us from giving them that chance, over and over. At least not those of us who can't stay away.

We can't change their lives, nor should we try. On the balance, I sure am glad they're here to change ours.

#Authoritarians are often very fond of #engineering, because they always want better ways to kill people. But they hate and fear #science, because the laws of #nature don't care about their #ideology at all. This is a reaction as instinctive as a rattlesnake's bite.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01396-2

Never let it be said I'm above a little self-promotion. 🙂 This may be the last short story in the Seaway Station universe for a while: I'm going to concentrate for a while on the Silmarillisaurus, the writer's bible for the universe, and then get to work on the novels.

#dinosaurs #timetravel #sciencefiction #SeawayStation

Main BSQ site: https://www.boundaryshockquarterly.com/product/30-fading-empires/

Amazon, including paperback option: https://www.amazon.com/Fading-Empires-Boundary-Shock-Quarterly-ebook/dp/B0F397V5QY

This is really neat and clever IMO.

I want to write about #dinosaurs, but I keep having to write about work instead. Not that writing about dinosaurs isn't work too, but it doesn't pay the bills as reliably. Oh well. Right now I'm going to let rapid eye movement write on the inside of my eyelids. 'Night, all. 🧬 🦖 💤

A lot of what the regime does is driven by greed, of course. Make as much money as possible as fast as possible. But I'm increasingly convinced just as much of it is toddler-like gleeful destruction for its own sake.

https://blog.ucs.org/science-blogger/ten-vital-services-provided-by-noaa-beyond-the-national-weather-service/

#NOAA #Trump #DeclineAndFall

The text at the end of the post is copied rather than shared, at previous poster's request, and lightly edited. Feel free to share my post, though, with commentary intact.

You know this was always their endgame. The bullshit answers #RFK Jr. and his fellow loons gave Congress were even more transparent lies than all the other confirmation hearing testimony. Everyone who voted to confirm them shares the blame, but Bill #Cassidy has earned a special place in hell.

#Bondi, #Hegseth, #Noem, and all the rest of the cabinet are all assholes, and profoundly dangerous. Justice and Homeland Security are slaying their thousands, and Defense is gearing up to slay its tens of thousands. Health and Human Services is chuckling at them and saying "amateurs."

I'm skeptical that any amount of lobbying #HHS directly, or any of its sub-departments such as #FDA, #NIH, and #CDC, will have much effect. But maybe, just maybe, calling your #Senators and #Representatives will have an effect.

Let's face it, members of #Congress will suffer a lot less from idiocy like #tariffs than the rest of us, and they're (probably) safe from roundup and #deportation. #Viruses don't care about such distinctions. Mighty and humble alike can choke to death on their own liquefying lung tissue.

#Antivaxers are not "skeptics." They're not interested in evidence. They can't be bargained with, they can't be reasoned with, and they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

===

Marty Makary and Tracy Hoeg at the FDA are currently trying to set a policy that would effectively eliminate all covid vaccines. They want to require a full clinical trial every year for companies to update the covid vaccine to match the current strain, which they know is not possible.

Please contact the FDA and demand continuing access to yearly updated covid vaccines and ask for the Novavax 2025 covid vaccine to be approved.

mmakary1@jhmi.edu
ocod@fda.hhs.gov
tracybeth.hoeg@fda.hhs.gov
800-402-8010

From a thread on Bluesky: “#Scientists together - STRONG!” needs to be a thing.

🦖🧪🧬☄️🚀🦍🖥️🦧
Unity is beautiful.

"We've been trying to reach you about your Frosted Flakes' extended warranty."

Run, run while you can!

Right-wingers hate and fear anything that even approaches objective truth. Of course Wikipedia drives them nuts.

See, this is why I miss living in #Minnesota: everything is just so efficient!

"It's #satire" will no longer be accepted as an #excuse. I have spoken.