Dr. Teddy Kareta
@teddykareta.bsky.social
planetary astronomer by day, also by night asst. prof. @ villanova, movie buff, he/they, 🏳️🌈 https://tkareta.github.io/, formerly lowell obs., uaz, umass
Sometimes i think about how, in the late 90s, USPS was moving to set up a secure email address for every US resident and how congress prevented it.
Tuta@tuta.com · 5d agoIf you have a Gmail account, you need to read this. Google's AI now scans your emails and attachments, bank statements, tax files, medical letters, all of it. It turned on by default, and there's a class-action lawsuit over how. Here are 5 moves to shut it off, the switch is hidden in two places:
counterpoint. faculty and student solidarity made the university and it can remake it in the 21st century www.cnn.com/2024/04/30/o...
Opinion: Student protests are what created the university as we know it | CNN
Seeing current campus protests unfold is a reminder that solidarity between protesting students and their teachers in medieval Europe was the origin of the modern-day university, write historians Davi...
cnn.com
Inside Higher Ed @insidehighered.com · last wk.Opinion | Postdocs Aren’t Burger Flippers: Why Unionization Is a Bad Idea Unionization disrupts the bespoke mentor-mentee relationships that are central to the advancement of science. By Evan D. Morris: https://bit.ly/3Sus7fa #EDUSky #AcademicSky #HigherEd
bair, schleicher, kareta, knight, and kelley, "The Highly Unusual Behavior and Chemical Composition of Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov", accepted in PSJ and available on arxiv here: arxiv.org/abs/2608.23701
Dr. Teddy Kareta@teddykareta.bsky.social · 2w agoco-authored paper about 2I/Borisov: accepted!
imo when the bubble bursts, what's left of AI will be much more specific and limited, a much smaller amount of engagement will be required than the AI industry currently anticipate, and the boosters will try to revive the golden years without much luck. Things online will get worse regardless
Scoop: For nearly a year, NSF has struggled to make new grants. Now we know that it will not catch up. In fact, NSF will award just 6,100 new grants—a 30% y/o/y decline, itself down from a previous avg. of 11,000+. In fact, the last time NSF awarded so few grants was in the early '80s.
Exclusive: NSF set to issue lowest number of new grants in four decades
The US science-funding agency is withholding $1 billion of its budget so that the money can go to a special White House project.
nature.com
turns out there's a small store down the street that sells nice japanese notebooks and pens, filed under "news that will absolutely drive my family to bankruptcy"
obtained the official @realinfowars.bsky.social gay frog plushie, which is both much larger and much cuter than my wife and I originally estimated when we impulse ordered it last week, courtesy of @theonion.com
my car makes a weird noise once and suddenly I'm out hundreds of dollars just to have the thing looked at. on the other hand, I could toss my bike out a second story window and it'd probably still be safe to ride to the repair shop and only like $30 to get fixed up.
The Trump Administration is now going after bike lanes. Seems pretty silly, but it's not just a random choice #bikesky skepchick.org/2026/08/why-...
Why Trump Hates Bike Lanes
Transcript: Two years ago, in a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to get people to vote against Donald Trump’s return to the White House, I went over the major problems outlined in Project 2025, w…
skepchick.org
"Scientists" believe life began in underwater hydrothermal vents 4 billion years ago. I believe it began at the Denny's off the interstate in Toledo Ohio in 1956. I don't make fun of their theory and yet they constantly ridicule mine. And that's what's wrong with our so-called elites
found it the second I was about to give up: it's dessler and russell 1980, featuring both the extremely funny plot (attached) and the quote "The graph clearly illustrates that while Pluto was sighted in 1930, it was slighted in the 1970's." ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1980EOST...
Dr. Teddy Kareta@teddykareta.bsky.social · 3w agorelated to my earlier post about older papers, I've been looking a nature or science commentary piece from sometime shortly after 1975 where the authors as a joke plot up mass estimates for Pluto from 1930 onwards and conclude it'll disappear by the mid-80s: if this rings a bell, lemme know
related to my earlier post about older papers, I've been looking a nature or science commentary piece from sometime shortly after 1975 where the authors as a joke plot up mass estimates for Pluto from 1930 onwards and conclude it'll disappear by the mid-80s: if this rings a bell, lemme know
I'm already a huge sucker for older astronomy papers and plots, but getting a chance to update our department's cosmology class has me really off the deep end. the early 70s are a real treasure-trove of people writing stuff like "we're the smartest ever: we told the computer about the error bars"
Aug 10th 1988 - Zero Cool was in the New York Times for crashing 1,507 computer systems. 📽️📅 Hackers (1995)
"The idea of society may sound appealing, but it's old men who will take the hit, planting trees under whose shade they might never sit."
USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · last mo.Opinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.
Whatever you do don’t take me to The Island from The Prisoner! I’d hate to live in a cool rent free apartment full of bold late 60s modern furniture haha noooo a bubble don’t chase me haha
I'm gonna stop using any Hank-related content in any of my science classes. This is embarrassing and a detriment to science education.
Kotaku@kotaku.com · last mo.YouTuber Hank Green Admits He Has Unhealthy Relationship With AI After Facing Backlash Over Recent Video 'The level of dopamine I've been getting from interacting with LLMs is not healthy for me,' said Green
Yeah so NYT asked me ~2 yrs ago to write an op-ed about how the Colorado is running dry, & what we should do to keep this exact thing from happening. I said "There's only one real answer. Bill farmers by how much water they use. Duh." NYT editorial staff freaked tf out & cancelled the piece.
Elias Thorne@truebe.horse · last mo.saw an article today about an az politician saying how great it was that we're now in emergency drought conditions because the farmers get automatic bailouts and I feel like way more Professional Rural Understanders just breeze by sentences like that. www.paysonroundup.com/news/arizona...
another entry in the 'being an astronomy professor rules' list: one of my students from this past spring is studying abroad this summer and fall just excitedly emailed me the photos he took of an archeoastronomical site he saw in Malta and added he hoped I was having a nice summer
one of my favorite books of the past few years, no question
mattie lubchansky@mattielubchansky.com · last mo.SIMPLICITY has been out for ONE YEAR today!!!! happy birthday to my little book :) we don't get paperbacks very often in the graphic novel world so it's tough to keep attention on something when it's no longer new, but i still think it's the best thing i've ever made. simplicitybook.xyz
More than 1/3 of tenured astronomers have left Lowell Observatory after positions were changed to be reliant on grant money (ed.: what grant money?)
Astronomers express concern about future of science at Lowell Observatory after research department changes
About half a year after Lowell Observatory’s research restructuring went into effect, more than a third of its tenured scientists have left, with several expressing concerns about their ability to fin...
azdailysun.com
in "huh, small world" news: just found out that Haruomi Hosono, electronic music pioneer and one of the most influential japanese musicians of the 70s and 80s, is the grandson of a Titanic survivor, Masabumi Hosono
just read a paper in my own discipline in a journal I regularly read and it was so unclear I had to go for a walk outside
One thing I notice though: every story I read about bike lanes tends to be illustrated with a photo of a white person in neon cycling gear and a helmet when a lot of the folks it actually helps are day laborers on cheap bikes and working folks on share bikes
Paul Gowder@gowder.io · last mo."DEI bike lanes" god these fucking nazi morons will try to change anything into a culture war issue and then fill it with racial dog whistles. www.npr.org/2026/07/23/n...
