Tamara Boyd
tamaraboyd.bsky.social
Tamara Boyd
@tamaraboyd.bsky.social
Word wrangler. Cat servant. Chief leaf and petal inspector. She/her
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
In the semi-darkness of a forest cave glitters a treasure of glowing green: Schistostega pennata, common name 'goblin gold' moss.

It's glowing not because of luminescence or fluorescence, but because the moss has evolved a billion little lenses to capture & reflect light.

(📷: Tentsukutsu)
March 30, 2024 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Everybunny was kung-fu fighting.

photographers: Takayuki and Mora Nakamura.
March 29, 2024 at 9:33 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Physicist Caroline Herzenberg was born OTD in 1932. She is known for pioneering early work in Mössbauer spectroscopy, including an analysis of the first samples returned from the moon by the Apollo astronauts. 🧪 👩‍🔬

Image: Herzenberg as Finalist in the 1949 Science Talent Search
March 26, 2024 at 4:47 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Stop.
Using.
Rat/Mouse Poison.
🪶
NYC isn't the only city with this problem! Maureen Murray has been studying this issue since the early 2000s in Massachusetts. By 2020, 100% of the red tailed hawks she looked at had rat poison exposure.

100 %. All of them. 🧪 setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
March 26, 2024 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Why do the billionaires who are obsessed with building space rockets never fund stuff like this
Chandra, the space-based observatory that brings us incredible x-ray images of the most extreme environments in the cosmos, is at risk of cancellation. It’ll be a huge loss to astronomy if the mission ends prematurely for budget reasons. Go to www.savechandra.org to find out how to help #SaveChandra
March 26, 2024 at 4:23 AM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Backlit Cooper’s Hawk 🪶🌥️🌵
March 24, 2024 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
I have a story in this new anthology, due out in May, along with a lot of excellent writers. Stories inspired by Zamyatin's social dystopia "We".
TOC Announcement for The Utopia of Us, edited by Teika Marija Smits! A charity anthology for Ukrainian charities, this book celebrates the centenary of the first publication of the hugely significant novel We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Launch at @cymeraf.bsky.social More news to come! #TheUtopiaOfUs
March 24, 2024 at 1:43 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Sadly Voyager1 is glitching again. Currently in interstellar space,15 billion miles away, it can receive commands, but is unable to return data.🤞Hoping NASA can fix its 46yo computer that has less memory than a car key fob. The 45 hr time lag between send/receive makes troubleshooting hard though.🧪🔭
December 19, 2023 at 8:04 AM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
"When it comes to space movies, it seems like moviemakers have a choice to make: is this story a work of competency porn? Or is it a Haunting Meditation on Time and Grief and Possibly Dad?"

Leah Schnelbach reviews Spaceman (2024)!

reactormag.com/movie-review...
Eight Crazy Eyes: Spaceman - Reactor
In space, no one can hear a giant space spider eat Nutella
reactormag.com
March 14, 2024 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Our ninth consecutive month of record warmth - February 2024

🟥 warmer than average
🟦 colder than average

Overall, the average February global air temperature was +1.44°C above 1951-1980 climate baseline (+1.73°C above the 1880-1920 baseline). Data code: data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sour...
March 13, 2024 at 8:24 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Maximum fluff: up close with a small (about a cm. long) day-flying moth (Heliolonche pictipennis) on its preferred flower, a desert dandelion. Mojave Desert, California. Worth a zoom-in to see its lovely pale-green eye. 🐙 🌿 #insects
March 12, 2024 at 11:19 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
This is a tribute to Peter Benchley, author of 'Jaws', who dedicated his life to reversing the unexpected negative impact his book had on the image of sharks.

We kill millions of sharks annually and demonize them in our media, who is the real monster? 💀

#Jaws #sharks #shark
March 11, 2024 at 2:15 PM
Always love when I take off my glasses for a sec and set them down someplace then can't remember where I put them and also can't *see* where I put them because I'm not wearing them and have to put on a second pair in order to find the first pair. Where are my bionic eyes?
March 12, 2024 at 9:42 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Been thinking about resonance and echoes in writing. I read an article about this once, I can't remember where, about ghosts and texts being haunted, not actual apparitions content wise, but echoes and connections.

Hauntings take time - that's a thing I rarely see writing advice address.
March 10, 2024 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
March 7, 2024 at 12:18 AM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
all of these decisions hinge on the false idea that the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws of the 1960s were written achieve "colorblindness" and "level the playing field" when they were explicitly devised to end THE RACIAL SUBORDINATION OF ONE GROUP TO ANOTHER.
Breaking news: A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a 55-year-old federal agency created to help minority-owned businesses must now open its doors to every race, siding with a group of White plaintiffs who argued that the agency discriminated against them.
Federal judge orders minority business agency opened to all races
The ruling sides with White plaintiffs in finding the Minority Business Development Agency’s presumption of disadvantage is unconstitutional.
www.washingtonpost.com
March 6, 2024 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Overcast skies brought out the best in this Costa’s Hummingbird 🪶🌵⛅️
March 6, 2024 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Reading dialogue out loud during the editing process really is key. So much dialogue reads like it was never spoken, nor was ever meant to be spoken, by an actual human. Actual human have to, you know, breathe when they speak.
Yup! This is my (not-so) secret weapon as an editor. Every single time I told a client to read even just the dialog out loud, things improved tenfold.

Sometimes my background in theatre actually helps.
March 6, 2024 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Commissions sign historic agreement to enhance cooperation on Great Lakes restoration and protection

Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC), the Great Lakes Commission (GLC), and International Joint Commission (IJC) formally signed the first-ever MOU between them.

PDF: www.glfc.org/pubs/pressre...
March 6, 2024 at 5:23 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
Just days after the CDC weakened its COVID isolation guidelines, the White House is suspending its free home rapid test program.

This week is your last chance to order free COVID rapid tests here: special.usps.com/testkits
March 5, 2024 at 4:14 AM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
It's been clear for 25 years, but today really underscored that the only consistent principle among the court's conservative judges is the desire for conservative outcomes. Federalism, originalism, textualism -- they're all just a means to an end, readily abandoned when inconvenient.
March 4, 2024 at 3:45 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
France has enshrined abortion rights in their constitution. Meanwhile in the US, SCOTUS is debating how many birthmarks a woman is allowed before being declared a witch
March 4, 2024 at 11:53 PM
Reposted by Tamara Boyd
front row at the poetry reading
March 3, 2024 at 9:52 PM
All this talk of Dune reminds me of a skit our college sf club performed (I use the word verrrrry liberally) at a convention roughly a thousand years ago that featured a character called the Kumquat Häagen-Dazs.
March 3, 2024 at 4:23 AM