A cartoon by Ron Cobb (1975), showing a shadow of US B-52 bomber above cratered landscape. Two people who look like Vietnamese peasants look up; one says “they’re having problems with their economy again.”
This is from 1975.
Almost 10,000 authors have come together to publish an empty book protesting the theft of books by tech companies to train AI models.
Titled Don’t Steal This Book, it is empty of text except the names of the authors involved.. 🧵
Imagine trying your damndest to find *more* absentee landlords given Ireland's history. #spéirgorm
oh my god
while I was disappointed that AXIS was selected over STROBE-X, I would not have ever wanted their concept study not to proceed and this is a loss for the entire field and a sign of how much Donald Trump and his goons have damaged science in the United States and NASA in particular 🔭🧪
For reference, without AXIS, the earliest that a high-resolution X-ray imaging mission can launch -- the successor to the Chandra X-ray Observatory -- is 2050s or 2060s. 🔭
Horrible news. This would have been such an amazing x-ray telescope.
Also fucked up in general that, under capitalism, the primary way to get folks in power to care about the deaths of civilians is to put war in the context of prices and profit.
Crude oil prices, showing a very sharp increase in the last day, from around 65 to 101 dollars per barrel..
Oil prices wouldn't be all over the news today if more of our economy was powered by local, secure renewable energy.
This isn't an "energy crisis". It's a fossil fuel crisis.
44% of UK electricity came from renewables in 2025. More of that plus an electrified economy => no more oil shocks.
No report in the Guardian about a woman MP being attacked on International Women’s Day by transphobic fascists after just a week in the job.
They have these “news” items though
The fact that daylight savings occurs at slightly different dates in different regions is a crime. Abolish daylight savings now. For the sake of my international collaborations!
There's something deeply obscene and broken about the fact that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are bombing elementary schools in an illegal war of aggression, and there's still a sense among the opposition that it has to be explained in terms of gas prices in order to get American voters to care.
Cover of "Picture an Astronomer: Best Practices for Retaining Talent in Astrophysics", which features an illustration of a 19-year-old Vera Rubin looking through a telescope over a backdrop of a first light image of spiral galaxies from the Rubin Observatory.
Happy International Women's Day!
Perfect time for me to (re)share our white paper on increasing the retention of women in professional astrophysics (really full of suggestions that broaden participation in academic science in general).
arxiv.org/abs/2512.24465
🧪🔭☄️👩🔬
Everything by @aptshadow.bsky.social that I’ve read has been fantastic. Also recommend Alien Clay, the Final Architecture series, and Elder Race (the latter is a novella). Getting into his shadows of the apt series now too
NEW “We’re celebrating a tradition that is at its core about resisting occupation and maintaining community in the face of horrors. You can’t keep politics out of Irish music. No one should try, for two reasons. First, it’s ahistorical. Second, Minnesotans are ready for a big anti-fascist party.”
Cool to see Spain stand up to US imperialism and disappointing that Ireland’s cowardly neoliberal ruling coalition (FFG) refuses to do so.
Gas prices jumped again this morning and are on track to double - a stark reminder of our exposure to fossil fuel volatility.
The real solution isn’t more drilling, but moving away from combustion: electrify, use renewable power, and boost energy efficiency.
See this full thread for all the ways we are showing how bad the STFC cuts to science will be With ways you can help us get the word out and just say no to cutting a generation of science and the foundation of future projects #science🧪 #astronomy🔭
A good thread of how #STFC cuts will hinder a generation of science.
Also good to remember that, while they cut fundamental research, capitalist govs are always ready to spend money on war. Because war is profitable.
Science and, more broadly, our humanity is at serious risk under capitalism.
"Peace in the Middle East No more forever war" Lionel Hutz edits it to say "Peace in the Middle East? No, more forever war!"
How many full rides to Harvard did the US drop this time in order to kill schoolchildren?
Can’t afford SNAP, can’t afford social security, can’t afford socialized healthcare but sure let’s kill some non-white kids.
www.smbc-comics.com?id=3496
The world could be such a nice place if we allowed it. It's all so goddamn unnecessary. There's no need for any of it. It's so beautiful here. It should be so cool to be alive
Capitalist imperialism.
Let me re-introduce myself. And why our campaign is doing things differently.
: Half of UK universities face a deficit next year. Up to 50 could close.
That is a sector in crisis. Simply blaming a tuition fee freeze and nudging fees up with inflation is not a plan. Where is the long-term strategy for higher education?
#Universities #HigherEducation
If you voted for FF or FG since the crash, you own this, and every man, woman and child you made homeless.
And you'll do the same again next time because you're too selfish to care.
Call for Editors at the Open Journal of Astrophysics
The number of papers submitted to the Open Journal of Astrophysics continues to rise, as demonstrated by this nice graphic which shows the stats for new submissions for the last five years: It's very clear that the thicket is getting thicker!…
Higher Ed is not about job training! STEM has long benefitted from this rhetoric but we are all threatened by this concept. The University is meant to be broad and forward thinking, not something that follows the trends of the market which are inherently short-sighted and lacking imagination.
When letting an LLM run code on your own machine, one has to remember that the probability of "rm -rf /" is low, but never zero.
Love that AI, a thing we hate and don’t want, steals everything, ruins everything, shittifies everything. Drinks our water, plagiarizes our art, pisses all over our information fidelity, drives kids to suicide, serves the right-wing, and fucks up our devices and services. Good job, techbros!
