I caught this great blue heron standing in reflection by the bank of the Eno River, at Historic Occoneechee Speedway in Hillsborough, North Carolina. #photography #birdoftheday #reflections

Hey Martians, did I mention we now also have a video of epic Phobos passing over a Martian dust storm near Pavonis Mons? 🌪️🌋🥔 Video & full info: flic.kr/p/2rNN8wk Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY @esa.int Mars Express HRSC 300 MP Photo quoted below Easy zoom: easyzoom.com/image/674026

Keith Haring, The Nativity, subway drawing, c. 1983

have a picture of my handsome goose neighbor

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy

My local farmers market just surprised me with $100 in free SNAP tokens, courtesy of an anonymous donor, in case you need a little glimmer of human decency this morning

Did you know that NOAA has a major office in Asheville? They put together a story map about Hurricane Helene, and it’s the best data resource I’ve seen out there about the storm. I might be a little biased, though, because I have a geography degree and love using GIS to share data.

Yesterday Curiosity took pix of jagged peaks in the distance with its ChemCam. I stitched them together, did some work on them, and... just look at that view... I've been doing this since Sojourner landed & this is one of my fave images ever... Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/S Atkinson

Fellow sober folks, a reminder: However bad things get, you don’t have to drink over it.

people who want other people to stay in sad little grey boxes forever and never be happy in their bodies or desires are villains and cowards and they may be winning right now but by god they will lose as water smooths stone and roots break it, because that fierce joy is roots and water and life

It's like staying up late to see if Santa is real but we're hoping Santa's dead

Modern AI tools emulate the classic con-man tricks of mentalism, tricking people into believing that they’re far more clever - and sapient - than they actually are. Fantastic piece by @baldurbjarnason.com : softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llme...

I have a complaint about Avi Loeb's latest work and I want to speak to management. medium.com/@steve.desch...

Oh so it does have phd level intelligence

happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜 feel free to join by posting small poems you wrote, +/or small poems you love by somebody else :) here’s one by Bill Corbett; Peter Reading called this kind of poem the 13-line sonnet for unlucky people—& what an 11th line, “every green thing goldens”

Recently, I shared a Lord of the Rings subway map, & I had a bunch of people asking me to do a Narnia version. Well...here you go! It's covers all 7 books, so it's a lot more complicated the the LoTR ones. And if you like it, it's available to buy on my Etsy store: www.etsy.com/shop/Surpris...

ICE in Durham, be safe and don't talk to the fucking cops

The other day I drew a subway-style map for The Hobbit, and it was very well received. Some of you asked if I could do one for LoTR, so I have! Forgive the eel watermark; I'm working on making these something you can buy, if you like.

Betelgeuse has a companion - a pre main-sequence B/A star with a semimajor axis of only 8 au. Required speckle observations to dig it out. noirlab.edu/public/news/...

biblically accurate angel wing begonia

The Trump administration canceled a FEMA program in April that would have funded upgrades to protect the town from flooding. Then the Eno River rose more than 20 feet.

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

What do you think is more likely, that Musk’s Nazi robot has made new discoveries in materials science or that Musk can’t tell when he’s being told scientific-sounding gibberish?

July 7, 2025, afternoon storm update: Mayor Mark Bell declared a state of emergency in Hillsborough this morning. The town has issued a boil water notice. Everyone who uses drinking water from the Town of Hillsborough must boil water until further notice. Please conserve water.

Orange County is distributing bottled water in Hillsborough tomorrow starting at 8 a.m. at Hillsborough Commons, 113 Mayo Street. Note that distribution will take place from 8 a.m. to noon and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. One case per vehicle.

I feel like these guys all somehow overlooked the part of the legendarium where Sauron is a tech nerd who falls from angelic grace because he wants to engineer a perfect world and then uses his unimaginable power to force his underlings to speak his weird conlang.

This week my time at the Examiner comes to an end, and I;m grateful I got to end things on a cautiously hopeful note. On Zohran Mamdani, and why those of us thousands of miles away are right to take heart from this week - and should be taking notes. www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

I hike at Occoneechee Mountain every morning, and always stop to say hi to the Twisty old Tree. It's a live and healthy sugar maple whose trunk has been hollowed out into a helix somehow. It marks the start of a particularly magical portion of the trail along the Eno River.

Fred Hoyle, who proposed a steady state model of the Universe and coined the name "Big Bang" to ridicule a rival theory, was born #OTD in 1915. He pioneered nucleosynthesis, but advocated unscientific theories about the origin of life and was known to make strange racist claims. 🧪 🔭

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory! Can you guess these regions of sky? This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪 #RubinFirstLook ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

The @washingtonpost.com just laid it out clearly: North Carolina’s Senate seat is a top pickup opportunity for Democrats in 2026. Thom Tillis is the most vulnerable Republican, and we have the chance to flip this seat and deliver real change for NC.

if the wheels had come off this thing any faster it'd be a Cybertruck

We are probably only moments away from an actual wig snatching.

I see it's time to talk about heat waves and caffeine again. All right fine, let's do this. The fundamental problem with coffee in a heat wave is not dehydration! www.newsweek.com/thousands-to...

Today is National Biscuit Day, and it’s about time that I populated this account with biscuit (cookie) sets from the past few years. Here are some of my favourites. 🧵 First up, a set inspired by the delicious designs of William Morris and John Henry Dearle.

The water is high, and the heron is hunting

Did you know someone reverse-engineered the Weather Channel computer system from the 80s/90s and now you can generate your own private weather channel for your location? weatherstar.netbymatt.com

Totalling around 120 hours of observing time, this is the longest the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has ever focused on a single target. The deep field aims to probe the Cosmic Dawn, when the Universe was only a few million years old. Read more 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... 🔭 🧪 ☄️

House Republicans passed their bill that’d rip health insurance from millions and take food assistance away from millions including households with kids as young as 7 in the largest Medicaid and SNAP cuts in history - while giving giant tax cuts to the rich. Thread on the next steps of the process.

We planted this thyme a decade ago, I love how it's gone all bonsai

For 59 days, Mount St. Helens has rumbled and reshaped. But tonight, it sleeps. As the calendar turns from Saturday to Sunday, there’s no reason to believe May 18 will be different.

No AI, this is a real photo taken by Percy’s engineering cameras of astronomical twilight on #Mars! You can see Deimos in the sky too. I worked pretty hard to plan, execute, and analyze this image, and it came out beautifully! A bit noisy, but it was very dark out after all. #astro #planetary

Perseverance captured a new selfie to celebrate 1500 Sols on Mars. The rover is currently investigating the outer rim of Jezero crater near an outcrop named Sally's Cove. #planetsci Full panorama: www.360cities.net/image/persev... Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Steve Albers/Simeon Schmauß

DEEP DISH COMMUNION WAFERS

Physicist and astronomer Willem de Sitter was born #OTD in 1872. He is best known for his work in Cosmology, applying Einstein’s general relativity to the dynamics and history of the universe, and also for strong "Jude Law as young Dumbledore" vibes. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️ Image: history.aip.org/exhibits/cos...

BREAKING: Judge Richard Myers rules that the N.C. Supreme Court's handling of the state supreme court election violated the U.S. Constitution. The win for Justice Riggs, a Democrat, is to be certified. Today's ruling stayed for 7 days for Judge Griffin, a Republican, to appeal "if he so chooses."

Does quantum mechanics really need to be complex? Why can't we just use real wavefunctions? 🧵1/15 *some math, non-relativistic QM

Sometimes people say things like “modern medicine is responsible for our lifespan increase,” but our understanding of modern medicine includes having clean water, food that doesn’t kill you, and a basic understanding of the major ways that not getting certain chemicals fucks you up.”

Tariffs are a tax on consumers. Today's example: prom dresses. There are a lot of pissed off teenagers right now, including the one in this household.