Maria Varmazis 

@varmazis@mstdn.social
1.3K Followers
678 Following
823 Posts

Podcaster, journalist & comms pro. Host of #TMinusSpaceDaily podcast and co-host on #HackingHumans.

I also draw comics and paint a lot. Road cycling is my sport of choice. Sometimes I talk about my rides or training on Zwift.

I'm a nerd of many kinds, especially for Star Trek. #NASAsocial alum for the first Webb images.

1st gen American of Greek parents. Mom to an amazing daughter.

It's pronounced "var-MAH-ziss."

she/her
📍Massachusetts, USA

about mehttps://mvarmazis.com
art portfoliohttps://varmazis.art
instagramhttps://instagram.com/mariavarmazis
#TMinusSpaceDailyhttps://space.n2k.com
Show threadMaria Varmazis 6d ago
For MA-locals, our installer was New England Clean Energy and I highly recommend them.
Show threadMaria Varmazis 6d ago
In our prior house we leased panels, which was okay until it wasn't. In this new house, we bought our own outright. Having any panels was better than none, but having your own is better than leased.
Maria Varmazis 6d ago
Our house's electric meter has been swapped with a new one so we can export our rooftop solar back to the grid, and that was the last step I was waiting on. Switches flipped on, rooftop solar is now fully online, I am a very happy camper.
Maria Varmazis May 9
rdmMay 9

A couple of nights ago I let my #Dwarf3 stay out all night with a stellation mask, which bagged me about 8 hours worth of #Antares , #Messier4 , and other goodies, including the Antares #ReflectionNebula.

I ran it through the #DwarfLab #StellarStudio tools, and then did a bit more cleanup in #Snapseed and #GooglePhotos - about 15 minutes work.

I'm pretty darned pleased with the results.

#astronomy #astrophotography #Astrodon #SmartTelescope #Nebula #Star #GlobularStarCluster

Maria Varmazis Apr 29
Canada continues to be a beacon of hope. Well done on your election, Canada!
Maria Varmazis Apr 29
Darius KazemiApr 29

We re-launched our website at the Applied Social Media Lab, which is not very exciting except that

1) we have an announcement for Frankly, a newly open source project I helped (a little bit) with that builds some public interest infrastructure for deliberative decision-making https://asml.cyber.harvard.edu/2025/04/29/we-open-sourced-frankly-heres-what-that-means-for-collaborative-dialogue/

2) you can follow @asml.cyber.harvard.edu to get updates here on fedi via the now-working RSS feed (or just use an RSS reader)

Maria Varmazis Apr 16
Sheril KirshenbaumApr 16

I’m so grateful for PBS & NPR. 🌈

If the programs & people of public media have also enriched your lives, *now* is the time to show your support.

Show threadMaria Varmazis Apr 15
But hey 4c**n got pwned so that's nice.
Maria Varmazis Apr 15

Having one foot in cybersecurity and another foot in space right now is absolutely WILD, in a bad way.

On my left, the CVE database in serious holy-shit jeopardy tomorrow, with no org planned to pick up vuln advisories like this that basically all of infosec depends on.

On my right, NASA's science mission directorate potentially getting cut in half, effectively killing off most of what it's working on and shutting down Goddard.

It's just super. Just super. Juuuuust super.

Maria Varmazis Mar 28
Americans: If you don't get them mailed to you, head to SSA dot gov, download your social security statement. Keep it safe somewhere. Not sure if it'll help worth a damn but it can't hurt if DOGE completely bricks the entire SSA system by going "YOLO! Let's use genAI to quickly migrate off COBOL, what could possibly go wrong"