Astronomers: highly recommend this thoughtful opinion piece by @hogg.bsky.social on how to think about our field in light of the development of large language models. whether you agree with him or not it’s vital to discuss the principles behind our science. 🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2602.10181

Hey, my name is in the Epstein files! I've told the story before, but should probably re-up. TLDR: never met the guy, never took (or asked for) any money from him, never visited the island. I was invited to the island, and said no. It's not that hard to just say no.

the Premier should resign after the disgraceful actions of the NSW police today

The only time I’ve ever had a package stolen was when it was a book. I wonder what they did with that book.

Happy to say that my paper “Inferring hemispheric asymmetries of stellar active regions through the information content of astrometric signals” is on the archive: arxiv.org/abs/2601.11707 It’s about what degeneracies are present (and importantly, what aren’t) in stellar surface mapping

I am creating some Bayesian statistics documents for phds students at UNSW and I thought it would be fun to look at the history of Jeffrey’s and Fisher. Goddamn Fisher was an awful person - Professor of Eugenics, and wrote in favour of nazi eugenicists AFTER Nuremberg 😕

Mulder is a Bayesian and Scully is a Frequentist.

I was reading a paper that got a bit of buzz a little bit ago about the adult literacy crisis. Ironically, the paper itself seems to lack numerical literacy, reporting basic percentages incorrectly…. 😕

I find it funny that when reading books on SETI, many authors describe the inherent chauvinism in assuming intelligence as an “evolutionary goal”, but to describe the pinnacle of technology they all invariably put the peak at radio telescopes. Perhaps radio astronomers are also chauvinists lol

War doesn’t just destroy buildings—it erases places where children learn, play, and grow. Bellingcat and journalists from @afp.com bureaus in Paris and Kyiv take a look at the lost spaces of youth in Ukraine. www.bellingcat.com/news/2025/12...

Very concerning that these guys were armed and not under surveillance.

I am concerned about the literacy rates in the adult population.

Sick and twisted massacre today. Had never imagined that this could happen here, like this. Solidarity to the Jewish community, solidarity to Bondi.

Confirmed: the attack at #Bondi was targeting the Jewish community. It’s a terrorism event. Awful for all involved. Thoughts are with Australia’s Jewish community and everyone who was on Bondi who had to witness such horrific events. This is so sad and not what our country is about. Devastating.

I don’t know how these people have gotten guns, but there needs to be a crackdown. We cannot be like the US and allows this shit to happen. It’s unclear how many victims there are, but I hope for a speedy recovery for them. Fuck those shooter cunts.

❗️Shocking footage. A passerby disarmed the shooter "with bare hands" at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

I don’t know how these people have gotten guns, but there needs to be a crackdown. We cannot be like the US and allows this shit to happen. It’s unclear how many victims there are, but I hope for a speedy recovery for them. Fuck those shooter cunts.

How is it that every bus I ride on there is always someone who has apparently never been in a bus before

For comparison, every robotic mission NASA has ever sent in its history, from the dawn of the Space Age 65 years ago to today, from Mercury to Pluto and beyond, has cost less than $40B. I know which one has done more for humankind and which one should be dismantled.

live long and prosper (if you have a billion dollars)

Archaeologists find evidence that a wave of mass brutality accompanied the collapse of the first pan-European culture ⛏️☠️ www.science.org/content/arti...

Very excited to share the NASA/ESA/STScI press release of our team's work on Apep! It's a terrific writeup, complete with a brand new beautiful visualisation of the nebula geometry. 1/? ⚛️🔭🧪 science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

Today is the first time I have seen explicit Nazi/antisemitic graffiti on the #usyd campus. I’ve reported it to campus maintenance, but I feel it is important to call out that this crap is never acceptable. I’ve tagged @sydney.edu.au so that they can hopefully resolve this quickly, as…

The decline in vegan options in the supermarkets correlates with the rise in fascism. In this essay I will argue that this is a causal relationship

What it took to get tenure in the Batman Studies Department in the 1960s, and what it takes to get tenure in Batman Studies today...

We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers. The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.

Anybody know where I can get a physical copy of this book that isn’t stupid expensive?

This whole operation is probably the most successful / impressive infiltration attacks committed since ww2. Doubly impressive that it is against a nation with a sophisticated intelligence network

Just paid $240 to have a stitch removed. Absolutely robbery, I could do that for free.

yes

Question for the academics who teach: what are you thoughts on “freebie” extensions for the students? For context, I teach a class at USYD, where students can automatically get a 5 day extension no questions asked. For this class, an assignment was due today, and only 15% of students submitted on…

We don't actually have to listen and report on what these assholes say. Having billions of dollars does not make your opinions more valuable than anyone else. In fact we shouldn't listen to your opinion on anything because you are a little dragon hoarding wealth and watching people suffer.

Third time buying this book first time actually getting it - really excited to finally read it after hearing the author talk about it at a SETI conference.

Come work with me at Macquarie University in Sydney! Job ad is live on AAS: aas.org/jobregister/...

Pretty cool to see TfNSW giving out surveys on the light rail today.

Good time to get a job in Australia

I'm hiring a postdoc here in Sydney! If you're interested in exoplanet dynamics, and circumbinary planets in particular, reach out. Three year position, apply by 27 February. Will be on the job register soon. Reach out if you have questions! 🔭 external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au/cw/en/job/53...

The destruction of trust in science. The burning of the books. The erasure and harm towards queer people. It’s happening. America went to countless wars and lost many of its children, making the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ for these freedoms. And one evil megalomaniac went and threw all of that away.

ditto for Australia

Happy to say that after 60 days of UNSW bureaucratic nonsense I have finally been paid. Without the support of my friends and family I would be scarily close to homelessness. While I know that no individual person is at fault or acted with malice, if you subscribe to Stafford Beers heuristic….

Sharing this proposed Sydney Harbour Area Stars and Planets Meeting link, organised by my supervisor, Dr Ben Montet doodle.com/group-poll/p... Details in the images, link for getting a consensus on dates. I’ll likely present so please come!

If you have to leave the US, there are many positions in academia and industry in Australia - I will do my best to talk through the possibilities here.

This has been done to death, but regarding PhD stipends, you’ll often see people mention that it’s below minimum wage, and then you’ll get some smarmy person (often a tenured prof on >$180k salary) say something along the lines of: well actually it’s not taxed. So I decided to do the math:

I have now not been paid by UNSW for nearly two months now. I am meant to be doing an internship, paid through UNSW, that was scheduled to start in late November 2024. Myself, and the industry partner, were ready to go in November 2024. However, the opaque maze of UNSW bureaucracy (cont…)

Visited the UNICEF office in Sydney today to discuss a data project for a class I teach. As much as I love astronomy, it’s very exciting to work on something that will have a tangible positive impact on people’s lives, particularly children in war/disaster zones.

Flying in to LAX at night is so cool as you can see all of the Christmas lights twinkling. However it reminded me that my prescription is outdated

Excited to be in Louisville Kentucky for exoplanets in our backyard 3! First non-California state I’ve been too

Travelling to conferences as a grad student is so fun. You never know when a hotel will on the spot charge you more than $1k, or refuse to let you in because they need the card holder’s signature. The card holder in this case is UNSW, and not a person.

The only observation I took all night. If fog wasn’t so pretty, I’d hate it.