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Donn Viviani

@donnviviani.bsky.social
108 followers 152 following 190 posts

Oceanographer. Interests include science, soccer, and sarcasm. Assistant Professor at Leeward CC.

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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
My dad tells stories about growing up in the Bronx in the fifties and buying their groceries from an old Italian man who lived in his store and slept on a cot behind a curtain and cooked on a hot plate
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Probably still not enough times tbh.
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Best version of this meme I've ever seen.
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
It is a lovely campus (but it is spelled Mānoa).
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Polling USA @usapolling.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Jesus Christ dude
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Just seeing that cover is giving me flashbacks! Genuinely terrifying!
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Everyone involved in this process — including the Palantir employees — have to be investigated and probably go to jail.
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
More fish are freaky than not, to be quite honest... Think about the Pearlfish living inside sea cucumber anuses. Or Sand Tiger Shark embryonic cannibalism.
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Julia Van Etten @couchmicroscopy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Spread the word! I’m looking to recruit a PhD student to grow the Paulinella project. Some details can be found here: www.vanettenlab.org/join
vanettenlab.org
Join! — Van Etten lab at UMD
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Does Scientology count as a legacy religion?
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Meg Mindlin @invertebabe.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Meet a carnivorous sea slug, Melibe leonina or the lions mane nudibranch ✨🧪🐡 🐙 🦑 🧵
Light green graphic featuring an illustration of Melibe leonina, the lions mane nudibranch, with white sparkles surrounding it and text that reads “MEET A CARNIVOROUS SEA SLUG @invertebabe”. Beneath the text is pink and purple eel grass
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Very sobering read. I will be assigning this to the students in my Marine science classes.
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Greenpeace International 🌍 @greenpeace.org · 30/08/2026
🚨 OCEAN HEAT: We are entering uncharted territory. Record-breaking ocean temperatures are pushing ecosystems closer to dangerous tipping points. Fossil fuel corporations and big polluters are gambling with a liveable planet for profit.
Global sea surface temperature graph
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Elaine Luo @oceanmicrobes.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Excited to share that our lab has moved to the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences @somas-sbu.bsky.social at Stony Brook @stonybrooku.bsky.social and we are recruiting postdocs (flexible start dates). About the lab and how to apply in the join tab: sites.google.com/stonybrook.e...
sites.google.com
Luo Lab - Microbial Oceanography
Our overall goal is to determine how microbes impact ecology and biogeochemistry, with a particular emphasis on under-explored environments with novel microbial diversity. Microbial engines drive biog...
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Hey folks, this hasn’t gotten much attention, but remember those proposed OMB rule changes we all commented on recently? There’s a new attempt to sneak them just for NSF. We have three days to comment. Please don’t sleep on this!
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
For my dissertation, I made myself write X words daily. They didn't have to be good, just written. I tracked if I was caught up (& so got a treat!) or behind and needed extra that day. Figures (worth 1,000 words) and editing counted. Let me know if you want my tracking spreadsheet.
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This is somehow disrespectful to hummus and also to peanut butter, both of which are objectively awesome.
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
This is total bullshit.
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David Rothkopf @djrothkopf.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Flirted with racism? Trump's relationship with racism is his only lifelong marriage that worked.
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Andy Murdock @andymurdock.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Botany friends: cool job alert. We're searching for a new Director for the UC & Jepson Herbaria here at UC Berkeley. Share with nice people. aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05405 🌿🌺🌵
aprecruit.berkeley.edu
Associate/Full Professor- Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics- Integrative Biology, and Director- University of California Berkeley Herbaria
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Congratulations!! That first publication feels so triumphant!
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Pete Buttigieg @petebuttigieg.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
This week someone targeted my family for harm with a false report. We’re physically OK, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t harmed. I am beyond furious. Whatever your politics, this is awful, wrong, and can never become normal.
substack.com
A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family
Even in today's climate, there should be one fundamental principle everyone respects: whatever you think about someone in politics, you leave their kids alone.
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Any chance of Libanius making a cameo?
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
As an educator, I'm quite fond of a famous quote about history: Those who don't learn history probably aren't doing well in math or health class either... www.pgpf.org/article/any-... abcnews.com/Health/flu-o... Say, didn't the 1916 flu pandemic start on military bases??
abcnews.com
Flu outbreak among Air Force recruits at Joint Base San Antonio after Hegseth ends mandatory flu vaccine
The basic training facility for the Air Force in San Antonio, Texas, is experiencing a flu outbreak with at least 159 cases, two sources told ABC News.
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Lessons from history! Worth reading in full and very relevant to our present moment!
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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
On legitimising yet another pogrom.
Some prefer to step two degrees away from the above conclusion, blaming the violence not on one discrete crime, but rather on long-simmering discontent about “unfettered immigration”, to use the words offered by loyalist MP Jim Allister, in the wake of last year’s Ballymena riots. Such riots are appalling, the argument goes, but their anger reflects a legitimate concern; that immigration has simply gone too far.

Again, we risk demeaning ourselves by pointing out that rates of migration into Northern Ireland have never been connected to any rise in crime, and represent a tremendous benefit to the economy, from workers in hospitality and agri-business sectors to manufacturing and academia. Migrants are most beneficial in the health and care sectors, with 22 per cent of carers in the state coming from outside the UK and Ireland, without whom Tracey Reid, chief executive of the Northern Ireland Social Care Council, says the sector “could not survive”. Such statistics are, of course, broadly similar throughout the UK and Ireland, and were regarded as truisms until it became seemingly gauche for any prominent newspaper or politician to repeat them, in favour of contorting gymnastically to flatter the perceptions and prejudices of those who just hate migrants for entirely racist reasons. No matter how much they contribute to society, and no matter how few of them there are.

A compelling argument that this is the case can be found in the demographics of Northern Ireland itself. Its current population is just shy of two million. According to the most recent figures available, net migration in the state between 2001 and 2023 amounted to around 62,000 people, including less than 2,400 refugees in secure accommodation. Ballymena, which until this week had been the most prominent site of anti-immigrant violence in the state, sits in the Mid and East Antrim council area, which has seen fewer than 5,000 international migrants settle there this century. Only 3 per cent of Northern Ireland’s population belong to any ethnic minority at all.

For those of us who find the constant discussion of “the immigration problem” dehumanising and dishonest in any context, it’s revealing to see it deployed in places where immigration barely exists, not least for what it might suggest about such legitimate concerns everywhere else. We are left to presume that any number of non-white faces, no matter how few, is a salient enough horror for locals that their concerns become legitimised automatically. Even one, it would seem, is one too many.Most confusing of all has been the near-total absence of any context regarding who, exactly, is committing all this violence. The reluctance among media outlets to specify that these pogroms are the work of far-right loyalist gangs is particularly odd, given that such groups are fond of signing their work. The LVF, and associated gangs, have for decades sprayed their tags on the houses of the people they burn out, whether Catholics, economic migrants or refugees. Even now their graffiti proudly adorns walls and estates, demanding they be reserved for “locals only”. I’m old enough to remember when the LVF attacked the specially modified home of a severely disabled child because his family was insufficiently Protestant. I’m old enough to remember it because it happened less than two years ago.

When loyalist gangs burned Catholic families out of their homes in past years, there were few stern and sombre pleas that we should understand the arsonists’ concerns. Nor was there a reflexive jolt to place such acts in a context the perpetrators themselves might have liked, perhaps by drawing direct links between their violent acts and the existence of alleged crimes committed by disconnected Catholics many miles away. That this same logic is no longer applied to vast acts of violence against dozens of non-white people of all nationalities in Belfast, purportedly due to the actions of a single man from Sudan, is as preposterous as it is repulsive.
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Jonathan V. Last @jvl.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Spoiler: Elon = Bad www.thebulwark.com/p/spacex-lat...
thebulwark.com
SpaceX, Late-Stage Capitalism, and the Trillionaire’s Race War
Everything, everywhere, all at once.
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
A useful exercise, but still easy to construct a lesser evil argument: both Rubio and Haley are corrupted by collaboration with Trumpism. A harder thought experiment: It's 2028 and the GOP has veered "normal-wise". Platner is running against Jeff Flake (or Mitt Romney)...
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 02/06/2026
another day, another story about the administration's war on knowledge itself, all in service of allow its corporate patrons free rein to rob us blind and poison our world www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...
nytimes.com
Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Sounds exciting! Can't wait to see it! I teach tides in Science of the See and use a NOAA article about D-Day preparation tide predictions. Students often find it fascinating. oceanservice.noaa.gov/podcast/june... Perhaps my atmospheric sciences colleagues will use this movie for teaching?
oceanservice.noaa.gov
Turning the Tide: D-Day and Tide Prediction
D-Day, codenamed Operation Neptune, was the largest amphibious landing not only in World War II, but in history. It marked the start of the liberation of German-occupied France (and later western Euro...
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Aaron Fisher @aaronjfisher.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
We just got approved to hire a teaching professor in Quantitative Methods! This is the *very* rare tenure track teaching position at Berkeley. I'll be chairing the search committee. Official job ad coming later this summer!
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
I've never collected at night, only during the day. Do yours sparkle during the day? I had a student go in a dark room and shake a bottle of them, but she didn't see any light. When they bloom here, the water has a slight purple tint (when concentrated after the net tow).
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Is that a diatom that it has eaten? We see them sometimes in Pu‘uloa (Pearl Harbor in Hawaii). Usually we see either none or huge numbers.
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
I recognize every individual word in this tweet, but when arranged in their current order I can't decipher the meaning. Can there exist some theoretical "worse soccer" than 2013 United? A team so allergic to scoring that "Own Goal" was the lead scorer?
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Folks who actively manage and get awarded grants may have a more accurate and nuanced take. My thoughts are just the perspective of someone who worked on grant funded science as a PhD student and now works with grant funded researchers (but whose teaching job is funded by a college). /end
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Grants often last 3-5 years; so some research still funded by the old grants. Some scientists have non-federal grants (small % of research funding). But if fed grants stop, labs will shut down, scientists will be fired, and scientific research will be almost dead in the water 5/
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Instruments themselves are bought using grants. A weather station, a wave buoy, or any other piece of equipment (from microscopes to telescopes), scientists will write a grant to buy it. No funding means no new equipment and no replacing older equipment as it wears out or breaks. 4/
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
A chemical technician measuring PFAs and PCBs in fish tissue? Grant funded. A postdoc (post PhD researcher in a temporary job) studying Gulf Stream slowing down? Grant funded. A field technician deploying buoys at sea or hiking into the back country to install weather stations? Grant funded. 3/
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Grants pay the salaries of the people doing the science. An institution will (usually) pay a professor's. Everyone else is supported on grant funding. A graduate student working on a new way to estimate fish species numbers in the deep ocean below the sunlit zone? Grant funded. 2/
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Dramatically. Grants pay for supplies that make science possible (everything from gloves to chemicals for getting DNA out of cells to glassware to ...). Almost all science needs supplies. Even computer based modeling studies need computers, server time, licenses for specific software 1/
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Picked up my pre-ordered copy from the bookstore last night- cannot wait to get this semester's grades submitted so that I can dive into these lost worlds!
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Pablo Maurer @mlsist.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Hey DC soccer folk, come out to Barracks Row tonight, I'll be speaking on this panel + there's a bunch of other cool s**t planned as well. Long live the Open Cup (and the lads from Club Eleven)
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Such amazing research and a transformative project. It's a tragedy for science education.
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
"Tucker Collins, an 18-year-old freshman at USC, attended a 'No Kings' protest in Los Angeles on Mar. 28. He ended up getting shot in the eye with a less-lethal projectile by a Department of Homeland Security agent and is now blind."
latimes.com
Teen who went to photograph L.A. 'No Kings' rally shot, blinded by Homeland Security agent, attorney says
Tucker Collins, an 18-year-old freshman at USC, attended a 'No Kings' protest in Los Angeles on Mar. 28. He ended up getting shot in the eye with a less-lethal projectile by a Department of Homeland S...
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Taste aside, it's a very slow growing and maturing fish and so very easy to over harvest. Some fish are sustainably caught. Orange roughy ain't one of them ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/f...
ocean.si.edu
Rough Going for Orange Roughy
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Just terrifying reading
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Trump’s Nominee to Run NSF is Unqualified, Conflicted, and a Threat to Science - Union of Concerned Scientists
blog.ucs.org
Trump’s Nominee to Run NSF is Unqualified, Conflicted, and a Threat to Science
If O’Neill is confirmed as NSF’s director, the Trump administration will further tighten its control over an agency created by Congress to be independent in its work to advance science.
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Good for the National Academies!
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Donn Viviani @donnviviani.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Tides has been an amazing listen over the years. Even when I've looked at an episode title and thought, this one probably won't appeal to me, I've always been interested. The prehistory season was so eye-opening and scratched my scientist-interested-in-history itch.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
This should be the biggest weather and climate news on your radar today. You can send an email today to say why dismantling NCAR is a bad idea for everyone: NSF_NCAR@nsf.gov
nytimes.com
Trump Administration Readies Plans to Dismantle Renowned Science Lab
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