Alex Wild / is on Nostr

Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin. Photographer of more living ant species than any other person, and still hasn't reached even 10% of them.

Photography: https://www.alexanderwild.com
UT Insect Collection: https://www.gbif.org/dataset/ba9984d8-d982-4fe6-b81c-a7585790034a

Last Notes

2024-08-15 19:08:16

The Party of Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity out behind the library filling a dumpster with books.

2024-08-15 18:49:16

The fascists who took over Florida's once-progressive New College at the behest of Ron DeSantis have been caught dumping vast numbers of books.
#Fascism #GOPExtremism #Florida #NewCollege
https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/education/2024/08/15/new-college-of-florida-throws-away-hundreds-of-library-books-diversity-lgbtq/74814756007/

2024-06-25 16:25:21

Can NOAA name heat waves like they do hurricanes, but after oil companies?
"The Chevron heat dome has been brutal"
"So many forest fires from the BP heat disaster"

2024-06-25 01:20:12

Are people aware that SCOTUS is very likely to end any effective federal protections for endangered species later this week?

2024-06-23 21:59:30

Twenty minutes of fireflies in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near the famous Elkmont campground. The yellow sparkles are Photinus carolinus, the synchronous fireflies that have become a tourism sensation, and the greenish trails are the more enigmatic "blue ghost" Phausis reticulata.
#Fireflies #Nature #Photography #Lampyridae
https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/112/668/175/562/967/397/original/9dd03a67586699a0.png

2024-06-18 14:44:19

From last week's trip to the Smoky mountains, a few minutes of synchronous fireflies (Photinus carolinus) in the forest undergrowth.
#Insects #Fireflies #Photography #Lampyridae #Photinus
https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/112/638/149/679/238/427/original/c777daa558a3110c.png

2024-06-12 12:34:51

Insane amount of light pollution coming from the Tesla factory in Austin. Just immense, and pointless.
#lightpollution #Tesla
https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/112/603/670/135/376/172/original/7de3b506f970080a.png

2024-05-16 02:00:22

While the Texas GOP’s ongoing destruction of public education may seem ideological, it’s worth looking past the culture war smokescreen. It’s simpler than that. The people doing it are pouring state money into their own pockets.
It’s just crime.
#Texas #HISD #MikeMiles
https://www.fox26houston.com/news/report-texas-tax-dollars-diverted-out-of-state-to-charter-schools-founded-by-mike-miles

2024-05-15 14:15:11

A gallery of hover flies:
#Syrphidae #Flies #Photography #Insects
https://www.alexanderwild.com/Insects/Diptera-Flies/Syrphidae

2024-05-03 20:04:36

UT Austin, my employer, beats and jails students engaged in peaceful protest, then manufactures propaganda that deeply misrepresents what the students were doing and had planned to do.
How am I supposed to work at an institution willing to hurt any students I recruit to come here? This is untenable.
#UTAustin #Texas
https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2024-05-03/uts-war-on-students/

2024-05-03 02:11:01

For all the hand-wringing over “illegals” breaking the law, this story of an illegal dam that messed with the water supply of millions of people downstream, built on the private ranch of one of the *border wall contractors*, is something.
#Texas #Water
https://www.kxan.com/texas-water/illegal-dam-on-james-river-torn-down-while-another-dam-pops-up-in-mason-county/

2024-05-01 15:40:31

Biology faculty at UT are meeting today to talk about a hiring plan. I don't envy their job of trying to make a department located in Texas attractive.
We're in the middle of an ongoing purge of black staff, the adminstration just called in the state police to beat and jail students, and no one in their right mind would want to risk pregnancy to have a family here. It's bleak.

2024-04-26 21:01:49

Campuses aren't being rocked by protests.
They're being rocked by politicized administrators ordering students beaten and jailed to satisfy the political elite.
Let's be clear who is causing the violence.

2024-04-25 15:03:30

Jay Hartzell, President of the University of Texas at Austin, yesterday broke the single most important compact that academics have with each other and their institutions: do not intentionally hurt students.
The TX governor, for his own political purposes, sent state troopers to campus before a student protest even began. Hartzell both let these outside law enforcement agencies in, and provided cover for the violence they inflicted on dozens of peaceful, unarmed UT students.
#UTAustin