iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 4h

One of the most irritating little things on a daily basis is that this is the chair UAA puts in every classroom for the instructor Great work everyone, incredibly functional set-up

A tall podium with a computer and projector control pad, served by a regular-ass green chair that is nowhere near tall enough.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 10h

I love my kitchen experiments but this one is kinda terrifying rn lol Shaggy mane ink- supposed to be a mushroomy umami flavoring, like a more fungal soy sauce, but ngl it's kinda scary right now lol

A filter set up above an old glass vinegar bottle, now partially filled with what appears to be soy sauce. The counter is a bit of a mess, as it always is when trying to strain various things lol

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I added some paprika and spruce salt, then served it up. Oh my god. It's so, so, SO good. Meat is tender, and not gamey in the slightest. It's sorta like duck but not as greasy as domestic duck can get. I realized I had egg noodles I could have added when I finishing it, but I'll add them tomorrow

A bowl of stew with meat that almost looks like roast beef, with sour cream and chivea on top

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Okay, nap was very good. I forgot to mention adding some bay leaves and wood ear mushrooms to the bird. Now, for the side dish. I *could* make cornbread from scratch, but I know when I can't improve on perfection

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The grouse was cleaned throughly in the field, but give it a good rinse and check for feathers. Add white wine and then the bird. Cover and simmer while you take a nap because you were up so early.

A very dark meat bird in the pot with the veggies

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I found some wild juniper berries while we were hunting, so that seemed an appropriate addition. Also, some coarse-ground Russian mustard and a fancy local potato (a Magic Myrna, for my fellow high-latitude gardeners.) Brown the onions and get everything nice and toasted.

The onions are now joined with a bright yellow potato with pink skin. That one isn't a trick of the light, they're really that yellow.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Spices! Don't measure, just dump them in. White pepper, cumin, dill seed, thyme, garlic, celery salt.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

So how do you cook a spruce grouse? Two big things: strong flavors are your friend, and low and slow is best. Spruce grouse are pretty gamey, so not for everyone and they take some care First up: sauté an onion in duck fat.

Some onions in a pot. Idk why it looks so yellow, the lighting in my kitchen sucks

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

They're my insulated mushroom ones! And never fear, a cooking thread is incoming

A navy pair of overalls with little pink and orange mushrooms in cute jars

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Went hunting today for the first time! I, uhh, need to practice my aim, but I will be enjoying some grouse this evening.

A view of a snow-tinged mountain landscape

Jess aims intently at a spruce grouse. The shot is very clear and close, and it seems impossible to miss. Reader, it was in fact very possible to miss. Repeatedly. Still got it though, eventually.

A view of the sun rising over a mountain from a sandbar in the river

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It's time to finally take all the terrifying things from the garage and shed to the hazardous waste drop-off Because AHHHHHHH

A very large fire extinguisher with a tag on it for the last inspection being in December in 1988. For those keeping track, that is several years before I was born

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The next stage in my goal to never buy meat at the store again

A screenshot of the Alaska Departmenr of Fish and Game app, showing a newly purchased hunting license and waterfowl stamp

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Someone came inside and whined until I gave her a sweater too lmfao

The white dog who was not wearing a sweater in the video is now wearing one while leaning against me

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Will the trials ever cease? First, winter returns; then your human mocks you for being a gigantic baby about it

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

There's not a single brain cell rattling around this sweet head yet somehow she knows the exact moment my emergency fund is replenished so she can go eat something she absolutely shouldn't

A very cute black and grey dog. You can hear the tumbleweeds rolling around her skull though.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

For those saying they look fluffy and warm, wait til you see my other pair lol

A taller and even furrier pair, this time in brown. Less bling but they manage to look even warmer

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Omg look what arrived today THEY ARE SO PRETTY???

A pair of gorgeous black mukluks with almost blue-black fur on them, adorned with silver embroidery that looks like snowflakes and the Big Dipper.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I swear Tähti and Gumbo are distant cousins lol

A white pittie sprinkled with black dots nuzzles my face while curled up on the bed next to me

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Well that's just absurd, it's just not reasonable for it to be this pretty?

A view of a road. The sky is cloudy, the mountains covered in snow, and the trees a frankly ridiculous shade of gold.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Well there's another brand I've gotten stuff from in the past that I'll be skipping in the future 🙃

An ad from the dog clothing company Spark Paws, showing a human and a border collie in matching unicorn-themed hoodies. They're sitting on a carpet of disconcerting genAI leaves, too evenly spaced and with a different set of perspective and scaling than the figures. The shadows are wrong. The dog looks stressed, presumably because they are trapped in some sort of digital feywild and can't escape.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Honestly no surprises here (Rojava was in the short-list, and top politican match is Zohran Mamdani)

My most compatible country, with a 93% match, is Anarchist Aragon and Catalonia.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

turns out their mother died only a couple months later, of "wasting away". not sure what that means in the context of 1818 Bohemia, but I assume cancer, tuberculosis, or something similar it's kinda hard not to read that as "we wanted mom to see us get married before she passed"?

a death record from 11 September, 1818, for Elisabetha, the wife of Georg Weninger, born Roblin. she was 54 years old and the cause of death is "auszerhung", or (according to google translate, so take it with a grain of salt) "wasting away" or "emaciation"

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

one cool thing about reading old records is when you glimpse a very human moment across centuries. these three sisters all got married within weeks of each other in 1818- not super weird, but unusual enough it caught my attention. i wondered if there was a reason.

three records of the brides of a series of marriages. They are Barbara, Theresia, and Anna Maria, the daughters of Georg Weninger and Elisabeth, neé Robl (or Roblin, with the customary feminine marker used in the area on the surname)

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Today's canning: First up, alpine currants and local Manchurian apricots (the latter from the farmer's market)

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

So I went to the Eastern European market again and found something I think will make this next batch of cider absolutely incredible:

A small bottle of syrup with a cute little label. Translated, it says "Taiga Cache Cedar Syrup. Golden magic of cedar syrup: call of the ancient forest"

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It is FALL and Réaltín has been PERSONALLY VICTIMIZED by this fact

A black dog in a hoodie looking unhappy and bewildered at this whole state of affairs

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I ordered some more dressy shoes to wear for teaching and I remain *obsessed* with Manitobah Mukluks

A very cute pair of dark green ankle boots. They have a toe box shaped like the classic moccasin, but they also look very dressy.

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

prepping for pop gen, and thus once again have to explain something that is absolutely not population genetics:

a few bullet points on my slide introducing Monte Carlo methods:
"Developed in nuclear physics to estimate the energy a neutron gives off when colliding with a nucleus"
"Please don’t ask me to explain this more"

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Well, *in theory* two of my students head out to St. Paul tomorrow. ...I have my doubts?

Screenshot of National Weather Service page showing a big ass storm in the Bering Sea. One of the arrows goes literally right over St. Paul

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Rescued from a campus lawnmower with literally moments to spare Also thank you groundskeeping guy for stopping long enough for me to harvest these lol

A bag of large puffball mushrooms. Well, large-ish. Bigger than any I've harvested so far

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

If you want to, you should, in spite of everything

Jess circa 2014, looking femme but also not really present

Jess now, making silly faces with a stuffed swan while wearing a coral-pink button up patterned with toucans. Kinda like trans-masc Ms. Frizzle

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Again, do not recommend- especially because these otters on this lake attacked at least one person this summer. Anyways he swam off and had his friends join him:

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Family lore still recounts how, while on a family trip to Wisconsin, I reached the end of the book and started screaming at my dad from the third row of our Windstar "YOU TOLD ME TO READ THIS, I HATE YOU!!"

You guessed it- it's Where the Red Fern Grows! This is the cover my copy had, complete with the "special low price, $2.99" sticker. The main character is in a nighttime forest that is weirdly brightly lit, behind his two dogs looking out into the distance like very good pups

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I am eating doner and not sharing. Someone's about to call the ASPCA on me.

A white dog with black spots very hopeful that some doner will be shared

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Well, I didn't do it as a thread, but I made the puffball schnitzel Frying isn't my greatest strength, so the garlic unfortunately got scorched, but the rest is pretty damn tasty. The mushroom is perfect texture for the schnitzel!

A plate of slightly artfully (although with less precision in execution than hoped) pieces of golden schnitzel surrounding a pile of golden mashed potatoes and cauliflower

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

in this age of incessant AI graphics, i will be purposefully sourcing as many of my graphics for class from colored-pencil drawings done by random wikipedia contributors as possible en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populat...

a extremely hand-drawn graphic of genetic bottleneck effects. Our original population, all of which are strange cow-horse blobs with frowny faces, are hanging out in a field. two have a pink dot (to indicate pink fur) and six have blue (for blue fur). next, a volcano that looks exactly like every cartoon volcano you've ever seen erupts. Our surviving population is just six horse-cows, now looking even sadder. by chance, 5 are pink and one is blue. After time passes, our population rebounds to 11 individuals, but now all are pink- despite the original population being mostly blue. again, the whole thing is in color pencil that was scanned in with low saturation, and i love it for its overwhelmingly human-made quality

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The dogsitter is so good at getting pics of my dogs looking ridiculous

A white dog with black spots with her tongue out

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I now have a designated Pickle Cupboard Because I wasn't using it for anything else, so why not? (All by me except the two jars from the Oaxacan family farm, I had to return for more enchilada sauce and some al pastor sauce)

A hoard of small jars of pickles and sauces, glowing gem-like in their jars

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

And dinnertime! Served with a bit of manchego cheese, masago, and a few pickles that didn't fit in the jar earlier.

Fried mushrooms and pickled cucumbers around a circle of wild rice

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