This 👇🏽

“Astronomy does more than deliver discoveries. It inspires students, engages communities, and builds the pipeline of future scientists. Stepping back from a flagship international collaboration at the very moment the world is looking up risks dimming that inspiration for a generation”

This is a nice read. Often I find people suggest something in the middle between “let them cook” and “ban hammer”, but they rarely try to find the line (which is hard to do). I think where you have suggested the line is, is a good place.

I had a Yeltsin-esque reaction in a Michigan grocery store after seeing hard to find and expensive bottles of liquor being cheap and readily available in the US. I don’t think it is possible to buy any mezcal in Aus for less than $100aud, but a nice bottle of it was $40USD here. End sin taxes!

I see no reason for TACs to not randomly select 5-10% of the time from the submissions (or the top half of submissions). The only reason would be the tacit agreement that ranking proposals is somewhat arbitrary

Are you really *shocked*? Seems pretty typical of our gov.

(I’ve made it through us immigration so I can post freely again)

if you tell claude not to make mistakes then how would it learn

Seriously though, if you journal clubbed or astro-coffeed about one, you should also do the other. Both super interesting and meta.

Why do we do astrophysics? At time of writing, large language models (LLMs) are beginning to obtain the ability to design, execute, write up, and referee scientific projects on the data-science side of astrophysics. What implic...

Astronomers: highly recommend this thoughtful opinion piece by @hogg.bsky.social on how to think about our field in light of the development of large language models. whether you agree with him or not it’s vital to discuss the principles behind our science. 🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2602.10181

Hey, my name is in the Epstein files! I've told the story before, but should probably re-up.

TLDR: never met the guy, never took (or asked for) any money from him, never visited the island. I was invited to the island, and said no.

It's not that hard to just say no.

I’m with ya. Currently observing remotely at the AAT and am so pissed at what I am seeing.

Also, the r/Australia mods are censoring / removing posts about this, and r/Sydney is whitelist only.

the Premier should resign after the disgraceful actions of the NSW police today

The only time I’ve ever had a package stolen was when it was a book. I wonder what they did with that book.

Also want to shout out some similar work by some good people from U Michigan: “Using Astrometry to Break Degeneracies in Stellar Surface Mapping”.
Arxiv.org/abs/2601.11737

The works are independent, but we released on arxiv on the same day intentionally :)
It’s an interesting topic!

Inferring hemispheric asymmetries of stellar active regions through the information content of astrometric signals Photometric light curves suffer from fundamental degeneracies that limit surface information recovery. We demonstrate that astrometry enables access to complementary information through photocentre va...

Happy to say that my paper “Inferring hemispheric asymmetries of stellar active regions through the information content of astrometric signals” is on the archive: arxiv.org/abs/2601.11707

It’s about what degeneracies are present (and importantly, what aren’t) in stellar surface mapping

Ronald fisher at a party, wearing a newspaper hat, and either a vest or shirt with the confederate flag on it

I mean look at this outfit! 1952!!!

I am creating some Bayesian statistics documents for phds students at UNSW and I thought it would be fun to look at the history of Jeffrey’s and Fisher. Goddamn Fisher was an awful person - Professor of Eugenics, and wrote in favour of nazi eugenicists AFTER Nuremberg 😕

Mulder is a Bayesian and Scully is a Frequentist.

I was reading a paper that got a bit of buzz a little bit ago about the adult literacy crisis. Ironically, the paper itself seems to lack numerical literacy, reporting basic percentages incorrectly…. 😕

I find it funny that when reading books on SETI, many authors describe the inherent chauvinism in assuming intelligence as an “evolutionary goal”, but to describe the pinnacle of technology they all invariably put the peak at radio telescopes. Perhaps radio astronomers are also chauvinists lol

How Russia’s Invasion is Impacting Ukraine’s Youth - bellingcat Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukrainian educational facilities and spaces used by children have been damaged in air strikes or closed because of them.

War doesn’t just destroy buildings—it erases places where children learn, play, and grow. Bellingcat and journalists from @afp.com bureaus in Paris and Kyiv take a look at the lost spaces of youth in Ukraine. www.bellingcat.com/news/2025/12...

I worry that the government will attempt to use this to expand surveillance, despite the fact that they clearly had enough information to (at least!) take their guns.

I’d even suggest that more surveillance would make it harder to stop things like this - adding hay not finding needles

Very concerning that these guys were armed and not under surveillance.

That’s not true, a quick check of their socials show multiple posts about it

I am concerned about the literacy rates in the adult population.

I don’t see how someone could ever need more than one gun. One should be the limit, with a good reason required, and limited ammunition.

This is about Sydney.

This was about the Sydney Massacre. Heart goes out to the Brown students too.

American opinion. Better things are possible.

Sick and twisted massacre today. Had never imagined that this could happen here, like this. Solidarity to the Jewish community, solidarity to Bondi.

Confirmed: the attack at #Bondi was targeting the Jewish community. It’s a terrorism event.

Awful for all involved.

Thoughts are with Australia’s Jewish community and everyone who was on Bondi who had to witness such horrific events. This is so sad and not what our country is about. Devastating.