Clark Gray
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clarklgray.bsky.social
Clark Gray
@clarklgray.bsky.social

Professor of Geography and Environment, UNC-Chapel Hill
https://clarkgray.web.unc.edu/

Sociology 27%
Political science 27%
Pinned
Advisee brunch at Carolina Coffee Shop!

Reposted by Clark Gray

UNC v Dook fit check
Shirt ✅
Pants ✅
Shoes ✅
RJ Davis socks ✅
Spoke with a PI whose postdoc is trapped abroad because of social media vetting. It appears the postdoc missed disclosing one account and it's unclear if they can come back… ever.

This is the country we live in now.

Reposted by Clark Gray

Graduate Students’ NSF Fellowship Applications Are Being “Returned Without Review” 🧪
eos.org/research-and...
Graduate Students’ NSF Fellowship Applications Are Being “Returned Without Review” - Eos
Graduate students applying for NSF funding have had their applications returned without review—even though their proposed research appears to fall squarely within the fields of study outlined in the p...
eos.org

Reposted by Clark Gray

NBER @nber.org · 3d
Place-based estimates of the impact of climate change on agricultural output depend on farmer adaptation choices at the extensive margin, from Robert Huang and Matthew E. Kahn www.nber.org/papers/w34771
Our paper “Inferring fine-grained migration patterns across the United States” is now out in @natcomms.nature.com! We released a new, highly granular migration dataset. 1/9

Reposted by Clark Gray

Over the past 15 years, all but three of 187 research universities had made public commitments to faculty diversity , pushed by years of student protests and demands. You can see how well they did with for various schools at the link. Below, I'm showing UNC.
wapo.st/45QWLmm
NEW: This year’s #2030Census test in Huntsville, Ala., and Spartanburg, S.C., is using an unrelated survey form that includes a U.S. citizenship question, according to a regulatory filing (To be clear, this is for the “2026 Census Test,” not an actual census)
www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PR...
The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions!

This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...
Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell
Somewhat devastating news today from the CIA: One of CIA’s oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications, The World Factbook, has sunset. There's not even a hint as to why they …
simonwillison.net

Reposted by Clark Gray

High young adult #mortality makes reaching old age less likely in the US than elsewhere. That's true in all states, but in WV and MS more than one-fourth of 20-year-olds are not expected live to retirement age.

State analysis inspired by @financialtimes.com and @drjenndowd.bsky.social #demography
Both chambers of Congress have now passed the FY26 minibus with NIH provisions. The President will sign.

(1) $48.7 billion for NIH
(2) Full IDC recovery
(3) No more multi-year funding
(4) No NIH reorganization, maintaining the current IC structure.
Climate 'fingerprints' mark human activity from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean

theconversation.com/climate-fing...
NBER @nber.org · 6d
Documenting trends in joint exposure to environmental stressors for 168 US cities finds persistent, yet narrowing, multi-exposure gaps, from Glenn Sheriff, Danae Hernandez-Cortes, TC Chakraborty, and Theresa DeConcini www.nber.org/papers/w34739

Reposted by Clark Gray

Call for Applications! NextGenPop is an undergraduate program in population research, 2-week on-campus summer experience and virtual components hosted by the University of Minnesota, June 7 – 19, 2026. Deadline Feb. 5
NextGenPop
Next Generation of Scholars in Population Research
buff.ly
New paper in ERL led by Feng Wang evaluating gridded daily climate products. Interesting results include: 1) how day-shifting affects the records; 2) Pierce vs Livneh precip data (a surprise!); and 3) differences don’t really matter for tree growth modeling. doi.org/10.1088/1748...
Evaluation of daily gridded climate products using in situ FLUXNET data and tree growth modeling
Evaluation of daily gridded climate products using in situ FLUXNET data and tree growth modeling, Wang, Feng, Wise, Erika K, Anchukaitis, Kevin J, Chang, Qing, Dannenberg, Matthew P
doi.org
It's become fashionable to talk about how a warming planet will see more cold-air outbreaks because of changes to the "polar vortex".

But here's the thing: It's not actually happening.

www.theclimatebrink.com/p/fact-check...
Fact check: Climate change is not making extreme cold more common
Sometimes it just gets cold
www.theclimatebrink.com
New paper looks into "The debt burden of tropical cyclones and climate change"

=> across all TC-exposed countries, debt-to-GDP ratios are on average 30% higher due to the cumulative effects of TCs since 1990, while GDP levels are on average 10% lower

eartharxiv.org/repository/v...
The debt burden of tropical cyclones and climate change
eartharxiv.org

Reposted by Clark Gray

That flow tho.

Reposted by Clark Gray

A snowy North Carolina from space this morning. 😍

This is fun!

1. Ecological plant geography
2. Population ecology
3. Statistics for ecologists
4. Third world developmental issues
4. Development economics
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:
1. Marine Biology (we got to go out on a boat!)
2. The History of the Holocaust
3. Logic and Critical Thinking
4. Eastern Religions
5. The French Revolution
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:

1. Origins of Nazism
2. Dante’s Divine Comedy
3. Behavioral Ecology & Conservation Biology
4. Principles of Evolution
5. Thinking and Speaking About Thinking and Speaking

Reposted by Jon Green, Clark Gray

Duke’s student newspaper is all over this. Neither Ariely nor the university are saying anything so far www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke...
Duke professor Dan Ariely had longstanding friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, newly released files show
Ariely is named in 636 of the some 3 million newly released files. He was a prominent professor at Duke over the course of his correspondence with Epstein.
www.dukechronicle.com

Reposted by Clark Gray

New gas power plant -- behind the meter, only to service datacenter -- on the site of coal-fired power plant in Homer City PA, will generate 4.4 GW of power, as much as peak winter demand of Scotland.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Reposted by Clark Gray

Big flocks of robins (100+?) show up in my yard in St. Paul every few days, I think they are eating hackberries (but I imagine they would eat through them pretty fast). I thought they went south for the winter? Its weird to hear them twittering like its spring in sub-zero temps.

Reposted by Clark Gray

I’m fairly certain that in my 17 years at NC State that I’ve seen exactly two protests. This is not a campus of radicals or activists. Both protests have been in the last month, targeting ICE and its illegal, thuggish tactics.
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:
1. Marine Biology (we got to go out on a boat!)
2. The History of the Holocaust
3. Logic and Critical Thinking
4. Eastern Religions
5. The French Revolution
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:

1. Origins of Nazism
2. Dante’s Divine Comedy
3. Behavioral Ecology & Conservation Biology
4. Principles of Evolution
5. Thinking and Speaking About Thinking and Speaking
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:
1. Introduction to Islamic Studies
2. Introduction to Rock Music
3. African Music
4. Arabic 101
5. Southern Politics
You can test new tech ideas using the Seinfeld Test

Would the product eliminate the plot of an episode? (Google maps, cell phones, paypal, battery packs)

Good tech.

Would the product inspire new Seinfeld plots? (NFTs, AI chatbots, crypto currency, blindboxes, metaverse land sales)

Bad tech.
Breaking News: Texas A&M ended its women’s studies program and changed hundreds of courses over race and gender to comply with new policies limiting how race and gender ideology may be discussed in classrooms.
Texas A&M Ends Women’s Studies and Overhauls Hundreds of Classes on Race and Gender
New policies limiting the teaching of race and gender issues led administrators and professors to change hundreds of courses. School leaders say the rules could hurt A&M’s reputation.
nyti.ms
Population science/demography folks: Looking for a list of journals that either a) don't have OA fees, b) have reasonable OA fees (a few hundred), or c) allow authors to deposit the author's accepted manuscript in PubMed.

Does this exist somewhere? Do we need to start such a list?
a cartoon character with a sign that says south park behind him
ALT: a cartoon character with a sign that says south park behind him
media.tenor.com
Job 🚨: The European Institute (@lse-ei.bsky.social) at LSE is hiring an assistant prof in International Migration. I'm not in the hiring committee but happy to answer Qs about the department, LSE or this bloody weather that is actually pretty pretty today.

jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...
Assistant Professor in International Migration
Assistant Professor in International Migration, , <p style="text-align: center;"><em><span>LSE is committed to building a diverse, equitable and truly inclusive university</span></em></p> <p style="te...
jobs.lse.ac.uk
Stop Guessing, Start Planning.
Ever look at a single snow forecast and think, "But what are the actual odds?"

The Probabilistic Precipitation Portal is a resource to help you get ahead of the storm by moving beyond a single number to give you the full picture. www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/Prob_Precip/
👇
NWS Probabilistic Precipitation Portal
www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov

Reposted by Clark Gray

"Unlike the original, the state-approved version doesn’t include chapters on media and technology, global inequality, race and ethnicity, social stratification, or gender, sex and sexuality. It also scraps a section on the government-led genocide of Native Americans."
Florida Introduces “Sanitized” Sociology Textbook
The volume was created after a state review found that existing course materials violated a law prohibiting general education courses from teaching about systemic inequality. So far, at least two univ...
www.insidehighered.com