Zoltán Sylvester
Research professor at UT Austin | geology | sedimentology | rivers | python | mountains | running | opinions are my own | he/him
zsylvester.github.io
- I added a page to my website that hints at the idea that I am interested in experimenting with artsy stuff when exploring landscapes with rocks and rivers zsylvester.github.io/art/
- There is also a page with links to recorded talks: zsylvester.github.io/presentations/
- Spending half an hour to figure out how to log in to a for-profit journal website to let them know that I don't have time to review a paper: not my favorite activity. You are making more than enough money to build (or pay for) a decent editorial management system. #elsevier
- This PBS Terra / Weathered episode is not easy to watch but it gives a great overview of the science and the aftermath of the 2025 fires in LA, one year later youtu.be/tYNwfj74WsI?...
- One task for which I would highly recommend using AI is improving poorly designed websites. I just asked Gemini to tweak the design of a conference page that makes me want to stay away from the conference, and the result is an order of magnitude better than the input
- Came across this old video of a sphere rolling down a 3D-printed meandering submarine channel. Even if you start out with a channel that has a constant slope, the meandering process results in a variable along-channel slope which is reflected in how the sphere speeds up and slows down ⚒️🧪
- One of the best things that happened to me in 2025 was that we got a permit to visit The Wave in Arizona. Here are some photos from last Friday; needless to say, photos do not do justice to this place
- TFW you have been trying to get a permit for The Wave for years, without success, and then you get not one but two permits for the same day
- Will be giving one of the last talks today at #AGU25, focusing on how well simple curvature-based models work on meandering rivers with a range of sediment loads. It turns out these models are not so robust if the sediment load is high and the river is migrating with crazy-high rates
- Downstream fining on a point bar, Trinity River, Texas. Scale bar units: centimeters in first photo, millimeters in the rest 🧪⚒️
- A couple of days ago we went to check out one of the most beautiful bends of the Trinity River in east Texas, a bend that is likely to be cut off in the near future 🧪⚒️
- A good introduction to power law distributions and their links to fractals, self-organized criticality, forest fires, networks, and earthquakes - although it would have been nice if they included more domain-expert perspectives and hinted at the limitations of these models youtu.be/HBluLfX2F_k?...
- Listening to this was a lot of fun. Disclaimer: I haven’t read Yuval Noah Harari’s book. And, after listening to this, I never will
- Posting this because it might prevent some additional swearing from happening: if you are trying to log in to the AGU website, do not use Safari
- Looks like AGU has decided that Macs (and people who use Macs) can just be ignored
- Moqui marbles - concretions from the Navajo Sandstone in Utah (images created from a photo taken in the field) 🧪⚒️
- Trying to decide which Matplotlib colormap is a good colormap for differentiating grains in an image
- As I said before, I am not a big fan (to say the least) of using AI for writing or generating images / movies, but it has completely changed the game when it comes to coding. Again, this does not mean that you don’t need to know anything about coding or that the work is less complicated/intense.
- I got this cutting board and these coasters from Kurtis Burmeister’s Etsy shop and they are among my favorite objects in the house www.etsy.com/shop/Burmeis...
- I just blocked all emails from MDPI journals in my email app. They are relentless. They are the worst.
- Today was a good day. #nokings protest, Austin, Texas
- It's not a big deal but I find it annoying when I am told to use only one slide (or three, whatever) when giving a short talk. I am old enough to figure out how to use visuals in a limited amount of time; let me decide if I want to use fifty slides or none
