Kyle Copas
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kylecopas.bsky.social
Kyle Copas
@kylecopas.bsky.social
510 followers 930 following 180 posts
Head of comms @GBIF.org, writer, poet, communicator, producer, husband, father. 💩posting about literature, music, biodiversity, sustainability, design, #biodiversity. Decolonization begins at home (and abroad), restoring Indigenous roots.
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kylecopas.bsky.social
Unexpected surprise last week, seeing a Camões sonnet in the São Paolo metro.
Soneto Quem vê, Senhora, claro e manifesto O lindo ser de vossos olhos belos, Se não perder a vista só em vê-los, Já não paga o que deve a vosso gesto. Este me parecia preço honesto; Mas eu, por de vantagem merecê-los, Dei mais a vida e alma por querê-los, Donde já não me fica mais de resto. Assi que a vida e alma e esperança, E tudo quanto tenho, tudo é vosso, E o proveito disso eu só o levo. Porque é tamanha bem-aventurança O dar-vos quanto tenho e quanto posso, Que, quanto mais vos pago, mais vos devo. —Camões (1524 - 1580) Whoever sees, Lady, clearly and manifestly The beautiful being of your lovely eyes, If they do not lose their sight just by seeing them, They no longer pay what they owe to your gesture. This seemed to me an honest price; But I, to deserve them more, Gave more my life and soul for wanting them, From which nothing more remains to me. Thus, life and soul and hope, And all that I have, all is yours, And the benefit of it I alone take. For it is such great bliss To give you all I have and all I can, That the more I pay you, the more I owe you.
November 9, 2025 at 3:09 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Sadly we HAVE been here before.

Melanie Cervantes, Ya Basta (2017). Now one of many amazing works showing in São Paolo at a #COP30-adjacent exhibit, Histórias da Ecologia (Histories of Ecology), at @maspdobsky.bsky.social .
Art print by Melanie Cervantes from 2017 with the headline that reads Ya Basta That’s Enough, above a mother holding a child and pointing defiantly above a caption that reads The U.S. government is abducting children and locking them in cages, while two figures labeled Border Patrol and Police Ice fall into a dumpster labeled Basura or Trash.
November 8, 2025 at 5:24 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Question for the #HoosierDiaspora of @bginchi.bsky.social @jeffreyinsko.bsky.social @mattseybold.bsky.social et al.: Is it just me, or is this an odd name and logo for a joint that, given its emphasis on “auténtica comida indiana,” must have a menu focused on catfish and pork tenderloins?
Sign for a (Southeast Asian) Indian restaurant in São Paolo, Brazil
November 8, 2025 at 12:01 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
TIL the only way to make this nugget of etymological wisdom from Eleanor Barraclough’s fascinating book, Embers of the Hands, more fitting would have been to read it yesterday, lordag.
…the importance of Saturday for bathing and washing is preserved in its Old Norse name, Laugardagr, which means 'bath day'. It's still there in the word for Saturday in all the languages of the Nordic world: Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, even borrowed into Finnish.
October 5, 2025 at 8:58 AM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Fond of the idea that the first female PM of #Japan shares her first name with a dear friend and teacher, #Sanae Tokizane, literary critic and scholar of #Faulkner and the epistolary form who left this Easter egg of an inscription in my copy of her book, Faulkner and/or Writing: On Absalom, Absalom!
Photo of handwritten note reading next a book by the notewriter: “To Kyle: / With the Compliments / Read it if you like or dont read it if you like. / Absalom, Absalom! / 9/18/89 Sanae”
October 4, 2025 at 9:28 AM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Re: "hot things can look cold": cf. García Márquez G (1967), ch.1:

"Aureliano, on the other hand, took a step forward and put his hand on it, withdrawing it immediately. 'It's boiling,' he exclaimed, startled.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY “‘Thinky think’ before ‘grabby grab’.” Nature has tapped into its global community of readers, writers, friends and colleagues to compile a list of 99 lab tips to help make scientists’ working lives better. One, sent in by a chemist who has been burnt before, is simple: hot things can look cold.
September 25, 2025 at 9:59 AM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Convenient development at @gbif.org as I pack for a flight Lenapehoking and #ClimateWeekNYC.

Not much time left to cram, though, so maybe stick to the highlights:
www.gbif.org/resource/sea...
Screenshot of landing page highlighting the more than 3,000 peer-reviewed research articles that use data from the GBIF network. Text reads: "Biodiversity loss and climate change interact in many ways, reflecting two sides of the same problem: humanity’s unsustainable relationship with the natural world. Explore the research relying on data from the GBIF network to understand and assess the growing impact that changing temperatures, precipitation and other climate-related phenomena are having on biodiversity."
September 20, 2025 at 10:34 AM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Hegseth’s Pentagon continues its stellar work on comms opsec: wapo.st/45Yk0vl
A National Guard official acknowledged the documents are authentic but downplayed their sensitivity, saying the assessments are intended for internal use and were inadvertently emailed to The Post last week. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing an unspecified policy. It is unclear how many people mistakenly received the documents.
September 10, 2025 at 2:43 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Nikolai Yezhov (right) was unavailable for comment.
Two photos of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin beside the Moscow Canal, the first including Nikolai Yezhov, the second with Yezhov erased.
August 1, 2025 at 2:29 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Congratulations, @gaia.eco on establishing a niche as a #reseller of #openData on #biodiversity from @gbif.org.

Why acknowledge the cow (or credit the community that cares for it) when you can charge scale-dependent pricing tiers for the milk?
screenshot of pricing tiers for a startup reselling scale-dependent access to open data on biodiversity without acknowledgement or attribution
July 25, 2025 at 1:39 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
This tracks, given that Marco Rubio himself seems at best a simulation of a human being…
Screenshot of Breaking News alert notification: A Marco Rubio impostor using Al has contacted three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor and a member of Congress
July 8, 2025 at 2:19 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Lawdy, lawd: can you imagine paying for #tradprof “culture” pieces like this from the @wsj.com ?

Should come with a complementary set of pearls to clutch at Hillsdale alumni events…
Mr. Conn's book (complete with 24 color reproductions of Sully's portraits) plays down those aspects of Philadelphia that earned it the nickname "Sin City" long before Las Vegas existed. In contrast to its aristocratic exterior, Philadelphia's street life was bawdy and unruly, with taverns and brothels to match. Even so, Mr. Conn's depiction is a welcome rejoinder to historians' recent habit of debunking America's achievements. Sully's Philadelphia added class and style to the nation's birth. Mr. Conn's book will be a useful guide to anyone hoping to catch a glimpse of the Liberty Bell during the semiquincentennial. -Mr. Hart teaches history at Hillsdale College and is the author of "Benjamin Franklin: Cultural Protestant" (2021).
June 28, 2025 at 4:28 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Samples from this week’s opportunistic harvests: opium poppy seedhead from Linnaeus’s garden in Uppsala, bread wheat from the margin of a nearby farm, and a raspberry-boysenberry cross from our backyard.

Sorry, I ate all the cherries picked along the way…
opium poppy seedhead, bread wheat, and a hybrid raspberry-boysenberry
June 27, 2025 at 3:48 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
What species of pastry be these?
Linnaeus cookies
June 22, 2025 at 5:40 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Live look-in, midsommar eve, Stockholm archipelago
Northern sky after midnight, 20 June 2025, 59.7 N latitude
June 19, 2025 at 10:39 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
The latest by @fotoole.bsky.social is more compelling for the long-term perspective it offers, imho:
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
June 17, 2025 at 4:29 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Can’t decide between:

He Stoops To Conquer, or

🎶 I can’t stand up
For falling down 🎶

📸 Stefan Rousseau, AP
British Prime Minister and former prosecutor Keir Starmer kneels to collect papers and abases himself before convicted felon Donald Trump at the G7 meeting in Alberta
June 17, 2025 at 5:02 AM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Had no idea of the slack I’ll have to take up, Negroni-wise @bginchi.bsky.social (h/t Jason Wilson).

But maybe Santo Roberto Calasso will grant me grace…
Let's also not forget that spirits, and cocktail culture, will be heavily affected by these tariffs, as well. The Washington Post ran a good infographic article the other day, showing which popular cocktails will be most affected by the tariffs. Will companies simply stop importing things like vermouth and amaro? Aperol Spritz and Negroni lovers should be worried. Cocktail-shaped graphics show that an Aperol Spritz consists of 94% liquids from Europe, 67% of a Negroni, and 54% of a Sidecar.
April 6, 2025 at 5:01 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
he said it was impossible to go at the time and I suppose he was right, and how could he have known anyhow, how could any of us have known what was going to happen, I suppose other people seemed to know, but I never understood how they were so certain, what I mean is, you could never have imagined it, not in a million years, all that was to hap-pen, and I could never understand those that left, how they could just leave like that, leave everything behind, all that life, all that living, it was absolutely impossible for us to do so at the time and the more I look at it the more it seems there was nothing we could do anyhow, what I mean is, there was never any real room for action, that time with the visas, how were we supposed to go when we had so many commitments, so many responsibilities, and when things got worse there was just no room for manoeuvre, I think what I'm trying to say is that I used to believe in free will, if you had asked me before all this I would have told you I was free as a bird, but now I'm not so sure, now, I don't see how free will is possible when you are caught up within such a monstrosity, one thing leads to another thing until the damn thing has its own momentum and there is nothing you can do, I can see now that what I thought of as freedom was really just struggle and that there was no freedom all along,
March 23, 2025 at 8:53 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Wait, so Fred Mertz is answering the call to be chancellor of Germany? Haven’t they learned anything from the US’ experiment with B-list TV actors as politicians?
Actor William Frawley answers a telephone in the role of Fred Mertz on the television sitcom, I Love Lucy.
February 3, 2025 at 12:45 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
A bit late into the trip to start shitposting breaded tenderloin sandwiches at the whole #HoosierDiaspora, but we are where we are…

Also-ran from Walt’s in West Lafayette. Holding out for the Black Sparrow…

@jeffreyinsko.bsky.social @bginchi.bsky.social
February 1, 2025 at 5:33 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
I will recognize the Gulf of Amerikkka if and only if that bronzer-greased nitwit gets out his Sharpie and does the markup himself again:
Delusional gaslighter-in-chief displays map of Hurricane Dorian's projected path that he grafittied.
January 28, 2025 at 1:34 AM
kylecopas.bsky.social
Today in sad but true fake news @theonion.com:
theonion.com/fbi-uncovers...
"Praise Allah, for soon every American city shall be plagued with disaster and hardship," al-Zawahiri said in the video, which includes several minutes of footage of young, masked al-Qaeda militants casually sipping beverages as they thumb through the latest issues of Time and U.S. News And World Report. "The infidels have brought this pain and destruction upon themselves through their arrogance and callousness. Soon, the United States will watch in horror as its bridges crumble, its desperate citizens suffer in want of medicine and paying employment, and its once vast riches are reduced to naught. The righteous warriors among our ranks must now unite, get comfortable, and look on from afar at the calamity unfolding in the West."
January 13, 2025 at 8:53 AM
kylecopas.bsky.social
h/t Aka Hansen 🇬🇱
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
But here's what I wonder: do people outside Greenland even realise we are still governed by Denmark? Do they know that our political landscape is primarily socialist, with a few socially liberal voices? Do they understand the values that guide us as a people? One of these is a commitment to generosity and sharing that values collective wellbeing over individual prosperity - such as when a hunter successfully brings back a catch and the food is distributed among the entire community rather than being kept for personal gain. They are principles that stand in contrast to the individualistic and profit-driven ethos often associated with US and western cultures.
January 10, 2025 at 5:40 PM
kylecopas.bsky.social
New line of holiday gift basket just dropped:
Black dog on a dog bed and a pillow atop a dog basket
December 25, 2024 at 10:53 AM