Man, I'm sorry, but reading all these AI generated essays from students, it just sucks all the joy out of everything. It's exhausting, makes you into a weird paranoid cop, grinds you down, wastes your time, makes you feel like shit about everything. Fuck this shit technology and all its enablers.

Things were better when computer was in room. Now everywhere is computer. This is bad. Computer should never have escaped room.

The CCA @flatironinstitute.org is hiring postdocs! We have two types, both independent fellowships: FRF: 3 year research fellowship apply.interfolio.com/173403 FSRF: 5 year research+software fellowship apply.interfolio.com/173402 See here for more info! www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/flatir... 🔭

The CCA @flatironinstitute.org is hiring postdocs! We have two types, both independent fellowships: FRF: 3 year research fellowship apply.interfolio.com/173403 FSRF: 5 year research+software fellowship apply.interfolio.com/173402 See here for more info! www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/flatir... 🔭

Gargantuan Gaia review by Michael Perryman "271 pages, 126 figures, accepted for publication in Physics Reports" arxiv.org/abs/2509.10883

I believe one of the new mRNA vaccines was expected to treat colon cancer, and another had the potential to keep pancreatic cancer from recurring. That’s what they’re taking away.

Actually heartbreaking, the list of colleagues that have run the show behind the scenes for so many years who are saying their pre-emptive goodbyes and taking literally thousands of years of amassed knowledge and expertise with them. Not to mention camaraderie and community. Morale is ... bleak.

📣📣 BOOK NEWS 📣📣 I'm excited to share the cover and release date of Book #2, #EdgeOfSpaceTime, which is now available for PREORDER!! You can order from ANY bookstore, including your local indie! More details on preordering here: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746817... What's the book about? 🧵

#Introduction: Theoretical physicist. Black Feminist theorist. Writer. I do: dark matter, neutron stars, & science studies. Web: chanda.science Newsletter: news.chanda.science Insta: chanda.prescod.weinstein Author of award-winning #DisorderedCosmos and now #EdgeOfSpaceTime, coming 4/7/26.

ALL CAPS THIS IS CATASTROPHIC FOR SPACE SCIENCE AND ASTROPHYSICS ... GLOBALLY CATASTROPHIC, NOT JUST FOR AMERICANS 🔭🧪 www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

There is an ongoing effort to coordinate observations of 3I/ATLAS among the community before it leaves the solar system! If you're interested in contributing (or seeing what's going on), you can check out the website here: 3i-atlas.github.io/coordinated....

though the subject is dark, I'm loving @bsky.app because it enables random intersections like this — between some favorite political @aoc.bsky.social, scientific @chanda.bsky.social @philplait.bsky.social, and art/music @rob-sheridan.com people I follow

New manuscript by Nawaf Bou-Rabee, Bob Carpenter, Tore Kleppe and Sifan Liu on the WALNUTS algorithm which improves of the NUTS sampler by introducing a locally adaptive step size. 📜 Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2506.18746 💻 Code: github.com/bob-carpente...

NASA is being told to cancel 19 *active* missions to save $6B, which looks to be less than the ICE *hiring/retention* budget going forward. I need people to let that sentence sink into their bones for a minute.

Finding out about Gaia at #EAS2025Cork! ☄️ Just announced: Gaia DR4 will be released in December 2026!

How many open clusters could be hiding at the edge of our galaxy? 🔭☄️🧪 #galactic Our new paper out today (A&A, accepted) pioneers a new way to test the completeness of cluster catalogues built with @esa.int's Gaia mission!

Normally my brain doesn't see or register the truly bizarre ads that appear randomly throughout the internet (e.g., on www.wunderground.com pages). But ... what ... why ... who ...

I'm sorry but the largest protest of my lifetime is not the 7th or 8th biggest news story in the country behind "what does Gen Z want from Instagram?" This shit is humiliating. Rearrange your layout to meet this moment. Omitting the thing happening in every American city is malpractice.

SAVE COSMIC SCIENCE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS! I wrote about the current astronomy/particle physics/cosmology 🔭 ⚛️🧪 funding catastrophe in context of all of the other ongoing catastrophes, including what we can do to save our science. h/t to @skylargrayson.bsky.social for posting the image.

Everyone needs to make some calls on Monday. Here's a helpful guide: aas.org/advocacy/get...

The president's budget request for NSF FY26 is also out. It zeroes out the NSF astronomy & astrophysics and NSF MPS ASCEND postdoc fellowships. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

Omg a picture worth a thousand tears 😭 🪐

In the scientific discipline of media content and discourse analysis, aggregate coverage bias means even if all individual stories are factually accurate, a relative focus on one issue over another suggests readers that said issue is much more important than other less-covered issues.

Takes five seconds, and might mean you can still get COVID boosters.

Trump has slashed the NIH and NSF budget, hired an anti-vaxxer as head of Health and Human Services, and filled the government's web page with crazed conspiracy theories. Here's why we just published a volume on the left's war on science. by Lawrence Krauss and Steve Pinker.

Should go without saying but given the UK supreme court ruling I guess not so let's say it again: TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS And the fake identity war you're dragging us in will not distract from the real problems you refuse to address, such as a long overdue Wealth Tax. #TransRights

From Skylar Grayson/Cole Meldorf/Abby Lee/Drew Lapeer/Catherine Slaughter: NASA is facing severe budget cuts that would cancel missions ready for launch, put tens of thousands out of jobs, and set science back decades. We need your help to ask Congress to prevent this! astrobites.org/2025/04/15/h...

The UK supreme court just single-handedly overturned most trans rights in the UK today. Very disturbingly, the ruling also opens a clear pathway for TERFs to completely push trans people out of public life. This one ruling pushes trans rights in the UK back at least 25 years. It's horrible

Dear Breakthrough Prize Billionaires: Fund the Science You’re Watching Trump Destroy www.scientificamerican.com/article/dear...

Objectively, being able to make things without AI makes us better at making things than the people who can't. I'm better than the kids who copied my homework, and you're the same person pulling the same crap 30 years later.

Also on the chopping block all climate change research in the US. www.cnn.com/2025/04/11/c...

The president's budget request seeks to strangle astronomy in the US. The president's hit job specifically seeks to murder the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – a revolutionary facility that is fully assembled, on budget, and nearly ready to launch. 🧪🔭 arstechnica.com/space/2025/0...

First the rumour was a 20% budget cut. Then, 50%. Now the president's NASA budget is out and it's a 68% cut to astrophysics ($1.5B to $487M). Even if this gets reversed in four years, we will *never* recover the missions, partners, people who will be gone. www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...

At this rate MAGA will only be able to afford to rent the libs.

As I mentioned several years ago, fuck this guy and his phony intellectual nonsense

CRAZY new image from #JWST of a distant spiral wrapped around a foreground elliptical through gravitational lensing - perfectly aligned, forming a perfect Einstein ring. A serendipitous discovery led by G. Mahler of @universitedeliege.bsky.social 🇧🇪 🔭 Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Mahler

RIMRUNNER (2011) Oil - 18” x 28” A painting in The End of Nature subset of my personal work, which represents humanity as somewhat oblivious to the support that nature provides for them. 1/2

Today we say goodbye to ESA’s Milky Way-mapper Gaia! The Gaia spacecraft has completed its sky-scanning and will be switched off this morning.

Our Gaia mission is going to be switched off tomorrow, 27 March. The spacecraft might be going into retirement, but the science continues with two major data releases in preparation for 2026 and 2030. 🔭 🧪

what the fuck did I just read

How many times did we hear "we need 60 votes to do anything" from Senate Democratic leadership in the last 15 years? And now when Republicans need 60 votes, the ONE situation in 2025 when Democrats in the minority actually have any leverage at all, Schumer chooses to just give it away. For nothing.

THE END OF NATURE (1998) Acrylic on Gessoboard - 28" x 22" The first in what became a series of paintings about our relationship with nature. 1/2

🚨 Everyone needs to call their Dem Senator right now. They are starting to cave. Tell them: 1. Vote NO on Cloture AND 2. Vote NO on the Republican spending bill. Don’t let them pivot to reconciliation. GOP doesn’t need Dem votes on that and they know it. TODAY is the showdown. 🤳🏽: (202) 224-3121

Last week I gave a review talk on stellar streams, so I updated this interactive visualization of our latest compilation of streams around the Milky Way (and added one of @stefanpw.bsky.social's Milky Way renders, for context): adrian.pw/visualizatio...

Want to learn more about the impact of @esa.int's Gaia mission on #galactic & Milky Way science? Retired Gaia project scientist Michael Perryman has written over 200 essays on various topics in Galactic astronomy, at a level accessible to non-experts. They provide a really lovely overview!

Trans girls are girls, not boys

Applications are open for our visiting grad student program (pre-doc program) at the CCA @flatironinstitute.org! Reach out if you're a student interested in: - Preparing for Gaia DR4 - Stellar streams - Data-driven methods for spectroscopy (and want to apply!) docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... 🔭

Re-upping this: @astropy.org is running our first user survey! If you use Astropy, please help us by filling this out and sharing it with your students / colleagues / collaborations / departments: forms.gle/dE3F6Rd8yTes... 🧪🔭