It's like staying up late to see if Santa is real but we're hoping Santa's dead
North Carolinian, erstwhile astronomer, latter-day gardener. PhD in "how is it already getting dark?" Surface of last scattering. he/him 🏳️🌈
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It's like staying up late to see if Santa is real but we're hoping Santa's dead
My local human-operated Bojangles drive-thru is perhaps the most efficient fast-food delivery system in existence, why on earth are they doing this (I know, money)
The Palliative
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...
Those replies were the most satisfying blocking binge I've had in a while. I feel refreshed.
The Medicaid expansion literally saved my life.
And the inside of the dome is sleek and pristine, and definitely not filled with shelf after dusty shelf of fifty-year-old broken equipment.
ICE in Durham, be safe and don't talk to the fucking cops
I gave up and bought a 12-pack of lens-cleaning cloths for my glasses, which are now distributed uniformly around my home, and I still struggle to find one sometimes.
If Democrats had spearheaded this initiative, you'd have Republican members of congress dressed as Toucan Sam at the State of the Union squawking about "tyranny".
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
I scrolled to find this. Ours was tan.
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
I'm honestly embarrassed for y'all for this
Does he think that Medicaid pays people's rent or something?
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.
We live at an apartment complex on a tributary creek/lake south of town, and it came into the apartment last night
For me, the compulsions feel like they come from the same source. But only one compulsion nearly destroyed my liver, so on my list that one is more serious.
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.
I like how each character encounters their new environment using different senses: Bok feels the cold, Flash hears the mechs, Dale smells the mud. Hoping Zarkov sees something dazzling.
I heard from a colleague that an active grant whose money was nearly all spent was flagged and threatened to be rescinded for mentioning "a diverse array of telescopes".
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...
This is the first time in a while I feel like having called a Senator's office repeatedly might have had a tiny effect (though at this point I assume there's just some AI summarizing transcripts of the messages for him)
That has started taking over some of my planters and I gave up trying to pull it out. Glad to know it will flower, it hasn't started yet.
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. 🧪 🔭
I like this visualization
In other words, they probably bombed the wrong country
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
That period after 'Parade' is brutal.
I will never not click on a Bob Mortimer story. He's adorable.
Stop carrying water for fascists and report the goddamn facts that everyone can see with their own eyes, you colossal disappointments
It just occurred to me I'd never thought about his "reality". Where did he come from? Where did he go to? Was that his home, or his office?
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.
I just read this for the first time last night, a nice coincidence
I was wondering if the tank treads might start flinging chunks of asphalt into the parade stands
If you don't have quite that many egg yolks to spare, would it turn out ok with fewer/none, or do you need to adjust the other ingredients?
If you fail to take advantage of this, you deserve to fail
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.
They had the wrong grid in the hints earlier -- what a strange choice, to replace the puzzle instead of the hints...
And you definitely don't want to splash any photons on yourself, they can burn the skin.
[laughs in astronomer] [puts on my white astronomy lab coat and steps out into my brightly-lit observatory dome, and proceeds to stare with my own flesh eye into the wrong end of the telescope]
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
bsky.app/profile/frog...
My parsley is pretty scanty, too. Cilantro and nasturtiums are chugging along, though.
Is there something about the commercially available seeds that's off this year? I only had 1 in 3 germinate.
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
I've got a pair, too. They're constantly shuttling back and forth across my patio. They also got into a neighbor's ashtray and left little gifts among my plants, with the tobacco carefully picked out.
It's charming how much loving attention the artist paid to the display cases, draperies, and stands
I'd dip it in honey. Reusable lozenge bear!
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... 🔭 🧪 ☄️
He literally didn't mention or even allude to fallen veterans or even the military in his Memorial Day message
He's punishing us because we elected a Democratic governor
I wish Carl Sagan was still with us to complete a trio of wise planetary elders.
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.
Thank you -- I only meant that it reminded me of a bonsai tree, with the twisted "trunk". I was thinking of pruning it to shape it after it is done blooming
oh my head
wait that's the actual name of the bill? This is mortifying
We planted this thyme a decade ago, I love how it's gone all bonsai
I love it when my parsley flowers, and so do all the bees
My North Carolina Quaker abolitionist ancestors are smiling
There's something especially grotesque about seeing this physically printed on newspaper
Accepting it as a gift is bad enough, but buying it to keep for himself using taxpayer money seems...worse.
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."
![D. Judge Griffin's motions for injunctive relief [DE 1-5; DE 1-13] are DENIED; E. Justice Riggs' motion for injunctive relief [DE 37] is GRANTED; F. The VoteVets Action Fund Parties' motion for summary judgment [DE 86] is GRANTED 6, G. The NCDP's request for injunctive relief [DE 78] is GRANTED; H. The Conley Plaintiffs' request for a permanent injunction [DE 82] is GRANTED; I. Final judgment is ENTERED: In Griffin Il, judgment is ENTERED in favor of the State Board, Justice Riggs, and the VoteVets Action Fund Parties as to the issues identified in Findings 1, 2, and 3; ii. In NCDP, judgment is ENTERED in favor of the NCDP as to the issues identified in Findings 1, 2, and 3; and iii. In Conley, judgment is ENTERED in favor of the Conley Plaintiffs as to the issues identified in Findings 1 and 2.28 The court's order is STAYED for 7 days, so that Judge Griffin may pursue an appeal if he so chooses. SO ORDERED this 5th day of May, 2025. PaulIMin RICHARD E. MYERS II CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:36eqtmzysqf7wsslczw4uxcd/bafkreifbygc3pqf6qij5qexcdcvezk3me2yu67clbmq4ttku2g6twbpclu@jpeg "Click to view full size")
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.
By the time I got used to the notion that you could even burn a CD, they were gone
my 7-year-old just informed me that we're all made from four things: - skeletons - stardust - monkeys - love
I just gave my very fantasy-averse mother a copy of Small Gods, and she read it in a day and actually enjoyed it. She likes mysteries, so I'll probably nudge her towards the Night Watch series next.
This is a Methodist fellowship hall annex
Your periodic reminder that one way to think about privilege is: who's allowed to make mistakes?
I paid my first speeding ticket fine to this nice lady.
An astonishing headline reporting on new observations from a team led to Nikku Madhusudhan claims they’ve found ‘hints of life’ on a planet orbiting a dwarf star some 124 light years away. What’s going on? (1/n) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 🔭 🧪
My main takeaway is that Elon Musk is literally preparing for "the apocalypse" and is now in a position where he can cause it.
I get the stock market is bad but the equivalent has already happened to foreign aid, research funding, and public health. Everyone didn't freak out because there isn't some ticker on the news measuring the number of cancer researchers and Ebola prevention experts being fired.
CRAZY new image from #JWST of a distant spiral wrapped around a foreground elliptical through gravitational lensing - perfectly aligned, forming a perfect Einstein ring. A serendipitous discovery led by G. Mahler of @universitedeliege.bsky.social 🇧🇪 🔭 Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Mahler
[Trump accidentally launches nuclear missiles] Who amongst us hasn't pressed the wrong button at the ATM?
Wendell Berry
Photo Umit Bektas. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/w...
This is like the opsec version of those Teslas that were self-driving into paintings of the horizon like Wile E Coyote.
Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...