Boley, Aaron C., Samantha M. Lawler, and Hanno Rein. “Rings in the Sky: Orbital Data Centres and Potential Impacts to Astronomy and the Sky.” arXiv:2608.02757. Preprint, arXiv, August 3, 2026. doi.org/10.48550/arX.... Don't sleep on the final paragraph ...

Doug Jones reporting to supporters that his campaign "raised more than twice what Tuberville raised in July. And when it came to small-dollar donations, [they] raised more than eight times what he did." Tubby's war chest still dwarfs Jones', but ...

New on the #ISAWNYU news blog: ISAW Welcomes Incoming Cohort of PhD Students for Fall 2026 isaw.nyu.edu/news/isaw-we...

ISAW Welcomes Incoming Cohort of PhD Students for Fall 2026

A very warm welcome to the incoming cohort of Fall 2026 PhD students at ISAW. We are so thrilled to have them join us on their journey and become a part of our community. Please give them a warm welco...

isaw.nyu.edu

I know it sucks, but Dems have got to be prepared to inherit a munitions-and-readiness hole that is going to be expensive to fill, but which will need to be filled. Hardly the only such hole, but it will be a big one.

Secretary of Defense Rock@sodrock.bsky.social · 8h ago

Who knew ridiculously long deployments and demanding op tempos run a ship and crew into the ground!

For the last two months, I've been working on tei2jsonl. I will blog the full rationale (basically, quickly load embedding dbs). But this morning, I would like to celebrate the fact that it just processed over 22 million word tokens across 410 eebo text in about 11 seconds.

Is the search function on LGPN down for anyone else?

Army ends anonymous reporting for harassment complaints trib.al/oQU93m2

Army ends anonymous reporting for harassment complaints

Soldiers can no longer make anonymous reports of discrimination, and commanders can more easily dismiss complaints they disagree with.

trib.al

That's gonna leave a mark ...

Your Daily Homer@dailyhomer.bsky.social · 2d ago

Your day will be like... a shining thunderbolt, fashioned by Zeus, sent as a sign for men. Iliad 13.240-5

If you click on a thumbnail, you'll go to the full database record for the object in Open context.

This visualizes diagnostic pottery sherds from Poggio Civitate, an Etruscan site south of Siena, Italy. More similar sherds group together. You can adjust the weights of different attributes to change groupings of the sherds. The "Embedding" slider is for similarity based on a small language […]

Don't mind me, just over here loading with rock salt and silly string in case anybody adds me to group chat.

#epigraphy

Dr Carolyn T. La Rocco 🏺🍃@carrielarocco.bsky.social · 2d ago

Rough translation: “Happy Eugenia, servant of God, built a new doorway, whose dedication contains the virgins’ vows. Every faithful person will be permitted over the threshold to this hall of the Lord. This virgin mother of virgins completed this sacred work under Bishop Orontius, Era 699 [661 CE]”

Wake up, honey, new Misopogon just dropped—but this time it’s not a satire. Yet we are still on a Persian campaign.

David Burbach 🇺🇸@dburbach.bsky.social · yesterday

"Commanders [must] maintain a log of personnel requiring facial hair treatment plans... Must forward a Facial Hair Accommodation Accountability Report in Excel monthly...   Those approved for accommodation must carry the signed paperwork on their persons..." www.militarytimes.com/news/your-na...

Is there a term in rhetoric for when someone frames an idea as radical or fringe when it is in fact quite mainstream? I see this everywhere online, from politics—cf. Fox News decrying “mainstream media” when they’re the largest news outlet in the US—to “hot takes” about fandoms, hobbies, etc.+

I worked for New York’s largest medical center at the start of the pandemic. There were morgue trucks on the streets. They set up emergency medical tents in Central Park. Healthcare worker colleagues died. It is horrific that RFK Jr is on national TV lying that ICUs were empty.

I remember how relieved we were when the UNC helicopter started flying overhead again because it meant the hospital wasn’t too full to take new patients. He is obviously someone who was nowhere near what happened. A profoundly ignorant man.

Dr. Lucky Tran@luckytran.com · 3d ago

I worked for New York’s largest medical center at the start of the pandemic. There were morgue trucks on the streets. They set up emergency medical tents in Central Park. Healthcare worker colleagues died. It is horrific that RFK Jr is on national TV lying that ICUs were empty.

From Ai Khanoum to S. Miguel de Odrinhas, there's something for everyone in this week's roundup of #PleiadesGazetteer additions and updates.

Pleiades gazetteer@pleiades-gazetteer.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 2d ago

Last week in the #PleiadesGazetteer (27 July - 3 August 2026): Over the course of the last week the Pleiades editorial college published 19 new and 149 updated place resources, reflecting the work of Johan Åhlfeldt, Jeffrey Becker, Sarah Bond, Catherine […] [Original post on hcommons.social]

FLASH: Justice Dept seeks to dismiss Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool criminal case against former Olympian David Hearn Trump Admin acknowledges: "Damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor"

Am I crazy? Thinking about doing a bit of Arrian’s Black Sea Periplus in Greek this fall alongside Xenophon.

Congratulations to Julia Flanders, who just won the Busa prize for lifetime achievement! @juliaflanders.bsky.social #DH2026

Traces of blue pigment on a 13,000-year-old stone artefact from Mühlheim-Dietesheim, Germany. Questioning the idea that Palaeolithic artists only used red or black, it paints a picture of a more vibrant Ice Age than imagined! 🔗 from 2025 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

Republicans didn't always hate trans people, but they have always—since the 1950s—hated somebody: they hated Black people, then hippies, then feminists, then gay people, before turning to trans people. And they never really stopped hating all those other people too. Hate turns out the vote.

🎶 TACO TACO MAN 🎵

The Temple with the indented niches at Ai Khanoum in Afghanistan now has a place resource in the #PleiadesGazetteer thanks to Chris de Lisle!

Pleiades gazetteer@pleiades-gazetteer.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 6d ago

Since Monday, the #PleiadesGazetteer editorial college has published 10 new and 63 updated place resources, reflecting the work of 15 people and projects. The usual Monday blog post will summarize the full week's worth of such work, but meantime, here's a […] [Original post on hcommons.social]

Never forget what Trump, his grifting cronies, and his psychopathic claque did to us during COVID. Never forgive. Fauci was a hero, and so was everyone else who fought tooth and nail against the virus, the President, his sycophantic servants, and the zombie hordes. I pray this GOP stunt backfires.

And none of these people have been thanked for their service. A lot of them got properly burnt out. If not actually left with PTSD. I suspect no one who wasn’t up close to it knows what it was like.

Even people not normally doing patient care were doing patient care. At UNC, there was a VP regularly directing traffic at the drive through testing. My wife (head of QA—that’s like ensuring compliance with govt regs, etc.) was assisting with infusions. It was like a war.

Jonathan Rigsby@ridetrips.bsky.social · 6d ago

One last thing, and I swear I'm done. A nurse at my ER internship told me about what it was like working in the ICU during COVID. Two patients per room, everybody on a ventilator or high flow oxygen.

Remember: during COVID states had to fight for ventilators and PPE; FEMA would swoop in and seize shipments of such life-saving commodities, to redistribute to red states. The same happened this year, with disaster aid cleared by FEMA, witheld from states which voted for Harris. 100% abuse of power

So, so many times this week have I almost posted this. Scott did it for me. Copyright is the root legal scourge that did this. In particular, the US copyright ruling that it's legal to scan a book, IF you destroy it. Yes, AI companies are evil. But copyright rulings mandated the destruction.

scott b. weingart@scottbot.net · last wk.

Copyright laws, digital distribution deals, & publishing monopolies are the reason destructive book scanning is putting books at risk. I get why folks are angry at AI companies buying books to destroy them. However, these issues predate them and hang a lot on books being subject to "market forces."

The sonic qualities of vintage analog synthesizers, c. 1970-1986, with emphasis on the big and aggressive "American" sound (Moog, Oberheim, Sequential Circuits) vs. the smooth and dreamy "Japanese" sound (Roland, Yamaha, Korg). Lots of technical details here, especially filter types and topologies.

ETX Gov@etxgov.myatproto.social · last wk.

You've got a captive audience on a plane, and you know they can't open the doors and yeet you out. What subject are you gonna do a 30 minute sermon on?