57 of my fellow students were arrested, academically disciplined, and barred from campus 2 weeks before finals.
And then the visas of some of those students were quietly revoked.
And then the DEI office was killed.
And then we watched our mentors’ grants evaporate over “woke”.
"Please" (derogatory)
Sad to not be at AAS myself this year, but for those who are there (and are interested in the future of studying space weather around the sun and other stars) consider checking out the splinter organized by some of the folks I worked on the KISS report with: lauraamaral.github.io/Exospace-Wea...
i have a meme for the opposite experience
Super stoked to finally share the KISS report on paths forward in studying exosolar space weather! The effort put into this report was incredible, and I'm super proud and honored that I was able to participate and collaborate with so many fantastic scientists arxiv.org/abs/2511.02871
My mom said she wanted a giraffe on the driveway and I am no one if not someone who 1.) loves their mom and 2.) commits to the bit
idk if I trust your tastes, Kovi. That "mediocre" podcast seems pretty snazzy to me : )
~2 weeks out from starting the ~week long drive back to Alabama. Podcast/album/audio book recommendations would be greatly appreciated 🥲
Thanks Ryan!! ⭐
Thankful to have had so many people to hype me up today. Officially Dr. Davis : )
It's treated so casually that I don't even have time to react before someone says "I assessed the plausibility of what you said by feeding your hypothesis verbatim into this model" and it makes me feel like I'm losing it for being furious that my ideas are being treated like training fodder
Beyond the fact that it feels incredibly disrespectful, I feel like it vastly reduces my time to explore the topic with care before it's descended upon by keyboard-smashing dorks.
This has become an increasing concern of mine for groups I'm apart of, but are other folks running into the problem of people feeding your ideas and/or research presented during meetings into an LLM for a "summary" or "opinion"?
I was under the impression that there's not many optical counterparts for isolated neutron stars. Maybe we just don't have a large enough population to reliably place it?
All of this is to say that among all of the complicated emotions, I feel an exceptional amount of gratitude that I'll be joining ASTRON! I'm looking forward to the work, both scientifically and socially.
It's hard to capture the grief I experienced when years of work done by myself and others to make Caltech a more inclusive place was apparently erased in an instant in order to appease the administration. Among all of the rage I feel at the situation, I desperately wish there was more I could do.
it's hard to capture the emotional whiplash I've experienced while a) interviewing and preparing for a role that honors a woman who contributed so much scientifically and socially to astronomy and b) pleading with my current institute to reaffirm their commitment to DEI while they remove resources.
I have successfully herded the cats (coordinated between professors' schedules)-- I'll be defending my PhD on September 3rd. Afterwards, I'll be (re)joining ASTRON as a Bell Burnell postdoctoral fellow!!
I'm super stoked for all of the different science I'll get to be apart of. That said--
I've officially settled on a start date, so here's a digitized version of a comic diary entry I made on my last flight to the interview for the position I'll be starting in November (along with a hint to the position!!)
I only have a few more months at Caltech so I have to take all the opportunities I can to be a nuisance to admin for quietly removing online DEI resources
The atomic spectral lines in this app come from the NIST atomic spectroscopy group, which has provided the world with spectroscopic measurements for 120 years.
Today we got word that the federal government is laying off the entire group. 🔭🧪
All probationary federal employees at NOAA’s EMC that’s responsible for keeping all US weather model systems running have been fired with 1 hours notice. And that includes me and colleagues. We will not go quietly because we care about the NOAA mission to protect the public.
I got the job : ) different screaming has ensued
flew out for an interview and my laptop charger stopped working because I am god's jester and he loves to watch me scream
my perfect, darling, delight of a cat only has so many years on this Earth. Who am I to deny him a little piece of goat cheese??
Donnie darko meme where he says he made a new friend. in reality his friend is just a collaborator
was called out when pointing to an author on a paper and saying "that's my friend!"
We're about to evacuate to a second location because another fire started about a half mile away from the location we escaped to, but feeling very fortunate to have a network of generous friends helping me navigate this
Some of my friends have been much more substantially affected by this. Several of my friends and fellow Caltech astro grad students just lost their home to the fire. If you have funds to spare to help out one of these folks, please consider donating to her gofundme: gofund.me/7d900772