Something I’m genuinely curious about: can academic research financially afford to go all-in on AI? We used to have to pass the hat to cover buying a new laser printer.

🔭 Storytime! This paper consumed my soul for a month and it turns out that you have to look at your 2D spectroscopic data. Thread... ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024OJAp...

Two decades ago, billionaire spending accounted for just 0.3 percent of federal campaign contributions. Now the 300 families we examined are giving an average of $10 million each — equivalent to the combined voice of roughly 100,000 typical donors. 2/7

Well, she is. @geckzilla.bsky.social

Because “looking at images, not catalogs” is a dying pastime, the paper includes a tutorial on -how- to interpret images of galaxies. Qualitative information alone can get you a surprisingly long way towards a reasonable model, if you’re thinking through the links between morphology and physics.

In LA, I had a neighbor with a dog named “Ted” and a boyfriend named “Rusty”. Also, I am not good with names.

To my Canadian friends, an acquaintance started a petition to allow US transgender citizens to claim refugee status here. www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en... If you’re Canadian please sign it. If you’re not, please share ❤️

Applications are open for our visiting grad student pre-doctoral program at the CCA @flatironinstitute.org ! More info here: www.simonsfoundation.org/2023-flatiro...

If you have the means, please donate to the Trans Continental Pipeline right now. They are a Colorado based org that helps trans people relocate and they are overwhelmed with requests. Colorado borders Kansas, and TCP has the infrastructure to help get people out. tcpipeline.org

The world could be such a nice place if we allowed it. It's all so goddamn unnecessary. There's no need for any of it. It's so beautiful here. It should be so cool to be alive

Thinking more about this, which is exactly right. I think this is a huge opportunity for public university faculty organizing. Active education campaigns. Shared tools for analyzing and projecting impacts of funding models. Recruiting & training at least one budget advocate per department.

Faculty have essentially two choices: (1) learn in painstaking detail how resources flow through your institution and how budgets work or (2) complain as you are cut to the bone and then broken. You’d be shocked at how many administrators and faculty do not understand their budget model.

NYC: Next weekend (2/20 - 2/22), Hands Off NYC is holding tons of community events across the city where you can help hand out resources (e.g., whistles, KYR info) and support mutual aid groups—all designed to protect your neighbors from ICE. Sign up to host or attend at HandsOffNYC.com/community.

Come make anti-ICE signs and banners with us by signing up at HandsOffNYC.com/build.

If you see this post a Star Trek

"reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something. Nothing can compare with that experience...Reward of the old scientist is the sense of having seen a vague sketch grow into a masterly landscape."

Astronomer Eric Wilcots to become interim chancellor of UW-Madison! 🔭

Benito is a threat b/c he makes art so alluring and enjoyable you want to understand everything about it and then you end up learning about sugar and slavery and colonialism and the Taínos and Hawaii and then you probably have some thoughts of your own, and that's why art is powerful and dangerous

Extremely good analogy. The endgame for AI companies is that everyone becomes dependent on their tech, and has to keep paying $2000 / year to write software. High-quality software is not actually necessary to achieve that goal.

No kidding! You use AI for your work just once, and for the rest of your life people will look at your work and wonder if you really did it, or if it was AI. Not worth it.

The sheer joy I felt just now discovering that there is a new Dan Foreman Mackey video about JAX.

Highlighting the speaker who stood in front of the Surprise mayor and told him to consider what the Mayor of Ohrdruf must’ve thought before he died by suicide: “He might have thought ‘how is this my fault I had no jurisdiction over this’ maybe he said ‘this site was not subject to local zoning.’”

Working on my first FA paper in the era of LLM, so it was important to me to develop a position on how I want to use them in my work. IMO it makes sense to acknowledge and state how these tools were used! But I suspect many are using without limits or a position on how...

A manual for ICE's immigrant-targeting computer system, Palantir ELITE, was leaked today. Let's look at it, then step back to evaluate how far we've come along a dangerous road and where that road might take us. 🧵

These were the people who held the careers of female scholars in their hands . This is who was shaping or epistemological world

I get tired of saying it, but I’ll say it again: the nature of oppression in America is that they workshop it first on Black, Latino, Asian & Native people. But it is always, in the end, coming for everyone.

Bondi directed federal agents to arrest four journalists. Georgia Fort, Don Lemon, Jamael Lundy, and Trahern Crews. All Black. All doing their jobs.

If you’re trans? The Trump Regime wants to redefine “gender affirming care” (which is healthcare) as “sex rejecting procedures” (which is not healthcare) — your real life, real world experience submitted as a comment is evidence that can be marshaled in the lawsuit that will challenge these rules

No Kings is hosting what is shaping up to be the largest ICE Watch training in history tonight. Join here: www.mobilize.us/nokings/even...

SNL NAILED IT. A must watch about double standards, coverage, and who gets to be human. #blacksky

One thing about living in NYC at this moment is how straightforward it is to integrate community-based resistance into your daily life. Signal chat blows up? Put down your tea and run three blocks to intercept ICE. Scheduled protest? Jump in, express rage for an hour, then finish your errands.

The Senate may choose to vote together on the DHS and LHHS bills. Thus, a filibuster on DHS may mean no funding for NIH. What my colleagues are saying: “Shut it down, public health will understand. I’ll work without pay again.” - anonymous NIHer

If you're in New York, please take two minutes right now to call Governor Hochul and tell her to support and sign New York 4 All, which would prevent state and local agencies from collaborating with ICE. 518-474-8390. This is important.

People already working hard to prove how perfect Alex Pretti was. To show he didn't "deserve" to be killed. But it's a trap folks. You're only feeding into a dynamic where people who are considered lesser get no protection. You don't have to be an Alex Pretti to deserve to live.

Protest in NYC will be 4pm at Union Square

All those people downtown yesterday, no ICE involvement, and not one incident. ICE shows up in a neighborhood and now another Minnesotan is dead. It's pretty obvious who the violent outside agitators are.

The @flatironinstitute.org's Adrian Bayer studies the structure of galaxies and the remnant heat from the universe’s creation, known as the cosmic microwave background: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/unveiling-the-universes-origins-and-current-state-by-modeling-its-many-faces/ #science

I keep thinking about the number of people that have to be involved to kidnap a small child, transport him to one facility or another, then an airport, then a plane, then another facility. Did no one on that chain stop and say hey what the fuck?

I went to a protest in New York City today and three Proud Boys were circulating among the crowd pretending to be members of the press (or maybe influencers) interviewing individual protestors. But espionage is not their forte; one was wearing a body cam and a "PB" patch. Stay vigilant, people.

the knitters too. this is the top pattern on ravelry right now

🧪⚛️ NSF is seeking community feedback on their draft strategic plan for the next few years. Now is the time to make your views known. (Maybe disbanding nearly all advisory committees wasn’t the best idea.) www.nsf.gov/od/updates/n...

Good write-up from @planetarysociety.bsky.social on the budget bill that passed Congress, explaining what space science has gained and lost, and which projects appear to be funded for FY26 (including Uranus, HabWorlds, & contributions to international missions). www.planetary.org/articles/adv...

There is something in here about how women organizing literally everything else is fine and expected but organizing opposition to a fascist government is a problem. Like what do you think we’re all doing when we set up phone trees for the a PTA? That’s community organizing you doorknobs

My favorite sign from NYC today @handsoffnyc.bsky.social

QOTD: What car do you want most, but know would be an absolutely miserable experience to own?

Tomorrow, many of us will gather in Union Square in NYC to rally for trans kids, their rights and access to gender-affirming care. Alongside fighting for trans rights and healthcare for all in our community. With many other actions needing attention. 3/8

ICE observers in the Twin Cities are in need of dash cams to prevent further intimidation and frivolous claims. Cams are $110, memory cards $35, and ship to us directly via this wish list: www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/... If you've been looking for a way to help, we'd sure appreciate it!

New: we've obtained material explaining how an ICE surveillance system, called Webloc, works. Draw shape on a map, see all phones available there, follow them home. All without warrant “This is a very dangerous tool in the hands of an out-of-control agency.” www.404media.co/inside-ices-...

There’s another emergency rally in NYC this morning—9am Foley Square. Kristi Noem is going to NYC today to hold a press conference. New Yorkers are showing up in mass to tell her to get the f*ck out. Join @handsoffnyc.bsky.social in the streets. It’s time to get loud and stay loud.