Oh goodie, it's one of those email-clogging "reply all cascade" mornings....

Wot?

Literally broke my neck diving into the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC as a teenager.

I do have to laugh at how, at 5:00am on January 1st, the Space Telescope Science Institute promptly sent me a "Grant Reports Due" email. Happy New Year to you too, STScI!

One of the great things about dogs is that you can just, out of the blue, say "Hey I got you a coat to wear, try it on", and they'll immediately think "OH YEAH THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER!" <wag wag wag> Do the same thing with one of our cats and you'll lose an eye... or worse

How many countries will Trump have to blow up before they give him his Peace Prize?

Very thin galaxies tritonstation.com/2026/01/02/v...

Words of truth from our local sewer district.

I am trying to be steely-eyed and determined not to text my adult daughter a BE CAREFUL TONIGHT ITS SNOWING AND THE ROADS ARE FULL OF DRUNK DRIVERS text because she's smart and capable and doesnt need to get naggy texts from her old dad on new year's eve. I'm trying, Ringo. I'm trying real hard.

Seen elsewhere on the intertubes: "Nobody is more consistently and frequently punished for their behavior than those who are punctual."

welp, in an absolutely fitting way to finish off this year, my laptop just bricked. sigh.

this is the one

Had a discussion of "church laugh moments" over dinner tonight. As an atheist who doesn't go to church, I haven't had many opportunities for a church laugh moment. But the closest I've come was in Rome at a Vatican Conference on disk galaxies. 1/n 🔭

What makes Christmas extra special? Feeling new photons hitting those Hubble Space Telescope detectors for your research project. SANTA LOVES MOAR VIRGO DATA!!!

Merry Radical Left Scum Christmas to all who celebrate!

Slacker Christmas: got up, made coffee, doomscrolled, walked the pup, and now we're getting ready to start wrapping up all the presents while listening to David Sedaris read The Santaland Diaries.

Mick Taylor's contributions to the Rolling Stones' legacy can't be overstated. Absolutely amazing guitar work across a too-short period with the band.

Merry Christmas from Keef!

Trading Places is a Christmas movie. Change My Mind(tm).

New pup settling in on dearly departed old pup's doggie bed.

I'm playing a playlist I found online with music that is supposed to help de-stress your dog. It's actually working. On me.

New doggo. Who dis?

This line never fails to crack me up. Crack. Me. Up.

The hour long, instrumental-only jam sessions from the remastered version of Derek and the Dominos' "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" is just amazing stuff.

if you see this, we IMPLORE YOU to post a picture from whatever device you're using without explanation

I will never forget as an undergrad in 1985 going to Griffith Park Observatory in LA for a midnight laserium show done to Led Zeppelin III. So so great. SO GREAT.

No matter how much I emphasize to my students before exams that 1 km/s = 1 pc/Myr, that 1 year is pi*10^7 seconds, that G=4.3E-3 in God's units, and that no good ever comes of working in SI units, some of them *still* clutch on to SI and then get totally lost in unit conversions on the test. Sigh.

OK we've had this discussion before, and I know my Top 10 Albums of All Time is a list of 50 albums, and my Top 5 Albums of All Time is a list of about 10 albums, but my Best Album of All Time trophy has 3 albums on it and no matter the version, Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" is *always* there.

the only sound left after the ambulances go is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row.

A good friend just sent me these stemless wineglasses featuring space telescopes. Including not just Hubble and JWST, but also Chandra, Spitzer, Compton, Planck.... Very fun! 🔭 🍷

I always thought the reason that Venus has no magnetic field is because it rotates soooo slowly. But today I learned from my geophys pals that as slowly as Venus rotates, it's fast enough that it should have a magnetic field if its internal structure is like that of the Earth. Whoa nelly!

Well, I wake up in the morning, fold my hands and pray for rain I got a head full of ideas that are drivin' me insane It's a shame, the way she makes me scrub the floor I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more...

Every time I watch Rudolph I am reminded how absolutely terrified I was of The Bumble when I was a little kid.

I realize that part of the reason that spam/fishing emails are getting hard to detect is because the spammers/fishers are getting better at making their emails look legit. But the other reason is that legit companies are doing an absolutely terrible job at making their emails actually look legit.

Oof, I am reading a PhD thesis about the nucleation barrier and how it affects on the solidification of planetary cores. This is testing my memory of thermodynamics. To be clear, I am failing that test. But hey, it's a learning opportunity, right?

I can't be the only one making turkey noodle casserole tonight, can I?

Introduce yourself with three people who have never been in your kitchen: Archibald Leach Bernard Schwartz Lucille LeSueur (IYKYK)

Time for the twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one!

just wait until the Post gets word of what my cat is speculating -- breaking news indeed!

We have glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of our bedroom. They make me smile every night when I turn the lights out. Every. Night.

As a totally square, unhip, white suburban kid in the 1980s, my introduction to reggae was through Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Jimmy Cliff. Today, those gentlemen are now all gone, and I'm still square, unhip, suburban, and white, but I do really appreciate reggae.

The instructor in Juniorkid's Wed afternoon art history class is giving a quiz the day before Thanksgiving, and I'm thinking that might qualify as a war crime.

No. The chief problem is, AI is literally A TOOL FOR UNLEARNING. The more you use it, the worse you get at whatever it is you’re using it for. It’s the opposite of educating, it’s uneducating. 2/2

Good god, the amount of spam coming in from bogus journals soliciting manuscripts has suddenly gone up by an order of magnitude in the last 24 hrs. SO MANY BOGUS JOURNALS TO CHOOSE FROM!

One of the great things about astronomy is international collaborations. So many people, so many timezones, the science never stops! One of the difficult things about astronomy is international collaborations. So many people, so many timezones, the emails never stop!

I'm so old that I can remember when the NFL wanted to get politics out of their broadcasts....

And these children that you spit on As they try to change their worlds Are immune to your consultations They're quite aware of what they're going through

It's like ten (fifteen?) years ago when universities were tripping all over themselves to invest in MOOCs. Who remembers MOOCs? <george costanza voice>oh no, i'm so sorry, it's MOOPS.</george costanza voice>

He's standing there like somebody unplugged his controller on the Xbox...