Sign in

Kale Sniderman

@muddypollen.bsky.social
562 followers 583 following 372 posts

Palynologist, paleoclimatologist, plant biogeographer | vegetation and climate history | fossil pollen

PostsRepliesMedia
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Pterostylis pedunculata (maroon hood), Erskine Falls, Otways (leaves speckled with silt) 🌱🧪
A clump of the orchid Pterostylis pedunculata (maroon hood), Erskine Falls, Otways (leaves speckled with silt)A clump of the orchid Pterostylis pedunculata (maroon hood), Erskine Falls, Otways (leaves speckled with silt)
090
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Bogong Moths are deservedly getting all the attention but we are in serious Utetheisa pulchelloides season – the heliotrope moth – with clouds of white moths rising from the ground everywhere as we walk along in the bush (this photo is not mine, of these flighty fellas) 🧪
084
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Recursive self improvement likely outcomes #73 pbfcomics.com/wp-content/u...
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The animals have had enough and they're fighting back abcnews.com/US/biting-ra...
abcnews.com
Biting rabid beavers prompt partial closure of popular Maryland park
Authorities are investigating what they said is a "possible rabies outbreak within the local beaver population" at a Maryland park.
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Proteacidites punctiporus in action
000
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
What is so weirdly deficient about this town square, that the blogpost below has less than a dozen likes?
000
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Turing test v. 327
010
Reposted by Kale Sniderman
Matt Bors @mattbors.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
It was exactly ten years ago today, on my 33rd birthday, that I posted this comic online.
485297697666
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Cmon man all that enthusing needs a photo www.inaturalist.org/photos/25891...
000
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I may gently correct @doctorow.pluralistic.net's geophysics projections but the Enshittocene is the only post-Holocene -cene worth two cents
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I acknowledge that 500 years of thermodynamics is a lot to ask the public to digest, @doctorow.pluralistic.net, but sea level is unlikely to have stabilised 500 years from now (eg see Turner's Fig 5) agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... m.youtube.com/watch?v=nTqC...
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Illustrative Multi‐Centennial Projections of Global Mean Sea‐Level Rise and Their Application
Projections of global mean sea-level rise to 2500 have [5, 95]% intervals of [0.3, 4.3]m under SSP1-2.6 and [1.0, 7.6]m under SSP2-4.5 The most uncertain sea-level contributor continues to be the...
011
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
*Of course* it was 'unlawful' in any meaningful sense; *of course* it was a crime against humanity,; *of course* Britain is obliged to provide restitution www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-i...
000
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Annals of paleoecology: shifting baselines
020
Reposted by Kale Sniderman
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 09/09/2026
As once-extinct diseases sweep through America, sickening, maiming and killing, the wild lunacy of anti-vax superstition grows ever more difficult to excuse.
A leaky drop ceiling with a large, dirty water stain.
1309124
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
It's surely not just me that finds that GPT's Luna is a bit of an idiot, lacking executive function altogether
000
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The database will surely be as boring as batshit, but this is a great initiative to help us understand which sediments do, or don't, preserve fossil pollen 10.1016/j.revpalbo.2026.105710
000
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Totally spesh
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Very fine Quaternary stratigraphy
020
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I gather you are interested in what the *history* of the earth sciences can teach us about the polycrisis, but it's less clear - your panel consisting mostly of historians - if you are interested in exploring what *earth history* can teach us about the crisis.
000
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Amidst the world's troubles it is soothing to split firewood and feed longicorn beetle larvae to the old chook
020
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
possibly the most interesting use of this meme I've seen. But does CO2 care, if it goes into and out of glycine? Shouldn't the indignant face be the leaf, or more directly the chloroplast, angry that its duplicitous enzyme servant is double-timing with O2, not giving all the goods to the leaf?
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
possibly the most interesting use of this meme I've seen. But does CO2 care, if it goes into and out of glycine? Shouldn't the indignant face be the leaf, or more directly the chloroplast, angry that its duplicitous enzyme servant is double-timing with O2, not giving all that goods to the leaf?
100
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Give the poor Europeans' psyches a break! It will take them a while to adjust to the demise of Europe's gentle Holocene summer climate 😂 Even Australians have only begun to greet the onset of summer with a palpable sense of doom and fear, for a decade or so
130
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
The set of cultural touchstones that Ezra Klein assumes his listeners are familiar with is essentially infinite but somehow does not include dialectical materialism
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
I've just been raking the cows off of my driveway, as is always necessary this time of year
020
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
The Matuyama-Brunhes reversal doesn't get much love outside of science, but when it does whoo boy www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
theguardian.com
Politician’s claim Earth’s magnetic poles could flip if NT doesn’t use more groundwater criticised by experts
NT minister for trade and business Robyn Cahill makes scientifically inaccurate claims while pushing to make territory ‘datacentre capital of the globe’
100
Reposted by Kale Sniderman
Lena Struwe @drgentian.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
"Hence our dismal conclusion: rather than finding that LLMs free us to do a better job of what we were doing before they came along, they shift scientific incentives (and the playing field of academic competition) in ways that compel us to do more and more, faster and faster, less and less well."
018491
Reposted by Kale Sniderman
CSIRO Publishing @csiropublishing.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
"Australia may soon face unprecedented conservation decisions, from relocating native species & gene-editing invasive pests to deliberately creating ecosystems better suited to the conditions of the future." @ausjbotany.bsky.social #AusJBotany #OpenAccess Read more: www.scimex.org/newsfeed/wha...
scimex.org
Lab-grown meat, gene editing and extreme fire: Researchers' prediction
Lab-grown meat, gene editing and extreme fire: Researchers' predictions for life in the 2100s A major study has examined the deep environmental technological and societal challenges and sc
044
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
It you haven't spent time in North Queensland looking at plants, you were not the intended audience. No offence intended
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
It wasnt meant to be an educational post
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Completely unnecessary in this case which was my point
200
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Nah, Corymbia tessellaris
210
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
This is Corymbia tessellaris, with its extremely distinctive and uniform transition from rough, retained bark below, to smooth bark above.
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Keep going, what species?
100
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
a diamond of a leader
000
Reposted by Kale Sniderman
ArtButMakeItSports @artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Lamentation (flipped, detail), by Gerard David, 1515-23, 📸 by Roberto Schmidt
37120882094
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Easy quiz. In what part of Australia was this photo taken? 🧪🌱
The photo shows a tree with very distinctive bark
660
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Isn't this wonderful Whoops! Most arXiv papers contain information never meant to be shared www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Whoops! Most arXiv papers contain information never meant to be shared
Passwords, GPS coordinates and private conversations have all been found in the metadata and source files of millions of preprint submissions.
000
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
So it's unclear if we have a looming shortage of PhDs, or a surplus elite problem
200
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Is it ominous that fewer people are starting PhDs, or that only ~5% of PhD graduates find an ongoing academic position?
110
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
all true www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Neil the seal is back, terrorising Tasmania’s coastal communities. Everyone leave him alone! | First Dog on the Moon
Neil is just a lonely teen who wants some other huge teen seals to punch on with. Sadly he has to fight bollards instead
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
herbarium collections as unique archives of the health of pollinator-plant mutualisms
031
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Catering plans, maybe 1989
010
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The assignment operator in R (<-) is vile and should be banished. It is needed constantly but is morphologically almost identical to <= (i.e. less-than-or-equal-to, ≤). It would be hard to find a smaller visual cue to carry such a large semantic load (though of course '=' just sows more confusion)
000
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
calcium-cemented neoliths are interesting objects for inhabitants of the Anthropocene to ponder, but their Myr-scale preservation potential is approx zero if they don't find their way into the deep ocean or a subsiding basin: i.e. they are fated to be surface ephemera aeon.co/essays/the-s...
aeon.co
The strange rocks that wouldn’t exist without us | Aeon Essays
Not natural, not quite unnatural, the strange new rocks of the Anthropocene stretch the boundaries of geology
000
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Bury me in the whale graveyard – let the weird starfish chew my bones | First Dog on the Moon
Scientists have discovered an enormous whale graveyard about 1,200km long, which seems big but then so are whales
000
Reposted by Kale Sniderman
Prof Ian Hall @ianhall.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
When the facts are against you, attack the experts. 
When reality is against you, attack the facts. www.politico.com/news/2026/06...
politico.com
Inside the campaign to discredit a key climate science report
An emerging field of research that can measure how much climate change has worsened individual disasters is under attack by friends of the fossil fuel industry. Billions of dollars are at stake.
23014
Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Would "Epstein and his sleazy detestable rich buddies" feel more objective and neutral, in your view?
000
Reposted by Kale Sniderman
Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
'The career ladder in academia is of particular interest as it is a “greedy” occupation due to its lack of substitutability among workers, long hours with increasing returns to productivity, and the importance of establishing and maintaining personal contacts.' Academia is a "greedy" occupation.
blogs.lse.ac.uk
The lack of women at the top of the academic ladder is driven by unequal childcare responsibilities - LSE Impact
Motherhood, and the unequal childcare responsibilities that follow, explain a large share of the observed gender gap in academic employment. Sofie Cairo, Ria Ivandic, Anne Sophie Lassen and Valentina ...
26734