Congrats to emeritus prof Ken Nomoto @ Kavli IPMU for winning the Gruber Cosmology Prize for his seminal work on supernova modelling! I'm in his former office so hopefully some of his mojo rubs off some day ;)

“Fuck Heineken!”

The president of Cornell hit two students with his car, lied about what happened, and got away with it. The story illustrates an under-reported crisis in higher education: administrators and the trustees they answer to are increasingly hostile to the idea of college itself. I wrote about it here:

Hey Bluesky peeps, I'm looking to speak to astronomers that are looking for alien life in unusual ways - think Ceres, weird technosignatures, unexpected exoplanets, etc - for a story in the BBC. If that's you, or you know someone, do let me know. jdaoca[at]gmail[dot]com Thanks!

ArXiV has a new LLM policy (Screenshots with alt text so you don’t have to click through to the other place and see all the stupid responses)

Yesterday, 56 of our fab colleagues at the Physics & Astronomy dept in Nottingham, received “at risk of redundancy” letters. The Uni is planning to reduce the size of the Physics dept by almost a third.🧪⚛️🔭 Sign this petition to show them your support ✍️: nottinghamphysics.github.io/Open_Letter/

Astronomical acronyms now extend across 3 layers: I was just asked to expand VUDS in a paper proof: VUDS -> VIMOS Ultra Deep Survey -> VLT Infrared Imaging and Multi-Object Spectrograph ( Ultra Deep Survey -> Very Large Telescope Infrared Imaging and Multi-Object Spectrograph Ultra Deep Survey

Hey, I wrote a thing about AI in astrophysics ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

Best raw data to look at is to be physically perched at prime focus of your telescope staring at the primary mirrow.

I once punched a monkey.

If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.

In this age of LLMs, it's trivially easy to get a Phd-level-expert™️ summary of any journal article that will extract the main arguments and findings for you and often even flags up the most relevant connections to the larger literature: just look for the bloody abstract, kid #AcademicLifeHacks

Hey y'all. I'm hiring. Are you interested in building instruments for astrophysics? wd5.myworkdaysite.com/recruiting/u...

Did not expect to be in a good mood all day from the fact that the 2yr old finally deigned to shit in a potty this morning.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I am looking to recruit a PhD student for the October 26 entry. It will be funded by STFC. Project(s) will be some combination of early universe cosmology, numerical relativity and strong gravity, and dynamical compactification of extra dimensions! Apply through this portal apply.kcl.ac.uk

Is this… is this a laksa?

German Jews were citizens of Germany at the start of 1933. By the end of 1933, the Nazis had removed citizenship from naturalized citizen Jews. In 1935, all German Jews were fully stripped of their German citizenship. Citizenship under dictatorships is contingent for targeted minorities.

North Korea on track to have a female executive before the United States.

Do not keep your lip chapstick in a drawer next to a glue stick. Ask me how I learned this.

I see we are at the 'demanding expensive and impractical wunderwaffen that nobody in the military is actually asking for' stage of things.

Flying through #Dulles Airport this week? Don't forget to check out the new James Webb Space Telescope exhibit in the corridor between the Metro station and the main terminal. If you missed it, you can still read about it: https://www.stsci.edu/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-403 🔭

🚀The Roman Cycle 1 Call for Proposals is OPEN! Unlock new discoveries with the Wide Field Instrument—your science starts here! Apply for funding to analyze Roman data, perform theory/lab research, and propose new observations. 🔭☄️ 📅 Deadline: Mar 17, 2026 (5 PM PDT) 📝 bit.ly/4q3jbbL

Not typically into dumpster diving, but spotted this in my buildings recycle bin.

高市早苗ばかやろ何です

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel, Disney Animated or Pixar.

Aren’t these villains in One Punch Man

Most telescopes in Maunakea now shut down until day crews can check for safety.

Cultivating the Miyamoto Musashi style of chopstick technique.

The 1.5 yr old has achieved tri-lingualism with precisely one word: “No no no!”, “ない!“, ”不要！”

I get the appeal of slow travel, but taking a sleeper train for a 7km journey is probably taking things a bit too far.

Will be practicing bushido on my veggies from now on.

The fact that my Steam Deck is docked to a big monitor and keyboard/mouse really says something about what kind of gamer I am. www.ign.com/articles/ste...

Unless I'm mistaken, the UK pledging to defend Belgium has had a 2/2 record for starting World Wars. www.bbc.com/news/article...

The supermarket has decided to stop carrying the 1.5 yr old’s favorite cereal. Now have a tiny crack addict to deal with at home.

Always check the primary sources… like TikTok

You know you've lost the crowd when Fark.com calls you a dipshit.

Incredible paper. These dinosaurs could literally have seen the Yucatán impactor with their very eyes.

Intergalactic gas-tronomers! At IPMU (outside Tokyo), we are organizing a workshop (March 16-19 2026) about circum- and inter-galactic gas in honor of 40 years since Art Wolfe's discovery of damped HI systems in absorption. Abstraction submissions are open: indico.ipmu.jp/e/dlas_at_40

"The secret sauce has been poured down the drain," says David Draper, former Deputy Chief Scientist of NASA, over the recent firing or departure of 1000s of NASA employees, which will be catastrophic for the legacy of the US🇺🇸😖🚀 www.planetary.org/articles/400... h/t @floragraham.bsky.social 🧪

🗿 The moai really walked New evidence shows Easter Island’s giant statues were engineered to 'walk' upright using their curved bases & forward tilt. A 4.3-ton replica moved 100 m in 40 min with just 18 people, & no logs or sleds. 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #SciComm 🧪 #Archaeology

The number of UK-related problems that just translate to 'UK parents can't be arsed to do parenting'.

It's great that FRBs are now becoming common enough that it's possible to have more than one in a single calendar day, but working on two interesting FRBs with the same date stamp is a pain in the ass!

TW: raw meat Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. Saw this 1000g A5 Wagyu steak in the supermarket and could not resist.

Isn’t this Zach Galifianakis?

Paper day, but a bitter sweet one. The last paper out of CLAMATO, a project we started 12 years ago with a crazy idea: how about we try to do Lyman-alpha forest with galaxies not quasars? So many ups & downs! Am grateful to Ben Zhang for shepherding it over the finish. arxiv.org/abs/2509.07453

Just lie back and enjoy the tranquil of absolute zero entropy.

In case you haven’t been following the saga of the NZ father who disappeared into the bush for a few years with his four children, DO SO! This is an insane ending.