I don’t usually strongly disagree with Dave, but speaking generally and not about Swift/Kelce: a wedding is almost definitionally a public performance! “Private“ ceremonies still happen in front of many others. Even getting married at the courthouse requires a witness!

Spent the day in Harrisburg testifying before a PA House Committee about the @pseticenter.bsky.social and Penn State's strength is astrobiology and astrophysics! Thanks Rep. Waxman for the invitation! www.pennlive.com/news/2026/06...

Bonkers to me that the 14th Amendment's historical promise of birthright citizenship was only upheld 5-4. Alito and Thomas dissenting is disappointing but not surprising, but Kavanaugh and Gorsuch genuinely surprised me. A win is a win, though. We should celebrate it.

Yup. The long delay is also inconsistent with a bunch of outer solar system things. But the idea of a more violent stage of planetary migration is a decent one that probably has some truth to it.

And 1 reason it was accepted quickly was that it explained the late heavy bombardment, a thing that probably did not happen

(So it was a very good step in evolving our understanding of the early solar system, but that model not a correct picture of the early solar system)

Just because I can’t help myself, the original, specific “Nice model” turned out to be demonstrably wrong. But *apsects* of it provide good explanations for observables in the solar system.

Ooh I wrote an undergraduate honors philosophy of science thesis sort of on this. (Independent study on “philosophy of planetary science” 1982)

Also accurate opening hours including (ESPECIALLY) on holidays.

I was once the sort of the visiting neutrino-physics attendee at a deep earth geology conference and I was AMAZED how the geologists were confidently arguing for various opposing ideas, much like your description of the planetary scientists. I'd never seen anything like it at a physics conference.

🔭 AAS has partnered with @apsphysics.aps.org and other organizations to develop a tool to help you submit unique, personalized comments on harmful proposed changes to federal grants. Please submit a comment by 13 July! www.aps.org/initiatives/...

Bluesky Science (especially journalists): 🧪 I have the sense that there is a lot of variation across scientific fields in how willing their scientists are to fairly portray consensus theories and certainty in those theories, especially when they disagree with them. Does this ring true? 1/

I participated in a AAS Congressional Visits Day a long time back and it was a great experience! Highly encourage you to apply if you're interested in learning more about advocating for science in DC!

Hey everyone! Our AAS committee, SGMA, wrote a 'comment' article for Nature Astronomy -- now published just in time for Pride! You can access it free via this link: rdcu.be/fplJd We also wrote an accompanying Q&A article to profile a few of our committee members: rdcu.be/fpk42 🧪🔭🌈

YES

As plausible as this is (and I'm not disputing it) it's also very plausible, given Trump's very particular and instinctive political genius, that he knows perfectly well what "asylum" means and is pandering to a base neither knows nor cares about that distinction. We underestimate him at our peril.

Loving the alt text here: "The plural of anecdote may not be data, but the singular of data is anecdote." xkcd.com/3262/

Particle physics Bluesky help me out: how fast do neutrinos of a given energy travel? My understanding is they are generated with a definite energy, but in a superposition of three different mass eigenstates. Since their velocity depends on their mass, how does one predict their time of flight?

I met some Welsh tourists in Italy and they were amused to tell me It’s pronounced, roughly, “cootch” or “koosh”. They informed me it’s sort of regional slang within Wales, which makes it even weirder it’s a Wordle word!

Fun fact for people who do the NYT Wordle puzzle: CWTCH (Welsh for, very roughly, "snuggle") is allowed by Wordle for some reason and is a GREAT way to avoid the (B/C/H/L/M/P/W)ATCH degeneracy that can sink you in hard mode. Open HORNS, then if h**** guess FILTH, then if ***tH guess CWTCH.

A key insight I had on how ”it is expensive to be poor“ was when I was helping someone manage a large amount of money, and the financial advisor pointed out this trick. You don’t sell your holdings and live off the proceeds, because that triggers taxes. You take out loans instead.

Eukaryogenesis was not a "step"! Neat new paper here, which reminds me to plug again Dan Mills' paper with me and Jenn Macalady on the topic of the "Hard Steps" paradigm: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I didn't watch the show with a careful eye, but I guess I imagined that the premise of the show was that each of the episodes was actually one of Jessica's books, in which she stars as a detective version of herself. That is, all these murders didn't really happen at all.

Help me out BlueSky. I swear I saw a long thread about why comments to the new OMB rules are important, because even if they don't persuade the OMB they will be fodder for the inevitable lawsuits. Gave examples of expert comments that would be "litigation gold". Help me find it?

So apparently there's a "Center for Extraterrestrial Integration to Society Research" at Penn State? Why wasn't I informed?! 🤣 sites.psu.edu/astrowright/...

The fact that I can never keep this straight and that I live in Arizona is *exactly* why I always just specify times in east coast or west coast and leave it at that

A pet peeve of mine that will become much more salient if more states stop switching to and from Daylight Saving Time is people using “standard time” as a flourish when they mean “daylight time“. Happened three times to me today!

The Rolling Stones' five year run of: Beggars Banquet (1968) Let It Bleed (1969) Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out (1970) Sticky Fingers (1971) Exile on Main Street (1972) Goats Head Soup (1973) Is just a mind-boggling-ly good string of work.

I am pleased to report that A(11) is now a Guinness World Record Holder (under 16 category) thanks to his ability to stack toilet paper rolls very quickly.

Just saw The Mandalorian and Grogu and it was fun! I don’t disagree with the reviews that say it’s basically 3 Mandalorian episodes in a very expensive trenchcoat. I think all the hate it is getting is basically an expectations problem: the title tells you exactly what you‘re getting!

One piece of advice I am seeing is not to log into Canvas until your IT staff says it’s safe. Apparently there’s a concern that the hackers are harvesting additional credentials by making it seem like it’s back online and running safely.

So, from what I’m gathering, I might be wrong about this: it appears that only some schools are affected, which suggests that we do in fact run local instances, but the ransomware pushed out broadly in a software update or something.

I don't know, some retired PSU folks I really, really trust told me that they could have built something better than LionPATH for far less than the ~$70 million PSU paid for that system, and I suspect they would say the same about Canvas.

This is also a particularly insidious bit of ransomware: timed right before graduation when universities most urgently need to have grades processed, and the hostage is protected by FERPA, which universities are overparanoid about violating.

OMG it’s ransomware! Again, I don’t think subscribing to Canvas makes us any more susceptible to this (I’m envious of universities that have switched to Gmail, instead of forcing faculty to use their own bespoke email software because I’ve misguided FERPA concerns)…

this is what all our learning management systems look like. Our universities knew they were targets of an attack, but didn't mention it to many of us. Neato.

I’m sure Canvas is better than anything individual universities could build themselves for cheaper, so I’m not opposed to outsourcing this essential function… But honestly, I thought we were all running our local instances of the software, not subject to a single point of failure, nationwide!

🔭 A cautionary tale for undergrads (and above!) using AI for #astro plots: our BSc student wanted to make a "quick" HR diagram showcasing M-dwarfs & thought some chatbot could make one and... well... ...extra credits are now offered to students who can correctly find all errors on cursedHR.png 🫠 🧪

Good to know! In all seriousness, this is very interesting and, as the thread goes on to show, a perfect example of how dynamics can be used to obtain physical properties! Something I am working on a lot :)

Not-so-breaking news: Phobos is a rock and not a space station. Neat work by Winter Parts using REBOUND to illustrate the old (disproven) hypothesis that Phobos's anomalous orbit was due to atmospheric drag because it is hollow! iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Filling in the gaps in the public school curriculum with a little home schooling

Spending May the Fourth watching the canon.

Warp, Woof, and Worf: The Foundational role of Klingons in the Ethos of Star Trek. In this this essay I will…

I was just contacted by a reporter asking for comment about the whole Pluto planet thing. Hanging on by a thread over here.

Currently in this situation, though I haven't finished yet. I did get many other things done while avoiding the task, though.

I need to put this up on my wall.

It's 2026 and we're still making callers wait on their phone while we slowly explain what voicemail is and how to use it every…single…time like it's 1985. "This is so-and-so's voicemail" is sufficient! I'm especially looking at you, customer service folks who ostensibly value customers' time.

Oh, is this why they say Jesus saves?

It's interesting that the many of the past barons of industry—Carnegie, Rockefeller—competed to be fondly remembered in death by building the biggest legacies and monuments to future American greatness with museums, research centers, and public spaces. Maybe this generation thinks they're immortal?

They are fantastic transition technology for teens. They can call home, be geolocated, pay for things without cash, listen to their music on headphones, get directions, slowly text friends, and ask Siri questions, but there’s no Web or social media and they turn into regular watches at school.