iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Between the decline of students’ basic academic and social skills (coming from me, an awkward weirdo), and the state legislature and our administrators’ obsession with using their “business” genius to “improve” higher ed, this has been a challenging semester.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Underthrown PI is the worst play in all sports

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Dog sniffed out this weird stick (it’s actually a lizard’s tail!) on this morning’s hike. First time I’ve seen one of these detached and just laying in the dirt.

A blue green lizard tail four to five inches in length lies detached on reddish brown dirt mixed with angular pebbles and some sticks. The base of the tail is pointed to the top of the photo, and is thicker. You can see the scar type tissue where it separated. Human finger on the right for scale.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Student proudly wore his Utah Shakespeare Festival daggers to class today. I was fully on board until I realized they were actually steel and actually sharp. Now only kind of on board. Small potatoes on a campus with a concealed handgun pretty much guaranteed within 100 yard radius at all times.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

On possible sinus and sore throat watch just two days into the semester. Not ideal, but OK timing with long weekend coming up. Also, great to be back. First day was a little rusty, as far as teaching went, today seemed good. Hopefully feel good tomorrow and set a good tone.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Cloudy here, but cool to watch the lunar #eclipse happen. Faster than I would have expected.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Second time in the last 8 years I’ve lived here that a deer has gotten a rear leg caught in the welded panel fence. Cut this one free by getting through the metal with a hacksaw. Deer definitely injured. Will see if it’s still in the neighbor’s yard and call the DWR if so when sun comes up.

Close up of the top of a quarter inch wire panel fence that has a section cut. The wires are coated in fur and blood. The photo is late morning in the dark, illuminated by flashlight.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

My university wants to come up with an AI “North Star”, and since I am a cynical person O used Gemini intentionally for the first time to get this feedback:

An AI summary of why corporate speak wastes people’s time and is busy work for overpaid bosses to feel important.

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Patrick De Haan @gasbuddyguy.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

MEGA🧵on prices: OIL is X but why is GASOLINE Y and DIESEL Z?!?! a thread on refining this summer and what's behind it, your questions answered in this thread (plz share!):

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Got sent photos of a #fossil tooth a local kid found at around 8500 ft elevation in southern Utah. Could use ID help. My first thought was mastodon or something similar because of the cusps, but juvenile due to the small size? #geology #paleontology

A fossil tooth with a teal plastic flossing tool for scale. The enamel of the tooth, which has a lot least four raised knobs, is dark gray in color. A long tooth root extends behind and is lighter in color.

The long root structure of a fossil tooth, with some light colored sedimentary matrix.

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 24/07/2026

As *tech*, AI isn't exceptional. It's not exceptionally wicked. It's not exceptionally good. Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we'd call AI's apps "plug-ins" and we'd use them and abuse them in the same way that we've used every other technology: www.normaltech.ai 1/

A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill.

Image:
Cryteria (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Some #geology and general nature pics from a trip through northern CA and southern OR. First up, coastal rocks.

Greenish gray rocks and brown dirt. A serpentinite outcrop along the highway.

Strips of light and dark gray sandstone. Graywacke turbidites that have been offset on small faults. Human finger for scale.

Stripes of light and dark gray sandstone. Graywacke turbidites cut by small normal offset faults. Human hand for scale.

Dark grey sandstone underneath a conglomerate full of boulders of similar sandstones. An angular unconformity along the coast.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

One thing I noticed leaving Utah/Nevada for a while is the complete absence of side by sides and spent shell casings on public lands at the places I’ve been. And I’m not just in national parks! That said, the parks sure make it seem like ecosystems are a lot healthier without all the damn cows.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

I might not be in Utah. There’s flowing water!

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Not sure why people haven’t recognized that McConnell was simply entering estivation due to the summer heat. It’s very dangerous to interrupt that, especially if you disturb the mucous cocoon.

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Pew Research Center @pewresearch.org · 06/07/2026

Lawmakers in the U.S. represent more people than in almost any other country. Each of the 435 voting members of the U.S. House of Representatives represents about 802,000 people. The median representation ratio among 106 democracies was about 31,000 people per lawmaker. #USDemocracy

dot plot of average number of people pew lawmaker in the lower or sole chamber of national legislature across 106 democracies.

Text reads:
U.S. lawmakers represent more people than almost anywhere else
Average number of people per lawmaker in the lower or sole chamber of national legislature.

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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

The 2026 United States of Science Challenge starts NOW! Each bubble represents classrooms we’ve matched with scientists this year. This a competition to fill bubbles with $10 donations to support @skypeascientist.bsky.social The first region to fill all bubbles wins. 👇🏻 givebutter.com/USS2026

givebutter.com

United States of Science 2026

By Skype a Scientist

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

It appears as though Recreation.gov has non-refundable reservation fees that I don’t remember. I assume those fees are a relatively new grift for the contractor on top of the already ridiculous nightly campsite fees that price people out of National Forest campgrounds.

recreation.gov

Recreation.gov - Camping, Cabins, RVs, Permits, Passes & More

We're here to help you dream up your next trip, figure out the details, and reserve experiences at over 3,600 facilities and 103,000 individual sites across the country.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Photos from yesterday afternoon’s smoke in Cedar City around 6:30 pm. It lifted by late evening and it’s relatively clear this morning. It smelled surprisingly pleasant compared to other wildfire smoke I’ve experienced. Maybe the mix of burning juniper, piñon, and sage is a nice potpourri?

Photo of the sun through wildfire smoke. The sun appears as a bright yellow ball rimmed with orange. Two beams of orange lens flare strike out at a 45 degree angle from both sides of the sun, cutting across the frame from upper left to lower right.

A photo of mountains obscured by wildfire smoke. The mountains are about 1-2 miles away from the photo location. The photo looks like old grainy film due to the haze.

Another photo of a neighborhood with mountains obscured by wildfire smoke. The hill on the left is less than a mile away. A distant hills two miles away is barely visible, and the 10,000 ft plateau in the background is not visible at all.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I usually avoid driving around in this formerly small town on a Friday afternoon but I ventured out at 1:30 pm today and good gravy, nonsense and traffic jams all around. All states have bad drivers but the three piece of UT, CA, and NV is a powerfully bad combo.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

As a fairly impartial NBA finals watcher, I’m not feeling Wemby activating SGA mode and the officials obliging. The Spurs are nailing shots, so it’s not all ref ball, but the refs have been pretty unbalanced.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

I hear “Uno, dos, tres, catorce!” and I’m instantly back in the Marshfield, Wisconsin Target in 2004. Stocked a lot of CDs that winter, though they were probably already declining with the spread of iPods. The Shinedown cover of Skynyrd’s Simple Man does the same thing.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Saw a few #Rivian R2 out in the wild today (a hotel parking lot in Cedar City as I drove past after a trail run). Special Illinois plates, so looked like test drives. One of the SUVs had the colorful dazzle livery. They look good. Somewhere between a Forester and 4Runner in external dimensions.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Some Great Basin things (mostly rocks).

$En echelon tension fractures (filled with quartz veins) in a quartzite with cross bedding showing sinistral shear from upper right to lower left. Size 8 men’s boot for scale.$ Green colored copper mineralization in a shiny micaceous metamorphic rock. Human finger for scale.

Green colored copper mineralization in a shiny micaceous metamorphic rock. Human finger for scale.

Sheared garnet-rich layer in a schist, a type of rock that looks like warm taffy pulled apart.

Somewhat cruddy sigma structure in a garnet showing de teal shear, top to east. A dark reddish-brown mineral is stretched into tails from lower left to upper right.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 29/05/2026

A few critical points: 1) Program officers will be replaced by political appointees in the grantmaking process. The role of peer review—originally introduced into US funding agencies for large part to prevent political interference with scientific research—is strongly diminished.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Some images from today’s fieldwork in the Chinle Formation (permitted work in Red Cliffs reserve, Washington County, Utah. First up: in situ petrified wood logs! Metal staff is 1.6 m long

Reddish brown dirt with an approximately 2 meter log fossil

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

The Chinle Formation is always good for fairly strange deposits. I’ve never seen fracture fills in this abundance before. It’s on the limb of an anticline that is also sliced up by much more recent normal faults. Some of them are mildly carbonate based, other gypsum, but most some silicate mixture.

A photo of a pile of flat rock chips and a human hand for scale.

A landscape photo of colorful hills and thousands of flat mineral chips in the foreground.

A photo of the mineral chips (broken mineral fills of cracks in the rocks), in a human hand.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Why aren’t we calling data centers surveillance centers? Tracking people online and now in public spaces with cameras is a big part of the data they’re aggregating and processing, malicious or not.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

This should make for an interesting first day of field camp tomorrow.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Thousands of pieces of flint napping debris near a creek south of Mt Dutton. Milky white agate(?), maybe from the contact between the Claron Formation and overlying volcanics. Not sure. Define human modification, with impact bulbs, flake scars, facets, etc. didn’t see finished tools or pottery.

Small pieces of agate or chert with clear evidence of human modification (bulbs, scars, facets, etc) lay in brown dirt with some sparse plants.

More small pieces of white agate or chert with clear evidence of human modification (bulbs, scars, facets, etc) lay in brown dirt with some sparse plants.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Paunsaugunt plateau wildflowers. I’m not great at flower ID and the pictures are a bit fuzzy because of the breeze.

A bunched cluster of yellow flowers on a long stalk

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Interesting scat in a forest service road near Bryce Canyon NP. I just listened to the megafelinology episode from @ologies.bsky.social and @biologistimogene.bsky.social on the way out here and wonder… It looks to be fairly old. Tire tracks have wiped out any prints but this is between the ruts.

What looks to be a desiccated poop pancake and a possible dried urine puddle in a pendant shaped depression that seems like it was made by an animal scraping its feet in the middle of a dirt road, but maybe my interpretation is biased by the science podcast I just listened to.

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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I'm hiring a postdoc to lead sedimentary aDNA reconstructions of alpine plant biodiversity as part of a broader project exploring the mechanisms of alpine plant resilience. Come join a collaborative team working in beautiful places! Bonus: postdocs at UMaine are unionized!

fa-ewca-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com

Postdoctoral Research Associate

The University of Maine is a community of more than 11,900 undergraduate and graduate students, and 2,500 employees located on the Orono campus, the regional campus in Machias, and throughout the stat...

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

In his monthly message in the city newsletter the mayor of this small Utah town wrote about mutual aid and community. I hadn’t seen that language used in a cultural space like this before. Given that the rapid growth and influx of white flight MAGA types from other states, this is a welcome change…

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

I keep hearing “national security” and the “ai war with China” as justification for data centers and things like mining just outside of the boundary waters, but none of these folks care to explain how any of that is true and it sure seems like a scam. utahnewsdispatch.com/2026/05/01/b...

utahnewsdispatch.com

Massive Box Elder County data center could increase Utah’s carbon emissions by 50% • Utah News Dispatch

Energy plant of proposed Box Elder County data center could increase Utah's carbon emissions by 50%, according to an expert's estimate.

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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

The attack on education in the US is not new, but the slow fuse that arguably started with Reagan is now setting off detonations across K-12 and higher education that are going to be incredibly difficult to walk back if we don’t treat this like the urgent crisis it is.

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Dr. Wendy Bohon @drwendyrocks.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

This video shows how seismic waves from the M7.4 earthquake in Japan were detected across North America and Europe. These ground motion visualizations are created by the @earthscope.org

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Based on the student responses to end of month check in reflections I assign (points for completion), the students freely admitting to using AI as a tool to help them study are getting the least out of it. So far it’s been a tar pit for the most vulnerable students. arstechnica.com/science/2026...

arstechnica.com

To teach in the time of ChatGPT is to know pain

LLM use is the most demoralizing problem I’ve faced as a college instructor.

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Matthew Morriss @rockiceandsnow.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Wanna move to Utah? Love being out in the field? The Utah Geological Survey his hiring a Project Geologist for a position focused on work mineral resource projects in Utah! utdgohcm.csod.com/ux/ats/caree... Please apply if you're interested! Unfortunately only US citizens or legal residents

utdgohcm.csod.com

Project Geologist

Job Description:The Energy and Minerals Program at the Utah Geological Survey (UGS) is looking for a Project Geologist specialized in economic geology...

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Canvas access is down with a multi factor authentication error.Wonder if it’s just our system or larger. Will be a mess for many of it’s not just a weekend maintenance issue. This sort of thing is why I am not all in on cloud stuff. #education

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Fieldwork Friday…student is working on a Chinle stratigraphy project. We dug up some mudstones with slickenlines, thought I’d share.

Grey mud with shiny surfaces from the rock sliding around past itself, either from tectonic uplift or soil forming shrink swell processes over 200 million years ago.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

It’s Friday and it might hit mid 80s F at 6000 ft elevation today. I’m going to wear shorts to work.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Been wondering about the bathymetry of the gulf that’s in the news. Apparently it plays an important role in recent goings on with various narrow waterways. It is, geologically speaking, very shallow. www.researchgate.net/figure/Locat...

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Not enjoying my sinuses at capacity due to spring snot runoff from distressingly early seasonal allergies. Pollen counts are purportedly low and the AQI ok, but the valley is dusty AF today (not windy) and, well, all the sneezing.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Well, Mojave Ntl Preserve is beautiful but now we’re in Vegas because the dog woke up in the middle of the night with super puffy lips and an obvious allergic reaction to something. Not sure what. Swelling was down with just one Benadryl by the time we got to the vet, but now she’s on the good stuff

Yellow dog on a hill top at sunset, head cocked sideways

Yellow dog with a puffy muzzle at a vets office.

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Grant’s Hammer @shimer.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Pulled this snail fossil out of the pea gravel in my backyard today. Looks like some of the relatively common Cretaceous snails around here. ⚒️ #geology #fossil

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