Bryn Nelson
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seattlebryn.bsky.social
Bryn Nelson
@seattlebryn.bsky.social
4.4K followers 2.5K following 1.1K posts
Freelance science, medical + environmental writer and author of “Flush: The Remarkable Science of an Unlikely Treasure.” PhD in microbiology; also post about misinfo, journalism, oddities, good dogs, bad puns, and Seattle. He/him
✍🏻 💩🧪🧫🦠🔬🌲🏳️‍🌈
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seattlebryn.bsky.social
Great #book event going on right now at Chicago’s Fulton Market Patagonia: @hillaryrosner.bsky.social is in conversation about her new book, “Roam,” with fellow science writer @emilysohn.bsky.social! All about wildlife connectivity and conservation success stories and hope (and yes, coyote 💩). 🧪
November 7, 2025 at 1:28 AM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
We went to the #Seattle #Catrinas Festival last night (it’s happening today too!) and it was so joyful, touching, and inspiring. Just amazing. The food, the art, the costumes, the dancing, and an incredible mariachi band - loved every minute of it. #DiaDeLosMuertos #MexicanCulture
Two smiling men pose between large colorful papier machè Catrinas: the woman on the left is in a marigold orange dress and the man on the right is in a black suit and top hat. A woman in an exquisite Monarch butterfly Catrina outfit spreads her wings. Her dress is entirely made to look like a butterfly. She is wearing detailed orange face paint and her floral headdress has a profusion of attached butterflies. It’s just spectacular. Two men - Catrines - sport highly detailed skull makeup. Both have hats festooned with marigolds. One wears a gray suit and the other is dressed all in black with a cross necklace and colorful blanket over his shoulder. A spectacular Catrina has a dress, headdress, and staff made entirely of white corn husks. The staff and her headdress have yellow skulls, and her makeup is accentuated by contact lenses that give her an otherworldly look. Her arms and hands look skeletal and she has a colorful Mexican blanket as a scarf. The effect is jaw-dropping.
November 2, 2025 at 6:31 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Another important data point:
-Less than 10% of plastic products have been recycled!

In part 2 of my series, I describe how researchers have even found nanoplastics in the brain. The effects are uncertain, but the trend is disturbing. 🧪
3/3

acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Outline of a human body with brightly colored dots within it, representing the many, many bits of microplastic and nanoplastic particles.
October 16, 2025 at 9:56 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Hello to all new followers! I haven't posted my #science stories in a while, so here's a 2-part series I just wrote for the CytoSource news page of the journal Cancer Cytopathology, on the growing threat of #microplastics. Here's part 1. 🧪
1/3

acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Tiny microplastic bits of different colors appear on a person's fingers.
October 16, 2025 at 9:56 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Minnesota State Fair seed #art for the win!
Seed art of three cats looking at the viewer. “Are You Pooping?” It says. Seed art version of Van Gogh’s Olive Trees painting. Seed art of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring except it’s a squirrel.
August 29, 2025 at 8:38 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Ooh. Found something very similar in a walled-off closet and in bathroom floor insulation that we discovered in our 1906 #Seattle house. The headlines, cartoons and ads (all circa January 1940) are great!
Ad for “Gone With the Wind!” An eye-opening political cartoon from January 1940. Stalin and Hitler are wielding axes, systematically beheading ostriches. Finland is next. The title: “The dubious rewards of neutrality.” An article about fashion shows in Paris during the war. An elegant, short-haired model is pictured with the caption, “The rear pouch is a gas mask.” Headline from January 21, 1940 in the Seattle Sunday Times: “Britain Bids Neutrals Join War!”
July 22, 2025 at 8:47 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Hey #Seattle #science writers! Have you wanted to try your hand at scientific illustration? Now's your chance, with illustrator @levihastings.bsky.social! Levi will teach us at a sip and draw this Thurs at the SLU Moxy Hotel bar. Register here! @nswa.bsky.social 🧪
nswa.wildapricot.org/event-6256312
Cover of the book, "The Spirit of Springer: The Real-Life Rescue of an Orphaned Orca" by Amanda Abler, with illustrations by Levi Hastings. Under the title, a young orca is leaping out of the water, with a small research boat in the background.
July 21, 2025 at 11:10 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
8) No social media channel is perfect. Sometimes you need to step away, disconnect, go outside, and enjoy nature! But a site on which basic empathy, humanity, and decency aren’t routinely demonized, and on which extremism isn’t normalized, is infinitely better for my own mental health. /fin
A view of the majestic Snolqualmie Falls on a partly sunny day, with mist in the foreground, abundant evergreens, and a partial view of Salish Lodge (The Great Northern Hotel of "Twin Peaks" fame) in the background.
July 14, 2025 at 6:51 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
6) This may not be true for everyone, but the science and science writing community here feels more engaged, and engaging, than it ever was on Twitter. In less than two years, I’ve vastly outstripped the follower count that required more than a decade to amass on Twitter.
Image of a large crowd that fills the frame. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
July 14, 2025 at 6:51 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
5) The block function here, which I’ve used on occasion, is a great way to nip bad-faith trolling in the bud. As a science writer, I definitely appreciate fact-checking, good-faith questions, and honest critiques. But I don’t owe trolls a dime - or my precious time. Nor should you.
A concrete road block looks like it's bisecting an asphalt road, with a small red triangular alert sign in front of it. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
July 14, 2025 at 6:51 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
4) Media critics talk glibly about Bluesky being an “echo chamber.” It’s not, clearly, but what is different from Twitter is that disagreements here are far more constructive/substantive than the lazy schoolyard bully tactics of insults and name-calling.
An echo chamber, resembling a metal tunnel, with a partial metal barrier some distance away in the shape of an asterisk. Credit: via Flickr from warthog9
July 14, 2025 at 6:51 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
2) Twitter’s “view” numbers were long suspect, & Bluesky delivered vastly better engagement even when I had less than half as many followers! I tested this out multiple times when I was doing marketing for my book, "Flush." It wasn’t close, and deleting my Twitter account wasn't a hard call.
Red attention sign with an exclamation point inside a triangle. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
July 14, 2025 at 6:51 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Straight up gaslighting to excuse the thuggish assault of a sitting senator who has Congressional oversight over ICE! He’s literally the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety.
A page from Sen. Alex Padilla’s website: SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP, AND BORDER SAFETY Senator Padilla is a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety. The first Latino to chair this subcommittee, he leads the consideration of immigration reform proposals, as well as oversight of federal agencies with citizenship, asylum, refugee, and immigration enforcement responsibilities.
June 12, 2025 at 7:42 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Amid ongoing turmoil at the #NIH, the fierce debate over reimbursement of indirect costs linked to grants is shining a light on the burden borne by facilities & participants needed to conduct clinical trials. My latest for Cancer Cytopathology. 🧪

acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
A pink piggy bank is partially buried in a mountain of pennies so you can only see its eyes and ears.
June 9, 2025 at 6:04 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
A great turnout for #StandUpForScience2025 in Seattle. About 2000 people showed under partly sunny skies, with appearances by Gov. Ferguson and a bald eagle flyover! Plus lots of great signs. 🧪
With the Space Needle and a partly cloudy sky as a backdrop, people hold signs at today’s rally. One says “Science is US.” Another reads “#StandUp for Science.” Two people in chicken costumes hold signs at the science rally. A man in a fuzzy yellow chicken suit with red leggings holds a sign that reads, “Us birds are dying while RFK Jr is lying. #sciencesaveslives.” Next to him, a woman in a white and red chicken suit with yellow leggings holds a sign that reads, “We have the Flu. Soon you may too. #sciencesaveslives” With the Space Needle in the background, here are two more signs at the science rally. The one on the left says, “Ignorance of science is not evidence against it” and the one on the right says, “Don’t silence the science.” Two more great signs at the science rally. On the left, “GIRLS just wanna have FUNding for research.” On the right, “MAD SCIENTIST” above a picture of Beaker from the Muppets.
March 8, 2025 at 12:54 AM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
This is what you get when you click on the CDC's "Health Disparities Among LGBTQ Youth" page. It has been disappeared. This purge will harm some of our most vulnerable & hamper research aimed at helping them - an abdication of the CDC's vision to "equitably protect health, safety and security." 🧪
January 31, 2025 at 6:05 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
A view of Washington’s Deception Pass suspension bridge, with a green arcing latticework of iron over the roiling water below. The bridge looks like it disappears into evergreens above a rocky shoreline on the far side of the
January 24, 2025 at 7:08 AM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Such a fun night at the @seattleaquarium.bsky.social for our @nswa.bsky.social annual party last night! Felt like a little kid, all full of wonder at the sea creatures in the gorgeous new Ocean Pavilion.
Three people lie on their backs, looking up at the sea creatures in a huge aquarium tank designed to replicate an Indonesian reef. A blue light bathes them all. A partial view of the round One Ocean Hall in the new Ocean Pavilion. Projected on the walls is part of a movie about kelp - so the colorful images effectively surround the space. Selfie of me and the back half of a spotted eagle ray - she’s resting on the sandy floor of a big aquarium called The Reef.
January 18, 2025 at 2:17 AM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Maybe he was confused by Saint Barbra, the patron saint of stage and screen? 😉
A tall candle featuring an image of Barbra Streisand dressed as the Virgin Mary (credit: Illuminidol - where you can likely buy one should you need to pay homage).
January 10, 2025 at 6:45 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
And he just blocked me for calling out his BS, after telling other people they were being too sensitive. This seems like either a disinformation bot or a paid troll, judging by his prolific burst of replies today. Zero evidence that there was ever a marine bio major in 2013 by that name.
Newly created profile of “Davis Cooper,” or @marinebiologist22.bsky.social, who suggests that he’s a “Marine Biologist with a focus on Pelagic Ecology” who graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2013. “I brake for seals!” it says. He is following 0 people yet already had 106 posts in what appears to have been a few hours.
January 9, 2025 at 4:21 AM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Miss Piper wishes everyone a very merry holiday season full of delicious treats.
A cute gray- muzzled boxador dog wearing a reindeer headband looks expectantly at the camera (she did in fact get treats).
December 24, 2024 at 10:45 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
This distinction matters because the powerful narrative has been used to legitimize book & bathroom bans & other attacks against drag queens & transgender people, portrayed as the sexual predators of children. It’s a demonstrably false accusation, but the intense emotion easily swamps facts. 🧪13/22
A composite graphic shows parts of the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2023, compiled by the American Library Association. Of the 10, 7 were banned in part because of their LGBTQ+ content.
December 5, 2024 at 11:16 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
The researchers found that higher pathogen disgust correlated with utilitarian preferences. In other words, people with more disgust of potential disease vectors more readily adopted moral positions that maximized the good & minimized bad (killing or stealing might be justified in some cases).🧪7/22
A photo of a lifeboat from the Titanic, with roughly 20 survivors, as it approaches the Carpathia rescue ship. One commonly used moral dilemma is to pick who lives and who dies in an overcrowded lifeboat that will sink unless some passengers are thrown overboard to lighten the load. Utilitarian morality proposes that a few should be sacrificed for the good of the many. Strict deontology would instead suggest that such killing is *always* wrong, even if it leads to further death. Credit: J.W. Barker (Carpathia passenger) in The Sphere (London, 4 May 1912).
December 5, 2024 at 11:16 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
In Flush, I trace what science has revealed about the evolutionary history of disgust—our “behavioral immune system” & one of the most powerful human emotions. 🤢 I explore why we’re so grossed out by common things (poop, of course) and other very specific things (like beets or lutefisk 🤮). 🧪3/22
A hand holds a sticker that reads, "NORWEGIANS AGAINST LUTEFISK." In case you're wondering, lutefisk is cod that has been preserved by soaking it in lye. It stinks, has the consistency of fish Jell-O, and still makes me gag. Unbelievably, some churches still have all-you-can-eat lutefisk dinners, which just sounds like cruel torture.
December 5, 2024 at 11:16 PM
seattlebryn.bsky.social
Current POV. Walked and had treats but not nearly enough ball time for Miss Piper.
A gray-muzzled boxador with a spiky green ball in her mouth looks very expectantly at me.
November 30, 2024 at 6:49 PM