Stephen Murphy (smurph)

Coffee, straight out of my nose.

Our cats do the same the first time the sliding door is open for them each year.

Dr. Mann's reference to Dr. Schneider has particular resonance with me (b/c I knew him a bit). He emphasized the need to follow the data; he had long talked about overestimating aerosols & underestimating CO2 impacts but bad actors pretended he had not changed his mind in only 3 yrs (71 to 74).

The asymmetry of the value placed on human life is so striking. Israel has a goal to recover 40-year-old remains; to do so, it invades a sovereign country, and the lives of 26 Lebanese are an afterthought. Their names not even worth printing in the New York Times.

Here's a key chart, one that zeroes in on the difference in stocks vs. flows and what they say about where we're all headed.

It would be good if the folks at the Globe and Mail read it.

Important paper. Won't be read by terrible ideologues of course, but this shows how complex defining 'sex' or allied terms is and always will be.

Kudos to Dr. Eppley and colleagues.

I’m so excited for this! Who’s going?

My talk will be about time, as ecology’s final frontier: dynamics, timescales, resolution and extent, historical contingencies, and the denominator of all ecological processes.

An anti-pattern is a solution to a class of problem which may be commonly used but is likely to be ineffective or counterproductive.[1][2] The term, coined in 1995 by Andrew Koenig, was inspired by the book Design Patterns which highlights software development design patterns that its authors consider to be reliable and effective.[3] A paper in 1996 presented by Michael Ackroyd at the Object World West Conference described anti-patterns.[3] It was, however, the 1998 book AntiPatterns that both popularized the idea and extended its scope beyond the field of software design to include software architecture and project management.[3] Other authors have extended it further since to encompass environmental, organizational, and cultural anti-patterns.[4] According to the authors of Design Patterns, there are two key aspects of an anti-pattern that distinguish it from a bad habit, bad practice, or bad idea. First, an anti-pattern is a commonly used process, structure or pattern of action that, despite initially appearing to be appropriate and effective, has more bad consequences than good ones. Second, another solution exists to the problem that the anti-pattern is attempting to address. This solution is documented, repeatable, and proven to be effective where the anti-pattern is not. A guide to what is commonly used is a "rule-of-three" similar to that for patterns: to be an anti-pattern it must have been witnessed occurring at least three times.[5] Documenting anti-patterns can be an effective way to analyze a problem space and to capture expert knowledge.[6] While some anti-pattern descriptions merely document the adverse consequences of the pattern, good anti-pattern documentation also provides an alternative, or a means to ameliorate the anti-pattern.[7] Examples In software engineering

"'You're doing it all wrong. Again.' : the embedded and unquestioned repertoires of Environmental Social Movement Organisation as anti-patterns."

Somebody should write that article.

'They are extraordinary': A Kiwi couple's $150m gift to NZ wildlife The $150m will be spent over 10 years in massive conservation projects across New Zealand.

Wow wow WOW 💖 www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kiwi-coup... Kiwi couple gift $150m to restore native wildlife in New Zealand

An Army Corps project could wipe out one of Florida’s last thriving coral reefs The fate of one of the last thriving coral reefs in Florida may be imperiled by plans to widen the shipping channel leading into Port Everglades.

The US army corps of engineers is considering, right now, what would be the largest destruction of coral reefs in US history. To make a port slightly bigger.

People know this, right?

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

🧪🦑🌎

Obama has the crowd at Jesse Jackson's eulogy hanging on his every word

The punch line is that Webster set this up to praise Tom as one of E Company's bravest & most effective non-coms. Same theme is in one of Maj Winter's books about 506 2nd Bat HQ's Steve Mihok who kept volunteering for patrols in the horror of the Bulge (he got two Bronze Stars; Winters wanted more).

For example, while Band of Brothers did not emphasize it, E Company's David Webster's book Parachute Infantry focuses on his friend Cpl (later Sgt) Tom McCreary. He describes Tom as short & doughy. This was not to insult him but to set up that he was not anyone's ideal of an airborne trooper.

A composite image of me from the red carpet at the Hoppers premiere with the Hoppers logo and several hoppers characters.

After about 5 years (!) of keeping secrets, I am so excited that Disney Pixar's Hoppers is finally coming out on March 6th!

Back in 2021, Pixar emailed me asking if I could give a talk about my research to their employees. Then another talk. And another.

📸 Disney/Jesse Grant/Getty Images

Sadly, I am so old that my baby pics are mostly black and white (colour after my 1st birthday; colour was too rare and expensive until then). I do have pics my mom told me reflect my colour change but the shades of gray barely show it and you'd really just think it is shadows on my cherub face.

Dunno about the rest of you all, but I *am* going to buy and read this book and telling my students to do the same. The point of reading anything is to expand your horizons.

Tangentially, I actually *did* eat too many carrots in my baby food - I loved the carrot rich ones so much my mom kept feeding me these.

And I *did* turn dark yellow-light orange from them.

Once again, Dr. Mann is correct.

(Yes, I know it was a joke.)

The Draft is Ready. Now We Need You. Share your perspective on the state of nature in the U.S.

The draft Nature Record National Assessment is now open for comment!

Take a look and tell us what we got right, what we missed, and what changes you’re seeing where you live.

Your perspective will help shape the final record of nature in the U.S.

naturerecord.substack.com/p/the-draft-...

Bills to ignore the Endangered Species Act so ranchers can kill endangered wolves advance | Arizona Mirror Arizona House passed bills allowing ranchers to kill Mexican gray wolves, drawing challenges from Democrats over the Endangered Species Act

Republican bills that would allow the endangered Mexican gray #wolf to be killed and no longer be considered an endangered species won approval in the Arizona House of Representatives.

Tracking Red Wolf Recovery: From Seven to Twenty-Eight As a new year begins, so too do new and exciting updates from the Red Wolf recovery efforts. Ten sub-adult Red Wolves have been fitted with GPS tracking collars

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that about half of the Red #Wolf puppies born last year have survived their first year in the wild! The current number of GPS-collared, wild Red #Wolves is 26 individuals, and there is a total wild population of around 28 individuals.

i love data, me too meme

Climate change in the WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations: a qualitative study. Graph shows the evolution of different topics over different articles.

NEW PREPRINT! 🦠⚖️🌡️ The Pandemic Agreement is the first global health treaty to name climate change, and behind the scenes, the UNFCCC was a source of both inspiration and conflict. Cristina Arnés-Sanz and team tracked climate issues through three years of negotiations: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Humanity heating planet faster than ever before, study finds Researchers identify sharp rise to about 0.35C every decade, after excluding natural fluctuations such as El Niño

The Guardian on our new study, which shows that global heating is significantly gathering speed. Our efforts to overcome our fossil fuel addiction should do the same.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

photo from inside a house looking south at an expansive lawn in morning sunshine, where there are six deer grazing within a few yards of two large windows. The horizon is pine & oak mixed forest.

Why I love our house.💖
🦌🦌🦌 🦌🦌🦌
(Click to see everybody.)

The future of Europe’s forest disturbance regimes– a thread.

Tl, dr: Disturbances from wildfire, bark beetles & wind will continue to increase in the coming decades. Under unabated climate change disturbances could more than double by 2100.

New paper out in @science.org doi.org/10.1126/scie...

🌳 How do species coexist in forests?
A JFR study shows niche differentiation in a 25-ha subtropical montane forest; elevation and convexity shape species-habitat associations across life stages.
🔗 link.springer.com/article/10.1...
#ForestryResearch #Biodiversity #ForestEcology #JFR 🌐🌿🍃

Data Visualization A Practical Introduction

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

U.S. Capabilities Are Showing Signs of Rot When a military force begins to decline, the first symptoms may be subtle.

Latest in @theatlantic.com . In only a few days, there are small but worrying signs that the corruption and incompetence of the Trump administration is affecting US military and diplomatic power. A fish rots from the head down.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...