It can be hard to appreciate the vastness of just one (1) light-year. The most distant human-made object has been hurtling into space for almost 50 years, and its distance from Earth is just about to reach 1/365th of a light-year.

Robert McNees@mcnees.bsky.social · last yr.

The Voyager 1 space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral #OTD in 1977, a few weeks after Voyager 2. Now it's the most distant human-made object – about 15.6 billion miles from Earth, racing away from us at 38,000 miles per hour with respect to the Sun. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️ Images: NASA/KSC/JPL

so thanks to a jar arriving broken, I pulled out and rewicked a candle from a major smelly stuff retailer (might rhyme with smath and smody sworks) and can confirm: the candle burns fine, and more slowly, with smaller wicks. It’ll last longer, too.

They’ll keep telling us it’s inevitable but NYC and other large school systems are starting to say no to AI, recognizing it’s not a legitimate tool for k-12 learning. Even some universities are putting their foot down, like U Chicago (and some law schools) www.nyc.gov/mayors-offic...

Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels Put Students First with Nation’s Broadest Generative AI Moratorium in Schools

nyc.gov

A Japanese improvement (a really good one) on Paxlovid. I am so grateful for non-US research right now.

Chise@sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 3d ago

Published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Peer-reviewed. Large sample size. Sound methodology. An antiviral pill has, for the FIRST time, been shown to PREVENT COVID-19 in individuals exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Ensitrelvir blocks the enzyme coronaviruses need to make new copies of themselves.

Them: The demographic cliff is coming! Me: Heard that before. T: NOW. IS. THE. TIME. M: Why? T: iN ThE aFteRMaTh oF eCONomiC cRiSEs, Bir- M: Yea yea. Birthrates. Southern migration. T: The cliff is steep! If you do not follow my model, YOU WILL DIE. By 2040, only my believers will rema-

chess dot com probably doesn’t have much money but they clearly have enough to own the world’s richest man

Razzball@razzball.bsky.social · 3d ago

lol

HOLY SHIT DUDES fucking with the environment is now not just a sin (which Francis also said), it is classed as a direct fuck-you to God and a central tenet of the reasoning is the need to care for "our common home," i.e. you are morally obligated to think about the other people who also live here

Vatican theological commission defines ‘sin against creation and the Creator’ in new document

The more than 29,000 word text calls for ecological conversion due to “sin against creation and the Creator.”

americamagazine.org

uh. so our college deanery has planned a G.O.A.T. parade, with real goats, in a week or so.

Erin Fogg says Free Link@criminalerin.bsky.social · last wk.

North Carolina! "Anyone who had contact with baby goats from the Farm Adventures mobile petting zoo either at their location in Harmony, North Carolina, or at an off-site event, between July 28 and Aug. 27, 2026, may have been exposed; should contact their local health department"

People working full-time jobs forced to live out of their cars. Private equity buying up rentals and even mobile home parks. School districts offering "safe overnight parking" so homeless kids can have a safe place to sleep. We are a deeply sick society.

"Courtney Turns a Corner" - chalk and charcoal on playground wall

The person who was marketing chatGPT to colleges was the head of marketing for Coursera and if you're an academic that actually should tell you everything.

You know what, I will say this one thing "global marketing initiative leveraging the brands of Ivy Tower universities" Is an accurate description that feels ripped from the worst possible futures imagined by critics of the neoliberal academy in the '80s and '90s.

Ben Williamson@benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 12mo ago

To really habituate users to an infrastructure often requires exemplars to produce conviction in others. OpenAI's NextGenAI is a global marketing initiative leveraging the brands of ivory tower universities to give it legitimacy in education, and attract future customers openai.com/index/introd...

New etymology visual to share a pet peeve: It’s helico-pter, not heli-copter. Spiral wing.

I couldn't *NOT* draw the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on launch day, right? I had to! #NancyGraceRomanSpaceTelescope #vector #art

earrings that remind me of Saturn (Aarikka)

Tim Curry Space

Alt: Tim Curry Space gif

static.klipy.com

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · last wk.

The telescope has been set free in space! Successful deployment! #Roman

I cannot understand loving someone, watching the world grind them down, and emerging from that grief determined to preserve the grinder. Your parents' graves are not monuments to the righteousness of the system that put them there.

The entire point of civilization is that suffering does not have to be hereditary. Your parents’ misery is not a debt subsequent generations owe them, it is information that tells us where the world failed them, so that we may build one that fails fewer people.

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · last wk.

Darline’s vision: Because her own parents worked so hard, couldn’t take sick days, and died untimely deaths, others shouldn’t expect better. This is an actual worldview. “Her plan is, work hard even when you’re sick until you die," her Dem opponent tells me. 2/ newrepublic.com/article/2148...

now: adopt this new tool we’re probably paying too much for! We will email you incessantly about trainings until we wear you down! (you adopt) soon: announcement! we will discontinue use of said tool effective immediately

Anyone else who is not superstitious ever get the heebie jeebies about something too specific? Weird vibes about the next 24

Working on a piece for the newsletter, this is a data point - smart people keep shrugging and saying “communities don’t like data centers because of ‘vibes’” etc when it’s really that people are in fact smart enough to know they are bad faith neighbors. It is *entirely rational* not to trust them.

Floodlight@floodlightnews.org · 2w ago

NEW: Thermal drone footage shows the Microsoft-backed DataOne AI data center in Vineland, NJ is running dozens of gas generators. None of them have permits. A Floodlight visual investigation with @us.theguardian.com:

my tv is currently restarting because its terms have changed and i need to accept the new agreement. a tv shouldn’t have terms of agreement. it should be a tv.

At the center of my message to faculty yesterday was: 1.) We may not be adequately prepared for how angry students are about tech. 2.) They are not all angry for the same reasons. 3.) Being angry at it doesn’t mean they aren’t using it. The sense of entrapment fuels the anger.

Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · 2w ago

For the third year, I’m giving semiannual “state of AI in HigherEd” updates to my fellow faculty. This is a worthy, healthy task, but it feels a little like being the guy with a bucket of boiling oil & a ladle going around the room asking, “Would you like me to melt your face?”

I saved this as a personal reminder but it's seeming to resonate with people, so I'll share it with everyone. All of you beautiful, weird people: we got this. They showed us how. And we will do our best to make them proud. 🖤

Half of the fucking point of going to a university is being able to study cool stuff that you're interested in that you wouldn't be able to study anywhere else. I learned ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics as an undergraduate.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 2w ago

well, Craig, we can't all be studying money and bitcoin now can we?

Academic freedom alert

Stars and Stripes@starsandstripes.bsky.social · 2w ago

A civilian geography professor was fired from West Point for pushing back after department officials barred faculty from teaching that humans contribute to climate change.

Fun fact: Dolly Parton spent decades quietly funding band uniforms and instruments at Black high schools across the South - never once putting her name on it. No headlines, no fanfare — just help, given because it was needed. Wonderful Heart ♥️ RIP Dolly ❤️

Congress funded the CDC's Alzheimer's work, the sickle cell and epilepsy data programs and a rape prevention unit, and Vought simply will not release the money. Grassley told him to his face he lacks the authority. The pocket rescission alone took 4.9 billion.

Republicans furious as Trump’s budget director goes 'rogue'

The director of the Office of Management and Budget is infuriating Republican lawmakers by "going rogue" on what appropriations were approved by the House and Senate.

alternet.org

Introducing myself to classes today by explaining that I used to be an associate professor of Sociology & African American Studies, but that the university shut down the latter department.