My father and his friends snuck into Reber's yard when they were kids to play on the structure when he was building it, and got yelled at and chased off. All the neighbors thought it was some sort of spy thing.

many people who knew him said "he's the strangest man I've ever met"

Radio engineer, amateur astronomer, and Chicagoan Grote Reber was born #OTD in 1911. After reading about Karl Jansky’s accidental discovery of galactic radio emissions, he built a 9m radio telescope *in his back yard* and carried out the first radio survey of the sky. 🧪 ⚛️ 🔭 📡 Image: NRAO

Chemist and educator St. Elmo Brady was born #OTD in 1884. He was the first Black American to receive a PhD in Chemistry (University of Illinois, 1916). Brady worked on organic acids, IR spectroscopy, and halogen compounds, and significantly expanded chem programs at four HBCUs. 🧪 (1/n)

Astro PhD applications for Edinburgh are open! Deadlines are: * 24 Nov: Career Development Scholarship (for students of Black heritage) * 5 Dec: Bell Burnell Scholarship (for all URM students) * 5 Jan: all applications Come to beautiful Scotland! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Applying is free! 🔭🧪 ifa.roe.ac.uk/phds-jobs-fe...

If you are visiting relatives for the holidays, turn on parental controls / password protection on their cable box and router, then block CBS. If they’ve found a way to turn FOX and Facebook back on since your last visit, go ahead and block those again.

Bari Weiss spiked the CECOT story because she wanted to have Stephen Miller included and demanded to control the language 60 Minutes used to describe the men who were brutally tortured after being sent to El Salvador without due process.

Nothing to see here, just a right wing hyper-nationalist government going to their party’s youth event sponsored by a group with a martyred leader they’ve pledged to avenge, recruiting people to join their masked police force devoted to removing auslanders from ze homeland.

On this darkest solstice day of the year, my heart has dimmed, waking up to learn of the loss of dear colleague and mentor, Yannick Mellier. Yannick will be known to most as the lead of the amazing Euclid Space Telescope which will revolutionise our understanding of the Dark Universe 🧵🔭

tonight the government killed a story on cbs about the slave labor camp in a foreign country theyre illegally sending people to

If you are involved with this report, or have any information about the process involved in today's decision, please reach out. I am on Signal: crg.32

One of my favorite #OTD threads.

Mathematical physicist Cécile DeWitt-Morette was born #OTD in 1922. She made foundational contributions to Feynman functional integrals, organized the first American conference on general relativity (important for gravitational waves), and started the Les Houches Summer School. 🧪 ⚛️ 👩‍🔬 (1/n)

I talk to my students about this on the first day, and use it to discuss why they are in college in the first place.

I love Ann Arbor but it has been a ridiculous place for a very long time now. This listing looks ridiculous, but the fact that it’s right there downtown is sort of emblematic. Even 20 years ago, folks who kept the University running couldn’t afford to live in town.

This is about as close to perfect as you get.

You love to see it. #GDTBATH

Okay, since Apple’s podcast app is irreparably broken in iOS 26, what third party app do you use? Would especially appreciate recs for an app that will just play consecutive episodes of one podcast.

If you are up and in need of a cozy distraction, here is a limitless supply of procedurally generated pubs.

Burying the lede here: it’s called the “Batman House.”

Just saw this on one of my discords. Wouldn't it be great if we could get this one way past the funding goal within hours of it opening? www.gofundme.com/f/help-roger...

Albert Michelson, pioneer of optical interferometry, was born #OTD in 1852. Michelson refined measurements of the speed of light, failed to find evidence of the aether, and developed a method that now underlies gravitational wave detection. 🧪 ⚛️ (1/n) Photo: “Practical Physics,” Millikan & Gale

In Search of the Unknown

[sucking air through teeth noise]

From an episode of “Bonanza” to the discovery of gravitational waves by @ligo.org. 🧪 ⚛️ 🔭 🎢

Just saw this on one of my discords. Wouldn't it be great if we could get this one way past the funding goal within hours of it opening? www.gofundme.com/f/help-roger...

On the Internet, nobody knows you're not a dog.

The story is richer. He left his first wife and hooked up with the RA as part of his journey toward becoming more Christian. www.newyorker.com/books/under-...

Worth noting that Brooks *left his family* for this woman when she was in her mid-20s and working for him as research assistant on his book titled [ahem] "The Road to Character."

The @nytimes.com has Bluesky posts for David Brooks's columns on November 14 and November 28. But nothing for his November 21 column – the one where he tries to downplay the Epstein story that we now know he is part of. Did they delete a post? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/o...

Maybe this is the flu talking, but I've watched almost the whole first season of "The Paper" and I think it is better than all the reviews I saw. It's worth watching an episode just for Domhnall Gleeson's accent.

These are the people who are willing to go on the record. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/u...

So you’re telling me that this HR complaint of a man, who has been sanctimoniously downplaying the Epstein story, appears in the latest dump of Epstein materials??

The really wild part of this saga, besides Apple’s willingness to nuke the online existence of an innocent person who was the victim of an undetectable scam, is the guy from Apple saying without saying that you should never buy gift cards from their retail partners.

This flu is the pits.

Those dropdown menus when a website asks your age should go in ascending chronological order, so young people have to scroll all the way to their birth year for a change.

These little things people make for Bluesky are delightful, I hope it's not a scam to steal my identity somehow. www.madebyolof.com/bluesky-wrap...

"It may be that there are metaphysicians and philosophers whose learning is greater than mine, although I have not met them. Yet, they are but frail humans, too, and have their own faults; so, when I add the sum total of my graces, I confess that I am inferior to no one." 🧪 ⚛️ 🎢 👩‍🔬

Émilie du Châtelet, who hypothesized conservation of energy, established kinetic energy as distinct from momentum and proportional to (speed)², and combined work by Newton and Leibniz with her own original ideas in "Institutions de Physique," was born #OTD in 1706. 🧪 👩‍🔬 ⚛️ Portrait: M. Q. de La Tour

Subscribe to Unwinnable before the end of the year and get all the 2025 issues free! That's twelve issues of Unwinnable Monthly AND twelve issues of Exploits for five clams. Feed your brain over the holidays! unwinnable.com/subscribe/ (@unwinnable.com)

Once the next administration is in place, anything less than a complete reversal of everything this guy has done will be a profound betrayal of the American people. From the WH ballroom to the war on science, reverse it all, no exceptions.

I also have funds for a PhD student in physical oceanography; this would be in the Physics Department. Further information about the PhD program and a link to apply is here: www.brandeis.edu/gsas/program...

🚨Important college basketball news🚨

I wish people knew to get me a map for Christmas. I love those things.

Some Dems have told themselves only ~1% of the population is trans so they can dip their toe in the anti-trans filth and come out clean. I don't have any trans family members—but it still makes me irate. I see it as a huge red flag, a sign you are unprincipled and untrustworthy. And I'm not alone.

[seeing the public response to my bombshell interview revelations] by the way this is off the record

For sale: baby shoes, never worn