Catherine Sheard

@sheardcat

Lecturer & Interdisciplinary Fellow @ University of Aberdeen. Professionally: macroevolution, especially birds & languages. Personally: drinks too much coffee, plays too much D&D. she/her

820 Folgt1.994 Follower1.942 Posts

Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir sheardcat.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· 15d

Being a senior editor is such a scam, y'all. 😂 (I'm kidding. I genuinely love handling manuscripts as an editor. Playing a small part in making science better is so rewarding. But also? The workload is non-trivial.)

A screenshot of Wiley's "ReX" editorial software. It lists me as being an editor on 42 manuscripts, but it also says "Action required: 0"

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· 21d

Sigh.

Screenshot of an online form asking for my title. The choices are "Mr.", "Mrs.", and "Divers". What I'm cranky about is having to choose "Mrs.", because, y'know, I am not a Mrs.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· 28d

Oh, hey, Evolution did a "digest" of our recent piece on rodent stripes. academic.oup.com/evolut/artic... (OG paper here: academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...)

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· 28d

Step 2: made it to Reading. England, why are you hot???

The Reading Museum, a reddish brick building, in the sun

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· 29d

Step 1: made the train on time. (The guy across the aisle has piled all his stuff on the seat next to me? I am so confused by this lack of British Train Etiquette.)

Catherine, a white woman wearing a KF94 mask, leaning against a train window.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jul 1

I'm sorry what? (I guess these are supposed to be AI-hallucinated sloths? They look more like meerkats to me.)

A captcha security showing AI-generated pictures of motorcycles, cars, a plane, and three baby meerkats. The challenge is "find all the animals that are really slow"

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jun 26

My maps are getting better, but yet somehow also not better. (This is supposed to be a map of [redacted bird trait].)

a map of the world. mostly in bluescale. Qatar is coloured yellow ( = 5 units) which is clearly screwing up the scale.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jun 24

Progress?

a purple rectangle, with a blob that kinda looks like Australia coloured in yellow

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jun 24

Somehow, this is worse.

A completely yellow square. Still not a map of global bird richness.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jun 24

Alright, today we have Round 2 of "why we don't let the PIs code": this is supposed to be a global map of avian species richness.

a grey rectangle with a small green blob. about as far as you can get from being a map of the world.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jun 23

Good enough for now. (Same plot, less garish.)

a phylogeny, this time coloured in purple / green. it's not great -- the light colours, for example, are hard to see -- but at least it doesn't look like the 1970s called and want their hippies back

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jun 23

Super ugly, but at least no longer small?

a phylogeny of ~4000 species of birds, mostly coloured lime green and a really disgusting yellow, with the occasional clade of red and two of blue

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jun 23

Me: OMG, I successfully plotted my data, this is so exciting! R: Methinks you celebrated too soon. (This is supposed to be a phylogeny of ~4000 species of birds. It actually very well may be, just smol?)

a trait that varies between -3 and +4, labelled "trait" with a perfectly clear rainbow scale. otherwise, this figure is blank, except if you look reaaaaaaaaally carefully, there's a green dot in the middle.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jun 5

What even is this alphabetisation.

A list of countries and their corresponding country codes. Some are alphabetised (e.g., Estonia, Ethiopia). Some you can understand how they got there (e.g., Espana -> Spain). Some are baffling (e.g., the United Kingdom is between Gabon and Georgia).

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· May 23

Okay you jest but I had McDonald's for breakfast because it was the only thing open at 6 AM, and I suspect the Gaelic would have been too much for these people 😂

A McDonald's sign that says "fàilte" (Gaelic for "welcome")

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· May 23

A snowy Ben Nevis hiding in some rain clouds, behind some forest and moors

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· May 20

Well, I've caught up with one thing, at least.

A screenshot of the Wiley editorial dashboard, showing "Action required: 0".

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· May 12

I can both totally see how Wiley came up with this alert, but also, Wiley, truly: what.

An error message that claims that I need "-2" more new reviewers.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· May 7

Me: *trying to do a task I've successfully accomplished dozens of times, including literally on Monday* Computer: no.

An error code, saying "value for field dim_7 = 'UA' is fixed!" and "you are not authorised for 249". Your guess is as good as mine as to what this means.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· May 7

Also, happy voting day! If you're eligible, please go vote!

A sign on the ground that says "polling place"

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· May 1

I've literally never seen this as an option before. Who knew.

A screenshot of the editorial view of a Wiley journal, where a potential reviewer is labelled as "review opt-out"

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Mar 26

Dan. DAN. I have questions.

a screenshot of a citation of Dan's "What's the deal with birds?" paper

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Mar 2

You guys, I make the bestest maps of bird behaviour 😂

A map of the world where the lower latitudes are in red (a value around 0) and everything about 30 S or so is in blue (a value around -999). A few places (e.g., interior Greenland, interior Sahara, Antarctica) are coloured white.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Feb 27

Relatedly, I was recently trying to purchase something on an Austrian website, and this was my list of titles to choose from for billing. I have QUESTIONS.

A list of titles. It starts with Mr/Mrs/Ms, but then includes options such as Family, Open, Inter, and Diverse

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Feb 20

Wiley, respectfully....what?

a screenshot of an email from Wiley to Catherine Sheard that says "Dr. Editorial Office has not provided a peer review report report"

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Feb 16

The Aberdeen School of Biological Sciences is offering bursaries (travel/accommodation) to potential fellowship applicants. If this might be you, get in touch with a prospective host asap! www.abdn.ac.uk/sbs/blog/ear...

a banner showcasing Aberdeen / Aberdeenshire, including (left to right) Dunnottar Castle, Old Kings College, the snowy Cairngorm mountains, and some pretty dolphins. There really are like a gazillion dolphins in Aberdeen.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jan 28

Panopto -- are you drunk???? (This Panopto's attempt to transcribe David Attenborough discussing lyrebirds. I have...so many questions.)

A screenshot of automatically-generated captions. It says: "Well, everyone can hear. Okay, got. He couldn't finish it because he was coming. To persuade females to propose to the mind before most of it is concrete. Concrete. And he does that by calling Muslims the only other a few years ago in South Africa. It's a very convincing impersonation. Even in emotional."

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jan 20

Ugh why has it been so cloudyyyyyyyy

a chart showing nT activity (basically, how strong the aurora is over the UK) over time. The past 24 hours show very, very high activitiy. A bar across the top says "red alert: aurora likely"

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jan 7

Very picturesque, though.

View of the Adirondack High Peaks, aka snowy mountains, from a small prop plane

Two small prop planes on an airfield with a snowy mountain in the background

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat· Jan 1

Waving goodbye to 2025 in the most North Country way possible: listening to Radio Bob on NCPR and watching the snow fall.