Cafnir's Paleo Blog

Just letting people know this is caused by animal neglect. Plecos NEED driftwood to suck on or they will look for other alternatives. This means living things. This pleco is sucking off their slime coating. This is an essential barrier fish need and can die without, and is very much comparable to layers of skin being stripped.

anomalocaris is a maid

statements that would make absolutely no sense on any other website

she has frills and stuff

I feel like "trump wants to throw away literal dinosaur fossils" would really turn heads if we actually had a functional opposition party in this country to get messages out, but I guess I'll just have to get a paint pen and write it on my car. fine, I'll do it.

Trump and friends are trying to get rid of IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Science, USA Federal agency). Everyone is on leave/in admin limbo while the DOGE kids do whatever and lock people out of their emails. Already-awarded federal grants (that's how I get paid) for museums and libraries are now being terminated early via executive order. Museums are already closing (to be fair it has been bad for decades) and a lot of large and delicate fossil material will need new homes with space and funding, which almost no one has. It's bad. I don't know what to do except to keep working and occasionally scream into the internet.

Not trying to be a bummer, but this is pretty much the only thing anyone at my job can think about right now. I can only speak for museums, but specimens need periodical tending or they will decay or get lost. Grant funding is how we do everything: it's how temporary workers get paid, how we get access to subscription-based software, and it's how we buy new label paper for cripes' sake. We are still fighting, but everyone is honestly loopy with stress all the time now. People should know what they are destroying.

Just checking in with the chuckable imp union, how's negotiations going?

it's really up in the air right now