Odd sight at UCLA: 6 Coco food delivery robots lined up by the chemistry building at 4:45 PM on the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend. Why?

Me in front of the Metro D line station at Wilshire/Fairfax and the Petersen Museum

Went on a bird walk at the Ventura settling ponds this AM. Did see birds like this mama duck with 6 ducklings.

The reservoir 4/30/2026

Beautiful “smile” of a crescent Moon hanging over Westwood Village tonight so I took a shot with my iPhone 16+pro at 5x. Night mode engaged so a stack of exposures about 10 sec total. Way deeper than my eye so I edited it down. IRL could not see the Earthshine at all.

Saw this big bug walking on the outside of my window. Luckily it’s a lot closer than the tree in the background.

Made a big pot of honey-spiced tofu chili for the UU Santa Monica Green Living potluck but it got canceled due to a forecast of rain. Two weeks of chili for us I guess.

Walking around the neighborhood this morning I saw LA Sanitation’s giant vacuum cleaner.

Page 3 of the Science Times in the 7 April 2026 dead tree edition of the @nytimes.com is a full page ad of the equations of some guy’s cosmology theory. Looks like he presented this at the March meeting of the APS. I haven’t followed the links in the image below.

Congrats to the UCLA women’s basketball team who won the NCAA championship today. 48 years ago UCLA WBB won the AIAW national championship before the NCAA included women’s basketball.

On Bluesky it's Death of Stalin - Easter Edition

It’s UCLA v USC in the NCAA WBB championship game! Just like the classic rivalry but with the Gamecocks instead of the Trojans. Go Bruins!

This is a great image of the Earth from Artemis II but it would be nice if the image details included more details like the time the shot was taken or the distance from the Earth when it was taken. www.nasa.gov/image-detail...

One more thing about the AI data centers in orbit schemes: the sun-synchronous terminator orbits suffer eclipse seasons, ~2 months per year with ~20 minute eclipses every orbit. So they will need big batteries too.

Dear @nytimes.com fix your sports stories on both the website and the iOS app.

Dead tree @latimes.com and @nytimes.com both have No Kings as the lead story with a photo above the fold. But the NYT headline writer was a bit snippy and skeptical

No Kings today. Sherman Oaks in LA. And I met my Congressman Brad Sherman in Sherman Oaks.

Some traitor is clearly trading energy and stock futures based on insider knowledge of Trump's moves in the Iran war. Is it Trump himself? Or an aide? If this is not stopped and the culprit arrested, then we can only conclude it is Trump himself.

The @nytimes.com spelling bee iPhone app once again failed to record progress this morning. This bug has happened many times in the past and all updates should be tested to make sure it never comes back. But apparently the QA staff is asleep at the switch.

The Moon was pretty this AM. New Moon on Wednesday.

It was clear last night but the morning fog couldn’t decide whether to cover the Moon or not. Later it was very foggy but then cleared up

WISE continues to inform us about the closest stars to the Sun: a new paper giving parallaxes on late T and Y brown dwarfs by Marocco etal using HST and Spitzer astrometry. I am the last author. arxiv.org/abs/2603.08984

Today was Daylight Savings Time day in the USA. Also the LA Marathon. So I had to get up at oh dark thirty then go to church on diversion since my usual route was closed. The detour was jammed but I got there. Still jammed for the ride home. Happy Sunday y'all!

Up early to see the total lunar eclipse. Clear in West LA. Took this shot with a cellphone camera on a tripod using 5x zoom and the self timer.

I was very efficient watching USA v Canada hockey this AM. The game started too early here on the left coast so I only tuned in at start of overtime and 101 seconds later it was over.

On 18 Feb 1930 Tombaugh saw Pluto jumping in his blink comparator, far fainter than expected. In 1980 a spoof paper by Dessler & Russell plotted the shrinking mass estimates vs time & predicted Pluto would vanish in 1984, but it survived to be demoted by the IAU in 2006.

Wearing this historical artifact while watching another: Casablanca on KCET

Seen at the Bernie/AOC rally in DTLA: sign says TRUMP IS THE ANTICHRIST Back side is a bill of particulars This tracks

Morning coffee

The spelling bee @nytimes.com - the iPhone app - just erased the 62 words I had found. Why don’t they have any quality control?

Just checked the sky: I won't see the Starlink launch from Vandenberg tonight. Too cloudy.

Last Sunday I walked up to the vacant lot overlooking the reservoir. The dirt parts of the old driveway were dry enough a week after the New Year’s rains.

The @nytimes.com spelling bee is not properly recording progress again

Saw the SpaceX launch from Vandenberg this AM. It was too early to get sunlight on the exhaust trail so just the rocket flames. Second stage on the left, booster doing boost back burn on right. This carried the Pandora mission in the Pioneer program of NASA plus many other satellites.

Toes in the Pacific 2026 Also another green flash

Happy New years Eastern time!

UCLA's campus is closed Dec 24 thru Jan 4, so my accomplishments lie elsewhere: rewatched The Santa Clause cooked food for 11 guests who all canceled due to rain on 12/24 rewatched The Muppet Christmas Carol saw the green flash on 12/27

Not a foggy Xmas eve but a very rainy one here in LA. Our Noche Buena dinner for 15 collapsed to only the folks staying in our house - 4 in all.

Donald J Trump is the child of an immigrant and is definitely a problem so I agree with Stephen Goering Miller?

Here in LA the solstice came at 7 AM on 21 Dec 2025. The Sun reached the southernmost part of its path around the ecliptic, so in the Northern Hemisphere days will start to to lengthen. While today is the shortest day, the earliest sunset was 4 Dec 2025 & the latest sunrise will be 7 Jan 2026.

Tire poppers I took off the boulevard on my morning walk Saturday

Found at the side of the boulevard yesterday and today. Spilled nails and a very experienced penny.

Belated post of a post Thanksgiving panorama from a vacant lot at the end of the next street up. Great view of the reservoir. It’s for sale for millions but you’ll need millions more for engineering.

Up early to see the ISS moving through the sky from SW to NE. I noticed Mercury was up in the ESE so I looked at it too. As usual Mercury is pretty bright compared to most stars but seen against a bright sky close to the Sun. Left pic is ISS, right pic is Mercury.

My @nytimes.com troubles continue: words found in the spelling bee on the iPhone app are not recorded but at least the webpage works OK. Stories on the athletic disappear in less than a second on the iPhone app and do't appear at all on the webpage. The app has been borked for more than a week.

Sunrise before the earliest sunset of the year at the latitude of LA.

Space-X launch of Starlink’s 12/1/2025 from Vandenberg as seen from my house. Booster in first picture, staging behind tree, then second stage in second picture.

Happy Thanksgiving! No big dinner for us today but I cooked and carved a 22 lb turkey for the UUSM.org potluck last Sunday. So we have leftovers! Turkey soup, turkey pot pie, turkey quesadillas, and canned cranberry sauce!

The @nytimes.com app on the iphone is screwed up again. The spelling bee fails to record progress. The sports stories show up on the screen for a fraction of a second before the screen goes blank. The webpage is OK on a browser.

So @ladwp.com staged an 18 minute power outage for Thanksgiving eve but the electricity is back on now