Adam McMaster
@adammc.space
I’m an astronomer who is searching for black holes with the help of citizen scientists at https://black-hole-hunters.org I write an astronomy newsletter at https://three-alpha.space and a blog at https://www.twelvemountains.com
There MUST be a way to do the schedule for NAM so that it’s not spread across a load of different web pages and PDF files. Every year it’s a struggle to figure out what I’m going to attend.
We should be careful that justified anger about AI not turn into IP extremism. You cannot “steal” from the public domain.
Mark Thompson@sonofathomp.bsky.social · 4w agoHowever, it’s worth the threat of stealing all of Earth’s intellectual property, since the beginning of writing.
Congratulations to @zooniverse.bsky.social on reaching a billion classifications! So much of what happens on the Internet is terrible. The Zooniverse remains one of the few things that is purely a positive for the world. www.twelvemountains.com/2026/07/a-bi...
A Billion Zooniverse Classifications - Twelve Mountains
The Zooniverse citizen science platform just hit a billion classifications from their volunteers: This milestone belongs to everyone who has contributed...
twelvemountains.com
I’d bet governments have been doing this for years to track submarines. “we demonstrate that we can observe hydrodynamic pressure and velocity signals from a cruise ship at 413 m water depth, and up to 550 m from the fiber cable”
Brandon Moore, PhD@rando.insalubrio.us · last mo.Fiber-optic cables can be used to track the subtle movements of silent blue whales via distributed acoustic sensing, even when these elusive giants aren't vocalizing! 🧪 www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
Ugh, getting engaged at the Empire State Building is such a cliche
"a person can think about what they intend to say and then intelligently construct a sentence to convey that meaning, which is not what an LLM does" www.twelvemountains.com/2026/07/peop...
People Form Sentences with Intelligence, an LLM Does Not - Twelve Mountains
I recently mentioned that people can form whole ideas at once before starting to put a sentence together, unlike LLMs. Nature has an article about how...
twelvemountains.com
Massive stars create black holes when they die, but some stars are so massive they leave behind nothing at all 🔭🧪 three-alpha.space/p/the-pair-i...
The Pair Instability Mass Gap
Some stars are too big to make black holes.
three-alpha.space
Just saw a cookie banner titled “we value your privacy”, which I guess is true in the sense that they want to make money by taking it from me
"If you believe an LLM requires a data centre, even if you think that’s a bad thing, you’ve fallen for their marketing hype."
Do We Even Need All These Ground-Based Data Centres? - Twelve Mountains
We often hear how LLMs require such large resources that they’re building massive data centres which use unholy amounts of both electricity and water. It’s...
twelvemountains.com
Anonymous quote of the day (from a meeting I'm in): "I usually stay away from humans to make my life easier"
Space-based data centres are a terrible idea and Elon Musk is full of it www.twelvemountains.com/2026/06/you-...
You Will Never Convince Me Space Data Centres Aren’t Stupid - Twelve Mountains
Especially when they’re proposed by the notorious huckster, Elon Musk: The logic is seductive: Launch the data centers into orbit, where solar energy is...
twelvemountains.com
Works as a noun and an adjective. As in “the black hole is being very grabity”
Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · last mo.Every time I make the typo "grabity" part of me wants to argue that it should have been called that all along.
Started the day with the inside of my house over 30° C. It’s 10 am and already 26° C outside
They will go bankrupt not because the technology is useless (it’s not) but because there’s no reason for it to run in the cloud. You can already run simpler models on your laptop and that will improve with time. They are wasting obscene amounts on data centres and will never recoup that investment.
"I am capable of having a complete thought before I ever formulate language from it. An LLM is not. Language is not thought." www.twelvemountains.com/2026/06/ai-a...
AI and Consciousness - Twelve Mountains
An interesting way to think about LLMs and chat bots, from Ted Chiang: “Should we seriously consider the possibility that Claude, or any large language...
twelvemountains.com
Will there be astronomers after AI? The short answer is yes, probably 🔭🧪
Will There Be Astronomers After AI? - Twelve Mountains
There’s an article in Science from earlier this month suggesting, essentially, that AI might end the practice of astronomy by humans. I have a few thoughts...
twelvemountains.com
In fairness it took a lot longer than expected
Adam McMaster@adammc.space · 3mo agoThey always deny they're going to resign right up until the moment they resign.
I don’t actually understand why Reform ran someone against Burnham. Why give Labour the opportunity to beat them and gain momentum? Hopefully they’re this politically incompetent in the general election
I installed a LaTeX extension for VS Code, and it's so much faster at compiling than Overleaf. I've already decided to just put the LaTeX and Python in the same repository, so it makes sense to edit it all in the same app too.
My autocorrect is determined to make me use the phrase "gravitational lending". I assume that would be when you borrow enough to leave a black hole in your finances
"One early program employed teams of hairdressers put out of work by the execution of the aristocracy in the French Revolution to calculate logarithms."
Jonathan O'Callaghan@astrojonny.bsky.social · 2mo agoThis is an amazingly well-reported story by @joshuasokol.bsky.social. And a wonderful use of "synecdoche". www.science.org/content/arti...
A very short microlensing event in the Large Magellanic Cloud. I'm not convinced it's a primordial black hole like the authors suggest, but still very interesting 🔭🧪 www.twelvemountains.com/2026/06/a-mi...
A Microlensing Event in the Large Magellanic Cloud - Twelve Mountains
Very interesting: On the night of 18 December 2019, a star in our satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, briefly got brighter. Not dramatically nor...
twelvemountains.com
We don't think black holes can form with less than five solar masses, so why have we found black holes smaller than that? 🧪🔭 three-alpha.space/p/the-imposs...
The Impossible Black Holes
Astronomers are detecting black holes that are too small to have formed in supernovae.
three-alpha.space
Weird that the headline makes this sound like it was somehow the dog’s fault
Dog shoots woman with shotgun at Nebraska convenience store
Police responded to reports of gunfire at store in town of Scottsbluff, and found the culprit to be a dog
theguardian.com
What are your most irritating hot weather myths? For me it's that watering plants when it's sunny can scorch the leaves. Absolutely not! Learn how lenses work. The focal length is not zero
Genuine question: Does this also apply to Google Drive, Gmail, etc now that AI is being shoehorned into everything?
Matthew J Kuiper@matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 3mo agoMany of the rationales for my AI course policy appeal to students' self interest (say no for your own sake). But I also stress (& they find it eye-opening) that inputting anyone else's work into a chatbot is unethical because it "turns over" that work w/out consent to for-profit tech companies...