the economists can finally run a real-world experiment.

For what it's worth, if there is anyone here, I'm still elsewhere for a couple reasons. First, the China/China-adjacent discussions are far better there. Second, I'm *very* uncomfortable with the sorting of bubbles, since we already basically curate our information stream.

Good to see that the medium place still exists.

The inability to decide to commit resources is itself a decision to not move forward.

Welcome to the medium place. Have an ok time!

Welcome to the medium place. Have an ok time!

So skipping the trip to carhenge?

Mercury is right there.

"'Oh you fucked up your career' but they're talking about the career they had in mind for me. I fucked up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I fucked up *their* career, not mine"

The world is not just the US? Suppression of evidence would require a massive global conspiracy.

[er, actually, that might not be the best argument to make to conspiracy addled brains, including in US congress]

PEPFAR has been one of the most effective aid programs and a strong legacy of the George W Bush administration. For those in GOP districts, its worth calling your local congressman to encourage them to re-authorize PEPFAR.

Recently met a baggage handler at PHX. Sounds like the airlines try their best to take care of them, but it's a tough gig in the summer.

I undeleted my birdapp, but every time I'm tempted to post, I realize that it's silly, I'm just posting for me.

Maybe the bsky problem is that it's selected users who don't really want to post any more, so timelines are just Scalzi and popehat.

I think it's also an economic and technological problem. The world needs to consume more energy. I've come to terms with recognizing that almost nobody is willing to sacrifice short-term economic development for the climate.

This looks pretty reasonable, and published on physics.org, sounds like a great site! Non-experts can't be expected to see the problems.

phys.org/news/2023-07-age-univers...

I don't really blame non-experts on this. The way that we write and circulate press releases, and then the way they are adopted by (most) media, is often misleading and a disservice to science communication.

Also, I can just post here and nobody responds with whiny snark or anger, or anything really. Silence is bliss.

Probably the last straw in thoughts that a cross-country trip in October might be best by Amtrak. Driving/flying both have downsides for this specific trip, but I guess rail is out. Oh well.

Sorry to hear that. I wonder if there were discrimination issues where dual-anon will help (not solve)? I have not yet submitted any paper anonymously, but am considering it in the future.

I think that there are problems with the field (especially extremely challenging problems in supporting early career researchers), I just don't think that this is one of them.

A Max Planck director can have a different profile than a Cambridge prof, a prof at Wesleyan, or a CNRS researcher. I think that this range actually facilitates science, since they all must take different approaches. Not all approaches are available to all of them, and that's ok.

I'd put biosignatures in here as well. It doesn't really get higher risk or higher reward. So many exoplanet atmosphere researchers are funded and exploring, each in their own ways, what biomarkers we might see, how we might detect it, and confounding variables.

Right! We *love* ideas that aren't the same old thing, only with 2x the sample size or 20% statistical improvements.

Pulsar Timing Array and Event Horizon Telescope, both extremely ambitious, costly, and *risky* experiments that required significant funding and coordination.

I do not believe that this applies to astronomy. In my experiences, panels and career incentives reward creative ideas. The wide range of funding approaches across the globe is helpful in facilitating science across many different timescales. Powerful data is widely available to everyone.

I feel like I'm usually a friendly person, or at least I hope I am, but I consider everyone else named "Greg" an enemy.

Whatever we think of our respective fields, can we agree that a field should not have more observers than signal? There are some amazing planets and moons pretty close to us, with some pretty interesting atmospheres! Study those!

Also, Mercury is not a planet.

Thanks for the invite! Let's build a better tomorrow, together! Be the community we want to be!

That seems like an appropriate entrance requirement! It'll all be forgotten when bluesky moves to normal operations, right? right?

Is this the wild time in bluesky beta when we can post all of our embarrassing stuff?