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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 6h

Look at that narrow dissected loess ridge! Lots more loess landscapes in Nebraska, but no one's promoting them.

Notes on Iowa @notesoniowa.bsky.social · 6h

📍Loess Hills State Forest - Onawa, Iowa

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Reposted by Joe Mason

Tom Gill @tomgillpredicts.bsky.social · 6h

news.uci.edu/2025/10/14/s...

Study links wind-blown dust from receding Salton Sea to reduced lung function in area children

UC Irvine-led researchers urge continued monitoring, intervention to mitigate air pollution

news.uci.edu

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 6h

Looks like a lot of people have been searching for uses of used cooking oil, and yeah, biodiesel is the big one. Also making soap, after purification I hope.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 6h

Someone here looking at No Kings rally locations in northern Wisconsin. Antigo! Medford!! Probably a couple dozen people, the ones everyone expects will be there, with a few surprises, but good for them. Moving west...Bemidji, meet at the Paul Bunyan statue. North Platte, Ogallala, Alliance.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 7h

Photos from a glacial geology field trip in 1989-90.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 7h

View across the quarry with some other possible corestones among the small trees. Glacial sediment in the face in the background. Found Cretaceous shark teeth in the debris on the rock surface. There are thick Cretaceous weathering profiles overlain by marine sediment southeast of here in Minnesota.

View across a granite quarry with a high vertical face. On top of the face there is an undulating surface with small trees growing on it and a few large boulders. A face exposing sediment is behind the trees.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 7h

A large granite corestone once embedded in saprolite, now resting on or close to the intact bedrock surface at a granite quarry near Milbank, South Dakota. Glacial sediment behind and around it. Right: Close-up of some saprolite still attached to the boulder

A very large subrounded boulder partly embedded in glacial sediment. There is a person for scale running across the outcrop on the right.

Closeup of boulder surface with a rind of yellowish and dark-stained saprolite.

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Reposted by Joe Mason

Daniel Huffman @pinakographos.bsky.social · 8h

The new ones have arrived!

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 8h

Old photo, I think this is till below the line of boulders about 1.5 m from the top. Lots of rounded boulders throughout. Bonus: The renowned glacial geologist H.E. Wright Jr. is standing on the outcrop. Minnesota, somewhere NW of Duluth, St. Louis Sublobe of the Des Moines Lobe, I believe.

An exposure of diamicton in a gravel pit. A person is standing on the outcrop with a small shovel.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 8h

There's some literature clasts in tills, including rounding, but I haven't really look at it in detail. I've assumed it's some combination of abrasion during glacial transport and reworking of outwash or other fluvial gravel.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 8h

I'm not immediately finding the original photo, so just screen caps of a lecture slide. It's till in a roadcut through a drumlin east of Madison. Lithology is a mixture of lots relatively local dolomite and far-traveled crystalline rocks.

Photo of a glacial till exposure. The clasts that are visible have a wide range of rounding.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 12h

To be blunt, this is coming from PIs who are looking for a productive workforce, not the work of mentoring students with great potential but not as fortunate in getting undergrad research experience and with less self-confidence. But I think that work is often the most rewarding part of this job

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 12h

Is it fair at all to hold that against the undergrad?

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 12h

I wouldn't even consider making first- or co-authorship a requirement. I think lots of undergrads can potentially do that but they don't have time or more importantly they don't have a faculty member/ postdoc/grad student willing to put the time into mentoring them through the process.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 14h

I don't think that range of rounding is unusual in tills. I have a good example from an exposure in a drumlin I can dig up later today.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 16h

The worst thing in Madison is the unpredictability. Some drivers will stop early, even if you're just stepping off the opposite side of the street. Others only if you hit the flashing light button. Some never stop. And state law basically just says they have to avoid coming too close to you!

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 16h

Still unwinding after crossing Cottage Grove Rd this morning. Normally not bad, but today a driver turning from a cross street came right at me.

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Reposted by Joe Mason

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 17h

Update from OSU Astronomy Professor Laura Lopez
blacksky.community/profile/did:...

Laura Lopez @ohdearz.bsky.social · 18h

Here is the email from the provost reversing the decision & saying we can attend if presenting research. However, we still cannot recruit or attend without research benefit. Also many students did have registration cancelled (or missed registration deadlines) when OSU was prohibiting attendance.

SACNAS NDiSTEM conference update
Hi All,

Please see the email below from the provost with new guidance related to the SACNAS conference.

Best regards,
Todd

From: Provost Ravi V. Bellamkonda <ADMIN-Provost@osu.edu>
Date: Thursday, October 2, 2025 at 5:00 PM
To: Provost Ravi V. Bellamkonda <ADMIN-Provost@osu.edu>
Cc: Garcia, Anne <garcia.680@osu.edu>
Subject: SACNAS NDiSTEM conference update

Hi everyone,

Our office has been working with the Office of Legal Affairs regarding participation in the upcoming SACNAS NDiSTEM conference in light of the outreach the university received last week from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Based on our conversations, the Office of Academic Affairs is recommending the following as it relates to participation in this year’s SACNAS conference:

If an Ohio State faculty member or student is scheduled to present research or participate in sessions that advance their research at the SACNAS conference, then the faculty member or student can attend and use university funds to do so.

If an Ohio State faculty member or student is NOT scheduled to present research or participate in sessions that advance their research (e.g., the purpose of attending is solely for recruitment) at the SACNAS conference but wishes to participate in the conference, they may still attend but must use personal resources to do so.

For participation as a research presenter or in sessions that advance their research, we are requesting that a designee within each college or unit (e.g., the Associate Dean of Research) affirms that the participation is in fact to present or advance research as part of the approval process for university funding.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 18h

There's no legitimate reason not to share it, though. And the method includes the code.

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 18h

I don't understand. Are you saying they shouldn't have shared the code? Why not?

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Reposted by Joe Mason

Garrett Dash Nelson @en-dash.bsky.social · 18h

Vito Marcantonio

Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 1d

name an italian more worthy of an american holiday than columbus

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Reposted by Joe Mason

Urban Milwaukee @urbanmilwaukee.com · 19h

Should Lakes and Forests Have Rights in Wisconsin? Bills Propose Protections

A group of Democrats is proposing 'rights of nature' legislation

urbanmilwaukee.com

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Reposted by Joe Mason

coolbutuseless @coolbutuseless.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy · 23h

#rstats Dev Diary - Glitched 3D rendering of a signed distance field

This should be a stack of spheres. But it isn't. And I love it!!!!

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Reposted by Joe Mason

Nicole Holliday @mixedlinguist.bsky.social · 18h

Also, this is just atrocious policy. Somehow Cal students manage to take 4 classes that don't overlap.
"He defends the double-scheduling practice because so many classes at Harvard meet at overlapping times. If we didn’t allow simultaneous enrollment, we’d be giving a lot of students heartburn”.

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Reposted by Joe Mason

Benjamin McKean @blmckean.bsky.social · 18h

Very bad: OSU unilaterally cancelled the registration of grad students attending the joint conference of the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists. And OSU won't fund recruiting at the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.

Ohio State changes policy on group conferences after Trump administration threats

A federal investigation into potentially discriminatory practices at Ohio State prompted the university to change its policies regarding conferences.

www.dispatch.com

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