Calling my #astrophotography chums in the Americas: will you be staying up late tonight with your telescopes trained on the Einstein Crater? Impact: 02:34 EDT; 4 tonnes of Space-X metal (15m x 4m diameter) travelling 5400mph Expected: 50km high plume containing ~1Mkg of debris 😲🔭

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 4d ago

"Will I be able to see the crash?" Probably not, but that doesn't mean friends in the Americas shouldn't try (daylight for those in Europe): look to the eastern limb of the Einstein crater. The @eso.org VLT will observe it & NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is taking before and after images! 🔭🧪🛰️

You "finish" writing a book like 37 times before it is actually done, and each round is absolute hell

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · yesterday

Writing a book is so weird because before it’s released there are half a dozen REALLY IMPORTANT DEADLINES for drafts & edits and each completely consumes you & is impossible to explain. “I just spent 72 hours locked in a room doing my copy edit review; I forgot what the sky looks like” “…congrats?”

We could have just... not done any of this!

Writing a book is so weird because before it’s released there are half a dozen REALLY IMPORTANT DEADLINES for drafts & edits and each completely consumes you & is impossible to explain. “I just spent 72 hours locked in a room doing my copy edit review; I forgot what the sky looks like” “…congrats?”

Bluesky is a "liberal bubble" because fascist chuds can't get traction without algorithmic assistance and because people here trained themselves to block "debate me" trybois the instant they roll up

The Verge@theverge.com · 2d ago

Bluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."

I think we can say this is the spiritual opposite of Biden’s loan forgiveness program, which targeted public service degrees for debt relief. I don’t think he needs much defending, but the way people blamed him for SCOTUS and the GOP stonewalling debt relief was a real low point in our politics.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

WOW A spectacular Squirrel of the Day for August 3, 2026 #sqrlpix

I'm on Day 3 of my doing-nothing-but-copy-edit-review writing-cave work period to finalize my second book and I'm fixing up little bits of tone and wording and the absolute best I can do to describe how I know if a sentence needs to get fixed is when it makes my brain itchy. Language is weird, man.

Some people, man

I’ve seen a lot of my colleagues’ interactions with Claude working on research problems & it would be easier for me to accept it as a serious scientific tool if it didn’t end every single response with the LLM equivalent of “you want fries with that?” — constantly trying to goad you into asking more

I continue to be disappointed when folks whose opinions I otherwise value do this on the regular. It’s just the absolute worst way to have a discussion and it’s exhausting to watch.

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 2mo ago

Quote-posting to mock/disagree/start a fight is pretty much always an instablock, just fyi. It's not something conducive to a good-faith discussion, no matter what the intent might be.

The inner moons of Neptune look like they were turned inside out, with deep-interior minerals spattered across their surfaces. Probably these moons are the shattered remains of earlier satellites that were shredded when a Pluto-like object came barreling in. 🧪🔭 www.caltech.edu/about/news/n...

If this is what happens to a scientific field as a whole when LLMs dominate the workflows of researchers, I can only imagine that the outlook is even worse for any individual researcher who is soldiering on without using them. 😞

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

13. Hence our dismal conclusion: rather than finding that LLMs free us to do a better job of what we were doing before they came along, they shift scientific incentives (and the playing field of academic competition) in ways that compel us to do more and more, faster and faster, less and less well.

Any of my friends who have witnessed my mental state as I have gone through edit after edit of this book can attest that every individual letter and punctuation mark has been ripped painfully out of my very own soul 😣

Ann Leckie@annleckie.com · 5d ago

For writers worried that they won't be able to "prove" their work isn't Spicy Autocomplete--worry not. You thought about every choice and will be able to talk about those choices easily and clearly. Folks who used the slop machine didn't make choices and won't have anything to say about why

there literally are no good-faith concerns about trans girls participating in high school sports. it is children playing games with their friends, its about confidence and relationship-building. let kids play with their friends.

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 6d ago

Good-faith concern on this issue would be going, "hmm, professional sports leagues should probably have some standards in place to ensure trans competitors aren't getting an unfair advantage," googling for 5 minutes, realizing every sports league already has those standards and dropping it.

In light of the “good faith questions” discourse I just wanted to re-up @reveleth.com’s fascinating podcast about the complex (and frequently appalling) history and present of policing sexual biology in women’s sports.

Reo Eveleth@reveleth.com · 2y ago

Hello new people! My latest project was a 10+ year labor of love and it would mean the world to me if you checked it out. www.tested-podcast.com It’s a narrative, deep, complex and suspenseful story of gender, sports, science, and “fairness.”

RFK Jr says kids might be “better off” if they aren’t given the flu vaccine He is wrong A new study in Pediatrics finds that overall vaccine effectiveness against death from flu was 80% from Aug 2016 to July 2025 (jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...) RFK Jr’s vile anti-vaxx crusade is costing lives

This is a great account of the perils of trying to reach statistical conclusions from scans of old astronomical photographic plates, when the noise and artifacts in the data turns out to be very far from uniformly distributed. www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...

Did aliens put satellites into Earth's orbit pre-Sputnik? - Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe | iHeart

<p>Daniel and Kelly dissect the evidence presented in recent peer-reviewed science papers for pre-Sputnik artificial satellites in Earth orbit.</p><p>See <a href='https://omnystudio.com/listener'>omny...

iheart.com

discovering what the contents of mincemeat actually were turned me feral for 3 years I had to learn to speak and dress myself again

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 6d ago

Today's copy edit dilemma: a plum pudding is, to a modern American reader, not a pudding. Also it does not contain plums. But if I tried to call it a fruitcake I would most assuredly be haunted by the ghost of J. J. Thomson.

me: [sobbing] England, you can't just call everything a pudding J. J. Thomson: [points at atom] pudding

Today's copy edit dilemma: a plum pudding is, to a modern American reader, not a pudding. Also it does not contain plums. But if I tried to call it a fruitcake I would most assuredly be haunted by the ghost of J. J. Thomson.

I see @xkcd.com got ahold of my to do list: xkcd.com/3278 (Adding to my status as 'Most Distracted Astronomer', I'm actually working on a surprising number of these) 🔭

Vera Rubin Observatory

xkcd.com

Same with gender-affirming care for kids. Good-faith concern would be, "gee we should be making sure kids are appropriately assessed before receiving care and don't end up regretting it," realizing the numbers are tiny, kids are assessed and regret rates are miniscule and then dropping it.

Good-faith concern on this issue would be going, "hmm, professional sports leagues should probably have some standards in place to ensure trans competitors aren't getting an unfair advantage," googling for 5 minutes, realizing every sports league already has those standards and dropping it.

Rodger Sherman@rodger.bsky.social · 6d ago

i don't believe anyone has "good-faith" concerns about trans women in sports in 2026. there's been too much time to hear the actual evidence, the actual people affected, and the role the debate plays in attempts to purge trans people from American life. anybody picking that side has made a choice

Recommended viewing even if you think you're not particularly interested in what it's like to intern at the NE Ohio Regional Sewer District.

NE Ohio Regional Sewer District@neorsd.org · 6d ago

for an intern's POV, we decided to ask AI: Actual interns.

A short video of @peacewind.aero and me and @flightchops.bsky.social being interviewed by AOPA at Oshkosh #AirVenture2026: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rfE...

Flying Two DHC-1 Chipmunks into EAA Airventure on their 80th Anniversary

YouTube video by AOPA: Your Freedom to Fly

youtube.com

www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/h...

There’s a Way to Prevent Ovarian Cancer. Few Know About It.

The vast majority of cases begin in the fallopian tubes — and removing them can reduce the risk by nearly 80 percent.

nytimes.com

See you in court, creep.

MPR News@mprnews.org · last wk.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is suing Minnesota over a first-in-the-nation law banning technology that allows users to create and post deepfake videos or images of people naked without their consent.

It's a point I've been trying to make for a long time: there is no good way to meet even 10% of current demand for animal products. They trash the living world, whichever way you do it. If you want to reduce your impact, switch to a plant-based diet. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Organic eggs have worse impact on climate than eggs from caged chickens

Adopting organic free-range model in UK could lead to greenhouse emissions equivalent to 2,316,000 tonnes of CO2, study suggests

theguardian.com

Informative video… my finger hovers over the Like button… they use a wacky AI transition… my finger launches photon torpedos at earth