JWST's "Y2K problem" will manifest as Cycle 5 data starts rolling in and we find out who wrote their code to parse proposal IDs as four characters.

Going to start adding vague threats to proposals.

"If you know what's good for you, we will measure [...]"

"consistent with models, except at optical wavelengths" is accurate for a surprising number of subjects

When you evenly space objects in your vectorized PDF figure but the latex PDF backend renders them with irregular spacing at certain zooms 😭

Just ask for very specific TA offsets and hope the obs tech doesn't notice?

NASA system update notification, day 1: "Hey buddy! Just FYI there's a security update available whenever you get a few minutes."

Day 10: "Listen up, moron. We have your stupid little dog. If you ever want to see her again, you have ten minutes to update your computer."

Obviously it will cause some economic turmoil or whatever if the "AI bubble" bursts.

But think of how great dirt cheap GPUs will be for science.

My rule of thumb for AI as a time-saver is basically "only use it if you will immediately know whether or not the output is correct".

Given that it takes years before academics can even seriously discuss the impacts of regulations, my intuition is that this is a horrible idea.

Please don't waste my time by spelling out "J-W-S-T" when speaking. If you respect me, you'll just treat JWST as a single syllable word that rhymes with twist but starts with a j.

2 year old just figured out she can open doors.

God help us.

Cmon, Stranger Things. The modern distinction between sorcerer and wizard didn't exist until the PHB for D&D3e. Outrageous.

I'm not a comet expert, but I just want to point out that an object can have a confluence of qualities not previously observed in a comet while still being a comet.

Just because you can't show me another human as fast as Usain Bolt doesn't mean that Usain Bolt isn't a human.

I feel like everyone that says HFMD is mild for adults had it as a kid or something, because JFC. I'd rather have COVID twice in a row.

"Whats the big question you're trying to answer?"

"I guess it's really 'How do I trick exoplanet scientists into letting me study circumstellar disks?'"

"..."

"Oh sorry, you meant like a science question."

Wife and kid (30 months) are flying to visit friends where my wife grew up. Last time (09/2024), kid met a friend's dog. Today, kid asked if they would get to see dog again (by name).

You can tell she's mine because she remembers the name of a dog she met for 10 minutes almost half her life ago.

There's this really spiteful part of me that wants to clear my calendar so I can throw together a proposal on a deadline-day arxiv planet.

You think you're tired? Imagine how the APT and ETC servers at STScI feel right now.

Just had to click through to the second page of Overleaf docs to find a JWST proposal I wanted to work on 🫠

a man is screaming with the words " unlimited power " behind him Alt: A GIF of Emperor Palpatine using force lightning and shouting with the caption "UNLIMITED POWER!" superimposed at the bottom.

Me every time someone acknowledges my dog in their paper using Winnie.

A piece of Winnie I'm trying to streamline. But I'll just not ship the update if I can't reconcile the worse-ness.

Yall ever spend ages overhauling some complicated code and then realize you've simply made it worse?

Congrats, all! A genuinely beautiful system joining the very small family of disk+planet systems.

I think if a student showed me this detection, my immediate assumption would be that they'd accidentally processed someone's "gap-carving planet" simulations by mistake 😂

Ugh. There're finally ST observations that I PI'd being executed but there isn't even a bot posting JWST's observation status in real time for me to repost now 😤

"The peasants expect us to pay them livable wages AT A LOSS?!?"

Asking for corporate tax breaks for paying your employees better is asking the government to subsidize your payroll.

Better idea: raise the minimum wage. Then they'll have a very compelling financial incentive to pay better.

If your color scale crosses zero and zero isn't perceptually obvious for the color mapping you've selected, I will never forgive you.

Fools: "Working from home with a dog is bad because dogs are a distraction"

Me:*works two hours more than I intended because my dog was sleeping on my lap*

New MINDS paper from Nicolas Kurtovic, focused on binary systems. Spectra, extended emission, variability, multi-observatory analysis -- there's something for everyone!
arxiv.org/pdf/2508.02576

Even if congress does restore prior funding levels, I have a feeling that some will be less interested in federally-funded work (e.g., the early career scientists who had to scramble to keep their families off the street after having competitively-funded grants/fellowships revoked with zero notice).

Me: "Please edit this photo of me with my child."

AI: "Sorry, our policy forbids altering photographs containing children."

Me: "Okay, please edit this photo of me with my very short adult friend."

AI: "Sure thing!"

An image of a Jupyter notebook tab reading "Untitled42-Copy4 - Jupyter Notebook"

You: "Hey Kellen, how are you doing?"

Me: