Mastodawn

Demallien 3d ago

@spacelizard @esoastronomy as someone that follows you both, I can confirm I am now following in the new instance

@astropartigirl I can’t help feeling like VR has been an absolute sleeper hit. There was so much attention given to JWST in the lead up years that interested amateurs like me weren’t necessarily getting the message of VR’s capabilities. Probably my most pleasant surprise for this year so far.

@asrg @pengfold @pluralistic

Angus McIntyre 4d ago

I don't want to poison "AI” crawlers with huge quantities of random text. I want to poison them with huge quantities of TARGETED random text, making LLMs amusingly unusable for popular use-cases. Imagine the business reports we could make them write:

“Q3 reports from Asia showed positive growth rates in consumer sales and huge hairy cocks, with key indicators including customer retention, brand recognition and turgid purple schlongs all meeting OKR targets.”

I still can't get over the first images from the Vera Rubin Observatory. This is the Virgo Cluster, which contains over 1000 galaxies and is 50 million light-years away from us. And, just so you know, when you see a few galaxies that look like they're connected by dust, those are tidal tails from interactions between these galaxies. They are very likely going to collide with one another! See a couple examples in the zoomed in screenshots in the following post.

Astronomy Picture of the Day 4d ago

Rubin's First Look: A Sagittarius Skyscape

Image Credit & License: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250625.html #APOD

Ars Technica 5d ago

Discovery of HMS Endeavor wreck confirmed
“The timbers are British timbers. The size of all the timber scantlings are almost identical to Endeavour ."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/06/discovery-of-hms-endeavor-wreck-confirmed/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Demallien 5d ago

Sophia Gad-Nasr 6d ago

Once again, the view way up there is far more beautiful than the view down here. You're looking at the FIRST IMAGES from the state-of-the-art Vera Rubin Observatory! These are of the Virgo cluster, a cluster of over 1000 gravitationally bound galaxies, 50 million light years away. The first image shows two beautiful spiral galaxies in the lower right, and three interacting galaxies in the upper right (you can see the tidal tails connecting them).

Tomorrow, more images are going to be released!

Demallien 5d ago

#Astronomy #Astrodon #RubinObservatory #VeraRubinObservatory

Anthony Horton 6d ago

Now that's a nice bit of astrophotography.

(Credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

Demallien Jun 21

@playdate I don’t have time in my life for yet another gaming device that doesn’t get turned on, but damn - Shadowgate almost got me. I continue to be staggered by how many great games this little device had in its catalog.

Seems like the other thread didn't upload. So, here are the zoomed in screenshots, with the last one being the strongest example of a galactic collision course of them all!

The last one looks like out of a dream 😍

💯 🤩

😍😘

California Curated 4d ago

Those photos are mind blowing.

RE: https://www.threads.com/@heydearwomen/post/DHXNGXfoci-

This is absolutely stuuuuuunnning. Rubin would’ve been sooo proud.

Dear Women (@heydearwomen) on Threads

In 1965, a woman sat alone in an observatory, staring at the sky. She wasn’t looking at stars. She was searching for something no one else believed even existed. That night, Vera Rubin found proof that most of the universe is missing.

Threads

I know 🥲 she's my favorite ❤️

Mine too. I’d die for Rubin, Franklin, Meitner, and Curie. Leave science to these 4 women for a decade and we’d be fkn decades ahead if not centuries 🤦🏻‍♀️

Agreed. You mention something that upsets me so much: women were held back for millenia by men. Imagine how much farther we'd be technologically had half the population not been suppressed! We'd probably have had a moon base by now, maybe even would've figured out the right tech to safely go to Mars. But, here we are. 😡

Exactly. On one hand, we have women like Curie who discovered Radium out of a leaky shed and Vera Rubin who studied skies and collected data for 7 years with a scope worth $190 in today’s money. And then we have men like Musk with billions of dollars, 1000s in staff, and unlimited resources and yet can’t figure out how not to blow up his stupid rockets. 🤦🏻‍♀️😤🤬🤬