Planets and Bright Stars xkcd.com/3219/

A real treat to return to my old stomping grounds at the @uciphyssci.bsky.social for the advancement exam of my exceptional PhD student Patricia Fofie, who passed with flying colors on her research using numerical simulations to understand how super massive black hole feedback affects galaxy shapes

I think the secretary of defense should not be a psychopath

This is one of the videos the NYT has verified and links to in their reporting. NYT: "Video verified by [NYT] showed ... rescuers digging through the rubble with building cranes and shovels, and piles of bloodied, dusty backpacks." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/w...

They're calling him Socialist Wormtongue

Since yesterday, the Einstein AI cheatbot website underwent some rebranding. The tagline changed from "Einstein does the busywork so you don't have to," to "Einstein is the personal tutor every student deserves." In the FAQ, "How does Einstein do all this?" became "How does Einstein help me learn?"

The 2026 Barkley Marathons is over. There are no finishers. #BM100

From @acyn.bsky.social (posted on X) "Reporter: Do any of you have a favorite animal? Child: My favorite one is a gold snake that can move. It has gold eyes, and it has a super-duper tail… Reporter: Mr. Mamdani, the second question for you. Mamdani: Yes. It’s also the golden snake."

New: The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the birthright citizenship case on April 1. www.supremecourt.gov/oral_argumen...

I’m at the part in Moby Dick where Herman Melville spends pages upon pages just listing every white object he can think of, and I think this book might actually just be bad.

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced the Democrats have to push their hand immediately. The parallels with the delays and subsequent failures after January 6th are blaring warning signs about what will happen if they don’t go after the issues with ICE and CBP at the root RIGHT NOW.

It's worth noting that the population of Minnesota is about 5.8 million, so close to 1 in 100 people in this entire amazing state showed up to say #FuckICE today

“nobody is insider trading off his death so it almost certainly didn’t happen” really sums up the state of the world in 2026 huh

BREAM: Is the FBI investigating the ICE agent who shot Renee Good? BLANCHE: What happened has been reviewed by millions of Americans bc it was recorded. We investigate when it's appropriate. That is not the case here. We are not going to bow to pressure. So no, we are not investigating.

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?" Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

From October, if you haven't read it yet www.oregonlive.com/politics/202...

BREAKING NEWS: We are opening a formal investigation into the shooting involving federal agents in Portland today. Our office will take every step necessary to ensure the rights and security of Oregonians are protected. #orpol #breakingnews

The New York Times states it plainly in display type: Videos Contradict Trump Administration Account of ICE Shooting in Minneapolis

The “prosecute the former regime at every level” candidate has my vote in 2028.

I’ll provide an update on today’s shooting shortly: www.youtube.com/live/-VhtJ2w...

if you are talking today about how bad maduro was and were alive, at all, during the run-up to the iraq war you are potentially the dumbest person to ever live

Uh… check out what ChatGPT allegedly told a man before he killed his mother and then himself. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Congrats to everyone who's been replacing their core skill sets with an all-consuming dependence on these things, I guess.

"Did you see what Mark Cuban posted? Oh did you see the clapb—" You shake yourself awake in the cold North Atlantic water. You are not online. It is July of 1858. You are a baleen whale, and you have changed your mind. The future most not come to pass. The telegraph cable must break.

This year's gingerbread is the Vera Rubin Observatory! @vrubinobs.bsky.social

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

Diederik Stapel was a massive watershed moment in psychology. However, he was -- and let's be slightly glib here -- some guy from The Netherlands who wrote social psychology papers. The full accounting of the Eysenck case is approx, at minimum, TWO STAPELS. retractionwatch.com/2025/12/03/n...

People catastrophizing about a precedent where no one can mark anything down anymore for being wrong when the real precedent is trans people not being able to do literally any job without an army of bigots launching a harassment campaign against their employer.

The USDA sent an email to grocery stores telling them they are prohibited from offering special discounts to customers affected by the SNAP funding lapse. I'm aware of at least 2 stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email

“Individuals on the ground sent a message that reached us Monday morning that 1,200 were dead,” Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director, said. “By that evening, they said 10,000. By Tuesday, we couldn’t reach them anymore. We assume our ground contacts are dead.”

But also we’re terrified of the subway

YES! THIS on GenAI! Please read this absolutely splendid piece of writing that had me cheering, a little bit weepy, and writing in the margins: "An extraordinary amount of money is spent by the AI industry to ensure that acquiescence is the only plausible response. But marketing is not destiny."

What are we doing here?

A modern Hachikō story: This man tweeted a Follow Friday for the band Foghat every week until he died

I'm losing my goddamn mind.

There's nothing like a month of chronic pain to make you have undying respect for people who have been putting up with this shit for years.

It is truly horrifying what is being alleged against the Trump administration in the Ghana case. Here is from an affidavit filed in the case today: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

the democratic party sagaciously intoning that the world's richest man killing millions of people around the globe by depriving them of their medical care is a needless distraction from kitchen table issues

what a humiliating way for don jr. to find out his dad sends birthday cards.

"Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)". Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, genocide scholars' association says - www.reuters.com/world/middle...

'Deliberate erasure': State Department removes anti-LGBTQ+ abuses from annual human rights report

It is very likely that if your main focus is comfort and safety, you will quickly drift onto a path that is hand in hand with fascism. That is where we are. Better to make active choices now. It is better to have clear in your mind what your priorities and beliefs are before someone is knocking.

WASHINGTON (AP) - US Air Force says it will deny retirement pay to transgender service members being separated from the service.

👑

Du Bois on what these assholes were really like

Stack Overflow contributions have been *tanking* of late, and it’s pretty reasonable to assume that this is largely due to LLMs disincentivizing people from asking or answering questions there. blog.pragmaticengineer.com/stack-overfl...

using AI for art is like if you were a fan of a simulated football team and the only information you got was the score and the stats. the whole part that involves joy is removed.