First day attending the Shaw-IAU Workshop (remote) and it was hit by the Cloudflare down while I was having lunch... #shawiau25 #cloudflare #cloudflaredown #IAU #astronomy #education #scicomm

#Pignoleria Visti stamattina in un negozio di una famosa catena di carabattole danese. "Peluche pinguino con cucciolo". Saranno fratelli, uno molto grosso e uno molto piccolo, giusto? #PedantryAlert Saw them this morning at a store of a famous Danish knick-knack […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

🇪🇺✅ SUCCESS: We've prevented mandatory #chatcontrol through the back door!🎉 A big win & THANKS to everyone! 🙏 But ⚠️: Anonymity-breaking age checks & "voluntary" mass scanning are still planned. The fight continues next year! https://chatcontrol.eu

Ho appena inviato la mail consigliata da @chatcontrol (https://fightchatcontrol.eu/) contro il voto previsto per oggi in sede europea, che introdurrebbe il Chat Control con dei mezzucci nonostante il blocco del mese scorso. L'ho inviata usando un servizio di alias, per coerenza con la causa […]

#silentsunday #sunset #sky

The astrophotographer I worked with earlier this month, Jeanine Holowatiuk https://www.instagram.com/jeanine.holowatuik/ https://northernescapephotography.com/about/ sent me some horrifying (Halloween-levels of scary) time lapse movies she took of Comet Lemmon. Why horrifying? Starlink.

I just tried to download the Observation and ObsIdentify apps as an alternative to iNaturalist after the latter team's decision to go on with their affair with Google generative AI. [Due to personal circumstances, I did not get the latest updates in the forum debate, so please correct me if […]

I finally saw the Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon!!! And discovered that my old Lumix TZ57 (which I miserably broke) shot better evening/night sky photos that my current TZ82D... I hope I will get something decent from what I took tonight once I learn how to process RAW files. #comet #lemmon […]

I've expanded a bit on my reflections about #inaturalist's push for using LLMs to regurgitate user-generated insights - and why replacing human peer-to-peer learning is likely harmful to people's motivations. Read it here: https://tzovar.as/motivations/ #citizenscience

I found this reflection of one community member in the forum interesting: «Every time I read that AI is better, faster etc. it lowers my motivation to identify. It makes me feel that what I do when identifying (mostly unknowns) is not going to be useful any longer.» My take is that this […]

I KNEW IT! I TOLD YOU THE VERY MOMENT I SAW THE NEWS ABOUT THE PAPER! MY DEPARTMENT WON AN IGNOBEL!!! https://improbable.com/ig/winners/?amp=1#ig2025 #ignobel #ignobel2025 #unipd #padua #physics #physicsofmatter #cacioepepe #pasta #italy #italians

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com p.s. this week I am on a USA/Canada tour with my new book. Details and preorder links at tomgauld.com

Se si guarda il comunicato stampa NASA, la prima cosa che l'amministratore ad interim sottolinea è che Perseverance è stata lanciata durante il primo mandato del tizio arancione. Mars Sample Return è tra le missioni che potrebbero essere soppresse dal budget NASA […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

TL;DR I feel the war on iNaturalist Google grant is lost, I was asked to upload stuff and I will do it 😞 ............ Sigh. People from the naturalist association I volunteer for (they are professional environmental scientists, which I am not) asked me to upload my observations of a gecko family […]

Non ci credo, stavo scattando una foto alla Luna e un aereo ci è passato ESATTAMENTE davanti mentre premevo il pulsante. Ma ho preso solo le scie perché avevo impostato 2 secondi di ritardo per evitare le vibrazioni della macchina sul treppiede. Sarebbe stata la mia foto più assurda di sempre 😅 […]

Reflect Orbital is saying that 30,000 people have requested that they shine a giant light on them at night (bright enough to be incredibly annoying and screw up ecosystems, but not NEARLY bright enough to do anything useful like power solar panels). I'm betting we can get >30,000 people who […]

Oh my gods THIS GUY IS INSUFFERABLE THE LOEB SCALE?!!! https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09167 "You know, I'm just not getting enough attention as a tenured professor at Harvard who yells about aliens after every cool scientific discovery, I need to name a scale after myself"

LIZARD LIZARD LIZARD LIZARD LIZARD #worldlizardday #lizard #lucertola #ligaora #podarcismuralis

[Me complaining about the existence of other people (in Italian)] Io: devo andare a Padova oggi. Visto che non ho un orario preciso, prendo il treno di metà mattina! Mi alzo dopo e poi, chi vuoi che ci sia su un treno regionale del basso Veneto il giovedì […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

New Comic Strip found: Arctic Circle by Alex Hallatt for Tue, 29 Jul 2025 https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/arcticcircle/s-3787933 #comicstrip #arcticcirclestrip

Sunset a few minutes ago. Not bad... #sunset #sky #rainbow #weather #italy #veneto

5. Feed a generative AI model, paid by Google out of pure generosity without any detail of the project being known by the developers themselves, apparently... https://www.instagram.com/p/DMqAy32RG-G/ #inaturalist #genai #google #enshittification

>:-( #medieval #medievalart

[UEFA Women's EURO 2025 (in Italian)] Gufata istantanea! 🦉🤦🏻‍♀️ #calcio #calciofemminile #weuro2025 #italiaspagna

Unless you are Italian https://mastodon.social/@gutenberg_org/114811568497985711

So I discovered TODAY, courtesy of my then advisor, that I had "my" first paper published on the ONLY day I did not pay attention to the arXiv bot on Mastodon. Summary of my life https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_astrophHE_bot/114737895202010038 #astrophysics #gammarays #blazars #machinelearning […]

I smell a cute IgNobel here https://scicomm.xyz/@dantheclamman/114790302454504281 #cats #catsofmastodon #ignobel

SpaceX spends a lot of time saying how safe they are with their threshhold for collision avoidance maneuvers, which is great. But they HAVE to be! With those densities, high collision probability conjunctions happen many times per day. It is impressive that they have been operating perfectly […]

New SpaceX report on Starlink conjunctions and deorbits (a.k.a. dumping tons of metal/plastic/solar panels/computers into the upper atmosphere) https://www.scribd.com/document/883045105/SpaceX-Gen1-Gen2-Semi-Annual-Report-7-1-25 Scariest part: 472 Starlinks were burned up in the atmosphere in […]

I knew it!! Now ChatGPT has confirmed …😬🙄 #ai #chatgpt

This awesome photo would be so much better without the person with the miner's cap that ruins every single Milky Way photo you can find on social media https://reentry.codl.fr/@apod/statuses/01JZ25N2EZ79R294SVM5ZXQCE0 #oldwomanyellsatcloud #milkyway #astrophotography #apod

My latest cartoon for @theguardian.com books

A study published in Scientific Reports in 2024 claims that "Our findings reveal that AI systems emit between 130 and 1500 times less CO2e per page of text generated compared to human writers, while AI illustration systems emit between 310 and 2900 times less CO2e per image than their human […]

Google's emissions are up over 50%, Amazon builds huge data centers powered by 75% natural gas. Remember all those posts telling us that "AIs climate impact isn't that bad" supported by some really funky math/perspective and/or numbers Sam Altman invented? Here's the actual impact. "AI" is a […]

Sfreccia solitario nei boschi dell'est #barbagianni https://mastodon.social/@medieval_illuminations/114753562265733776

It is true. Just tested it myself. Google AI claims that Hungary (Ungarn) starts with H in German (which it isn’t, only true in English ) and that it is sometimes called Holland (which probably refers to the Netherlands). Nice demonstration how AI works … 😉

@acb like this? #vicisart

E dopo Padova vicino all'Islanda, ecco Chioggia vicino a Singapore #giornalismo

Radio astronomer Cyril Hazard (1928-2025), one of the discoverers of quasars, died on Jun 14. In 1963 Hazard got an accurate location for 3C48 and 3C273 using lunar occultation, allowing optical astronomers to find the optical counterparts and measure their redshift.

[Instagram screenshot] So it begins. Of course, the climate change account is among the first to go. Not that I'm sorry to no longer see the same story reposted over 10 accounts, but it's the meaning of this "optimization" that counts. #nasa #climatechange #trump #instagram #doge #nasafundingcuts

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250611-ai-mode-is-google-about-to-change-the-internet-forever #ai #google #enshittification #deadinternettheory #chatbots #echochamber #misinformation

#inaturalist received $1.5million from #google to develop #genai tools to aid in identification. Not surprisingly the community is appalled. The idea that anyone considers Google a beneficial (or even neutral) player in community projects at this point is disappointing. This shows a shocking […]

[LONG vent on the iNaturalist sellout to Google GenAI] I used to love iNaturalist for so many reasons, one of them being the fact iNat still looked quite safe from being enshittified. Identifications beyond the outcome of the computer vision model were done and explained by humans in the […]

Podcast RSI – Quando l’IA non è A: la beffa miliardaria di Builder.ai https://attivissimo.me/2025/06/10/podcast-rsi-quando-lia-non-e-a-la-beffa-miliardaria-di-builder-ai/

Livelli altissimi #giornalismo #serviziopubblico #rai #luna #fuffa

Updating talk slides so you all get to be horrified along with me at the current Starlink numbers. There are now 7,652 Starlink satellites in orbit (>500 more than there were in February, when I last updated these particular slides). 2-3 Starlinks per day are burning up in the atmosphere […]

Promemoria per la prossima volta che mi viene in mente di essiccare una foglia: non usare tovaglioli goffrati... (Perdonatemi, è la prima volta) #foglia #erbario #malva #dilettanteallosbaraglio

Thunderstorm in progress, the strongest downpour in a while. But the blackbirds are still out there singing 🖤 #thunderstorm #blackbird #birbs #birds

I'll note that the Starlink piece that was discovered in Saskatchewan came from a Starlink that never made it into its operating orbit, so it never got a TLE and isn't included in this analysis. If they're burning up completely ("fully demisable"), that is a crapload of metal in the atmosphere […]

The African Space Agency is now a real official thing! (I wrote a thing) https://www.universetoday.com/articles/african-space-agency-takes-flight