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Kristina M. Gill

@kmgill.bsky.social
2.5K followers 2.1K following 269 posts

Archaeobotanist, archaeologist, and historical ecologist working in island and coastal California. Native plant enthusiast 🌼 Lowe Syndrome Mom 🌼

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Reposted by Kristina M. Gill
Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
😂😂😂
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I spent the full hour on NPR/@wbur.org's "On Point" in conversation with Meghna Chakrabarti on this year's very strong El Niño event--which is expected reach record intensity by Nov--and the broader context surrounding it, as well as local-to-global impacts.
wbur.org
How the 'super' El Niño will shape the global climate
El Niño has become an annual global climate phenomenon. But this year, scientists are warning of a record-setting 'super' El Niño. What that could mean for the weather everywhere on planet earth.
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🦋 Alie of the Woods 🦋 @humanbyweight.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Princeton finally handed off some advance copies for the 2nd Edition of my wasp book, and they look phenomenal! Thank you everyone for your exceptional patience! Go order it right now!! press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
A photo of me (a white woman with long brownish hair wearing glasses and a dark blue shirt) holding an advance copy of my book "The Social Wasps of North America, Central America, and the Caribbean: Second Edition" in front of an old wooden railing and some lush sassafras leaves. There is a big illustration of a bald-faced hornet on the cover. 

This photo is slightly misleading, since it was taken by my mom a year ago in 2025, immediately before we noticed the major printing errors in the plate series that required us to completely redo the printing from scratch. My joy is nonetheless real, and I feel justified in using this photo since I never posted it the first time around. It's all good now!
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Antiquity Journal @antiquity.ac.uk · 23/09/2026
📕 #BookReview 🏺 #Archaeology Placing people with disabilities at the centre of historical archaeology, Laurie A. Wilkie & Katherine M. Kinkopf's 'An introduction to crip archaeology' explores how disability studies can transform how we think about the past 1/2 (£) doi.org/10.15184/aqy...
Cover of the book reviewed, depicting various metal spoons with diverse shapes and decorations, with the text 'Book Review, Antiquity'.
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Elle Cordova @ellecordova.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I am the very model of a modern day typographer A font take on the tune “Modern Major General” by Gilbert & Sullivan #typography #fonts #graphicdesign
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
We may seem some genuinely extreme humidity levels along SoCal coastal plain Tue-Wed (yes, even worse than today). As Marie's tropical moisture lingers, temps of 90-100F will combine with dew points of 70F to nearly 80F (!), yielding heat index values as high as ~110F. #CAwx
Map showing predicted heat index values over SoCal on Wed from ECMWF model. They are widely above 100F, and locally as high as 110F.Map showing predicted humidity (dew point temperatures) over SoCal on Wed from ECMWF model. They are widely above 70F, and locally as high as 80F.
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Kate Clancy @kateclancy.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
PREGNANCY INTERRUPTED in Newsweek:
"People joke a lot about, 'I've got a parasite eating me,'" she said. Others describe themselves as a "short-term rental" or compare a fetus to a tenant they cannot wait to evict.

“There's this oppositional language that people use when describing pregnancy,” Clancy said. “The science is much more cooperative. There are ways in which each is invested in the other's survival.”
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Kristina M. Gill @kmgill.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The lunar eclipse from California’s central coast. The storm blew past just in time. 🔭🌕🧪✨
Photo of the lunar eclipse through a telescope. Foggy conditions give an ethereal veil to the moon glowing red towards the bottom. 
A
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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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Kate Clancy @kateclancy.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
MY BOOK IS HERE (for me at least, you need to pre-order it right now!). Check out my unboxing (unenveloping?) video and me telling you about a few of the most feminist rage-y chapters. bookshop.org/p/books/preg...
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Aug update from ECMWF predictive ensemble is genuinely extraordinary from extreme #ElNiño perspective. One implication: it is now indicating not only 70-100% odds of above avg winter precip California-wide, but also 70-100% odds of DJF 26-27 being among the top 20% of wettest CA winters (!).
Map showing ECMWF ensemble DJF 2026-7 predicted precipitation by tercile status (i.e., most likely well above, well below, or near-average). All of the CA coast is painted the brightest color, indicating 70-100% odds of a winter among the wettest third of all historical winters.Map showing ECMWF ensemble DJF 2026-7 predicted precipitation. All of the CA coast is painted the bluest color, indicating well below average odds of a winter in the driest 20% of all winters.Map showing ECMWF ensemble DJF 2026-7 predicted precipitation. All of the CA coast is painted the brightest orange color, indicating well above average odds of a winter in the wettest 20% of all CA winters.
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Kate Clancy @kateclancy.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Turns out I fumbled the pre-order link, here you go!
bookshop.org
Pregnancy Interrupted: The Science and Stories of How Pregnancies Really End
A compassionate, evidence-based look at pregnancy loss--how and why it happens, and why the assurances of the medical industry don't reflect the reality One of the most prevalent myths about human pre...
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Ophthopedia @ophthalmology.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Ophthopedia Update: Modeling of Lowe patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells into trabecular meshwork: Congenital glaucoma is the leading cause of vision loss in patients with Lowe syndrome (LS), a rare X-linked disease caused by mutations in the OCRL… #Ophthalmology #Ophthotwitter #Scicomm
dlvr.it
Modeling of Lowe patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells into trabecular meshwork
Congenital glaucoma is the leading cause of vision loss in patients with Lowe syndrome (LS), a rare X-linked disease caused by mutations in the OCRL gene. OCRL encodes an inositol polyphosphate 5-phosphatase. Despite significant research efforts, the pathogenesis of glaucoma caused by OCRL deficiency remains unclear, partly due to the inaccessibility of patient-derived ocular cells.
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Reposted by Kristina M. Gill
Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Serious wildland-urban interface (WUI) fire situation in Spokane, WA amid "extremely critical/Particularly Dangerous Situation" fire weather conditions. Two separate fires, #OldTrailsFire & #FairViewFire, are actively burning near/in neighborhoods; mass evacs ongoing. #WAwx
Snapshot from Watch Duty showing evacuation areas on the north side of Spokane.Snapshot from NOAA's Wildfire Fire Data Portal showing two hotspots from active fires burning near and in Spokane, Washington.
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Yooty @yooty.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
The conservative solution for the “male loneliness epidemic” and decentering men is to just remove women from public spaces.
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Kristina M. Gill @kmgill.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Agreed. 💫
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Jonathan McDowell @planet4589.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
SpaceX continues to reconfigure its Starlink constellation, moving the satellites to lower orbits. In this thread by 'high' I will mean sats at 500-600 km, 'medium' 400-500 km and 'low' 300-400 km.
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
I just submitted my formal comment on the disastrous proposal to transform essentially all U.S. federal grantmaking--affecting every sector of American science, technology, education, & health--into an overtly partisan political process. Full text here: weatherwest.com/wp-c...
Screenshot of page 1 of my letter (see link in post for full text).Screenshot of page 2 of my letter (see link in post for full text).Screenshot of page 3 of my letter (see link in post for full text).Screenshot of page 4 of my letter (see link in post for full text).
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Kate Clancy @kateclancy.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
I've been doing sexual harassment and assault research and advocacy work since 2012. If there's one thing people need to understand is that everything, literally everything, is stacked against the victim. Every one who comes forward risks their reputation, identity, safety, and more. 1/2
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I wanted to share my thoughts on the proposed OMB rule change that would radically transform federal grant-making into an overtly partisan political process. It's highly alarming, and would be devastating for American science (among many other things).
youtu.be
The new proposed OMB rules would be a disaster for American science, technology, and health
In this excerpt from a recent livestream, climate scientist Daniel Swain explains with the newly proposed rules from the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would be a disaster not only for American science, but also for everything from disaster response to public universities to can
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Catherine Frieman @cjfrieman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Today and forever: there is no world and never has been a world without gender diversity, trans and queer folk
anthrodendum.org
Archaeologists for Trans Liberation | anthro{dendum}
By The Black Trowel Collective To be an archaeologist is to revel in the diversity of human expression through time. Trans perspectives and voices add necessary further dimensions to our…
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Dr Lia Betti @liabetti.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Very, very happy that our paper is finally out! We look at how tight a fit primates experience at birth, and found really cool results. It has been a long journey from collecting the first data seven years ago! A brief thread (1/8) www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Comparative primate analysis shows that humans are not unique in having a tight cephalopelvic fit at birth - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Analysing cephalopelvic proportions among 29 extant primate species, the authors show that a tight cephalopelvic fit is not unique to humans, with comparable or tighter fits occurring in several non-h...
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Gwen Pearson @bug-gwen.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
New paper out suggests there are a LOT more species of insects in the world. Their estimate: 20.3 million species, of which we have described 5% 🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Scientists have only discovered a tiny fraction of living insect species
About 1 million insect species have been described, but a new analysis suggests tens of millions more may be out there
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Lightning bugs have arrived on our block!! My next door neighbor Maggie & I just freaked the fuck out bc neither of us have seen one here in years. The native habitat worked!!! She’s lived here ~40 years & said the streets used to be full of them. She’d catch them as a girl. Now they’re back 😭😭😭
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Dr Space Junk (Alice Gorman) @drspacejunk.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
'But archaeology can be of the living, not just of the dead, and this means it's inextricably linked with the future'. 🧪 🏺 🔭
zoharesque.blogspot.com
Why do we need an archaeology of space?
Why do we need an archaeology of space? Haven’t we got an abundant documentary record to tell us all about spacecraft and their stories? Not...
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Flint Dibble @flintdibble.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
This video took over TEN YEARS to make! So you know it's a good one It summarizes a major avenue of research that took me from PhD student to Postdoc to now Don't miss out on it! It's educational and fun youtu.be/mn_51q5mTM8?...
youtu.be
We solved a 94 year old mystery about ancient Greece by analyzing GOATS!
YouTube video by Archaeology with Flint Dibble
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Kristina M. Gill @kmgill.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Happy Solstice Fathers Day! 🌼 Canyon sunflower (Venegasia carpesioides) with two native bees collecting pollen. California central coast 🐝
Yellow flower of a canyon sunflower (Venegasia carpesioides) with two different native bees (one bright green the other smaller and darker with a yellow and black striped thorax) collecting pollen.
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Arlyssa D. Becenti ✍️🗞️ @abecenti.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
From me: Tohono O'odham Nation sues feds over border wall on tribal lands
azcentral.com
Tohono O'odham Nation sues feds over border wall on tribal lands
Tribal officials argue that plans to build 62 miles of border wall across Tohono O'odham lands violates the law and threatens resources.
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Crystal Fleming クリスタル @alwaystheself.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
I'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +
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Ticia Verveer @ticiaverveer.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Archaeologists in Peru just found two 500-year-old freeze-dried potatoes hidden under a floor at the Inca site of Tambo Viejo. 🥔🏺 ​ 📷L. M. Valdez phys.org/news/2026-06...
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Kristina M. Gill @kmgill.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
My brother in law is in these photos as NPS maintenance, shipped in from the PNW. I can’t stop laughing 🫢 www.usatoday.com/picture-gall...
usatoday.com
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turns green after surface painted
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool appears green after recent repairs and painting work in Washington, D.C. See the photos.
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Kate Clancy @kateclancy.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
My latest, on the impact of hormonal contraception on young adolescent brains. It matters to get the science right to confront MAHA rather than turn to some sort of science positivism every time they attack our disciplines. buttondown.com/KateClancy/a...
Enter hormonal contraception. When young people, whose brains are in a critical period where they are responding to and being organized by hormonal exposures, are prescribed hormonal contraception, they are replacing whatever hormonal exposures come from their endogenous (from within) hormones with an exogenous (from without) one. Exogenous, synthetic hormones may have a greater binding affinity – this means they can exert stronger effects via hormone receptors.

For a full-grown person not in a critical transition period, this may not matter. For a young person whose hormonal exposures are more variable (because of typical experiences of infrequent menstrual cycles, lower hormone concentrations, and anovulation) this could lead to significant differences in terms of how their tissues and organs differentiate and learn to respond to hormones.

Two big points to make here: First, there are many reasons a young person (and their caregiver) may be considering a hormonal treatment at this age: dysmenorrhea (painful periods) are very common, they may already be developing endometriosis, they may need a less easy-to-spot form of contraception, they may have premenstrual dysphoric disorder, they may be non-binary or trans – and a hundred other possibilities. Some of these are very, very important for quality of life, some are suicide prevention. There are a lot of phenomena out there where a hormonal treatment is the only feasible option, and the alternative is terrible.

Second, we need not fear change. That is, many, many factors influence our endogenous hormones and therefore also have reorganizing effects on the adolescent brain, from exercise to schooling to pandemics to authoritarian regimes to family separation to climate change to inciting joy. And so, we need not fear hormonal treatments simply because they influence the brain in some way. What we need to ask is, under certain circumstances and for certain bodies, are these treatment exposures influencing the brai…
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Catherine Frieman @cjfrieman.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
One reason i think everyone should take an archaeology class is to internalise with tangible examples that there is no pure, natural past utopia and that antibiotics and vaccines are what stand between us and a 50% child mortality rate and scores of women dying needlessly during pregn and birth
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Okay, folks: The big El Niño update is now out on Weather West! This sure looks like it's going to be a dramatic year from a global climate perspective, and there are major implications for extreme events (across California, the U.S. West, & well beyond).
weatherwest.com
Special update: Rising odds of a strong-to-historic El Niño event in 2026, with growing likelihood of significant regional-to-global scale impacts - Weather West
June 11, 2026 - Daniel Swain - A quick refresher: What is El Niño and how can it affect global weather patterns? El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a semi-regular recurring cycle that transfers vast amounts of heat and momentum from the tropical Pacific to the global atmosphere. It is triggered every 3–7 years when the #
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Kristina M. Gill @kmgill.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
💫
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Kristina M. Gill @kmgill.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Does anyone know how I can track what this was re-entering the atmosphere above the California Central Coast at 1:42 am? 🔭☄️🛰️🧪
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Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
I wrote a piece on Hegseth's religious code changes and the specific absurdity of removing the religions of some of our better known Founding Fathers. Up this afternoon @religiondispatches.org with my deepest thanks to @mpgphd.bsky.social for her edits & image. religiondispatches.org/2026/06/08/f...
religiondispatches.org
The Fake Faiths of Our Founders?
Every Pete Hegseth story somehow becomes a story about Christian nationalism, but few are as on the nose as last week’s. The Pentagon announced the culling of the US military’s list of recognized reli...
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Dr Space Junk (Alice Gorman) @drspacejunk.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
A priority for space archaeology: investigating Earth and near-Earth space as a combined ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ system. 🧪 🏺
tandfonline.com
Launching archaeology into space and what it tells us about life on earth
Published in Australian Archaeology (Vol. 90, No. 1, 2024)
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
🧵 Public science in the US has taken some heavy hits over the last year, but the White House OMB is proposing a series of changes that will result in a TKO for science as we know it unless we fight back. Here's what's happening, and why it matters. 1/n
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Again, please share. In every aspect of American history you will run smack dab into the critical contributions of Black people. It’s not Black history. It’s American history. Trying to erase it is a fool’s errand. We live it every day. time.com/5836444/blac...
time.com
The Forgotten Black History of How Memorial Day Started
Historians like the Pulitzer Prize winner David Blight have tried to raise awareness of freed slaves who decorated soldiers' graves in 1865
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🌴 Scott Zona, Ph.D. 🌴 @scottzona.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
You don’t have to go to Tatooine or Arakis to find fog collectors. Many plants from arid areas are specially adapted to collect fog to top up their water budget. They have curly, wavy or hairy leaves to intercept fog. 📷: Albuca spiralis Collet Dodkins CCBYNC4 🌾🧪🌱 #Asparagaceae #fog #Botany 1/2
Photo of a plant in an arid habitat. The flower stalks bear greenish pendulous flowers. The leaves, at ground level, are distinctly curled.
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 23/05/2026
I am very glad that Watch Duty exists, and is holding the line on providing accurate, freely available disaster information to the public, outside of the locked down and intentionally confusing confines of X and Meta. app.watchduty.org
app.watchduty.org
Watch Duty - Wildfire Maps & Alerts
Real-time information about wildfire and firefighting efforts nearby
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Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Because this country likes to forget what it’s capable of, I take it as a duty to remind us. We sit at the brink of the largest decimation of Black political power since the fall of Reconstruction — a Second Redemption. And the end of Black political power means the end of democracy itself.
nytimes.com
The Civil Rights Era Is Collapsing Before Our Eyes
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Dr. Kat Napaaqtuk❄️ @napaaqtuk.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
For the evening folks
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Kristina M. Gill @kmgill.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Really mind blowing stuff here. Why on earth would the expectation be that senior PIs wouldn’t be intimately familiar with the material being cited? It’s not just performative?! 🤯
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Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Clovis-first is dead in the water. Try as they might, they can’t put the Pre-Clovis genie back in the proverbial bottle 🫡
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Kristina M. Gill @kmgill.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
30 SCIENTISTS SLAM STRAT STUDY 30 experts just published a series of three eLetters in Science May 4-9. The letters systematically dismantle the claims made by Surovell et al. that Monte Verde is <8k yr old, upholding the rigorously documented conclusion that Monte Verde really is 14.5kyo 🏺🧪🌎
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Gaelynn Lea @gaelynnlea.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Yesterday was the perfect way to cap off a truly delightful book launch tour... Thank you to Boston Public Radio for inviting me to perform music live and talk about my new book with the wonderful Jim & Margery! 🎶🎙️🎶 👀 Watch the GBH interview here: linktr.ee/gaelynnlea
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Evelyndroid's Aperture Science and Bugge-Finding 🏳️‍⚧️🕷️ @apsciencebylyn.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
She ordered the Bug Bowl at the local ramen joint (young Phidippus with a stinkbug nymph of some kind) #EmotionalSupportSpood
Black and grey Phidippus jumping spider perched on a green leaf peering up at you; she's got a small round true bug nymph as a snack, flipped upside down like a bowl with its legs like noodles in her face
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Spooky Femme Peter Lorre 🙀 @sarahkite.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
HELL YEAH!! Finally a search warrant for Susan Flores’s house!! Californians, esp those with ties to San Luis Obispo County, may be interested in this new development in the Kristin Smart case This is marked as a gift article, so hopefully it works for others www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/c...
sanluisobispo.com
Kristin Smart podcaster watches search at Flores home. ‘Today was a big surprise’
“Your Own Backyard” creator Chris Lambert was at the scene of Wednesday’s new investigation in Arroyo Grande and called the property “overlooked.”
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