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Sarah H. Ledford

@sledford.bsky.social
1.4K followers 393 following 404 posts

Urban hydrology- water and cities. Pretending to be a geographer these days. Associate professor of Geosciences in Atlanta. Izzo 🐾🌈 7-19-24

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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
Society for Freshwater Science @freshwaterscience.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The SFS Urban Chapter invites paper submissions to two special collections inspired by the Symposium on Urbanization and Stream Ecology (SUSE) and SFS meetings held in San Juan, Puerto Rico in May 2025. (1/3)
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Got my first paper reviews where I’m quite confident at least one is AI output. 🎉
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
The Verge @theverge.com · 02/09/2026
As a new Harry Potter trailer makes the rounds, it bears repeating that there’s no way to watch this show without supporting J.K. Rowling’s bigotry and the structural violence she’s inflicting on the trans community.
theverge.com
There is no ethical consumption of HBO’s Harry Potter series
You can’t without supporting Rowling’s transphobic bigotry.
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
Dr. Megan Fork @aforkintheriver.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
We want to invite you to give a talk at WCU! We're looking for folks who: - identify with a group underrepresented in STEM - want to learn about PUI careers - are not yet tenure-track - are mid-Atlantic-based - research in any subfield of Bio Sign up to be considered: forms.gle/WwT5DZJSvHTk...
forms.gle
Interest Form: WCU Department of Biology Early Career Biology Seminar Series
The goal of this seminar series is to showcase diverse early-career biologists working relatively local to West Chester, PA. Apart from giving our students the chance to learn about cutting-edge scien...
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 13/08/2026
Well well well look what we've got here with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens
selectshadynole 2h

Have some fun by restoring Peachtree St's pedestrian-centric design in downtown and by delivering what we voted for with extra sales taxes for Marta by getting Beltline rail done.

Reply

andreforatlanta

5m. Author

@selectshadynole shut up and respect our

legacy black women residents that made this city that you get to enjoy freely. We on the southside today.

Reply

selectshadynole 3s

@andreforatlanta wow a mayor telling a

constituent to shut up for asking him to uphold voter mandates. Stay classy, Andre.
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
My wonderful geography colleagues and collaborators continue to make me a geographer. New paper out in EPF. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/....
journals.sagepub.com
Repair requires more than yet another fix: Interrupting the longue durée of whiteness in greening Atlanta - Richard Milligan, Katherine Hankins, Tyler McCreary, Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, Sarah H. Ledford...
Across the shifting urban regimes that have cumulatively produced the intensely unequal landscapes of Atlanta, one feature of racial capitalist governance has r...
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
CUAHSI @cuahsi.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
You have until Aug 31 to make nominations for a CUAHSI Community Award! 🏆 Do you know someone, an instructor who's made a lasting impact, a student who’s been actively involved in the community? Let's give recognition to those serving the water science community! 💦 www.cuahsi.org/community-aw...
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
Craig Calcaterra @craigcalcaterra.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
People have been talking up the new newsletter Worse on Purpose, which exposes corporate consolidation and enshittification. It's very appealing, but as I write at Cup of Coffee today, the vibes are way off and I think people should be wary. www.cupofcoffeenews.com/cup-of-coffe...
Beware of "Worse on Purpose"
Yesterday I was hipped to a newsletter/website called Worse on Purpose. Its tagline: "Corporate autopsies on the brands you trust. Who bought them, who gutted them, and what's still worth buying." Basically, it's a chronicle of private equity and conglomerate consolidation written by a man named Keyana Sapp.

The mission statement:

Worse on Purpose is an investigation into how the brands you trust got cheaper to make, quicker to break and who profited from the decline . . . Each edition takes apart an entire industry: how the category got hollowed out, who profited, and which brands still hold the line.

No PR pitches, no ads and nothing flattering written because someone paid for it.

If I ever do work with sponsors, they'll be heavily vetted against strict criteria that you’ll know about up-front.
Worse on Purpose launched back in March and each new edition, one of which comes out every one to two weeks, tackles one industry or specific business such as mattresses, cookware, backpacks, restaurant chains, opticians, vet clinics, kitchen appliances, etc. In addition to the industry/product-specific investigations Sapp maintains what he calls The Brand Ledger, which tracks hundreds of well-known brands and provides a brief, capsule overview of who owns them, what they used to be, and whether they're still worth buying. These summaries are the thumbnail product of Sapp's larger investigations and are added to and updated as he learns more or as things change.This is the sort of thing that's right the hell up my alley. But it's so up my alley that it made me wonder why such a beast is just emerging right now, from a person no one has ever heard of, as opposed to a few years ago from a better-known anti-corporate crusader or institution. And, more to the point, it made me wonder how Sapp was putting out articles that clearly required a lot of research every week or two weeks when such exposés are normally the sort of thing that can take journalists with resources several weeks to research and write.

So I did some searching to figure out Sapp and his whole deal.

The first thing that raised a red flag was his LinkedIn page, which reveals that, until just last month – three months after he began Worse on Purpose – Sapp worked for Palantir, which is Peter Theil's AI company. Before that Sapp was a co-founder of the AI chatbot company Indigo. Which is, to say the least, a curious path for a guy who wants to blow the lid off of corporate and financial excesses and who cares about everyday consumers like you and me.

So I searched some more and found a post on Y Combinator's news page in which people are asserting that Worse on Purpose is an AI-written project that is cynically leveraging anti-corporate topics with big populist appeal as a means of inuring people – especially otherwise skeptical people like me – to AI "journalism."

That ultimate conclusion skews a bit conspiracy theorist for my tastes, but (a) Sapp does not state his own AI credentials on his site nor are there any disclaimers such as "article partially composed by AI" that you are increasingly seeing (he does have a button connecting his LinkedIn page); (b) there are a lot of unsourced anecdotes and pieces of information in his articles for which you'd normally expect to find at least some sort of sourcing; and (c) most notably, I ran a couple of articles through multiple AI-detection apps and they all light up as highly probable for AI composition.To be sure, those detectors are, themselves, often unreliable, so I spent a little time early this morning doublechecking facts on one of the articles – the mattress one – to see if Sapp, or his AI bot, were playing super fast and loose with either his facts or characterizations. I obviously did not have the time to be super exhaustive or anything, but most of the broad claims (i.e. who bought which company and when, etc.) check out. Which I think they'd have to because if they didn't he'd be sued into oblivion by the deep-pocketed companies his bots are writing about. That said, the lack of sourcing gives me pause and I am highly, highly skeptical of this whole project.

Maybe Sapp is someone who simply got disillusioned with the world of hypercapitalism, cashed out, and created Worse on Purpose as a soul-cleansing passion project. But if that were the case I doubt he'd start it while still employed by Palantir. And I doubt he'd farm it out to AI to write, which I strongly suspect he did. And even if he did, I'd hope he'd say so. I'll leave the allegations that the site is just some grand psyop aimed at suckering the populace into trusting AI slop to people who are better able to figure such things out, but for now I'll leave it at "this gives me really bad vibes" and suggest that people either steer away from it or treat it with extreme caution.
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Terry McGlynn @hormiga.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
For those who haven't heard of this yet, the fastest/easiest way to reduce indoor air pollution from wildfire smoke is to get a basic 20x20 box fan, and slap a single 20x20 air filter (make sure it's very high MERV) on the back. No tape or anything, it just sticks to the back of the fan.
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
Lizzie O'Leary @lizzieohreally.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Furthering my theory that this entire website is for people who owned Doonesbury collections as children and understood about a third of it.
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Matthew R Francis @bowlerhatscience.org · 07/06/2026
the real question, though: why are you continuing to lionize a horrible misogynist who, by his own admission, loved to harass the women who served him at restaurants? who found it hilarious to make their jobs harder? and who thought women who wouldn't sleep with him were "worse than whores"?
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
I don’t have words for how awful this is.
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
Noam Ross @noamross.net · 27/05/2026
The National Science Foundation is terminating and suspending grants again, and at Grant Witness we need you to help to track them! 🧪 We can only identify research being suppressed by under-the-radar suspensions directly from researchers. Please report! grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0... #NSF
grant-witness.us
New Grant Disruptions at NSF - We Need Your Help to Report! – Grant Witness
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Bless these folks for building and sharing this tool!!
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
Julian Bene @julianbene.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
That's what I've heard, too #GApol. A vote for Ivory is a vote for a Fulton tax increase, twice over. Once for the 2025 increase Mo demanded but no other Commissioner backed. Twice for the TAD money diverted to Dickens: $50M+/ yr to fund the Jail reno & hospital that taxpayers will have to make up.
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Marta needs to get some serious enforcement on Mitchell St if the bus lanes have any hope of being successful.
Cars driving in a bright red bus only lane in Atlanta
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Whelp, just realized my grading scheme for one class this semester adds up to 110%
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Endless Screaming @infinitescream.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
This doesn’t cover all my thoughts on stormwater and flooding in cities, but does summarize good number of them! whenthecreeksrise.org/2026/03/24/w...
whenthecreeksrise.org
What does more proactive stormwater management look like?
An urban hydrologist walks through five fixes, from permeable pavers to mandatory standards
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
CUAHSI @cuahsi.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Our March newsletter is LIVE - we're officially celebrating 🎉 25 years! Inside: a CEO letter marking this milestone, Fellows sharing about WaterSoftHack, a board member story, a CUAHSI college visit, an upcoming cyberseminar, application deadlines and more! us3.campaign-archive.com?u=aad7e9257f...
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
Sarah Hird, PhD @sarahhird.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
I’m at the mid-career slump. I’m at the national research funding & infrastructure crisis. I’m at the university budget cuts. I’m at the nonsensical war. I’m at the demolition of our democracy. I’m at the combination mid-career-slump-national-research-funding-&-infrastructure-crisis-university-budge
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
The world continues to burn and I’m sitting here reviewing 131 amazing applications to our REU program. Every single student has a strong application. So remember, if you don’t get a REU offer, it is not a reflection on you!
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
JP Gannon @jpgannon.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
@hydrochrista.bsky.social @domciruzzi.bsky.social, and I asked hydrologists across the country for their syllabi so we could investigate how instructors were teaching hydrology courses and think about the future... Here’s what we found + suggestions agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
The Current State of Undergraduate Hydrology Courses in North America: A Path Forward
Examined syllabi for introductory courses in hydrology The titles, topics, and approaches to assessment varied widely across courses Found limited consensus in how hydrology courses are taught a...
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
Noam Ross @noamross.net · 02/02/2026
NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics? 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at grfp@grant-witness.us so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
This one hurts
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 29/01/2026
Ossoff: "This is a seismic event. This should have people across the country absolutely shook. This is a huge deal. This is an FBI raid on the Fulton County Elections office ... This is a shot across the bow at the midterm elections. He tried to steal power when he lost it in 2020."
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
If you know an undergraduate looking for a geosciences REU program, our applications are due in one month! Focus this year on community, air, and water projects! sites.google.com/view/csaw-re...
sites.google.com
CSAW REU
Overview
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Reposted by Sarah H. Ledford
Nick Barber 🌋 @volcannick.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
I appreciate this from @us.theconversation.com by Jonathan Paul. However, I think it’s making a mistake I commonly hear geologists make with regards to current events. I have a hunch that this mistake is one of the reasons geology programs are struggling 🧵🛠️🪨🧪 theconversation.com/greenland-is...
theconversation.com
Greenland is rich in natural resources – a geologist explains why
Greenland’s rare earth element deposits may be among the world’s largest by volume.
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AGU Hydrology H3S @agu-h3s.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Our Annual AGU First Timers Guide is live! Please share widely!! We look forward to connecting with folks at our Booth #836 with @cuahsi.bsky.social www.agu-h3s.org/post/agunola...
agu-h3s.org
NOLA AGU Guide for First Time Attendees
Welcome! We’re glad you’re here! This guide was put together by members of the American Geophysical Union Hydrology Section Student Subcommittee with help from the wider AGU community in hopes of maki...
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AGU Hydrology H3S @agu-h3s.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
Applications are open to become a member of AGU H3S! See comments for links. Feel free to contact us through our website if you have any questions! www.agu-h3s.org
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
Born out of our WaterSciCon sessions and workshop in 2024 (thanks @cuahsi.bsky.social and @agu.org!) this was a really fun one to write! We hope it spurs thoughts and new collaborations.
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CUAHSI @cuahsi.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
CUAHSI is hosting a Community Gathering during the AGU Annual Meeting the evening of December 17th at 6pmCT! Join us at Ernst Cafe for appetizers, networking, and interactive activities with chances to win prizes! All are welcome but space is limited. Please RSVP here www.cuahsi.org/events/cuahs...
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Adam Ward @wardhydro.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
New #WOTUS rule changes, impacting the Clean Water Act & protections for our nations' waterways. This is an area of expertise in my group - I would be thrilled to engage with media, policy-makers, nonprofits, etc. to discuss. DM or email to engage -
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Things at work I cannot do do far while Cloudflare is down: anything on our LMS; open stack exchange to troubleshoot R code
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Dr. Megan Fork @aforkintheriver.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
I'm looking to switch out the Winogradsky column lab I've been doing in my Wetlands course for something new (I never get visible diffs among treatments and I don't think students are getting much from it). What are your favorite labs for an upper level Wetlands course? Bonus if biogeochemistryish!
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stephen fowler @stphnfwlr.com · 05/11/2025
👀 DDHQ projects Democrats flip both PSC seats in Georgia, the first state-level Democrats in ~two decades. Now for the final margins and what the results may/may not foretell. election-night.decisiondeskhq.com/date/2025-11...
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
How is Lasership still in business? I’ve literally never had a package handled by them that wasn’t lost or delayed by 3+ days.
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CUAHSI @cuahsi.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
CUAHSI is piloting a new Virtual Open House initiative to strengthen dialogue with our community and guide future planning. We invite you to join the first session on Wednesday, October 22 at 2pm ET. Visit our website for additional information including an agenda www.cuahsi.org/events/cuahs...
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Claire Masteller @cmasteller.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
📣 📣📣 We are seeking a postdoc join our team in January 2026 to lead community-engaged flood monitoring and modeling efforts as part of a convergent research team linking flooding to health risks. Apply here: tinyurl.com/floodPostdoc Review of applications will begin Oct. 31 Please share!
tinyurl.com
Postdoctoral Research Associate - Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences
Position Summary This position will focus on integrating high-resolution field monitoring, remote sensing, and statistical and numerical modeling approaches to improve predictive flood hazard mapping....
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AGU Hydrology H3S @agu-h3s.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
We hope that everyone had a happy first day of the 2026 Water Year! Tomorrow is the first day of Catchment Cup! Check back in the morning when the first round of polling opens up for Headwater Catchments! We are so excited to share facts and research from early career researchers at these sites!
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
Many USGS gages across the country have stopped updating. Anyone know what’s going on? This shutdown related? They seemed to all stop 16 hours ago, at least in Georgia.
Screenshot of the National Water Dashboard showing lots of sites in grey for “recent measurement unavailable”
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NE Ohio Regional Sewer District @neorsd.org · 21/09/2025
do you remember
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Jared Rennie @jjrennie.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
I’m proud to say that @noaa.gov and NCEI has released a 1 year retrospective on #Helene using ESRI Story Maps. arcg.is/aqCD4 Here is a brief thread of how this came to be and how NOAA can still do good things (even while wearing pajamas).
arcg.is
Helene in Southern Appalachia
One year later: An event analysis and how we move forward.
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
The most useful and useful impactful classes I took during my PhD were at ESF. It’s an amazing school always working on a shoestring budget. Cutting more will just decimate it and the amazing work it does.
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
I accidentally saw the video. Do yourself a favor and don’t.
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Adam Forte @topoismyforte.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Discussions of the destruction of the CDC, HHS, etc. by RFK Jr that do not lay a hefty part of the blame on Senator Cassidy feel woefully incomplete. He could have stayed true to his principles as a medical professional and blocked RFK's confirmation. He did not and he should not be given a pass.
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
New paper with our community partners! We used four years of community science E. coli measurements to look at patterns in Atlanta streams. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
iopscience.iop.org
Radware Bot Manager Captcha
To ensure we keep this website safe, please can you confirm you are a human by ticking the box below.
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Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 18/08/2025
For my next story with @thexylom.com, I'm looking to interview researchers and science professionals who have left the U.S. for Asia due to Trump. They can be Asian nationals who returned to their home countries, or Americans who are seeking greener pastures overseas. Please email or DM me!
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Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
As a reminder, if you use dataRetrieval , @cuahsi.bsky.social is hosting a webinar tomorrow at 3 pm on the API changes! Free! www.cuahsi.org/events/chang...
cuahsi.org
Events | Cuahsi.org
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Bob Mann @robertmannbooks.com · 11/08/2025
Tulane’s behavior in this case is disgraceful. www.chronicle.com/article/cens...
chronicle.com
Opinion | Censored by My Own University
Tulane says it values free inquiry — until my work became politically inconvenient.
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