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ploppa.bsky.social
Ploppa
@ploppa.bsky.social
120 followers 190 following 280 posts
PhD chemist, amateur geologist, metalhead, feminist, atheist, CGillustrator sometimes and everything natural sciences.
"Uncivilized and boring science educator".
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mineralcup.bsky.social
#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 7

It's a color-changing match of informative minerals! Time-tracker #Monazite-(Ce)'s yellow in sunlight darkens to orange in incandescent light while index mineral #Andalusite is pleochroic

VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Split photo with yellow andalusite, backlit to show its color and its growth patterns, which have four-fold symmetry with branching dark streaks in each direction and a glassy amber-yellow crystal point in a craggy setting of smaller, lighter yellow crystals.
September 7, 2026 at 12:00 AM
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vickyveritas.bsky.social
A cute #quartz “inclusion” before Match 6 while it’s still #Caturday. Is this FINALLY quartz’s year? Make it so.

#MinCup26 ⚒️ sci-fi 🧪 🖖🏼 scifi Geosciences #WomenInSTEM geology #geosky #GIS 🍎 🪐 🔭 🌋
A small tabby kitten with blue eyes has snuggled into the cavity of a snow white quartz crystal geode.
September 5, 2026 at 10:48 PM
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mineralcup.bsky.social
The 10th #MinCup is a battle of carbonates with copper-rich #Azurite vs zinc-(and sometimes other stuff)-rich #Smithsonite

It’s the first day of #MinCup26!

VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Vote in Round 1 Match 1 — Mineral Cup & Ore Cup
Vote in Azurite vs Smithsonite Credit: Harold Moritz and Graham Myerson
www.mineralcup.org
September 1, 2026 at 6:20 PM
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wizentrop.bsky.social
Lichen-mimicking katydids are among my favorite insects, and after 20 years of multiple visits to South America I was fortunate to come across a beautiful rare species, Lichenodraculus matti, or “Matt’s little lichen dragon”!
August 26, 2026 at 1:14 AM
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mineralcup.bsky.social
What’s that? For #MinCup26, our 10th year of minerals battling it out for your affections, we drew from ANY year to pick our returning minerals? That’s a lot of joy and heartbreak from one little list!

www.mineralcup.org/2026/mineral...
Mineral List — Mineral Cup & Ore Cup
www.mineralcup.org
August 25, 2026 at 2:39 PM
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mosasaurologist.bsky.social
Happy #FossilFriday from the special surprise found inside the last stupid Xiphactinus that i discovered this spring: a complete Micropycnodon!

This poor little guy was eaten right before the Xiphactinus (nicknamed Brown Sugar) died, and is forever trapped in fish rib jail. 🧪🐟
Curatorial finger booping the snoot of a completefush. It looks like an armored brown pancake with a googly eye. Its trapped between thin parallel ribs of a much bigger fish.
July 31, 2026 at 4:11 PM
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tricialockwood.bsky.social
just occurred to me that some of you might not know about face agates
agate that looks like a face agate that looks like a face possibly world’s most famous agate — the cookie monster face agate most advanced face agate containing a plasmic blue slimer
July 31, 2026 at 5:43 PM
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daverodland.bsky.social
#TrilobiteTuesday is also #TraceFossilTuesday with a lovely pair of overlapping traces: the trilobite resting trace Rusophycus appears to capture the moment it slurped a burrowing worm out ofvthe mud like spaghetti. ⚒️🧪
Cincinnati Museum Center exhibit: a large trilobite resting trace (Rusophycus) preserves a cast of the underside, but the intersection of the mouth region of the trace with a worm burrow suggests it is also a feeding trace.
August 4, 2026 at 10:31 PM
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mikamckinnon.bsky.social
I just realized it’s 59 days until Mineral Cup #MinCup26 and I AM NOT READY.

We need to lock in the competitors early this year Because Reasons, so nominate NOW: www.mineralcup.org/nominations

Tip: Reasons make us more likely to pick a mineral as it’s easier to imagine how it can campaign.
Nominations — Mineral Cup & Ore Cup
www.mineralcup.org
July 5, 2026 at 12:31 AM
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ketanjoshi.co
NEW BLOG FOR YOU

Google's energy consumption numbers in their new climate report are mind-blowing. 2 years ago they flipped from linear to exponential growth, and their climate impact is blowing out, too.

A WILD testament to the obscene bloat and waste of GenAI:

ketanjoshi.co/2026/07/01/g...
a chart showing google's rising energy consumption - huge, and rising faster than ever before a chart showing google's rising energy consumption - huge, and rising faster than ever before a chart showing google's rising energy consumption - huge, and rising faster than ever before Google's total energy consumption more than new zealand
July 1, 2026 at 8:23 PM
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ketrinadrawsalot.bsky.social
"Whose Larva Is This?"
A quick guide to figure out what you're looking at when you find something that resembles a worm or a Zerg unit crawling around.

#insect #bug #education #SciArt
A flow chart to help identify insect larvae
June 16, 2026 at 8:09 PM
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c0nc0rdance.bsky.social
There are almost no crustaceans in the deep ocean.

Not because they would get crushed, but because they would DISSOLVE.

The cold & high pressure cause changes to water that make it very corrosive to calcium carbonate shells.

But there's one crustacean who solves this problem with ALUMINUM ARMOR.
A trench amphipod, Hirondellea gigas, from the deepest place on Earth: Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (10,890m). Alan Jamieson, Newcastle University
June 4, 2026 at 11:16 PM
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davidho.bsky.social
You want to see Norway men’s national football team’s official photo for World Cup 2026

www.nytimes.com/athletic/733...
members of the Norway men’s national football team on a rocky shore, styled as a fierce group of ancient Vikings. They are dressed in elaborate historical costumes, including fur-trimmed capes, leather tunics, chainmail, and armor pieces, while holding traditional gear like circular wooden shields, spears, axes, swords, and blowing horns. In the background, longships rest on a calm body of water that cuts through a vast, dramatic fjord. The rugged landscape is framed by massive, steep green mountains, with a thin waterfall cascading down a cliff face on the left, all under a cloudy, overcast sky.
June 5, 2026 at 7:25 AM
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titaniasrealm.bsky.social
Finally home after a perilous quest

🎨 Sarah Graham
Illustration of a mouse in a cloak with a sword, walking up the mushroom stairs to a door in a tree.
May 9, 2026 at 6:36 PM
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emilnilsson.bsky.social
Glad första maj med Adam och Eva från Segersgärde i Västervik.
May 1, 2026 at 5:08 PM
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allochthonous.bsky.social
⚒️🧪 Fossil worms in the Ediacaran! Newly described fossil deposit in China suggests some continuity of the fossil record between the late Ediacaran and the Cambrian.
New fossil deposits show complex animal groups predating the Cambrian
Collection of fossils includes Ediacaran, Cambrian species, suggesting a transition.
arstechnica.com
April 3, 2026 at 11:32 AM
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bearysweet.bsky.social
A wonderfully weird creature you'll find deep in the endangered Chocó Rainforest of Ecuador.

It's a moss-mimic walking stick insect (Trychopeplus laciniatus).

#insect #camouflage #rainforest
March 24, 2026 at 3:53 AM
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leahmcelrath.bsky.social
Minesweeper—but it’s the Strait of Hormuz:

sweepthestrait.com

(Via SAlexashenko on X)
Minesweeper video game screen in the shape of the Strait of Hormuz
March 11, 2026 at 6:31 PM
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cbdawson.bsky.social
More Seismology 🤝 Hydrology

Wallace Creek (dry in these photos) has been offset by the San Andreas fault. The two ~90° turns occur where it crosses the fault. The land on the left has moved over time ~north (direction of view) relative to the land on the right.

Carrizo Plain National Monument.
Photo looking down on low area of dry stream channel covered with grass and shrubs. The channel basically makes a z shape, but with almost 90-degree angles
March 5, 2026 at 3:27 AM
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davjons.bsky.social
"...the best learning happens where there is friction, or when a student needs to grapple with a problem and work through it."

"When you use offloading tools... as a novice, as a student, you don’t learn the skill. You simply learn dependency."

fortune.com/2026/03/01/a...
American schools weren’t broken until Silicon Valley used a lie to convince them they were—now reading and math scores are plummeting | Fortune
Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath warns the U.S.’s $30 billion bet on laptops in schools has made Gen Z less cognitively capable than their parents.
fortune.com
March 3, 2026 at 8:03 AM
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catmomdo.bsky.social
Timeline cleanse, first Trout Lilly of the season - thousands of these speckled leaves around the forest floor, just this bloom😍
#Nature #Flowers #Timelinecleanse
First one spotted of the year, a Yellow Trout Lilly (Erythronium americanum) with its speckled leaves and low growth, only about 3 inches tall.
March 2, 2026 at 8:00 PM
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etchachan.bsky.social
Here’s an interesting thing… greater dogtooth lichen, or Peltigera membranacea. It is remarkably big and fast growing for a lichen… you can see it overshadowing the moss underneath it here. I had mistaken it for a liverwort, but you can see lichen-like fruiting bodies in photo 2.

#lichensubscribe
An edge on view of some lobes of dogtooth lichen, showing the long and stiff white rhizines underneath which aren’t roots but serve more to hold the thallus in place. A view of some more mature lobes of the Iichen that have gone paler and dryer and curled up more and formed round orangey apothecia at the edges which are the fruiting parts of the lichen and will shed spores. A clump of dogtooth lichen overgrowing some moss. The leaf-like lobes are a few centimetres across and dark grey and wrinkled on top, and white and hairy underneath. There are about 10 lobes visible in a broad patch, making it look quite plant-like.
February 20, 2026 at 10:04 PM
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ento-ea.bsky.social
Did you know? Insects eat plants as medicine. #OpenAccess
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Pharmacophagy in insects: Ecological and evolutionary perspectives on the non‐nutritional use of plant specialized metabolites
Insects interact with plants not only for nutrition but also to actively seek plant specialized metabolites (PSMs) for chemical defense, reproduction, and self-medication—a behavior known as pharmaco...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
February 7, 2026 at 9:23 AM
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bladeofthes.bsky.social
This is what they have in the USA and what Nigel Farage wants to bring to the UK.
February 1, 2026 at 5:42 PM
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geohenning.bsky.social
Happy 6th "Large boulder the size of a small boulder" anniversary to those who celebrate! #Geology ⚒️
Twitter post screenshot of the San Miguel Sheriff account. 5 years ago they posted about a boulder on the road but referred to it as "Large boulder the size of a small boulder".
January 27, 2026 at 12:49 PM