Worst episode of 'Perfect Match' ever.

This 👇🏽 “Astronomy does more than deliver discoveries. It inspires students, engages communities, and builds the pipeline of future scientists. Stepping back from a flagship international collaboration at the very moment the world is looking up risks dimming that inspiration for a generation”

The Australian Academy of Science posted this reaction to the government's decision to withdraw Australia from ESO (which I had not heard about?!) 🔭 science.org.au/news-events/...

I will say this again: Science isn’t just something that nerds do, it’s the foundation of the modern world. It’s why this app exists. It’s why child mortality rate isn’t 50% anymore. It’s how we’re able to launch people to the moon. It’s how we’re able to grow food that feeds half the world.

More context on this #Artemis II image: * This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right * The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon: ☀️🌍🚀🌕

I made a little Instagram reel about this image because it’s just so frickin’ cool

Really awful to say goodbye to an Iranian PhD graduate from our Centre today, before they make a 5-day journey back home to help their sick mother. “These crazy people – they don’t care what they do”. “Maybe I’ll try to get a job at a university there. If they’re not destroyed, & I’m not killed”.

New crater just dropped. Wait. Large meteor just dropped. Then the crater. Another stunner from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

✊ donating to Wikipedia is a good thing to do

When I was growing up, I remember my parents scraping together $5 for fuel to make it to work. We couldn't go to friend's houses because we couldn't spare the fuel, and every trip needed to be accounted and planned for. If the petrol price went up, we stayed home. (No public transport) (cont)

Sovereignty overboard

A viral dog rescue from 2016 is now immortalized with a statue in Kazakhstan. When a dog fell into the Sayran reservoir, bystanders formed a human chain to pull him to safety. The statue is a reminder of the value of unity, solidarity and collective action. 14/10 for all

Of all the things I would have expected bipartisan consensus on, this was not it.

Andrew Hastie … welcome to the resistance www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

It's absolutely insane to me that solar panels aren't mandatory on all new construction projects in Australia, let alone homes. Heat pumps being mandatory would make a lot of sense too, it just seems like such an easy win that almost everyone (who matters) would agree with. #auspol #ausnews

Very "approximately", Google. Very.

#arXiv, the granddaddy of #preprints servers, has announced it’s splitting from Cornell U., its long-time host institution. Leaders there explain why. #OpenAccess #ScholComm @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

Lest We Forget.

Whoa, hang on a minute! The Barnaby bloke in the hat, and the Matt guy with coal on his face said renewables would *increase* power prices. How could have they have been wrong?? … No, it must be the maths, the science, the engineering, the economics that's wrong.

Looking at the AAS jobregister lately, it seemed to me that there are less positions available in all categories than in previous years. Wanting to quantify, I used the wayback machine to check on the number of postings in the January-March window and it is quite depressing.

What happens when researchers (especially those with data/code/text-heavy activities) have been conditioned to rely on hours a day interaction with advanced models have to deal with whatever monopoly companies demand they (or their institutions) pay? How exactly is that gonna work?

You mean a brand that was entirely built on youthful enthusiasm, silliness, curiosity and real writers/content makers adapting to new content forms and experimenting didn’t succeed by replacing all those people with a slop-stew robot that produces the same dull output everywhere? Shocked. SHOCKED.

🔭 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...

Dirty Fuel "Bowen said Ampol had assured him the extra supply would be prioritised for regional Australia and the spot market. Ampol would usually export high-sulphur fuel to developing countries with lower environmental standards than Australia." #Auspol #EnvironmentalStandards #EpsteinWar

Robodebt was the great test of Australia’s accountability mechanisms – and they failed

This is such a disingenuous process and despicable outcome

The ‘No Actual Consequences Commission’, by @fionakatauskas.bsky.social

Australian astronomy has added $3 billion to the economy over the past decade—building high-skill employment, technological innovation, and global collaboration. Learn more about new economic analysis into Australian astronomy here: astronomyaustralia.org.au/blog/news/as...

“Fossil fuel subsidies harm the budget and make climate change worse,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute. Read more: https://theaus.in/4lpmqJq

A Canadian journal has issued corrections on 138 case reports it published over the last 25 years to add a disclaimer: The cases described are fictional.

“A complete joke” After the starting gun fires, Australian researchers have to wait 2–3 years before even starting the race. Really clear article explaining the impossibly long new time-frames for Australian Research Council grants. By @liammannix.bsky.social

Car ads: Massive utes or hybrids are more suitable for "Australian conditions" *nudge-nudge, wink-wink* Australian conditions: Only produces+refines ~20% of the oil (i.e. petrol) it uses.

Is this the part where they start eating each other?

We are a rich enough country to be funding 37% of all basic research proposals, not just considering "the best" 37% and then maybe only funding 12% in the end.

One day of taxpayer subsidised fuel = $30 million 730 days (2 years) of taxpayer funded climate risk assessment science = $27 million minister.dcceew.gov.au/mcallister/m...

AI is going to trash every single way that we had modernised university teaching and send us back to handwritten exams and vivas for every assessment. Which will bring back every problem with those assessment models (and make us seem even more out-of-touch even as we just try to do meaningful work).

I'd like to think this is how it went down

Don’t forget, when Pauline drops racist bombshells into the media for everyone to react to, she’s now being funded by Gina Rinehart, major contributor to racist propaganda group Advance and inspired by MAGA-guru Steve “flood the zone with bullshit” Bannon. The offence is the point.

The Albanese government has sat for more than three years on the climate risk assessment it commissioned from the ONI. All attempts to use FOI and parliamentary procedures to access the documents have been unsuccessful. satpa.pe/corZhNG

Electricity retailers unhappy folks are supplying and storing their own energy instead of buying from them. Not happy with ripping folks off on their solar FiTs to make profit, now they want to slug everyone 5x the daily supply charge. reneweconomy.com.au/plan-to-incr...

Angus Taylor’s brain. #MadAsHell #auspol www.instagram.com/reel/DUp7OSE...

4. Guy who, in 2019, falsely accused respected Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore of vast travel expenses largesse, based on what turned out to be a fake document. He obfuscated, and denied his office had doctored anything. "It looks a little messier than we hoped," his staffer, on WhatsApp.

3. Guy who, he says, did not attempt to intervene regarding a federal environmental order to rehabilitate critically endangered native grasslands poisoned with herbicide on a property he and his brother own.

2. Guy who co-founded and helped manage a speculative company that later (in 2017) received $80 million from taxpayers, paid into its Caymans account, for surprisingly expensive, low security cotton water rights attached to properties it owned near St George. He denies any involvement.

This Angus Taylor, ICYMI. We still don't know where that money went btw - bc Cayman Islands.

Just discovered $3 billion in extra nuclear sub spending between May and December $15.4B → $18.6B Where's the $3 billion going? Defence: "Take it on notice" That's enough money to build 10,000s public homes but for Defence it's pocket change they lost down back of the couch.

Very happy to advertise a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Exoplanet Science position with me and Christian Schwab at Macquarie University in Sydney. We'll be working on applying machine learning & differentiable physics models to extremely precise radial velocity surveys.