Morgan Gray

I mean, as a human, I find those instructions useful. You point out the key bits to include, which can be a stumbling block when writing alt-text for figures. Or maybe I understand instructions better when they are written for a machine 🤖

No way. Your instructions (to Claude) are very thorough, I appreciate seeing how you detail what and how to describe plots.

I raise

If you listened to Portishead as a teenager, this will speak directly to your lower back pain:

Students “seemed pleasantly surprised by the analogue experience” of no devices in lecture

2 photographs of a biography of Marty Feldman. One has googly eyes added but it looks virtually the same.

Every time we see this Marty Feldman book it reminds us of that time we stuck googly eyes on it but all that happened was it looked even more like Marty Feldman. 👀

A snake has its head right in front of a camera. It has a cream and rasberry coloration in large patches that get smaller on the top of the head. The eyes are comically enormous, lime-green colored, and seem to protrude from a tiny snake skull. From the Wikipedia page on Imantodes cenchoa Colubridae: Imantodes cenchoa Yarina Lodge, Ecuadorian Amazon Geoff Gallice from Gainesville, FL, USA

The blunthead tree snake (Imantodes cenchoa) looks like what happens if you squeeze a garter snake too hard.

The eyes make up 27% of the head's area, and a thin ribbon body looks out of proportion.

You'll find them high in the trees of Central & South America.

(📷: Geoff Gallice)

Quality #statsmeme or #retatsmeme of the morning.

some people have wedding vows, others have wedding proofs

Is your husband named Thomas Bayes?

Data Visualization A Practical Introduction

Here’s a full draft of the upcoming second edition of my “Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction”: socviz.co

Timeline cleanse:
Baby tapir getting scritches for their itches.

If you want to scritch your very own tapir & you live outside of Central or South America or SE Asia, you'll need to visit a zoo.

But these little guys are (evolutionarily) from around here, in North America. Let's talk about it.

Looking for insight 💡

What tools are people using these days to make external facing dashboards that are low/no cost and where are you hosting them?

Oh wow this looks fun!

your moment of calm: sea potatoes! potatoes of the sea!

Title: Female tortoises were healthier in places with fewer males Subtitle: Average body condition of female and male Hermann's tortoises for three locations at Lake Prespa, North Macedonia: Beach (teal), Konjsko (yellow), and Plateau (brown) locations (Summer records only; no 2013 data). A higher score indicates a healthier animal. Circle size shows how many individuals were measured per timepoint. Notably, Plateau males consistently had the most records. Figure: Two horizontal line plots showing average body condition (y-axis) by year (x-axis), each with three lines corresponding to Beach (teal), Konjsko (yellow), and Plateau (brown) locations. The annual record counts is depicted as a circle overlaid on each line. Female body condition (upper plot) values for Konjsko are consistently higher than those for Beach and Plateau, demonstrated by the yellow line that is above and distinct from the teal and brown lines. Male body condition values for Konjsko lack this trend, demonstrated by the overlap between the lines for the three locations. The record count for males at Plateau are very large across all time points. Caption: Source: Sex Ratio Bias Triggers Demographic Suicide in a Dense Tortoise Population (Arsovski et al. 2026) | Graphic: [bluesky icon] morgangray [github icon] morethangray

A time series for #TidyTuesday showing annual trends in body condition for female and male tortoises

Code: github.com/morethangray...

#dataviz | #ggplot2 | #r4ds | #rstats

Thanks!!

Did you get a copy of the paper? I’d love to read it but it’s paywalled 😖

im doing a crazy thing and starting a tiny press that wants your poetry, maybe a follow, maybe a repost, definitely your submission

It was 39F & Sunny when I saw this phenomenon, often called 'steaming trees' or 'smoking fences.' It occurs when morning Sun rapidly heats water soaked into surfaces of tree/fence after heavy rain. Heat converts water into vapor, which condenses in cool air & looks like steam/mist.

Photo of a blue-green lichen growing on a birch tree. The lichen is in sort of an octopus shaped mound, with frilly edges instead of tentacles. It’s covered in numerous disc shaped apothecia which have blue-grey edges and dark brown centres.

Physcia sp lichen on a birch tree.
NWT, Canada. Photo covers about 5cm, left to right. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends

Reminds me of a word I learned this week: barbasco. I legit thought it was a condiment made of BBQ + Tabasco sauces. Nope.

“Barbasco is the name of several plants that contain poisonous chemical compounds that have been used for fishing by indigenous populations”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbasco

This Brazilian frog might be the first pollinating amphibian known to science Nectar-loving tree frog likely moves pollen from flower to flower

It’s the first time a frog—or any amphibian—has been observed pollinating a plant, researchers reported in 2023.

Learn more on #WorldWildlifeDay: https://scim.ag/4riUU1G

Same here! He *is* on a bed warmer, but being snugged in is life.

Oh the beans!

A close up showing the powdered sugar face of a red chiggy; the eyes and snoot are peeking out from a teal cashmere blanket that entirely swaddles his body in coziness.

Warm Fuzzies Club pupdate

Public libraries are the best.

I built a free tool that shows how night-time lights have changed anywhere on Earth.

Here's how it works and why it's useful for monitoring conflict, disasters, development and growth. 👇

Photo of my studio featuring a Zeiss micro-stereoscope basis for binoculars

When you're a nerd about both birds and insects
#birds #insects

One brillant idea here is to combine the inputs and outputs in the middle instead of trying to connect precisely the sources and destinations, creating an unreadable spaghetti.