Woke up to some unexpected good news today in the Netherlands: the centre-left party D66 won over the far right who were the lead party last election. Big sigh of relief. Also means: don’t listen to the polls.

Hey all if you feel like helping ppl make ends meet post Hurricane Melissa, a Jamaican friend suggested this group is reliable donate.wfpusa.org/page/Hurrica...

A letter from the age of truth. Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley. We need more of this in our public discourse. Call vile ideologies and the people who peddle them out for who and what they are.

End of a long #caturday here

This ‘extra credit’ also awards people who put themselves first instead of eg promoting the careers of their students and junior collaborators. 🧪

We cannot wait! 🖖🤘

🔤EHT A–Z We’re breaking down the science behind the Event Horizon Telescope - one letter at a time. 📡 J is for Jet Black holes can launch powerful streams of particles moving at nearly the speed of light - we call these jets. Just look at the striking one in M87! #blackholes #EHTAZ #astronomy

Just one week until the @mayodarkskies.bsky.social festival! I'm excited to give a public talk, but also to see @paraphrasestudio.bsky.social again. Rae achieves the impossible by making insane visualisations of talks in real time! 🔭🧪Here's the one she made during my #blackhole talk back in 2022:

Wait a minute. Why aren't we celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's dissertation.

📈 Record interest in ERC Starting Grants 2026! 4,807 proposals - a 22% increase compared to last year’s call. 👩‍🔬 Women submitted nearly 43% of proposals - the highest share ever recorded in an ERC call. More stats 👉 bit.ly/4hcYJln #ChooseEurope

Leg up on a #caturday night

It’s starting!! @spacerocksofficial.bsky.social stage at #ESAOpenDay with mission update by ESA DG, Joseph Aschbachen. 🧪🔭 We’re up next!

Gearing up to channel my inner goth for the "Dark Side of the Universe" panel at tomorrows #ESAOpenDay, on the Space Rocks stage, together with JWST scientist Mark McCaughrean and EUCLID project scientist Valeria Pettorino! 🧪🔭 www.spacerocksofficial.com/news/come-se...

Bandida has a serious foot fetish. Caught in the act on a lazy #caturday.

I’m excited to be part of this event for #ESAOpenDay tomorrow, also celebrating their 50th bday! And I def need a photo op with the alien egg!

... For a snapshot of the awesome weekend ahead, hit the link below, and may the force be with you. www.spacerocksofficial.com/news/come-se...

We’re hard at work prepping for the ESTEC Open Days this weekend. As @esa.int celebrates its 50th, come see the Creative Space near the Space Rocks stage in Escape on Sunday to see a concept for long-term deep space travel...

I love it.

Bit last minute note but if you’re in Ireland check out this free talk tomorrow about the Mayo Dark Skies project! And come see me talk about black holes at their festival in a few weeks! www.mayodarkskyfestival.ie

Breathing a sigh of relief that my alma mater @mit.edu refused to sign onto the so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”.

I went to a gastropub with my group today while visiting the UK and they had this adorable doggy menu!!

I really enjoyed this post by @rawsignal.ca against the pressure (in industry, but also very true for academia 🧪🔭) to overwork at the cost of having time to think, breathe and yes, be creative (it is related). mailchi.mp/rawsignal/yo...

My mom posted this picture of a scale from her primary care clinic, which I absolutely love, being an astrophysicist. But also the messaging is great!

It’s a special happy birthday #caturday, this little lady is 8 today!

A lovely article about the region in Namibia where we are building the Africa Millimeter Telescope w/UNAM, a single dish telescope 🔭🧪 that will operate on its own and together with @ehtelescope.bsky.social, next to the H.E.S.S. gamma-ray telescope. nightfallandelsewhere.substack.com/p/gamma-rays...

Jodie Foster: "Okay to go... okay to go.... okay to go..."

This is horrific.

Anti-immigration demonstration in the Netherlands escalates. This is exactly what happens when far-right ideas are tolerated and normalised over an extended period of time. The far right gains confidence and grows, both at the ballot box and in the streets. nos.nl/artikel/2583...

Let’s keep going

I have to keep this deliberately vague, but this is a total disaster for academic research. And imposing it so suddenly is just cruel. I’ve got friends scrambling to get back to the US before midnight tonight. Do you know how hard that is to do on 36 hours of notice?

Hair out of every toe #caturday

It's so interesting to see cancel culture now overtaking the right, I just saw someone refer to it as the "woke right" and that totally resonates. Guess people aren't that different from each other after all...no one likes to hear what they don't want to hear...🤷‍♀️

Ah the joys of Dutch weather. It's not actually raining, "het miezert" which means you are biking through a dense cloud of mist, and there's no raingear in the world that can keep your face from getting soaked...

An abandoned plan to visit another star highlights the perils of billionaire-funded science

But wait, there's more! Our @ehtelescope.bsky.social outreach folk made a fun explanatory movie of the new M87* #blackhole results, complete with Game of Thrones style soundtrack! 🧪🔭

This is our biggest result so far this year (IMHO)! 🔭🧪 The M87* #blackhole is clearly cocooned in a turbulent, magnetised plasma and we can now resolve it changing in real time (albeit slowly). Excitingly we plan to do the first 2 month "movie" campaign looking ever 3-4 days in spring 2026!

Check out our new results on the M87* #blackhole w/ @ehtelescope.bsky.social ! We now have 3 frames in a 4yr "movie", including polarisation ⇔ magnetic fields. It's like tracking extreme sunspots just outside a black hole, the brightness and fields flip, yet the shape stays the same bc...gravity!

Very proud to have won the @api.uva.nl 1 minute elevator pitch prize, from the last year of pizza lunches! Whomever our wheel randomly selects has to give a 1 min pitch about their work, and mine came in at 59s! I now get the trophy for the next year, complete with a picture of pizza on it! 💪🍕

As a member of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts & Sciences (KNAW) I support our statement on the war in Gaza. www.knaw.nl/en/news/stat...

Three days til registration opens. Watch this space! 🖖🤘

One of the awesome bits of supernova science I always love is when someone finds a new ancient record of a supernovae! In this case new Arabic records for SN1181 and SN1006 from poems! arxiv.org/abs/2509.04127

Self-care is overrated—helping others has the biggest benefits for everyone involved A new 2-week intervention finds that helping others improves well-being more than "self-kindness", with benefits for depressed mood, anxiety, and loneliness due to social connection psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

In 1949, Superman told schoolchildren “our country is made up of Americans of MANY different races, religions and national origins. So… “…if YOU hear anybody talk against anyone else because of his religion, race or national origin — don’t wait: tell him THAT KIND OF TALK IS UN-AMERICAN.”

The first time Charlie Chaplin used his voice in a film, he wielded it to forcefully condemn the rising forces of fascism around the globe. Will we listen to his words today?

My favourite ship from yesterday’s #SAIL festival sail-in parade. This one looks like it’s right out of #GameofThrones, about to attack Amsterdam central station!

Enjoying the chaos of #SAIL in Amsterdam after 10 years

This is probably my favourite title of anything I've read recently, and the abstract is hilarious too! For those of you who don't know @astrobites.bsky.social 🔭🧪 it's a great way to stay up on the field with short, approachable summaries of recent results! astrobites.org/2025/08/18/t...

I keep feeling like I woke up in an alternative timeline. The conservative/Republican mantra was always "small Fed gov't and power to the states". Now it's all about the Fed overruling states' rights, and Republican governors sending troops to DC?? Don't any "classic" Republicans find this alarming?

Cat on car camouflage (day after #Caturday)

Can we stop putting happy faces in news stories about temperature records and heat waves?