Shannon Skalos, PhD

But did he watch the alt half time show?? 👀

A watercolor painting of an orange tree in a white ceramic pot. The tree has oranges with several different color green leaves and a brown trunk. The vase is white with blue and yellow details.

A watercolor tutorial of an orange tree in a vase on the left and my version on the right.

My first watercolor! I’ve been feeling my soul yearn to be creative again lately, so I finally sat down and painted. I’ve never used watercolor before (I’ve never really painted before, either), so I got a guide book to help me learn. I hope this is the beginning of a new journey for me!

Well those are words

The Feeling You Haven't Had in a Long Time
Steve Driscoll
2021

IMAGE SHOWS GRAPHIC OF CORNELL LAB OF ORNITHOLOGY PHYLOGENY EXPLORER TOOL.

MAJOR NEWS! We just launched an awesome new tool! The illustrated Birds of the World Phylogeny Explorer lets users trace any bird’s lineage, compare species relationships, and explore major evolutionary milestones with a click of a button. SHARE and EXPLORE! birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/phy...

Maybe I should have said buried in ice…

A garden gnome with a red pointed hat, large nose, long white beard, and holding a mushroom stands next to a clear glass vial that catches and measure precipitation up to 5 inches. The vial is full of snow to the top and the gnome is half buried in snow.

Everything feels heavy. Like we’re buried in snow.

It appears that this legend owns a little bookstore — and you can order books from him instead of Bezos. Link in next post.

Fuck

Agreed. It’s just absolutely horrifying today on top of the other horrifying things that have happened.

White House post - Trump and a penguin walk towards a Greenland flag. “Embrace the penguin”.

There are many serious governments in the world.

The US is not one of them.

(There are no penguins in Greenland.)

Hi everyone -- there is a general strike in Minnesota tomorrow to protest what the Trump administration and DHS are doing to our community. In solidarity with the action, I am going to donate my revenue from tmrw's newsletter to People over Papers, the Midway-Hamline Diaper Bank, & Every Meal. (1/2)

Look, I know roughly half of us voted for this ignoramus, but the other half of us are literally melting into a puddle of embarrassment on a daily basis.

A Curlew, a wading bird with a long downcurved bill, stands on an estuary shoreline with water in the background. Wording below reads: PhD opportunity with BTO and Liverpool John Moores University. BTO logo is top right of the image.

📢 We're looking for a PhD student to focus on habitat use of wintering Curlew in and around coastal SPAs. Apply now ➡️ bit.ly/CurlewPhD

The student will be based at @ljmuofficial.bsky.social and BTO, starting in October 2026 for four years.

📆 Deadline to apply: Wednesday 18 February #Ornithology

A European Robin - small, round bird with a bright orange face, neck, and chest and a white belly and brown wings and back.

Saw this cutie up in Montréal today 🥰

Hello 👋

I’m a mom of two with a PhD in ecology. More specifically, I’m an ornithologist who works on delivering high quality data to inform conservation and management of North America’s birds. And I trust my kids’ pediatricians!

A graph showing daily temperature anomalies since the 1940s

Not a single day in 2025 was cooler than the 1991-2020 average, on a global scale. @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social

That’s a sunny side up egg

Oh to be a little Tardigrade walking across a microscope slide. 🫧🐻🧪

Professor Forbidden to Teach Plato Assigns Article About University Censorship Instead Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is using the censorship of Plato from his course syllabus to teach his students about freedom of speech

I spoke with Martin Peterson, the philosophy professor at Texas A&M University who had to remove Plato readings from a course syllabus to comply with school policies against teaching "race and gender ideology." He says he's replaced that material with media coverage of this censorship.

bsky.app/profile/laur...

I wonder if that was a typo or an Easter egg 💩

🫶

Also, fuck ICE

I miss California

Trump should be posting this, but instead he is trashing the officers who died protecting American Democracy against Trump's mob.

This is the kind of thing that the Founders explicitly designed our constitution to prevent; a president who has seized wealth for his own benefit without any intervention from Congress, which in our system is supposed to be the holder of the power of the purse.

everything has to be as maximally stupid and annoying as possible every minute of every day

What a catastrophe.