Our next exhibition opens April 9 and features a rare broadside of the Declaration as well as John Jay's handwritten draft of The Federalist No. 3. Learn more --> www.newberry.org/calendar/fre...

Hey all, if you are the kind of person who goes to or pays attention to or even, yes, complains about Worldcon (because you care about the state of speculative fiction & its communities), I *implore you* to take ten minutes and submit a program item or two before the deadline. Thread! 1/13

An opportunity for a Shameless Plug! Anyone in Chicagoland curious? The Chicago Astronomical Society has invited me to speak Sat, 28 Feb, 6 PM, at the Cernan Earth & Space Center, 2000 5th Ave, River Grove IL. "The Great Telescope of Birr Castle: How a 19th-Century Irish Family Changed Astronomy"

Our first glimpse of comet 3I/ATLAS from Juice's science camera 😍☄️ The precious data from the mission's November observations of the interstellar comet arrived on Earth last week. Teams are now digging in to discover what they reveal. Stay tuned for updates! More 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... 🔭 🧪

Provoke away, Ada!

Astonishing story. In the 1890s, a traveling showman, William Frisbee, hauled magic-lantern & movie projectors around Pennsylvania in his buggy, giving rural audiences their first taste of cinema.📽️🍿 His great-grandson just brought his films to the LOC. Including a Méliès: a lost mechanical clown.

Hey space people, I'm looking for an expert with good technical knowledge of Rocket Lab's Neutron rocket – particularly on the reusability/constellation aspect – to comment in a story I'm working on. If that's you, or you know someone, do get in touch. jdaoca[at]gmail[dot]com Thanks!

Exhibit writing/development gig for folks around NYC: careers.amnh.org/postings/4737

Johnny Cash's birthday, so I'll share what I wrote when I learned what he did for the military as a radio operator in Germany: "I keep my eyes wide open all the time. I keep a watch for Russkies on the Rhine. I mind the dots and dashes that go flyin'. When I'm at Mainz I watch the lines."

And we're off! My most favourite telescope, the Vera Rubin Observatory, has turned on its public alert stream and boy, were there a lot of changes in the Universe last night. More coming: ~7 million a night 😮: exploding stars, belching black holes, asteroids cruising through the solar system. 🤗🔭🧪

Takes Direction Well? Could I love this book any more? Yes! Just figured out that the stamps are oriented to show you the way the book opens in every direction! What a helpful clue!! 🧐

Puzzle Binding! Tricky! These are almost as rare as hen's teeth, and we just... Had One??? And, it includes HOW Many Books? (Five from Germany c. 1601 and a blank one at last count...) #Vexierbuch #DosADos @newberrylibrary.bsky.social (Case C 823 .966)

On TV tonight, saw @ms.now's correspondent @jacobsoboroff.bsky.social, introducing a panel of Minnesota voters by saying: "Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis, such a symbol of The Resistance…" For any of us who've discussed politics in the aisles of a #ScienceFiction bookstore, a dream come true!

The US Cabinet has a Designated Survivor hiding somewhere. Do the Joint Chiefs of Staff have one?

Science fiction bookstores rule! Comics stores rule! Here’s where news gets made— Eat your heart out, Politics & Prose!

Color me surprised. #GregKetter sighting on cable TV— MS NOW‘s reporting live from Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis on the night of a big speech, somewhere else. A group of thoughtful Minnesotans gathered there; they’ll be quizzed on their reactions. Great moment for science fiction bookshops!

I'm hosting a STEM fair with the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) on March 7! This is a free, family-friendly event. Registration is not required, but encouraged. Learn more and register here: bit.ly/FosterSTEM

In exactly four weeks from today, on Tuesday March 24th, you'll finally be able to buy Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction, a collection of essays from @adapalmer.bsky.social and me torpublishinggroup.com/trace-elemen...

Let's talk about James A. Harris, the co-discoverer of Rutherfordium and Dubnium, elements 104 & 105. He was the 1st African-American to be involved in the creation of a new element. Born Waco, TX in March 1932 BS in Chemistry at HBU Hutson-Tillotson College in Austin, TX.

Happy s39th birthday to SN 1987A- the closest to us since the invention of the telescope! 🥳 Always a good excuse to share my cross stitch evolution over time in radio of SN1987A. Everything is to the correct scale etc bc cross stitch is the original pixel art. 🔭🧪 #sciart

Writer and illustrator Edward Gorey was born#OTD in 1925. Not in a mouldering old room down the drafty halls of an Edwardian manor on a bleak and windswept moor, but right here in CHICAGO, of all places!

Does anyone know of real scientists commandeering aircraft? In 2001, Heywood Floyd snags two spaceliners to get to Clavius Base (no Zoom for him), and in The Andromeda Strain, Wildfire director Jeremy Stone snags an airliner to get to the lab. Other examples? Did either get peanuts and a drink?

Now it can (again) be told: We had a tagline for DART: “66 million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. In 2022, Earth strikes back”. Everybody loved it except some (1-whimsical) NASA folks, so it was never officially adopted. It did sneak into some things, though…

it is not enough to disable the feature that produces an AI summary of my emails at the top of my emails in gmail, I need a button that delivers an electrical shock to the person who thought it was a good idea

Look for the helpers in part so you can be a helper.

So what IS a "Wet Dress Rehearsal?" Here are some #NASA graphics that explain what the test is all about and why it's important to the success of Artemis II.

I really ought to retweet @minouette.bsky.social’s art more often. Here’s Copernicus!

Anyone working on space telescopes / detectors / related stuff who might have a lead on a summer opportunity for a great undergrad, please let me know.

My historical NASA budget dataset has a new home on The Planetary Society's website, and is now updated with all final FY 2026 details. New per-sheet CSV/XLSX download options as well! Check it out at: www.planetary.org/space-policy...

#Glasgow mutuals. I am having a big clear out of magazines/journals. All free but you must collect them from Cathcart. Details in ALT texts. Institution of Engineers in Scotland transactions Newcomen Society journals & magazines Modern Railways magazines + directory #railways #engineering #History

Of interest to @bluejo.bsky.social, and possibly to @gretchenmcculloch.com.

Catalogue— "Summary: OR WHAT YOU WILL is an utterly original novel about how stories are brought forth from Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jo Walton." I have always wondered how stories are brought forth from Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jo Walton.

Thinking about remarks by @stevensenski.bsky.social & @jdnicoll.bsky.social, my question: What would be the very best Doc Savage stories to suggest to someone who has never read one, but enjoys, say, Golden Age science fiction? Asking for a friend.

Within @gretchenmcculloch.com's thread about Canada's swell Public Lending Right, she reminds readers that they can recommend book purchases to their libraries. Here in USA we don't have the PLR, but we, too, can suggest books to libraries! 🇺🇸📚 Authors do benefit! In a different way.

My rough estimate is that I would die attempting 25% of Olympic events, injure myself attempting another 25%, be completely unable to even simulate participation in another 25%, and 25% could do approximately two orders of magnitude slower than the athletes.

*You might say, "retrofuturist curio," but I'm inclined to say that this diegetic prototype of 1968 was doing a really good futurist job *So good a job that it had to be cut out of Kubrick's movie because it was carrying too much techno-speculative freight

love this so much! some notes: ✅ actual ➗✖️√ keys for math! ✅ numpad relocatable? ✅ yuge, uncompromised spacebar ✅ Fairlight CMI-esque lightpen, but 11+ years earlier ✅ phone handset wedgeable against shoulder ✅ the colours! ❌ the Q key was innocent! ❓hat looks precariously-installed, at best

Around 6:20 I saw something that basically looked like a cartoon falling star. Little flash of orange, short tail. Not flashy enough for a firework, I don’t think. What looks like this?

I met Willey Ley when he visited the Physics Department at Gettysburg College in the late '60s. He was charming, kind, informative, and a wonderful raconteur!

This week I learned something wonderful: The Smithsonian has Willy Ley's papers. And they appear to have digitized them. Amazing stuff in there. (I have Jared S Buss's biography of Ley, but am yet to read it.) Sample—1951: #ArthurCClarke, Hermann Oberth, & BIS pals drop Ley a postcard. 🚀🔭

(Household robot DJ throws up unfamiliar tune) "Alexa, what song is this?" "This is 'Main Street Breakdown,' by Chet Atkins & His Guitar-Pickers." Chet Atkins? Really? Chet Atkins is the last person on Earth who NEEDS any Guitar-Pickers!

This is very sad news. I learned a lot from reading his books about silent-film locations www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Prominent artist Don Davis is not generally known for his erotic paintings, but here’s one.

Whatever legal authority applies to the company that's launching a steady stream of replacement CPUs, network switches, wiring harnesses for wires chewed up by moon squirrels, etc.

What legal authority applies to data centres on the Moon?

God wants us to understand science. For example, to make sure we understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics, He gave us aging and death.

Or (hint, hint) you might ASK your library to get WORLDS BEYOND TIME. Libraries listen.

RIP Robert Tinney (November 22, 1947 – February 1, 2026), the artist famous for his playful covers for Byte magazine, a hobbist magazine that ushered in the microcomputing age from the mid-70s through the 90s. I'm honored to have included his work in my own art collection.

This made me cackle with joy. Draw a horse and watch it run with other drawings of horses.

The 17 February deadline looms for those who wish to nominate journalists for the #MirrorAwards. Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications administers awards for those "who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit." News about news, more or less.