Geology

Hi folks. All 90 of you. Two weeks in and we're at 90. It's a far cry from the 173k on r/geology.

tl;dr: is it okay so far?

So far it's been mostly me, just trying to populate the community on a somewhat regular basis to keep the snowball rolling. And I just wanted to ask, is it okay that I'm doing pretty much exactly this? I know that the 90:10 rule applies here, maybe even more so until network effects take over. But I worry that I'm shouting into the void. Is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me.

Assuming it's okay to keep shouting into the void as though this community is my personal blog, for the time being, is there anything you'd like to see? Exactly one of the posts gained any traction (the equivalent of hitting the Reddit front-page), but that doesn't necessarily reflect on what you, all 90 subscribers, want to see here while you're doomscrolling.

So I'm begging you, try licking this clear rock here. It's probably not salt, because it isn't cubic. And all the undergrads have been dropping HCl on it to see if it effervesces, so it's probably sour now from all that acid. Maybe it's a sugar crystal I grew in my coffee cup, suspended on a string and I'm hoodwinking you all. Meow.

Are there geology MOOCs anywhere? Every time I go looking I find at most like three but one's in Chinese (which I don't know nearly well enough to take a course in), one's some advanced thing, and the other... I don't even remember.

Anyway, is there anywhere I could possibly peek into a course like... Rocks an' Whatnot 101 maybe? Dirt Stuff for People with Clean Hands, maybe? :'D I can't promise I won't end up disinterested or get bored or distracted and quit, but I want such courses to be a thing anyway.

I keep this one on hand for discussions with people who say "but the climate has always varied". Rate of change is a thing.

Full documentary. Not sure if NatGeo actually gets youtube royalties from it, or if it's a bootleg.

And you just finished your first field summer in geology

"That's a gneisse butte"

We think it is, but it would be great if someone with a little more knowledge could post a more authoritative response in that thread.

And a direct link to the embedded article at nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12127