Matthew Bizer > Recent Status Updates

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next."

“Sometimes scientists are painted as being not that caring, but we are all, literally, just to be here, sacrificing our normal lives for the sake of a cause we feel so strongly about. Surely that is the ultimate activism, to do the work that's going to provide the foundation for the answers.” - Dr. Ali Graham, as quoted in this book

I need to carry this book around so that the next time someone in my life wants to talk about my weight, I can force them to read chapter 6 of this book, a brilliant essay called “Fat Panic and the New Morality” by Dr. Kathleen Lebesco

"Only you can judge […] what your body needs and what gives you pleasure." - Richard Klein

First two essays in this collection were incredible. Next two had some good points to make that were a little too drowned in academic jargon, unneeded qualifiers, and datedness.

“Only you can judge […] what your body needs and what gives you pleasure.” - Richard Klein

First two essays in this collection were incredible. Next two had some good points to make that were a little too drowned in academic jargon, unneeded qualifiers, and datedness.

“…this tired binary—pitting mitigation against adaptation—is often peddled by the people for whom the difference between 2°C and 2.1°C of warming doesn’t really matter.”

It takes over half of the book for the ship to even get to Thwaites Glacier, which I do appreciate as part of the point, that the act of conducting this research is a brutal and challenging slog. Still, some parts of the first half of the book are quite dull (and/or too prone to navel-gazing). This chapter where they finally reach Thwaites, however, is just beautifully written.

Only through 2 chapters (of 12) but already this book is showing an ability to balance a wide range of topics: climate change & environmentalism, feminism & gender dynamics in science, and the power of multidisciplinary research. Rush is great at these discussions, but equally so are the scientists & crew members who contribute passages on their own lives and work!

Struggling to think of an essay that made me both laugh and cry as much as Joe Posnanski’s on Roberto Clemente.