Scout Blum
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Scout Blum
@scoutblum.bsky.social
470 followers 57 following 10 posts
Environmental historian and game designer; mom to an amazing boy and animals.
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Reposted by Scout Blum
envirodgi.bsky.social
Congress has not yet approved EPA’s proposal to slash its budget by a massive 50%, yet the agency has *already* cut far more staff than in its proposal - 25% by EDGI’s count, and likely more by year’s end. EDGI’s @scoutblum.bsky.social and Chris Sellers explain:
theconversation.com/trump-admini...
Trump administration is on track to cut 1 in 3 EPA staffers by the end of 2025, slashing agency’s ability to keep pollution out of air and water
Careful research into public information and in-depth interviews has shown the scale of personnel cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency.
theconversation.com
October 10, 2025 at 5:46 PM
A print and play game about diversity in games I designed for the Playing Inside series!
October 9, 2025 at 12:12 AM
An op-ed I did with Chris Sellers:
October 1, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Proud to have been a small part of this report - many congrats to Chris Sellers for his thorough, hard work!
September 7, 2025 at 2:33 PM
This is a great project and already generating some fascinating information from interviewees! If you are a federal employee in env'l, health, energy, climate work, please contact us!
envirodgi.bsky.social Environmental Data & Governance Initiative @envirodgi.bsky.social · Aug 1
❗Former & current fed employees @enviro agencies: EDGI is looking for confidential interview participants.

➡️ Interviews are ~1 hour
➡️ Participation is confidential (encryption & password-protection used)

Interested? Reach out to Scout Blum:
Signal @scoutblum.26
Email scoutblum @ gmail dot com
August 1, 2025 at 7:15 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
boardgamegeek.com
Feedback: I asked game publishers how they plan to respond to newly announced U.S. tariffs, and here's a sampling of their responses: boardgamegeek.com/blog/1/blogp...

That post features only 15 of more than a hundred responses, so I'll post another round-up tomorrow. —WEM
April 3, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
liedra.net
I have a few masters level students who are looking for responses to surveys about games, so if you’re in the mood to fill out fun forms I’ll make a thread of them here!

First one is about horror games: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...
Microsoft Forms
forms.office.com
March 26, 2025 at 9:14 AM
Reposted by Scout Blum
envirodgi.bsky.social
1/ Earlier this month, the Trump EPA announced it would cancel 100s of grants already authorized by congress. EDGI & @publicenvirodata.bsky.social have released a map highlighting the impacts of cancellations on #EnvironmentalJustice communities. Learn more here: envirodatagov.org/new-environm...
New Environmental Justice Grants Map Highlights Impacts of EPA Fund Cancellations – Environmental Data and Governance Initiative
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 20, 2025 CONTACT: EDGI’s experts are available to answer media questions. For media inquiries, please email Shannan Lenke […]
envirodatagov.org
March 20, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
jbf1755.bsky.social
Truth 😬
econroy.bsky.social Eddy Conroy @econroy.bsky.social · Mar 19
Paging @thetattooedprof.bsky.social and @kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Hoping you aren’t the end of the video just yet.
March 20, 2025 at 4:51 AM
Rising Waters has been reviewed in the American Historical Review! This is one of the flagship historical journals - so cool to see board games getting a place alongside other scholarship. doi.org/10.1093/ahr/...
Scout Blum, designer. Rising Waters: A Game Based on the 1927 Mississippi Flood.
In the evolving landscape of historical pedagogy, Rising Waters, designed by Scout Blum, emerges as a notable attempt to bridge the gap between interactive
doi.org
March 17, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
bellingcat.com
Are you a keen researcher and passionate about environment or wildlife investigations? Bellingcat is looking for wildlife and environment related investigations that use open source methods and tools. www.bellingcat.com/uncategorize...
Pitch Wildlife and Environmental investigations to Bellingcat - bellingcat
If your source material is online and public, and your story unearths something deeper about our planet, we'd love to hear from you.
www.bellingcat.com
March 13, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Reposted by Scout Blum
dollyjorgensen.bsky.social
We have two openings left in the Greenhouse #envhum book talk series this spring: April 7 & 28. Talks are at 4pm Central European time, but we move it to 10am if we have a guest from Asia/Australia.

If you have a new book (2024 or 2025) that you'd like to present on one of these dates, contact me!
The Greenhouse – Center for Environmental Humanities
newnatures.org
March 9, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Scout Blum
nichecanada.bsky.social
This is the introduction to an entire series that we co-published with @activehist.bsky.social on historians confronting climate change, which you can peruse here: niche-canada.org/tag/historia...

#envhist #climhist #climatechange
March 4, 2025 at 8:21 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
girlsreallyrule.bsky.social
Here is a great website, where you can put in your zip code and see what specific cuts in Social Security in your area Republicans are proposing and what that will mean for you specifically. democrats-budget.house.gov/house-republ...
February 23, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
carbonbrief.org
Recommended read: A research librarian and policy scholar in North America outlined in @us.theconversation.com how to “find climate data and science the Trump administration doesn’t want you to see”.

📝 @ericnost.bsky.social Alejandro Paz
How to find climate data and science the Trump administration doesn’t want you to see
Several groups are working to preserve webpages, tools and data – some of which have already gone missing from government webpages since the start of the Trump administration.
buff.ly
February 23, 2025 at 11:32 AM
Reposted by Scout Blum
jbendery.bsky.social
Trump's DOJ has erased a report from its website that lays out its own recommendations for tackling violence against Indigenous women www.huffpost.com/entry/donald...
Trump’s DOJ Erases Report On Violence Against Native American Women
www.huffpost.com
February 18, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
carsoncenter.bsky.social
We are looking forward to your applications!
theplantinitiative.bsky.social The Plant Initiative @theplantinitiative.bsky.social · Feb 17
The @carsoncenter.bsky.social invites applications for the international & interdisciplinary MA Environment and Society. Deadline Mar 10, 2025. 2 yrs, instruction in English. In-person in Munich, Germany. No tuition, just small fee. www.environmentmaster.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/about_ma/ind...
February 17, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
fortcircle.bsky.social
Hey, everybody, I just wanted to let you all know that Tory Brown @downtowntbrown.bsky.social (designer of Votes for Women) will be on NPR's 1A program on Thursday at 11:20am (eastern time). the1a.org
January 21, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
us.theconversation.com
People with less knowledge about #AI are actually more open to using it, challenging the assumption that tech-savvy individuals are the most eager adopters. Business professors explain the “lower literacy-higher receptivity” link – when people think it’s ‘magic’:
Knowing less about AI makes people more open to having it in their lives – new research
People with less AI literacy often see the technology as ‘magical’ and awe-inspiring.
buff.ly
January 22, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Scout Blum
chalkbeat.org
Teacher harassment is making headlines. It’s past time for school districts to address it.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/philadelphia/2024/12/23/malvern-teacher-tiktok-harassment-case-teacher-bullying-is-old-news/
It’s past time to address teacher harassment
The problem has long plagued educators online and off.
www.chalkbeat.org
December 23, 2024 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
envirodgi.bsky.social
“The first Trump admin altered or deleted numerous federal web pages containing public-facing climate information, according to monitoring efforts by the nonprofit Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which tracks changes on federal websites.”

www.scientificamerican.com/article/scie...
Scientists Scramble to Save Climate Data from Trump—Again
Federal climate databases remained largely intact during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. Scientists say the threats are bigger this time
www.scientificamerican.com
December 15, 2024 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
louisathelast.bsky.social
Please tell your kids, every damn day if necessary, that chatGPT is not a goddamn search engine and you shouldn’t believe a word it says. Tell the adults too, but it’s especially imperative to inoculate kids against this
spavel.bsky.social Pavel* @spavel.bsky.social · Jul 6
Well this is grim
weird interaction with a student this week. they kept coming up with weird "facts" ("greek is actually a combination of four other languages") that left me baffled. i said let's look this stuff up together, and they said ok, i'll open a search bar, and they opened... ch*tgpt and i was like "this is not a search bar" and they were like "yes it is, you can search for anything in here" the thing that made me feel crazy is like. every kid that's using this as a browser is getting new BESPOKE false "facts." this isn't "a widespread misconception about X that stems from how it's taught in schools." each individual kid is now hooked into a Nonsense Machine with the "widespread misconception about X" you can start at a baseline. like, ok, in tenth grade we all talk about X thing from history, and that leaves us with some misguided concepts about X, but we can correct that as students get broader understandings of the world but with this, each child is getting UNIQUE wrong facts they are SURE are correct... because they did what we told them to do! they "looked it up"! they got it from somewhere! it's not a kid making up a belief on hearsay and assumption... it's something they think they LEARNED this kid was extremely combative with me, and i understood why. i was sitting in front of him and telling him that the internet, a computer, technology, all these supposedly authoritative things... were wrong. and that i, one person, was right. he basically *couldn't* believe me. 8 135 3.8K 97K ... stillorangecrushed @stilloranged. 7h he decided that i was simply a teacher who'd made a mistake. he could check it, after all! he could look it up! he could find the REAL facts. i obviously hadn't done that, i was just an adult who'd decided i was smarter than him. hence the defensiveness. like i said: i understood 5 760 3.2K 82K stillorangecrushed @stilloranged. 7h ... it was so fucking rough. i did my best, but i am one person trying to work against a campaign of misinformation so vast that it fucking terrifies me. this kid is being set up for a life lived entirely inside the hall of mirrors
December 10, 2024 at 2:38 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
dollyjorgensen.bsky.social
Coming up Monday 2 December 2024, 16:00 Central European time:
Elena Kochetkova on Greenhouse #envhum book talk series to discuss The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology (MIT Press, 2024)
Join us!
newnatures.org/greenhouse/e...
#envhist
Online book talk: Kochetkova, Green Power of Socialism – The Greenhouse
newnatures.org
November 29, 2024 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Scout Blum
cmichpress.bsky.social
This #GivingTuesday level up education through the Center for Learning through Games and Simulations and CMich Press, where innovation meets education. Power the future of game-based learning & design: giving.apps.cmich.edu/fund/9100111. The first $1k donated will be matched $2 for every $1 given.
Banner image with a maroon background saying "Unlock new levels of learning! #GivingTuesday" with a large yellow meeple person off to the right side and the CMU Center for Learning through Games and Simulations logo below the text in white.
November 25, 2024 at 5:54 PM
Proud to have worked with a great group of historians on this.
November 20, 2024 at 7:04 PM