Tara E. Jenson
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tejenson.bsky.social
Tara E. Jenson
@tejenson.bsky.social
Compassionate nihilist & gender traitor | Queer AF 🏳️‍🌈 | Postdoc @ BUSPH | Located in Mpls | Occasionally actual environmental epidemiology content (dementia/Alz) but mostly jaded cynicism & swears | she/they
Pinned
“I am, as you say, relentlessly cheerful because it’s the best fuck you I can think of to this terrible world.” - Senior Chief Petty Officer Jenks Khan, from “And the Mighty Will Fall”

Thank you @kbwagers.com for another joyful read, and the perfect encapsulation of feels I’m holding close today❤️
This.

Related - we're not in this boat because scientists/researchers all failed to be better/effective at communicating science to "normies." (iirc the fabulous Ed Yong also recently discussed/wrote along these lines but can't find)
I really hate it when scientists keep saying that “we need to rebuild trust in science,” because it implies that scientists are to blame for the mistrust rather than the millions of dollars of dark money that have funded political attacks on science in order to advance a far right agenda.
November 19, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Welp soooo many things are legit genuinely terrible presently, but here's a nice damn thing: my first published article out of my postdoc position - and it's alllllll DEI and intersectionality and environmental exposures - oh my!
journals.lww.com/environepide...
November 19, 2025 at 8:48 PM
After my sobering, gut-punch reminder this week of what happens in my fam-of-origin when I as a queer, gender non-conforming person accidentally or on purpose express any joy, sorrow, concern, or anxiety that is in any way tainted by queer, anti-racist, pro-trans or other progressive notions...
November 19, 2025 at 7:15 PM
One of my fav reads of last year, part of now one of my favorite universes/cast of characters, and also happened to beam into my brain just when it could do the absolute most to uplift and soothe my queer ass soul (i.e. the days after the election).
Happy One Year Anniversary to my little queer Die Hard in space book. Probably my favorite book of the #NeoG

#BookSky 🌈📚💙
Code Bravo.
Hostiles on board the MOS.
Command compromised.
NeoG compromised.

Today's the day! The action-packed, emotional Die Hard in space mashup you didn't know you needed. Come join the #NeoG as Commander Maxine Carmichael fights the good fight.

bookshop.org/p/books/and-...
November 19, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by Tara E. Jenson
Tonight! 9pm central! Tune in as I play some excellent dance music! I'm going to play some jungle music tonight, new and classics.

9pm central!

twitch.tv/devericmn
Twitch
Twitch is the world
twitch.tv
November 18, 2025 at 11:07 PM
Still haven't muscle-memoried that when I first see reference to anything "MTG" on the skyline it isn't Magic the Gathering
November 18, 2025 at 11:47 PM
Reposted by Tara E. Jenson
really sucks that they got the epstein drive while we got the epstein crimes
tbh gavin newsom does not look like someone you can trust
November 18, 2025 at 7:43 PM
A quick and beautiful turn out/response to an ICE raid in St. Paul MN this morning.
Federal officer threatening protesters with non lethal gun (paint ball gun?) to get them to move.
November 18, 2025 at 5:11 PM
I do appreciate the ungentle reminder (as I was clearly slipping in some of my impressions) that functionally and family-dynamics undercurrent-wise, 25 years has certainly not passed at all since I came out to my mom.
In news surprising no elder queers: as a 50 yo gay with a record span of years in which I’ve kept myself so narrowly dialed-in to keep most authentic bits of me safe and away from my fam-of-origin just to have a “we can talk about dogs tho I guess” relationship, I let my guard down and stepped in it
November 18, 2025 at 4:45 AM
In news surprising no elder queers: as a 50 yo gay with a record span of years in which I’ve kept myself so narrowly dialed-in to keep most authentic bits of me safe and away from my fam-of-origin just to have a “we can talk about dogs tho I guess” relationship, I let my guard down and stepped in it
November 18, 2025 at 4:38 AM
Reposted by Tara E. Jenson
Get in, losers, we’re going to the Cambrian Explosion.
ZOMG LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE SHALE

Okay, so the Burgess Shale is a fossil bed in British Columbia that contains a whole bunch of fossils of weirdass creatures from the Cambrian era, over 500 million years ago. But the great thing about the shale is that it has fossilized SOFT PARTS!
November 14, 2025 at 1:47 AM
Reposted by Tara E. Jenson
unsettling nepobaby that absolutely no one wants to be naked around: “millennials have killed public everyday nudity”
November 14, 2025 at 1:54 AM
Reposted by Tara E. Jenson
Some good auroras never fail to bring to mind the scene from Maximum Overdrive, a fav flick from my childhood. Stay away from your vehicles, power tools and certainly big rigs with your psycho clown demon faces the rest of the night, folks. Just in case.
November 12, 2025 at 5:01 AM
Reposted by Tara E. Jenson
Burning “still”
Pretty sure that someone in Anoka is seeing the aurora and insisting that it's Minneapolis burning "again".
November 12, 2025 at 5:28 AM
reposting full version with attribution info (apologies for and axing prior post)
So sad this keeps getting shared with the attribution cropped out.
November 12, 2025 at 5:30 AM
Reposted by Tara E. Jenson
Alt text for the image

Also, is it happening here? check Aurorawatch.ca and you can watch the webcam if you can't see it yourself.
November 12, 2025 at 5:02 AM
Adding my “holy shit” to the MSP northern lights skyline tonight. We live a mile or so from downtown Minneapolis, and I just got home and walked out the back and looked east:
November 12, 2025 at 4:55 AM
I love surfacing into bsky for the first time in a minute in the middle of a brief moment of nicetime vs the usual unrelenting un-nicetime. (I know, this doesn't fix or make ICE or any of the rest of the unrelenting awful stop, but it's 30 sec of "jesus well there are some rational ppl out there").
November 6, 2025 at 7:41 PM
goddamn I <3 my researcher work/life but hoo-boy this week I'm feeling T. Swift's lyric "you're only as hot as your last hit baby": last week 1 paper finally accepted for pub & another drafted, this week feeling like a failure struggling to make the current analysis mechanics work or even make sense
November 6, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Reposted by Tara E. Jenson
*whispers *

awoo
November 5, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by Tara E. Jenson
The United States was the leading destination for top scientists from all over the world.

That is ending. Politicians ended it. It will cripple our future competitiveness.

And it’s such a bitter tragedy. Almost no Americans, Conservative or Liberal, grasp what is now being stolen from them.
Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: 'The science world is ending'
YouTube video by PBS NewsHour
youtu.be
November 1, 2025 at 3:44 AM
Reposted by Tara E. Jenson
Look I have loved Tolkien for ages too but I learned a long time ago that if you are talking about the Silmarillion you are losing
October 29, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Been a minute since I’ve been in the O’Shaughnessy at St. Kate’s, and I couldn’t be more grateful and happy to have been here tonight for an event with Ta-Nehisi Coates. Also ran into a little bird named @makeherway.bsky.social who I haven’t seen in a hot minute either!
October 24, 2025 at 1:39 AM
Finally chilly enough and had an excuse to go out tonight to catch up with a friend to have a chance to wear this ridiculously awesome thrift store find from this past summer. Srsly check these epaulettes and embroidered/beaded coat-of-arms situations!
October 22, 2025 at 3:11 AM