You reach down and pick up the fist-sized shiny grey rock. It twinkles in the daylight.
>
> Pet
You stroke your fingers across the satiny surface, appreciating both the smooth sensation beneath your fingertips and the gentle waves of the undulating foliation.
You could sit here all day petting this beauty.
>
> Lick
You nibble at the phyllite, well-aware that while flavour is diagnostic for some minerals, licking is an act of idle curiosity for rocks with mixed composition.
You taste salty sea spray from the beach, but mostly enjoy the textures.
>
> Analyse
Phyllite a mid-grade metamorphic rock, a slate or shale subjected to enough pressure and heat to re-orient its mica flakes into ultra-glittery alignment.
The wavy crenulation tells you it was floated, then pressure directions shifted & refilled it.
>
> Snuggle
You cuddle the rock close, resting your cheek on its surface, and tighten your arms in a fierce hug.
You squeeze tightly. More tightly. Inhumanly tightly over geologic timescales. Your snuggle is a squish of epic proportions.
>
> Squeeze moar
You unleash boundless affection, snuggle & squish beyond human limits until atomic bonds break & minerals realign within your grasp.
The sun rises & sets countless times, the very structure of the rock shifting as shiny phyllite metamorphoses into platy schist
>
> Take
With deep satisfaction, you tuck this lovely demonstration of a fundamental rock type into your bag.
You reflect fondly that today’s adventure was a remarkably calm interlude to the multi-hazard chaos descending on North America.
I’m reading a lot of well-intentioned articles that make it clear how many scicomm peeps have no idea disaster risk reduction is a deep field with a lot of research into effective communication.
ProTip: Using fear & shame as motivation backfires when applied to public health.
I can’t write this article (or even thread!) right now as I’m under medical orders to drop my stress levels (ahahahahasob), but...
If you’re writing well-intentioned pieces trying to influence pandemic behaviour, please take some cues from disaster sociology research. It exists!
Fundamental premise:
Vanishingly few people make active choices they believe will endanger themselves or the people they love.
If they’re making “bad” choices, it’s a fundamentally different risk perception. Until you understand how & why, your argument will miss its audience.
Even if you don’t pay much attention to ground-based astronomy, you know this telescope from pop culture & movies. It’s somewhere special. nature.com/articles/d4158…
This article from just before the closing announcement is fantastic for the context of why Arecibo is so unique: space.com/arecibo-observ…
I just...
I know we’ve got a lot going on, especially with the mass casualty event scheduled shortly after US Thanksgiving.
But take some time to read the Arecibo tributes as they come out. They won’t be cheerful. But they’ll be heartfelt.
But technically landslide are fluid-like, not fluids.
Why?
Because they’re a mixed mess of materials that act differently when moving than when still. You can’t just sample a tree trunk, some peat, and water to figure out the rheologic properties (how it flows).