Diggstown 🥊

I like how they emphasize Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase wasn’t allowed by the Constitution but it was good for him to do it anyway…

I think giving the first HLS contract to a wildly optimistic and next-next-nextgen vehicle like Starship was a ridiculous choice.

At the present moment I am not interested in anything politically beyond the destruction of the Republican Party as a viable political force. If we don't break the back of the conservative movement nothing else really matters. Whatever good shit you want to do won't happen.

Do Papers with Titles Ending in a Question Mark Usually Have the Answer "No"? Yes.................

Title: Do Papers with Titles Ending in a Question Mark Usually Have the Answer "No"?
Authors: Daniel Stern, Brian Grefenstette
Categories: astro-ph.IM
Comments: April Fools Day paper
\\
Yes.................
\\ ( arxiv.org/abs/2603.29936 , 9kb)

Milky Way evolution on a human timescale by Eugene, Neige. How do galaxies form and evolve? This is one of the most puzzling questions in astronomy. Galaxy assembly takes place throughout the entire history of the Universe, but our understanding of it is hampered by the unfortunate fact that we can only observe galaxies at a single moment in time. Here, we use archival data of decades-long monitoring of the Milky Way to examine some of its key characteristics, namely the mass of its central black hole, the pattern speed of the bar, and the distance from the Sun to the Galactic centre. We find a surprisingly fast evolution of these three properties on a timescale of only a few decades, and speculate that it might be driven by shared physical processes.

My favorite one. "We find a surprisingly fast evolution of these three properties [of the Milky Way] on a timescale of only a few decades..." 😂

arxiv.org/abs/2603.29503

The juxtaposition on arxiv is the best part of April 1st - you'll have "Protoplanetary Disk Evolution in a Low-Metallicity Environment: JWST's First Mid-Infrared Census of Low-Mass Stars" followed by "On The Detection of Digiorno-like Objects in the Flavor Zone" 🍕

You can’t just move the entirety of astronomy to space telescopes to accommodate megaconstellations.

(And that the decision to refrain from indicting is based on a memo/policy.)

I drove cross country to visit my folks, and listened to the entire report.

I’ll always take away that there wasn’t evidence to indict on the first count but evidence to conclude they “welcomed and encouraged foreign interference with the election.” Not a crime per se, but…

We’re saving up for a setup like that, so I’m happy to hear it works well!

As an already nervous flier, I really really hope navigating ORD is easy enough this week.

Lava tubes could make life on the moon possible The structures, set deep beneath the lunar surface, are safe, efficient, and habitable with the right strategies and tools.

My collaborator and friend's group is featured in this article on developing structures within lunar lava tubes. A number of my community college students have worked with him and gone on to do great things. Very cool! 🌙

www.asce.org/publications...

Saw the Minibosses live 😎

Not to say he isn’t a scumbag, but I think he’s answering that “it’s not his job [to determine whether the Iranians go w a cleric, representative democracy, etc]”, rather than it’s not his job to have a plan to keep Iran from sponsoring terrorism. Lying, regardless.

What you may be thinking of is that water ice can *behave* like rock on cold worlds, for e.g. on Pluto water ice forms the bedrock of its crust.

Anyone with eclipse shades (or a welder's mask) and clear skies should check out this massive sunspot 4466.

10x larger than the Earth, you can see it's *shape* with the naked eye. Incredible ☀️

A gray couch with two black blobs on it. The foreground blob is a cat napping on some blankets, while the background blob is a folded black sweater.

Which is cat, and which is folded sweater? 🐈‍⬛

You just made me check under my district (9th circuit), and indeed it does require some form of assault here.

www.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury-instruc...

As far as I can tell, the Schmidt Observatory System is essentially “what are the best next-gen facilities coming online in the future? Ok yea let’s just build all of them nice and fast and synergize them w the rest of the community.” Incredible 📡🔭🔭🛰️

I wasn't familiar with that film, but it looks like a similar idea. It looks great, I'll have to check it out

A float at the Rose Parade showing a damaged robot with glasses with hearts in them lying down in a forested scene. A tiger has some wiring in its mouth on the robot's leg, a monkey climbs on its right shoulder, and several bird lie at the top. A sign with the words Rose Parade are obscured but lie in the background. The scene is rainy with a few people visible in the foreground.

How cool is this - Cal Poly Pomona and SLO's float, the only one designed and built entirely by students, won the Rose Parade.

The float's message is about the dangers of climate change, with a bunch of cute woodland animals repairing a damaged robot 🤖

www.cpp.edu/news/content...

I can't parse it myself. If we assume the top 1% is just broken out of the top 10%, then I'd conclude what you wrote, but what about the 51-89 percentile workers, do they control zero percent of the wealth? What is going on with that chart.

Trying to outflank things knowing he's criticizing a black woman talking about racism in America? Setting the tone by first accusing her of privilege.

Title: “Every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share, the first time this has ever happened.” This is followed by a plot showing data since the early 1900s of the rise/fall in vote share for governing parties in national elections. The U.S. is highlighted in red on the right in 2024.

I’m no political expert, but it seems to me any explanation of the 2024 U.S. election needs to account for the incredible anti-incumbency wave that year.

Skydivers landing at Arizona Stadium?? #Tucson

Hey Martians, did I mention we now also have a video of epic Phobos passing over a Martian dust storm near Pavonis Mons? 🌪️🌋🥔

Video & full info: flic.kr/p/2rNN8wk
Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY

@esa.int Mars Express HRSC
300 MP Photo quoted below
Easy zoom: easyzoom.com/image/674026

Dividends as a sign of financial health - that's smart 👍

I'm very happy I woke up at 4am this morning to catch 3I/ATLAS right before its closest approach to Earth (today!) This interstellar visitor is traveling over 60 km/s ☄️

At 269 million km (1.8 AU), I took a series of 2.5 min exposures with my Seestar 🔭

Just a little PSA - if you have any solar eclipse shades (or a welder's mask), you should try and check out the massive sunspot group that has rotated into view these past few days.

It looks so big it may be naked-eye visible, which is pretty neat!