Jolyon Ralph 🪨
LightNews LightNews
banner
jolyon.bsky.social
Jolyon Ralph 🪨
@jolyon.bsky.social
830 followers 270 following 350 posts
Pebble Enthusiast, mindat.org founder and maintainer.

Twitter Refugee. He/him
Posts Replies Media Videos
jolyon.bsky.social
Meme time
Password change box, new password: P63/mmc shown as super weak and New Password: Fd3(bar)m shown as strong.
August 12, 2025 at 11:02 AM
jolyon.bsky.social
Got three books for £1 yesterday at a charity shop, including this epic kids book on Aliens. [1/3]
Cover of "Granada Guide to Aliens" showing simplistic art of aliens walking in a field.
August 8, 2025 at 8:48 AM
jolyon.bsky.social
Uh what, ChatGPT?
a screengrab of a dialog from chatGPT saying "chatgpt.com wants to connect to a serial port" and a listing of different serial port devices on the computer.
July 21, 2025 at 4:51 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
Possibly one of the most amazing fossils to ever come out of the Fossil Butte Member of the Green River Formation in the US, this is a fossil of a Apatemys chardini - a lemur like mammal from the Oligocene. This is the best and most complete example of this species - in a private collection.
July 21, 2025 at 10:08 AM
jolyon.bsky.social
And also...
July 2, 2025 at 7:33 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
No apologies
July 2, 2025 at 3:20 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
Is Galen Erso working at SpaceX?
June 19, 2025 at 12:39 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
you.regettingold.com

This site absolutely gets worse every time you come back to it.

#sorrynotsorry
How old are you getting? Let us explain it properly!
you.regettingold.com
June 15, 2025 at 6:25 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
My* mindat paper is published in American Mineralogist!

I feel almost like a real scientist. Now I need to beg for views and citations like some kind of Youtube influencer. Yay.

pubs.geoscienceworld.org/msa/ammin/ar...

* Other co-authors may exist.
Mindat.org: The open access mineralogy database to accelerate data-intensive geoscience research | American Mineralogist | GeoScienceWorld
pubs.geoscienceworld.org
June 3, 2025 at 6:24 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
Antique stall in Tirana, Albania. No translation necessary
A antique stall with records including Sinnita
May 27, 2025 at 5:53 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
And I'm now in Albania, a place I've always wanted to visit. Enjoying it thoroughly.
May 27, 2025 at 4:45 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
Melanterite stalactite, from the 10th level of the Trepça mine in Kosovo. Amazing visit yesterday.
May 27, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Reposted by Jolyon Ralph 🪨
gmf1369.bsky.social
Repost & like, if you stand with President Zelensky!
February 28, 2025 at 8:34 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
An old photo of women making hats, and the caption says 'HATTERS GONNA HAT'
March 1, 2025 at 6:01 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
Have obtained these two specimens for my good friend Kerry, who needs them for reasons
Cummingtonite and Dickite
January 18, 2025 at 4:20 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
It's almost time for the greatest mineral event of the year.
A poster for "The Gem and Mineral Shit show"
January 16, 2025 at 2:48 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
Big Fukang Meteorite

(and @getpseudoed.bsky.social )
January 14, 2025 at 5:35 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
This image is a humorous and scientific reinterpretation of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, comparing human needs to the Igneous QAPF rock classification. The pyramid is divided into five layers, labeled from bottom to top: Physiological needs (red): Includes "food, water, warmth, rest," representing the fundamental human requirements. Safety needs (orange): Refers to "security, safety," emphasizing stability and protection. Belongingness & love needs (green): Highlights "intimate relationships, friends," which symbolize social connections. Granite (blue): Subdivided into "syeno- and monzo-granite, granodiorite, tonalite," humorously comparing human psychological needs to various granite compositions. Quartz-rich Granitoids (purple): Defined as "might not be igneous," reflecting the highest level of need in the context of "Quartz-rich needs."
January 8, 2025 at 5:09 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
I look after a large list of holes.
"Poorly explain what you do for a job."
December 31, 2024 at 6:00 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
Vibe for 2025
One of these tedious word grids with all sorts of phrases that are meant to bring positivity, such as POWERFUL and OPTIMISM "hidden" within, except on this EAT and ROX are outlined in red.
December 31, 2024 at 11:49 AM
jolyon.bsky.social
Everything on one chart. Mass vs Radius.

Lineweaver, Charles H., Patel, Vihan M. (2023) All objects and some questions. American Journal of Physics, 91 (10). 819-825 doi:10.1119/5.0150209 pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/art...
A logarithmic plot visualizing mass versus physical radius, with various regions and phenomena labeled. The x-axis shows the log of physical radius (in centimeters, with equivalent Mpc at the top), ranging from the Planck length to the Hubble radius. The y-axis shows the log of mass (in grams, with equivalent energy in GeV at the right), spanning subatomic particles to galaxy clusters. Regions include: "Quantum uncertainty" at small radii and low masses, where quantum mechanics dominates. "Forbidden by gravity," where gravity limits dense configurations like black holes. "Sub-Planckian unknown," below Planck length and mass. Labels for objects from fundamental particles (H+ and atoms) to humans, Earth, stars, and galaxies. Stellar remnants (white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes) and cosmological scales (Hubble radius, galaxy clusters). Overlays indicating the dominant cosmological parameters (ΩΛ, Ωr, Ωm) in shaded colors. Key milestones, like the Sun, Earth, and Planck units, are marked for reference.
December 30, 2024 at 10:39 AM
jolyon.bsky.social
A humorous comic strip with three panels. In the first panel, a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat and leopard print is selling crystals at a booth labeled "Gemma's Crystals." She holds up a red crystal and says to a potential customer, "This one protects you from being run over." The second panel shows the customer responding with "Cool. Can I see that?" as they take the crystal. In the third panel, the seller is being hit by a car while the customer looks at the crystal in her hand with a neutral expression. The car crash scene includes broken table pieces and scattered items from the booth. The comic is signed "@Beetlemoses."
December 27, 2024 at 12:42 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
That, kids, is how you do a headline.
The image shows a CNN Science article headline that reads, "Could mouse sperm orbiting Earth be the future of humanity?"
December 16, 2024 at 5:06 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
So I was given this old trophy that had a rock on it, and turns out it's a piece of "platinum-rich"* ore from the Merensky Reef, South Africa. Some nice visible chromite and sulfides (pentlandite/pyrrhotite?) along with the usual silicate gunk.

* Everything is relative.
A piece of merensky reef rock on a trophy dated 1974, "The Johnson Matthey Award"
December 16, 2024 at 1:08 PM
jolyon.bsky.social
Yes, there's a page on mindat.org for flourite
December 11, 2024 at 10:55 PM