Random thought for the evening: if a website wants me to prove that I am human, it should also be forced to prove that it is human (or at least, written by and for humans).
Got some exciting new mosasaur research out today in Current Biology! How fast could these predators burst? www.cell.com/current-biol...
Mosasaur tail morphology reveals burst swimming performance and ecological diversity
Formoso et al. develop a drag-based “slam-start” model to estimate lunge velocity in four mosasaurs from skeletal and muscle reconstructions. Tail curl amplitude mainly drives performance: russellosau...
cell.com
Insert that Douglas Adams quote about coming down from the trees being a big mistake here.
beetle moses@beetlemoses.bsky.social · 6d ago
Can planets emerge from the deaths of stars? 💀 Astronomers looking through Hubble data from 1999 have identified unusual amounts of niobium in the chemical signatures from a white dwarf. 🔭 🧪
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a fast man in possession of a furious fortune, must be in want of a never-ending set of sequels.
Crip Dyke@cripdyke.bsky.social · last wk.Fast & the Furious redone as the opening line to a book? How about: "A fast and a fury do a dance for the jury, but not the hippopotamus."
I find the German „Gute Besserung“ to be somewhat friendlier than the English “Get well soon”, as I increasingly feel that the latter comes with an implicit “or else”.
Shane Ross at Virginia Tech created a simulation of what 500k orbital data centers, as proposed by SpaceX, would look like from your home latitude sdross0.github.io/orbital-data...
What would orbital data centers look like from your sky?
500,000 satellites from SpaceX's FCC filing, two published brightness models and the real stars, for any latitude, date and time. Computed in your browser.
sdross0.github.io
Saw various recommendations of Claire North's "Slow Gods" on here, so picked it up for a recent trip. It is indeed good, would also recommend it.
We should let people dream of something besides labor
“LLM Policies: Progress At All Costs” https://diegoe.be/2026/09/25/llm-policies-progress-at-all-costs/ > When the LLM can get you 80% of the way to your goal, there is no need to "waste" time in mentoring, discussion, or convincing others.
LLM Policies: Progress At All Costs
GNOME and KDE have started to consider LLM policies, and we should talk about what this is really about. KDE caught everyone's attention first by...
diegoe.be
33 years ago today, the Stranger stepped onto the dock of Myst Island for the first time. We can still hear the water splashing against the pilings.
THE PLOT THICKENS! 👀 arxiv.org/abs/2609.20996
A fifth companion in the HR 8799 system revealed by Gaia
HR 8799 is the benchmark young multi-planet system, hosting four directly imaged giant planets orbiting between a warm inner belt and a cold outer debris ring. However, the few-au region has remained ...
arxiv.org
Jayke Samson Nguyen@jayke.io · last mo.Hot off the press! Via the magic of differentiable forward modeling and of non-redundant masking on JWST we may have found a new exoplanet! One of the most challenging papers I've written, but I'm glad its finally out! Submitted to AJ, pending peer review. arxiv.org/abs/2609.10507
German would be so much easier if they'd invented model railways back when the language was created. That way they could have gotten their desire to shunt stuff back and forth out of their system before they inflicted it on the sentence structure.
David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 3w agoFrench would be so much easier without gender or conjugation. 🫣
Chemists keep talking about molar masses and molar concentrations, but what about other types of teeth?
For the 1st time, an extrasolar planet has left a radio fingerprint of its own, distinct from its star’s. 🔭 That fingerprint also tells us how strong its magnetic field is.⚛️ The planet is called β Pictoris b.🧪 Illustration Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org) #planetsci #astronomy
Latest module in my German course is about discussing technology. I am not sure whether the terms Transhumanismus, Extropianismus, Singularitarismus, Kosmismus, Rationalismus, Effektiver Altruismus or Longtermismus will be on the exam...
If I never hear about AI again it will be far too fucking soon
COMPUTER METALTHE NEW ALBUM 30 OCTOBER 2026 ON METAL BLADE DOT MATRIX - NEW SINGLE OUT NOW For it is humans that shall command machines, and not machines that shall command humans. THIS IS COMPUTER METAL SPREAD THE CODE
An EX Trianguli Australis entry for the list of amusing variable star designations.
Emily Hunt@emily.space · last mo.if you are a man who builds apps then i have found the star for you it's called UX Men (short for UX Mensa) and you are a detached eclipsing binary star
As you can see in the contrast curve... this candidate is right at the limit of what we can see in these data, so we're not going to go guns blazing claiming this planet - but it's consistent with a resonant chain, and it will be accessible to followup JWST/AMI observations with better calibration.
I just noticed that the number of recognized exoplanets [6360] recently surpassed the number of recognized minerals [6239]. It’s like noticing your car odometer at 100,003 miles. #mincup26
How many giant planets does this one system need???
A Candidate Innermost Fifth Planet In the HR 8799 System Revealed By JWST NIRISS Aperture Masking Interferometry
We detect a candidate fifth planet in the HR 8799 system, directly imaged with the JWST/NIRISS Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI). The detected source lies just above a $3σ$ contrast curve at a con...
arxiv.org
the 2026 software experience is betrayal
#SciArtSeptember 2: violet A recently described specimen of Sinopterus dongi showed, for the first time, evidence of iridescent colour in pterosaurs. There were also traces of horizontal stripes on the soft tissue crest. The Mesozoic world is getting more and more colourful. #SciArt
“The age-gating of history – Hi, I'm Heather Burns” https://heatherburns.tech/2026/09/05/the-age-gating-of-history/ > Enter the pearl-clutching brigade, who have deemed real history to be “age inappropriate” content so shocking that it requires age and identity verification to view.
Leiden Observatory Masters graduate Valerie Bakker leads a paper on “The Hill sphere transits of Beta Pictoris c and the search for another 1981-like event” where we (sadly) did not find circumplanetary dust… but maybe it’s already condensed into #exomoons ..? #astrodon #exoplanets
PBS Eons made a insta post showcasing my work on their series "Life and Death on Pangea" :) #sciart www.instagram.com/p/DcypJWfG4d9
If you're under the age of 25, the first time you encounter *any* of these companies it's them offering dogshit. Like, if you are under 25 your experience with Bethesda has been Starfield, your experience with Facebook the Metaverse bullshit, your experience with Google its dogshit genAI, etc
Adolfo Neto@adolfoneto.elixiremfoco.com · last mo.Why young people hate AI even more?
This is fun! No Pelagornis sandersi though.
Dr. Scott Hartman - but not THAT kind of doctor@skeletaldrawing.bsky.social · last mo.Have you ever wanted to visually compare the size of your favorite extinct animals? Now you can, as I'm launching an interactive size comparison tool on my website. Give it a try and let me know what you think: www.skeletaldrawing.com/compare/
