How culturally insensitive does one have to be to continue naming the default branch on GitHub repos the old way instead of 'main', even for recent repos!

Great reporting from our student journalists at the Duke Chronicle on increases for the most highly paid Duke employees in the wake of unnecessary massive layoffs: www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke...

As cost-cutting began, Duke’s highest-paid employees took big raises

Tax filings reveal administrators, including President Vincent Price and Provost Alex Gallimore, saw their compensation rise in fiscal year 2025. Managers of Duke’s endowment and standout athletics co...

dukechronicle.com

Transient phenomena got nowhere to hide even amidst these dense, deep images. After spending more than a year in commissioning and science validation, the 10-year journey of the LSST begins! Thanks for featuring me in your story @hannah-richter.bsky.social .

Hannah Richter@hannah-richter.bsky.social · 3mo ago

20 billion galaxies. 10 million supernovae. 90k near-Earth objects. 50 interstellar objects. And finally, 0 more days to Rubin's long-awaited cosmic survey. 🌌💫 Read about this milestone for astronomy in @skyandtelescope.bsky.social: skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne... #space #rubin

My preferred AI metaphor is actually Asbestos. - Seemingly magical properties - Developed and experimented with to make endless products - Poisoned countless communities in it's creation - Everything it was used for eventually becomes a toxic hazard to mitigate & it's in the fucking walls now

Greg Pak@gregpak.net · 5mo ago

Trying out a new metaphor: "A.i." = cocaine. Cocaine is inevitable! Cocaine can enhance your creativity! Cocaine can make us all faster and more efficient! If your kid doesn't learn how to use cocaine, they'll get left behind!

This could not be correct. Tidal force on the earth is directly proportional to the mass of the other object (Sun, moon) and inversely proportional to the cube of the distance between Earth and that object, not the cube of the radius of that object.

Marcus Chown@marcuschown.bsky.social · 6mo ago

The tides pulled by the Moon are 2.4 times bigger than those pulled by the Sun. From this, Newton deduced, correctly, that the Moon must be 2.4 times denser than the Sun. How amazing is that?

I was both relieved and sad when I submitted the final grades for my course on general relativity. This is a course I've been wanting to teach in a physics-first approach for almost 15 years now. I don't have teaching obligations so I don't know if I'll teach this course again (or when).

The classroom I taught in this semester had no windows, two doors on opposite sides with glass panes and both opened outwards. There was no place to hide or escape had this happened in my building.

Roxane Gay@roxanegay.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Each semester I go in my classroom and I try to figure out what we would use to block the doors, if it would be safe to crawl out the windows, where we could hide if there was a mass shooter in campus. It’s such an indictment of this country how we have normalized these preventable tragedies.

Tank you for your attention to this matter!!!

Sarah Hörst@planetdr.bsky.social · last yr.

Sean Duffy signed his first email to NASA employees “Tank You”

Awful news: CMB-S4 is cancelled. This experiment was massively exciting for the cosmology community. It would have told us about the state of the universe some 400,000 years after the big bang, at a level of precision we can now only dream about ⚛️🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...

U.S. abandons hunt for signal of cosmic inflation

Now-canceled CMB-S4 project would have searched the afterglow of the Big Bang for signs of cosmic exponential growth spurt

science.org

🔭 Friendly advice for astronomers in the US and Chile--if you are excited to access @vrubinobs.bsky.social Data Preview 1 on Monday, request your account *now*--it has to get approved by a human. For best results use your university single-sign on, if available. rsp.lsst.io/guides/getti...

Getting an account on the RSP

Before getting started: Understand whether you have Rubin data rights.- Rubin data rights are required in order to hold an account in the Rubin Science Platform., All scientists and students affili...

rsp.lsst.io

If you're in the triangle region of North Carolina, come see this and more on a big scoreboard at the Duke University watch party! #CaptureTheCosmos #RubinFirstLook

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory@rubinobservatory.org · last yr.

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

In response to the ever-increasing number of submissions to the Open Journal of Astrophysics, I'd like to invite more astrophysicistsonto our Editorial Board. We're looking for volunteers with expertise in any area of astrophysics! Please contact me or @ojastro.bsky.social astro.theoj.org

If you're in the triangle region of North Carolina, join us at the Rubin First Watch party at Duke and talk to those of us who made it happen in-person.

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory@rubinobservatory.org · last yr.

🚨 SAVE THE DATE: The world's First Look at images from NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory is coming June 23, 2025! 🔭🧪 Get ready for a preview of how Rubin will soon #CaptureTheCosmos in its decade-long survey 🌌 More details soon—stay up to date at rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look

What a milestone for the @vrubinobs.bsky.social ! I have been with the project for almost 6 years now but have been interested in it for more than 12 years. I was happy to be at the celebration virtually and excited for more things to come.

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory@rubinobservatory.org · last yr.

Eye to the sky…on-sky engineering tests have begun at NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory using the world’s largest digital camera! 🔭🧪 After installing and testing the LSST Camera, we turned the telescope to the sky—a moment 20 years in the making! With that, Rubin #CommissioningNotes are back ✍️ 🧵

A 2/3rds budget cut to astrophysics and completely dropping Roman 😱🤢

Ars Technica@arstechnica.com · last yr.

We should declare March 2025 as THE month of cosmology

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 2y ago

Too busy to read the paper? Want the inside scoop? (6-month B-mode saga, surprise at unblinding, quintupling of our spectroscopic calibration sample, methodology updates!) What erased the S8 tension? @justshaun.bsky.social has asked all the questions for you! 🔭 🍿: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIQK...

Oh, the ivory

Neil Lewis, Jr.@neillewisjr.bsky.social · 2y ago

I suspect this will quickly become the new norm for American universities. Harvard announced a new policy that the university will no longer comment on current events. www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/u...

Duke's destroying a globally recognized generational legacy. I know of 15 biology faculty and curators who trained at Duke and who used the herbarium, just in my 10 years there. Climate Commitment "for life"? A budget is a moral document and Duke has shown its cards. www.science.org/content/arti...

sad news - Duke University decided to dump their herbarium, which has over 800,000 plant specimens, one of the largest among in America, and includes many type specimens of Lady Gaga ferns. What a shame. Please stop Duke admins for making this horrible mistake!!

What's a good alternative for "the universe is 'flat'"? I was speaking to a 6-year old about space who has picked that term from the Internet and thinks that the universe must be made of stacked sheets of paper. I had to tell him that the observable universe (he knew of that term) is a sphere.

We are hiring a research scientist and multiple postdoctoral researchers to join our ever-expanding cosmology group (pun intended) Duke Physics. Details are in our job ad jobregister.aas.org/ad/354aef95. Reach out to me or Prof. Troxel, or @evevavagiakis.bsky.social if you have any questions.