While people go on about how wonderfully peaceful Mastodon is, I can't help but notice my feed is too white.

That is all.

P.S. open to follow suggestions.

I got back from #AAS241, walked into the house, and found my spouse was virtually attending talks still. Weird!

Seems like there were some amazing plenaries yesterday at #aas241. Great job by the #aas Vice Presidents picking them. And they are usually free to watch in recordings later so I look forward to that.

Goodbye #AAS241! It was surprisingly fun, and if I'm still covid-free in a few days I'll feel it was well worth coming to the meeting. Got to meet a lot of new people, and hang out with a lot of old friends. Oh, and the talks and posters were good too!

Fischer: satellite constellations are an “existential threat” to astronomy without mitigation and cooperation with industry. She cites as an example of such cooperation the recent NSF-SpaceX coordination agreement for Starlink Gen2, a model for others. #AAS241

Fantastic #AAS241 Plenary talk by @janerigby on JWST launch and commissioning!

So many highlights but great to recognized the 20,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, and staff that worked on it.

I really appreciate the call out to the science calibration pipeline and data accessibility that has helped support the huge enthusiasm in the public to use JWST data with great images and really active communities!

Thanks Jane for all your work and great talk!

#aas241 Background is the protests about the Thirty Meter Telescope, starting in 2014 and reaching a crescendo in 2019. New authority created including cultural practitioners to manage Maunakea. Also the “state of the profession” report from Astro2020 reflecting growing understanding of the impact of astronomy on indigenous people within the astronomical community.

Good morning Seattle I am in you still! #AAS241

I'm here, I'm queer, I'm an astronomeer.

Seattle I am in you! Three talks mostly ready. Umbrella, forgotten at home

@planet4589 Giving a talk as Groucho would be easy. Harpo —harder

Exactly 14 years ago , Satoshi Nakamoto designed the most pathetic / inefficient system ever invented by humankind : the blockchain.

Today, it weights 60 000 tons, wastes constantly 10 gigawatts (more than Belgium or Chile) to process less than 7 transactions per second :

Less than a 33 bps modem from 1990.

This could be a joke if it didn't have such gigantic environmental impact, wasn't enabling billion dollars ransomware industry and was not crushing thousands of lives in the process.

@planet4589 I have a whole hour on “what it’s like to commission a 6.5m space telescope”, and almost none of it fits

@planet4589 then I’d better finish writing it! The problem is what to leave out. I have about 3hrs of material

Where’s the traffic for #AAS241 ? I know I’m not the only person struggling to finish a talk over the holidays

A stranger comes to town, a stranger leaves town

A reminder to everyone in #Ireland interested in #astronomy that tonight there will be an #occultation of the entire sky by cloud.

I hope this clarifies the situation.

#Astrodon

I’m planning to COVID test every day of #AAS241, to keep myself, my family, and my colleagues safe. If you’ll do the same, please share!

@mattkenworthy
There are dimming LED bulbs that give off warmer light as you dim them, just like with an incandescent bulb. I want these in all of my light fixtures that have a dimmer switch.

It's SO FUCKING HARD to find them, because 90% of LED bulbs that advertise colour temperature shifts on the packaging are actually indicating that you can dial in the temperature with a mobile app.

I don't want to control my lights with my phone. I'm basically *never going to want to* control my lights with my phone. In the minute fraction of instances where I might find value in controlling my lights with my phone, I'm not going to find enough of it to want to deal with the hastle of pairing my lights to my phone at all. And that's without considering the part where I'm opening the door to monitor how I function in my living space to some AI-horny surveillance capitalist that will likely drop support for my appliances years before they die out.

Who asked for these things? Did anybody? They always feel like a solution in search of a problem.

Eating too much cake is the sin of gluttony. However, eating too much pie is okay because the sin of pi is always zero.