iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Walking through the urban crow roost at 4am and seeing THOUSANDS of sleeping crows despite the noise of the city was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced. I'm delighted that I got to write about it for @highcountrynews.org #scicomm 🪶🧪

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Thank you! And also, RAW stinging nettle? Fascinating and a little frightening honestly

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

I don't think anyone went back to look, but I'd be fascinated to know just how much of this bird the anemone managed to eat (Image content warning: animal death. I've never used BlueSky's content warning labels but I hope it blurs it for people who don't want to see!)

Underwater image of a giant green sea anemone eating a cormorant chick. The cormorant's head is fully within the anemone's mouth but the rest of it is sticking straight up and out.

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

My field guide says they top out around 10in, though most of the ones I see tend to me more in the 4-8" range. The paper that describes these (digitalcommons.usf.edu/marine_ornit...) doesn't say how big the anemone was but it was definitely not going to have an easy time eating the whole bird.

digitalcommons.usf.edu

Giant Green Anemones Consume Seabird Nestlings on the Oregon Coast

By L. Sheffield, L. B. Habecker, and G. Oxwang, Published on 01/19/24

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Pssst @lisasheffieldguy.bsky.social, your paper was very influential for this piece 😄

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I've got a new essay in @highcountrynews.org, all about giant green anemones and how much I adore them. #scicomm 🦑🧪

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

This is all amazing, thank you so much! It's also reassuring that to an actual Bird Scientist this is very complicated, and it's not just me totally missing something.

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Photo by Mark Scherz et al. You can read more about these tiny dudes at pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... and also here: www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/t...

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Mini mum, Mini scule, and Mini ature are 3 frog species endemic to Madagascar. They got their names because they are teeny tiny (Mini mum tops out at ~9mm in males and ~11mm in females! The frog in this photo is on a thumb!!) and because their namer, @markscherz.bsky.social, was truly inspired

an extremely tiny frog sitting on the tip of a person's thumbnail. It's like, half the size of the nail? Two-thirds? It's little. It has a dark brown mottled belly with lighter brown/tan back, and its iris is red around a black pupil. It's really stupid how cute it is.

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Had one of those moments where I thought SURELY everyone must know about the frog genus Mini, home to tiny frogs Mini mum, Mini scule, and Mini ature, only to text several friends and realize this isn't common knowledge. So now you, dear BlueSky friends, get to learn too. 🐸 🧪

The XKCD Lucky 10,000 comic, about how for each thing everyone supposedly knows by the time they're adults, each day there are approximately 10,000 people in the U.S. hearing about it for the first time. The second panel usually shows someone asking about diet coke and mentos and their friend saying oh man, come on, we're going to the grocery store. In this one, diet coke and mentos has been replaced with The Mini frog genus, and the grocery store has been replaced with Madagascar.

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Reposted by Liz Weinberg

Celeste Labedz @celestelabedz.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

I haven't seen enough Juneau Icefield Research Program on hype on BlueSky! Are you a student interested in polar science? Are you a researcher imagining future field work? Are you an educator looking to teach the best and brightest? JIRP is for you! Deadlines are soon! www.juneauicefield.org 🧪⚒️

Nine people standing in a row in front of a vast glacier with jagged mountains in the distance

Woman standing on a rock in front of a glacier running through a wide valley, with dark moraines and arcuate ogives on the surface of the ice

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

ok yes this is a good good choice

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Today's #scicomm / science question: what are your favorite science/ecology/climate words? For their beauty, their utility, their awe-inspiration, or simply because they're fun to say? 🧪🦑 Some of mine: solastagia (neologism), pyrocumulonimbus (awe+beauty+horror), albedo (important+fun to say)

media.tenor.com

elmo is wearing a chef 's hat and holding a glass of orange juice

Alt: elmo is wearing a chef's hat and saying that's a big word for elmo

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Thank you! Just messaged you 🪼🪸

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Thank you! I just emailed you.

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Ooh thank you! I love "super fast biological systems" as a field of study

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Science and marine life folks! Does anyone on here study sea anemones (or know someone who does)? I'm particularly interested in talking to someone about the biomechanics of their tentacles and stinging cells. 🧪🦑

media.tenor.com

a close up of a sea anemone with a lot of tentacles

Alt: a close up of several sea anemones in different colors (white, yellow, brownish orange) waving their tentacles

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Also hi @lisasheffieldguy.bsky.social it was wild to come across your name when I was just casually looking for info about giant green anemones

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

the paper describes two nestling birds that were consumed by giant green anemones at the base of Haystack Rock: a cormorant in 2013 and a glaucous winged x western gull in 2003. It also postulates that this probably isn't entirely uncommon. Anemones! They're opportunists I guess

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

WHAT (this paper isn't new, it's a decade+ old, but also still WHAT WHAT WHAT) 🧪

screenshot of a scientific paper heading, reading: contributed papers. giant green anemones consume seabird nestlings on the oregon coast. authors: Lisa Sheffield Guy, Lisa Bullis Habecker & Gretel Oxwang

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Reposted by Liz Weinberg

The Trandalorian @charliejaneanders.com · 16/09/2025

Hey, I know books are expensive and money is tight right now. But if there's a brand new book you really wanna read — including my own Lessons in Magic and Disaster — you can help get the book into way more hands by requesting it from your local library! It's easy! Check your library's website.

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Quite the opposite, which is why I really feel for whoever had to do this

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

wait no I take it back, upon further review some of the scats were "moist upon collection" and got frozen, not dried out

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

reading a study about coyote diets, and my condolences to the person who had to do this part: "Prior to extraction, we homogenized the scat (hand-mixing it from outside of the collection bag for 10–15 s)" The scat was dried out at this point and they presumably were wearing gloves, but still 🧪

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

ohhhh I love this (the picture and this tactic of yours) so much

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

walking up to my computer sideways in a slight crouch, eyes averted, trying to trick myself into writing

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Currently reading a study about mesopredator (raccoon, coyote, skunk) cognition and please enjoy this photo of a raccoon in a box scientists built for it to press buttons in (study is Stanton et al, Variation in Reversal Learning by Three Generalist Mesocarnivores) 🧪

a black and white image of half a raccoon's face VERY CLOSE to the camera

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Reposted by Liz Weinberg

Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 11/09/2025

Political violence is abhorrent. I have not celebrated Kirk's death. But Newsom calling for his followers to "continue Charlie Kirk's work," someone who praised stoning gay people as "god's perfect law," who called for men to "take care of" trans people like they did in the 50s and 60s, is not it.

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

This is your regular reminder that Jacobin pigeons exist, and they ARE coming to steal your husband 🪶 (photo via WikiCommons: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_...)

a ridiculous looking pigeon. It is mostly white with a few dark feathers on its wing and tail, and a few golden feathers in its ruff. Its ruff is the bizarre part—it has fluffy-looking feathers sticking out all around its neck in a collar that makes it look like it's wearing a Elizabethan ruff.

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Reposted by Liz Weinberg

bubbe yaga @ellearmageddon.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

at their core, trans rights, abortion rights, and vaccine rights are actually all the same issue: they’re all about bodily autonomy, and the willingness to concede any of them puts the others at risk.

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

Ohhhh I would like to hang out with those squirrels

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Another thing I love about this paper is that squirrels were apparently reluctant to do the cognitive test after they'd been captured and tagged, so instead the researchers spent 2 months learning to identify individual squirrels by sight

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

I assume this is because squirrel behavioral studies don't often require researchers to actually capture the animals, which means the squirrels are truly choosing to participate (without, of course, understanding that they're part of a study). But it nonetheless delights me.

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

And "Caching for where and what: evidence for a mnemonic strategy in a scatter-hoarder," Delgado and Jacobs: (bonus for this one: each squirrel received 16 nuts. fair payment!)

screenshot of study, reading 2. Material and methods. The study was conducted on the University of California at Berkeley campus, with a population of marked, free-ranging fox squirrels, as described in earlier studies. Forty-five individual squirrels (17 female and 28 male) participated in the study.

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

For example, in "Cognitive Performance of Wild Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) in Rural and Urban, Native, and Non-native Environments," Chow et al

screenshot from the paper, reading "Materials and methods. Sample and study sites. Thirty-seven wild gray squirrels from the native environments (United States) and 29 squirrels from the non-native environments (United Kingdom) participated in this study.

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

A thing I've noticed while reading about urban animals is that squirrels, unlike other animals, are often framed as study participants rather than subjects. I love it so much. 🧪🐿️

media.tenor.com

a squirrel is standing in a pile of leaves on the ground

Alt: a squirrel pawing at leaves on the ground as if it's panicked it forgot where it put that acorn

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Fear: moray. Complete bafflement: gulper. Go back to the deep deeps!

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

I understand that bears are large, but I saw bear poop today that was approximately two+ inches in diameter and I am perturbed

An array of cylindrical turds; the photo completely fails to communicate how big they were

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

I’m pawsitively ashamed I didn’t sea this sooner

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Liz Weinberg @eaweinberg.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Rattlesnakes apparently only need 500-600 calories a year??????? @ologies.bsky.social blowing my mind today

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