iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 18/09/2026

An editor at a journal with surging submissions reached out to the authors of 10 papers that were going to be desk rejected. The result indicates a disturbing time for the scientific literature.

Of the ten submissions:
- Authors of one paper withdrew their submission.
- Authors of one paper said they were unavailable due to other commitments.
- Authors of one paper scheduled a meeting but did not show up.
- Authors of three papers were unable to answer basic questions about the paper.
- Authors of three papers answered questions about high-level ideas in the paper but had difficulty when asked further questions on technical details.
- Authors of one paper answered all of my questions (although I identified a major flaw in that paper).

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 30/10/2025

It’s finally cooling off here and it’s been a long week, so definitely time for a pot of @sagenatural.bsky.social’s Miracle Max’s Chocolate Elixir

An excited looking bespectacled bearded person holding a tin that says: Miracle Max’s Chocolate Elixir. Ingredients: fair trade roasted cacao nibs, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, Sasparilla (all organic)

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 21/10/2025

When the classroom microphone system fails and you have to go old school

Selfie of a spectacle, bearded professor, wearing a headset microphone

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 20/10/2025

Going to be an interesting day in higher education

Error screen showing: Canvas is experiencing issues due to an ongoing AWS incident.
We are working on recovering as soon as possible.
You can follow the status of the issue at https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status and https://status.instructure.com/

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 18/10/2025

If you’re ever flying through ATL (and have time to sit down for a meal) I cannot recommend One Flew South strongly enough. I will choose a longer layover just to get to eat here.

A sushi roll and sashimi (hamachi) with a cocktail

Breast pudding (it was sooooo good) and a (mezcal) cocktail

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 10/10/2025

I always try to make this distinction as a reviewer and I love it as an editor when reviewers make this clear: "Note: The following are optional technical questions that arose during my review. They do not affect my recommendation to accept this paper"

Reviewer comment: "Note: The following are optional technical questions that arose during my review. They do not affect my recommendation to accept this paper"

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 07/10/2025

I would like to thank @sagenatural.bsky.social for helping get me through the semester with their truly amazing teas!

5 tins and a large bag of Desert Sage Natural teas with a loose leaf teapot in foreground. If you haven’t tried their teas you really really should.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 06/10/2025

Very excited to start Cory Doctorow’s new book on enshittification and what to do about it. Comes out tomorrow! Buy it from your local bookstore or get the DRM-free ebook on @libro.fm

Bearded man holding a copy of a book with a poop emoji on the cover titled Enshittification: Why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 22/09/2025

I'm teaching problem decomposition this week and that means The Return of Moo Deng!

On the left "Your Problem" showing a bull sized scary looking hippo. On the left "Your Problem Broken Into Pieces" showing 4 pictures of the incredibly cute baby hippo Moo Deng. The analogy is that the sub problems are smaller and less scary, not that the sub problems are all miniature versions of the overall problem (because yes; last year someone online felt the need to question whether I understood how problem decomposition works).

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 10/09/2025

When Posit Cloud goes down while you’re teaching class (you’re glad you have online copy-paste commands to get you and your students up and running locally)

A selfie of me showing the screen in my classroom in the background displaying a giant 500 Internal Server Error page

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 15/08/2025

What gif pops up when you type your name?

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 12/08/2025

Challenge: post your last photo taken in DC to show what a hell-hole it is.

Picture of a beautiful and pristine subway station

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 14/05/2025

quote skeet with a picture of the airplane you'll accept as a bribe 🚀

Picture of the Firefly ship from the Firefly TV show. The ship is next to a moving train.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 07/05/2025

If you see this, post the most recent photo of yourself from your camera roll. No cheating!

A bearded man lying back in a rainbow hammock raising a glass of white wine towards the camera

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 26/04/2025

#WithoutNSF we wouldn't have software that allows us to automatically monitor trees (for things like forestry), wildlife (for management and conservation), and livestock using drones and airplanes. deepforest.readthedocs.io/en/v1.5.0/

Image of trees from overhead in forests in Alabama, Virginai, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. Bounding boxes are shown around each tree with their species indicated by the color of the box.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 17/04/2025

Let's all show up for the Day of Action for Higher Education today. Now is the time to fight back to save US higher education. There are events all over the US and lots of online activities as well. "Your silence will not protect you" - Audre Lorde www.dayofactionforhighered.org

April 17, Day of action for higher education. Join us! QR code that links to https://www.dayofactionforhighered.org/events

Map of the United States showing large numbers of locations across the country

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 20/02/2025

It’s “Do not obey in advance” Thursday

Photo of a bearded person wearing a red t-shirt with a raccoon in the middle and the words “Do not obey in advance”

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 22/11/2024

Can’t believe it’s already time for my next to last day of class hoodie

Picture of me wearing a white hoodie with the words “It’s almost over” printed on the front

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 04/11/2024

Start the countdown for the increase in the number of deeply inaccurate citations

Screenshot of Google Scholar website showing the following line: "New! AI outlines in Scholar PDF Reader: skim the bullets, deep read what you need"

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 24/10/2024

Excited to see that early voting on the UF campus was busy today. Still only took 5 minutes to vote. Go vote today or make a plan to go soon. Abortion rights are on the line (and so much else) 🗳️

Selfie of a bearded man with glasses pointing to an “I Voted” sticker

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 01/10/2024

Something I'm adding to my open course materials are weekly Reference Cards that provide a concise summary of material from the week E.g., dcsem-solutions.weecology.org/reference-ca... Notes & videos are useful but students often need a quick reminder & tell me that this has been really useful

The top of a reference card showing a bullet point summary followed by a code example. There is quick link based navigation within the page on the right side.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 24/09/2024

I'm teaching problem decomposition for programming today, so I made a new visualization to help students understand the benefits.

Left side - "Your problem" Image of an angry hippopotamus.
Right side - "Your problem broken down into pieces" 4 cute pictures of Moo Deng an adorable baby pygmy hippo

Angry hippo image from: https://www.fotocommunity.de/photo/angry-hippo-again-huber-tom/43184827

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 17/09/2024

The sadness of going to get your first cup of coffee only to realized that you were so tired you forgot to add the water

Empty coffee pot with a PLOS One Editorial Board mug next to it

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 31/08/2024

If you see this, quote post with a beach photo from your gallery.

Sunset with whispy orange clouds at the beach

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 15/08/2024

I never miss an opportunity to remind students to backup their important data datacarpentry.org/semester-bio...

Exercise from my Data Carpentry course:

To determine if a file named thesis_data.csv exists in your working directory you can use the code to get a list of available files and directories:

1. Use the %in% operator to write a conditional statement that checks to see if thesis_data.csv is in this list.
2. Write an if statement that loads the file using read_csv() only if the file exists. 3.Add an else clause that prints "OMG MY THESIS DATA IS MISSING. NOOOO!!!!" if the file doesn’t exist.
4. Make sure your actual thesis data is backed up.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 14/08/2024

I hereby submit my application to head the search committee for the next University of Florida president.

Screenshot of a quote tweet by @ethanwhite on Nov 1, 2022 stating:

"The @UF Board of Trustees has made it clear where it stands, and it is in opposition to the faculty and students that make the University of Florida what it is. Regardless of how the new president performs, the damage done to the institution by this decision will echo for years."

The quoted tweet from @UF says "The University of Florida Board of Trustees voted unanimously today to select U.S. Sen. Dr. Ben Sasse as UF’s president-elect."

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 05/08/2024

Same here. Maybe you trees remain vertical and your power hold.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 29/07/2024

We (@weecology.bsky.social) monitor Everglades wading birds using drones & turn this imagery into data in near real-time using computer vision models to detect birds & automated workflows to immediately process new imagery. 🧪🌎 Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2024... Blog post doi.org/10.59350/b5b...

Screenshot of https://everwatch.weecology.org. Map showing the general location of the colony, CypressCity. Time-series showing the total counts of all birds in that colony weekly during the February-April for 2000-2023. A zoomed in image showing individual bird detections on top of the imagery.

One-to-one plot showing counts of birds from the bird detector on the x axis, human counts on the y axis, and a tight clustering of points along the one-to-one line.

Diagram of workflow showing: 1) imagery moving from drone to laptop and then syncing to a workstation; 2) ground control point alignment; 3) combine individual drone images into a single orthomosaic; 4) syncing the orthomosaic to the HPC; 5) cropping the ortho into pieces for the model; 6) DeepForest model prediction; 7) output the predictions; archive the predictions and transfer them to a web server for visualization. It also shows: 1) orthomosaic converted to mbtiles and geospatial raster data; 2) syncing this data to a tiling service in the cloud; 3) that data being pull to the data visualization platform.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 13/05/2024

Every journal should make submission as easy as @plos.bsky.social Biology

Easy Submission: Our submission process is designed to save researchers time so they can focus on their science. With format- free initial submission, authors need only upload a PDF of their manuscript, cover letter and supporting information. Submission takes less than 10 minutes. One of our Staff Editors will evaluate the work and provide an initial decision in about a week". Additional submission information is required only if the work is sent for peer review and specific formatting is not necessary until the manuscript is close to acceptance. Please note that submission through our online system asks for confirmation that the work is not under consideration elsewhere and presubmission enquiries should not be sent through this route.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 30/04/2024

University of Florida professor @tbridis.bsky.social is reporting on Twitter that UF has confirmed arresting protestors for "clearly prohibited activities". Reminder that UF's list of "prohibited activities" includes the use of chairs & pillows twitter.com/tbridis/stat... #HandsOffOurStudents

In response to the arrests made of protesters this evening at the University of Florida campus, below is a statement that is attributable to UF spokesman Steve Orlando:

“This is not complicated: The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children — they knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they'll face the consequences. For many days, we have patiently told protesters — many of whom are outside agitators — that they were able to exercise their right to free speech and free assembly. And we also told them that clearly prohibited activities would result in a trespassing order from UPD (barring them from all university properties for three years) and an interim suspension from the university. For days UPD patiently and consistently reiterated the rules. Today, individuals who refused to comply were arrested after UPD gave multiple warnings and multiple opportunities to comply.”

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 26/04/2024

Here are some of the things the University of Florida “leadership” thinks are worth suspending students & banning them for 3 years: Littering Sleeping (outside, I guess) Amplified Sound “Any other items and/or activities deemed to be non-compliant with policy & regulations by university officials”

UF
UNIVERSITY of
FLORIDA
Division of Student Life
Allowable Activities
Speech
Expressing viewpoints Holding signs in hands
Prohibitive Items and Activities
no amplified sound
no demonstrations inside buildings
No littering
No camping
No sleeping
No unmanned signs
No blocking egress
No building structures (chairs, stakes, benches, tables)
No camping, including tents, sleeping bags, pillows, etc.
No disruption
No threats
No violence
No weapons
Any other items and/or activities deemed to be non-compliant with policy and regulations by university officials
Consequences for Non-Compliance
Individuals found responsible for engaging in prohibited activities shall be trespassed from campus
Students will receive a 3 year trespass and suspension.
Employees will be trespassed and separated from employment.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 07/02/2024

The breadth of impact of @thecarpentries is wild. At a bio conference I'm at the ice breaking exercise involved a bingo card that included "Taught or attended a Carpentries workshop" & out of 7 people in my group there were multiple Carpentries instructors! They just joined - give them a follow

A bingo card with a square highlighted in red that says "Taught or attended a Carpentreis workshop (software or data)

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 13/01/2024

Guys! We just drew Apples to Apples cards to predict what our 2024 would be like and I have great news!

Apples to Apples card showing the word Boring

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 12/01/2024

. @skmorgane.bsky.social named her To Do list "Morgan's Rock", after Sisyphus, which is simultaneously the funniest, most demoralizing, and most accurate representation of academic work these days.

A list icon followed by the words "Morgan's Rock"

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 12/01/2024

Snagged the first RSS sub in Inoreader!

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 01/01/2024

go to inspirobot.me and generate a motivational poster to get you focused for the new year Strong 2024 vibes there Inspirobot

Inspirational poster with the text “Ever so often the coolest thing you can do is to panic”

Inspirational poster with the text “After something important, comes the smoke”

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 01/12/2023

It's the end of the last full week of classes so time to teach wearing my official end of the semester sweatshirt.

Me wearing a sweatshirt that says "It's almost over"

Me teaching with a sweatshirt that says "It's almost over" hanging across the monitors that I am teaching behind.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 29/11/2023

Nice. This is grad school for me.... and now I really want a breakfast burrito smothered in green chile...

Picture of a large barn style restaurant with a large Frontier Restaurant sign

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 29/11/2023

Using only a restaurant, tell us where you went to college.

A purple castle themed building with yellow turrets and "King's Chef Diner" painted on the window.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 19/11/2023

I’m Ethan. I work on environmental data science and ecological forecasting. I work at a university in Florida but my research involves data from around the world. 🧪🌎

Map of millions of trees identified to species from remote sensing data at the BART National Ecological Observatory Network site.

Time series data and associated forecasts for the desert pocket mouse showing that changes in the surrounding species composition can influence forecastability.

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 18/11/2023

Son, did you crash the car? No dad, it experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Text from a news article: “Despite the detonation, which SpaceX calls a rapid unscheduled disassembly, the test flight went further than the first launch in”

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Ethan White @ethanwhite.weecology.org · 15/11/2023

Me at 20: What is my advisor accidentally doing that makes every document I open from him appear zoomed in like 200%? Me now:

Picture of a Google Doc with zoom set at 200%. The text is really large, which is nice for your eyes when you're been staring intensely at computer screens for decades.

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