I want to post something happier today as well, so here are some scientists whom I recommend platforming and financially supporting! I'm a bit out of the loop, so I'm bound to miss people. Please reply with your own recommendations!

Highly recommend this video about Lawrence Krauss and Jeffrey Epstein from Rebecca Watson (@skepchick.org) CW discussion of sexual assault youtu.be/VNLdyWPAz18?...

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features." There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

Astronomy & science history folks, does anyone know more about what this would have been used for? Just saw it in the Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools exhibit @romtoronto.bsky.social! 🔭 I'm guessing we're seeing a depiction of the "heavens" (celestial sphere). I also spot the names of the planets

People learn through practice and challenge; not by receiving answers. But a deeper problem is that an essential aspect of teaching is helping someone organize their thinking in new ways. LLMs — systems which cannot think or appreciate thinking — are incapable of doing this in a meaningful way.

Please let me know if you play Crusader Kings because I need someone who's interested to talk about it with me!

It’s widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort — specifically, if you don’t have to work at getting the knowledge, it won’t stick. Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.

When I ran AstroTours, occasionally people would come in to ask us about their astrophysics theories. Anyhow, a reminder that these kinds of inquiries aren't limited to digital communications. Keep your volunteers at your outreach events in mind!

so, so good. run it as a political ad.

"I have a theory that there is something in the Italian landscape which inclines even the most stolid nature to romance."

Another TikZ masterpiece I cooked up today 🧪⚛️🧮

Wacky waving inflatable tube man, but it's Kate Bush at the end of the Wuthering Heights music video

Just a little creepy

For the day 4 #SciArtSeptember prompt riverbank I am sharing my portrait of geologist & #paleontogist Alice Wilson (1881-1964) who mapped the Ottawa-St Lawrence river valley. 🐡🧪👩🏼‍🔬⚒️ ⁠ After completing her BSc in ‘11 she was 1st woman offered a position at GSC & 1st female geologist in #Canada. 🧵

I'm watching a documentary series about Jane Austen and the subtitles are comically large. It's like they assumed anyone watching this is 80+ years old

I think I hate the part I’m currently at the most, though (hotel basement RIP)

Me booting up the Last of Us: I love this game! This will be fun! Me playing the Last of Us: Ahhhhhh I hate this part!

My questions for NASA HQ at this conference mostly boil down to - are you trying to protect the scientific community? are you taking risks to help us not collapse from the inside? What is the future of planetary science worth?

Would you watch a stream of me playing video games and chatting about astronomy? Like, viewers can ask questions and I’ll answer them or just chat about cool space stuff? 🔭🎮

Next stop for Europa Clipper: Mars??? That’s right, we are doing a rare Mars gravity assist on March 1st to help pick up speed on our journey out to the Jupiter system. More info and cool animations below!

"The team predicts that the two neutron stars will spiral slowly toward each other in a cosmic dance, ultimately colliding in a kilonova explosion." Inspired by @skuthunur.bsky.social article & thanks to @astro-jje.bsky.social for patiently answering all my silly binary star questions! #Sciart

Whose idea was it to make right ascension increase to the east but hour angle increase to the west? I would like to yell at them :)

If you held a gun to my head and asked me to compute (by hand) the exact date of the year based on the Sun’s azimuth at sunset plus the observer’s latitude, I would simply take the bullet

Quick question about the celestial sphere and figure 1.12 from Carroll & Ostlie 🔭 Am I losing my mind or should the angle between the horizon and NCP be L rather than 90-L? If you're at the equator (L=0), NCP is on the horizon. If you're at the north pole (L=90), the NCP is at zenith. No?

MUTUAL AID ALERT: Stand with our community in Astro+ adjacent fields impacted by the attack on DEIA, support our community by giving aid through our GoFundMe. See links in thread! - choir collab, @blackinastro.bsky.social, Astro Poverty Survey Team, MVMT Consulting @dranicole.bsky.social)

alert! we're organizing to help folks in astronomy + planetary sciences who've lost their jobs without warning, or have important DEIA initiatives that suddenly lost funding please share with your networks!! #extragalactic #exoplanets #astronomy #cosmology

What if we kissed in the Deep Roads

God, Alistair really is Maric’s son Also, was not expecting to find myself feeling so much compassion for Loghain so early on These poor kids :(

I know very old timey astronomers only had their eyeballs to use as detectors so what else were they supposed to do, but I can't stand magnitudes. I feel like a fool every time I explain them to someone who's grown up in an era of abundant CCDs.

Drinking game idea: take a shot every time you say, "For historical reasons..." when teaching astronomy

Girl dinner? No. These are my epic fantasy adventure rations.

Being an adult is really neat because I can indulge in my childhood dream of being a fantasy character by having a glass of wine, a chunk of cheese, and a heel of bread for dinner.

Curling up with a glass of wine and The Stolen Throne because Ferelden is my valentine

Need a white guy to walk confidently into a federal building and delete all the student loans files

I have done a Meyers Briggs personality test and my result is INTKTCOTS (I need to know the context of this situation)

Every time I wear this shirt I secretly hope that someone will ask me to name 5 Joy Division Songs just so I can ask them to name 5 pulsars (at which point we will then have a nice and fun conversation about neutron stars)

What if AGU put some of its almost $80 million in annual revenue towards actually protecting and supporting its scientists instead of quietly removing these pages? This isn't a small organization that needs to protect itself from being annihilated. The interim CEO made $548,612 in 2023!

I wrote this bit that is entirely unrelated to current things

I am a coauthor of this letter, which asks folks in power at NASA and other institutions of space exploration to do more to resist ongoing efforts, and instead support the incredibly diverse people across the country that make the field what it is. Sign here: sites.google.com/view/space-s...

Also I googled Reylo to make sure I got the name right and this is literally the first image hahahaha (art by Bob Al-Greene)

On a related note, I would love a modern day film adaptation of Northanger Abbey (think Clueless & Emma). Probably the easiest one of Austen’ novels to modernize, imo.

This is perfect cover art for a modern day Northanger Abbey starring a Catherine Morland who’s obsessed with Reylo fanfic. Is it good cover art for the original text? Absolutely not 😬

I swear to god, mathematicians named properties of conic sections knowing full well that I'd have to say rectum to students with a straight face

Look, I'm not a fancy CEO guy, but if someone said to me "the key to this successful single-player IP's success is to make it purely a multiplayer game. No, not a spin off: fundamentally change the DNA of what people loved about the core game" to me, I'd probably, like, quit that job or something.

I remembered that Leonardo Da Vinci is in this game, but I forgot how early he’s introduced. Assassin’s Creed games sure love throwing in real historical figures. Alexander Graham Bell in Syndicate was so weird to me. Like, please stop being awkward around Evie. I got a fellowship named after you 😳

Something else to thank EM for. "The sustained rate of daily reentries is unprecedented," says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics who tracks satellites. "They are retiring and incinerating about 4 or 5 Starlinks every day." @planet4589.bsky.social #astronomy