A bit of #Jupiter (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Mohammad Fathi)

LLMs, or more specifically the way they’re sold as “intelligent” (and ultimately as ersatz humans) are the biggest grift in history

You need to watch this NOW. I promise you will feel much better. I promise you will experience hope. And joy. #ChooseLove

This is amazingly awesome news. VIPER rises phoenix-like from the ashes! (Sorry for the amateur poetry imagery). www.nasa.gov/news-release...

Still looking up. McDonald Observatory, Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve, Texas

okay AI controversy aside, just talking as a nerd for a second: this is such a cool paper

The Silmaril - From Bill (ridingrobots.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2j2KVce

The GOP stands for the gleeful destruction of the United States as a global leader in science and innovation. It stands for isolation and hokum. And the people will suffer for it. Medical research has been set back decades.

*taps the sign*

Keep sciencing. We are living through a time when looking at a rock and wondering how old it is qualifies as an act of resistance.

Seeing the Bill Watterson originals full of pencil lines of stuff that didn’t work, scuffs the eraser didn’t pick up, white out galore and more was something I needed to see to remind myself that nothing is perfect the first go and tweaks need to be made and you’re allowed to try again.

Helping with another CreatiVets.org astrophotography workshop at @mcdonaldobs.bsky.social in Texas. Great group as always, lovely skies, a soundtrack of bugling elk in the night.

Kilauea is putting on quite the show once again! Live stream here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk0t...

Amidst all the darkness, there's room for wonder. That's an entire other planet. And we got to see videos of it. Free. People did this. We need to remember this.

From NASA: Check out the view from up here! As the Curiosity rover continues to climb the flanks of Mt. Sharp, it has captured an extraordinarily clear panorama of Gale Crater's rim...and even the lands beyond. Details: photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA2...

Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.

Can Japan's #Hayabusa2 touchdown on asteroid 1998 KY26?  A new study that includes VLT observations reveals the mission’s target asteroid to be three times smaller and much faster than previously thought. Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2515/ 🔭 🧪

#NASA's #Mars rover #Curiosity Sol 4662 2025-09-17: Right Navigation Camera mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1... Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/j. Roger

NASA's confirmed exoplanet list has reached 6,000. As I wrote elsewhere, Think of the wonders of our own solar system: the glistening rings of Saturn, the fiery volcanoes of Io, the sapphire oceans of Earth. Now imagine what might exist on these 6,000 worlds. To celebrate, a fav video (sound on!)

NASA FRONT PAGE, BABY!

My new small museums for mental health w'shop is on Sat 4 Oct Recent compelling research shows that collecting & arranging collections neatly alleviates anxiety & lifts mood. Includes: 🌿2 hr zoom-we'll make & photograph small museums 🗝️30% off my Etsy shop: workshops.emmamitchell.uk/courses/smal...

I'm glad to read this. About time. Also I don't understand why he was made FRS in the first place. He's not a scientist and he's not an engineer. He's a business leader who pontificates wildly on scientific subjects in which he knows next to nothing and his DOGE has actively damaged US science. 🔭🧪

Who benefits from attacks on higher ed? Certainly not the US economy. Certainly not the states where higher ed is the major employer. Certainly not the American people. excellent work @ehayot.bsky.social and @paulakrebs.bsky.social www.post-gazette.com/opinion/gues...

The commonplace tradition of denigrating the government workers who sustain the public good is a blight on us all. I'm reading Who is Government? edited by Michael Lewis, with fascinating profiles of public servants written by Geraldine Brooks, W. Kamau Bell, Sarah Vowell, Dave Eggers, and others.

"He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause. He said, If I was unwilling to do both, I should resign."

Fmr. CDC Director Susan Monarez: "Secretary Kennedy demanded two things of me that were inconsistent with my oath of office and the ethics required of a public official. He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation, regardless of the scientific evidence.

Yardangs on Mars is the name of my ambient dub band 😉

From NASA: Minatogawa, Olduvai, and Mungo. What's in a name? A nod to the story of humanity's origins. New official names for features on Donaldjohanson, an asteroid our Lucy spacecraft visited in April, recognize research & discoveries about early humans on Earth: go.nasa.gov/4goPDS5

NASA has earned a spot on The Webby 30, a list of 30 companies and organizations that have shaped the digital landscape: go.nasa.gov/3K6235y

If it seems like every issue leads to right-wing pundits attacking colleges and universities lately, it’s not random. They’ve wanted to defund and delegitimize higher education for decades. They’re using any pretext to call for faculty firings, defunding public education, canceling grants, etc.

More spooky fall boys heading to the kiln! 🐸🔥 #ceramics #frogart

“It’s incredibly beautiful and poignant that the oldest stories we have—the stories humanity has been telling ourselves for tens of thousands of years—are stories about the sky and what it can tell us about where we come from and where we’re going,” [Christiansen] said.

The best Redford film you haven't seen: The Great Waldo Pepper. Not hight art, but funny and poignant and it's Susan Sarandon's first film. There's a scene I've always thought of as a metaphor for our current political disaster but I'm tired. Just watch it for the funny, poignant, and Sarandon parts

🐦 Fly through a 3D map of stellar nurseries ✨ Scientists have created the most accurate 3D map of star-formation regions in our Milky Way galaxy, based on data from #ESAGaia. The map extends to a distance of 4000 light-years from us, with the Sun at the centre 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪

Today, the UN officially designated Israel’s assault on Gaza as a genocide. As a party to the Genocide Convention, the U.S. has a legal obligation to obey our own laws, stop weapons sales to Israel, and demand a permanent ceasefire. End the genocide. Ceasefire now.

“Sorry for more Jupiter art” is not a sentence that ever needs to be said.

One more from NASA: Join the next Aurorasaurus Report-A-Thon Saturday, Sept. 20, at 1-4pm ET and bring your aurora photos, with times/locations, to help advance aurora science. Register today: go.nasa.gov/4mXk0le

From NASA: What IS a "potential biosignature" anyway? For a complete review and deep dive into last week's announcement, check out this special edition of the Mars Report: science.nasa.gov/mars/the-mar...

From NASA: Comet 3I/ATLAS is the third known object from outside our solar system to be discovered passing through our neighborhood. ☄ Track its current and future position using our "Eyes on the Solar System" interactive. Here it is passing near Mars in October: go.nasa.gov/4goaV2t

At her Substack site, @karenattiah.bsky.social lists the posts that got her fired. karenattiah.substack.com/p/the-washin... None of them is in the top .0001% of inflammatory things said or written by public figures that day.

How about a timeline cleanse. A miniature painting that I created of the Moon rising above the Earth. Acrylic on canvas board. We’re all in this together. {{{Hugs}}}

Sunflowers don't close at night. I'd like to think their little antenna dishes, each pointed to a different point in the sky, are tuned to the stars.

In the same vein: In 1980, there were just 250 mountain gorillas left in the world. Now, there are 1063. Cancer treatments are advancing so rapidly than oncologist now worn their patients that the customary five-year survival rate is no longer an accurate measurement of what to expect.

Art Deco Owl #synthart #ChatGPT Image #aiart #AIartcommunity

Captain obvious: Homelessness isn’t cured by lethal injection. It’s cured by affordable housing.

Hi, I Brought You the Moon - From Bill (ridingrobots.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2q2s8uW

Snippets from a 360° panorama captured two days ago by Curiosity, including a new angle on the Yardang unit #Mars Sep. 11, 2025 - Sol 4656 🧪🔭 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Imprisoned for dance crimes

The Cassini Saturn probe swept its cameras around #OTD in 2017 to collect some of its last images. A few days later it would end its twenty year mission by plunging into Saturn's atmosphere, a fireball flashing across the sky at over 70,000 mph. 🧪 🔭 Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Great list of books right here if you're looking for some science/nature stuff.