New Yorker cartoon feels about right

seen a few very non trivial successful uses of LLMs for astrophysics in the last few weeks and really having to reassess how effective they are going to be in the medium term for science

The 15 minute city conspiracy theory is very weird to me because it’s just a straight description of urban spaces that are good. Why would you be against proximity to services and infrastructure

Want to bring an ARC Future Fellowship to Macquarie? These are 4-year, teaching-free faculty-level fellowships with $60,000/year research support. Send us an Expression of Interest by 26 August 2026 ahead of the application deadline of 6 November! Email / DM if you want to talk about it!

stop. making. people. feel like. chatbots. are "conversational" and their friends.

Mark Follman@markfollman.bsky.social · yesterday

My new investigation into a mass shooter’s harrowing history with ChatGPT reveals numerous red flags—and some very disturbing ChatGPT replies—from long before his attack on Florida State University www.motherjones.com/media/2026/0... 1x 🧵

#Sydney folks -- looking for something to do on a night out? Come along to Astronomy on Tap! Also, give the account a follow to keep up with the latest upcoming events. Tue 8 September at The Rocks is the inaugural event!

Astronomy On Tap - Sydney@astro-on-tap.sydney · 3d ago

We’re starting up Astronomy on Tap Sydney! Join us for our kickoff on 8 September, 6:30pm at the Endeavour Tap Rooms on the Rocks for astronomy talks and beer! Admission is free but tickets are limited - sign up at events.humanitix.com/astronomy-on...

I'm extremely proud of @breaky.bsky.social winning a Tall Poppy Award for her science and communication in Queensland! She's of three astronomers recognised this year - alongside the excellent Fiona Panther (WA) and Laura Driessen (NSW)!

We are hiring a graphics editor at Guardian Australia! This is a great role for someone with a track record in news graphics, cartography, and datavis and will involve working on big, global breaking news stories workwithus.theguardian.com/job-search/d...

Congratulations to @hughmcd-astro.bsky.social on his latest paper, a large new sample of AGN masses from reverberation mapping using hughmcdougall.github.io/litmus/, his new Jax-based Gaussian Process code!

Hugh McDougall Astro@hughmcd-astro.bsky.social · 2d ago

Excited to have my latest paper up on arxiv: AGN Reverberation Mapping with LITMUS: Fundamental Limits on lag Recovery Rates! This is a full Bayesian re-analysis of the OzDES Reverberation mapping sample, measuring dozens of new supermassive black hole masses arxiv.org/abs/2608.01163

It's genuinely a massive problem that the median voter both 1) believes "criminal illegal immigrants" to be an astronomically more serious threat than they actually are, and 2) believes that the legal immigration process is substantially easier than it actually is.

Sunsette / Cynthia Skye@sunderedmarches.com · 2d ago

I understand your position, but those are different situations. People straight up both envision a system much milder than exists and cannot imagine a modern world without that imaginary system. By default they have no real grasp of reality on the matter, but are usu. sympathetic to individuals.

Almost as depressing as people using AI to write: People who have apparently read so little decent writing that they believe utterly commonplace tools every minimally competent writer employs are AI tells.

Anthony Michael Kreis@anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 2d ago

I saw someone say that sentence length variation is a sign of AI. I’m just out here like, no:

FT calling for the new PM to stop the bloodletting of UK fundamental curiosity driven science.

Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 2d ago

Time for Andy Burnham to smile on UK science ft.trib.al/YaGOWfr | opinion

Proper sense in a FT editorial. Come on PM. Easy wins right here.

Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 2d ago

Time for Andy Burnham to smile on UK science ft.trib.al/YaGOWfr | opinion

some very pretty figures in here

Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 2d ago

Fascinating paper from Frank Jülicher looking at a continuous (as opposed to cellular automaton) version of the Game of Life, and finding Turing-like patterns. arxiv.org/abs/2607.27402

Our new paper is accepted in A&A! 🧪☀️☄️ How much has the Sun's energy output changed since the 1600s? Different reconstructions of total solar irradiance (TSI) have yielded different estimates. In our new study, we reconcile these reconstructions and explain why they differ. doi.org/10.1051/0004...

The political right in Australia used the same talking points after the Black Summer Bushfires, with two additions: the fires were the work of arsonists and/or the Greens for curbing forestry activities, and "Australia is a land of extremes, it has always burned. What of it?"

Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)@doctorvive.bsky.social · 2d ago

This (from the @wsj.com Editorial Board) distills every denialist trope there is: It implies climate change isn’t exacerbating extreme weather. It calls solutions “costly … nostrums.” It fosters doomerism. And it suggests we can just adapt to or “manage” climate impacts. How is this journalism?

Very excited to announce the first @astronomyontap.bsky.social in Sydney, kicking off at the Endeavour Tap Rooms on September 8 with a triple-billing of Orsola De Marco, Peter Tuthill, and Nichole Barry! Come along for astronomy talks and beer - book your free tickets as we have limited space!

Astronomy On Tap - Sydney@astro-on-tap.sydney · 3d ago

We’re starting up Astronomy on Tap Sydney! Join us for our kickoff on 8 September, 6:30pm at the Endeavour Tap Rooms on the Rocks for astronomy talks and beer! Admission is free but tickets are limited - sign up at events.humanitix.com/astronomy-on...

Tony Abbott:

disc horse bot@horsedisc.bsky.social · 3d ago

Eating a raw onion like an apple really do just be woke Australophobia

applicable in the more technical areas of astronomy too

Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io · 4d ago

"We're all worried," as what it means to do research (in my field, Theoretical CS) seems to be shifting, and shifting fast. What to do? Senior researchers must lead by example, knowing that not everything will pan out. What I'm suggesting below may not work everywhere, but here's my own advice: 1/

🧵To juniors: - Move away from LPUs, at all costs. (Nobody likes to think of their own paper as LPU: what I mean here is "a paper just good enough to be published in a fairly good conf even a year ago") These publications are most likely going to die, or not being valued any more, as flood-prone 2/

- be there for the junior researchers, and be generous with your funding/opportunities. Again, You (we? I feel old) have more stability, more of a cushion. Go out of your way to ease the path of the next generation and shield them. 4/ (end of personal, biased advice for senior TCS researchers)

- stop the public hand-wringing and doomerism. Things are worrying and scary, yes, but this is (y)our job to navigate it (you/we have the stability and, allegedly, the experience). We can afford to think about it and try things out! If we project despair publicly, then how is that going to go? 3/

Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.

Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says

LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic student fees freeze, international student limits and rise in employers’ national insurance

ft.com

Just my whole job being dragged by Andy Weir.

Time to offer this seminar again I see.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 5d ago

there are a lot of philosophical concepts that get egregiously misused out of the seminar room (and in the seminar room, to be fair). but in terms of sheer pernicious misuse "social construct" has gotta be top 5 somewhere and it's not number 5

ooooh this is such a good point! yes!!! there;s no need to turn the odyssey into that when it clearly isn't that thing at all, and virgil is right there

if you want to do a classical adaptation about regret and loss and treat modern themes sensitively… Vergil did that! The Aeneid is tremendously filmable and relatable to modern audiences!

having now seen the Odyssey I basically think Wilson’s review was spot on

people are like "em1ly w1lson went out of her way to be abrasive" but i just don't think that's true. a lot of us are just like this. at one point in his ancient greece lectures donald kagan *just as a random aside* says he thinks rousseau is a "poisoned apple in the history of the human race"