We had a trip to Scotland this summer, whilst driving across Rannoch Moor I decided to stop and grab a shot of Buachaille Etive Mòr.

For the briefest of moments the clouds lifted.

I then hurried back to the van to count my many many midge bites. 🦟

#photography #landscapephotography #landscape #eastCoastKin #Scotland

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disasters, and destroy the night sky, is going to launch.

A bunch of astronomers and I have sent out a fact sheet about them to a bunch of journalists, but very few are going to write about this. So, let me try posting it all here.

Here's what I know about Reflect Orbital and all the downsides:

sigh. There are a lot of posts going around right now claiming that #bluesky is feeding data to the various data sniffers that the US government uses for surveillance and that #Mastodon is not.

This. Is. Crap.

Anything you post on Mastodon is nearly as easy to vacuum up as things you post on BlueSky. You should treat *all* social media platforms larger than a Signal group of your college friends + Pete Hegseth as "assumed public." It's slightly more work to slurp up almost all of mastodon but really not that much more.

Genie: I'll give you ten billion dollars if you can spend one billion in a month. There are 3 rules: No gifting, no gambling, no throwing it away.

Data Scientist: Can I train gen AI models from scratch on NVIDIA hardware?

Genie: There are 4 rules.

My sister is visiting New Zealand with a tour group comprising mostly US citizens. One of the tour leaders asked “Is everyone here American?” My sister responded that she and her husband were Canadian, and some MAGA woman nearby snorted “Not for long!”

Earlier, my sister had met another couple on the trip who, upon learning she was Canadian, said that she must be so thrilled that Canada was getting the exciting opportunity to join the USA. They were sincere and happy for her. They were honestly shocked to discover that Canadians have no desire to lose their sovereignty. (Or their health care).

These examples (heartless callousness in the first, egocentric cluelessness in the second) really sum up MAGA.

To my many American friends and family — I can assure you that Canadians understand that it is the current administration and their cult-like supporters that have betrayed our long friendship, not Americans in general. But we are hella pissed right now.

Imagine taking a win-win situation like our long partnership, and turning it into a lose-lose situation like a tariff war. That takes a special kind of stupid.

#tariffwar

*editorial board publishes some racist nonsense*

👴🏻 Look, I don't like it any more than you do! But I can't control the editorial board of my own newspaper! No one can! That thing has a mind of its own! I'm telling you, I can't control it!

*Editorial board attempts to endorse Kamala Harris for president*

👴🏻 No wait just kidding I can! LOL!

There's a disgusting inversion going on right now where people try to justify incel behavior by saying men are lonely. This makes people feel bad about pushing back on this, because it sounds like you're a callous person that doesn't care about the very real pain of loneliness?

No. This is a nonsense trap.

Women get lonely. Black people get lonely. Loneliness is a real problem.

But loneliness is not justification for *checks notes* becoming a literal nazi and electing a racist dictator.

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