Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

Hurrah! My copy of Kelly and @ZachWeinersmith 's new book just arrived in our far shores. Looking forward to getting stuck in.

Happening now

#nasa #noaa #temperatures 2023 announcement #climate #ClimateChange
🥵 🔥
I think it’s likely 2023 was the hottest year since the mid Pleistocene transition or perhaps since Greenland had its current size, even earlier— but Gavin says that’s an announcement for another day. (And we are working on demonstrating that… but scientists tend to be conservative.) probably that announcement will happen in 2024 barring any crazy volcanoes.

https://www.youtube.com/live/To4vJ_cazyM?si=aEWasuQsq_7P7E_L

@thomasfuchs I wonder if these come as a set

We are searching for a rising star in #physics 🌟: nomination sought for a position of Director at the Max Planck Institute for Physics, Werner Heisenberg Institute in #Munich -> https://www.mpg.de/21360553/call-for-nominations-director-at-max-planck-institute-for-physics

#maxplanckinstitute #career #CareerOpportunities

Let me rewrite this for you Jason. “I, as CEO, made a major strategic error, taking the decision to increase headcount too rapidly. I take personal responsibility for the decision I made, and am working with the board to appoint new leadership.”

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/11/24034705/discord-layoffs-17-percent-employees

#Pulsars are magnetized, rotating neutron stars. Beams of radiation from their magnetic poles swipe past the observer, resulting in characteristic pulsing radio patterns.

The fastest pulsar we know, PSR J1748−2446ad, rotates at 716 times/sec or 43000 times/min.

You can listen to some of the pulsars here - the intensity of the radio waves as the amplitude of the audio:
▶️ https://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~pulsar/Education/Sounds/sounds.html
Not the 715 Hz one, but the 173.7 Hz (careful, annoying sound!)

#astrodon #VicisAstro #astronomy

Someone on LinkedIn pointed out that #OpenAI doesn’t use an LLM for their support chat, but has instead opted to use some extremely limited decision tree. Which is both understandable, telling, and fucking hilarious.

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic is kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to last year's Red Team Blues.

There are all kinds of reasons to support this project. Starting with the obvious: Doctorow's novels are always good SF, and the audiobooks are always top notch. But too-also, he's showing the way that indies can thrive outside of the Amazon monopoly. This benefits all of us.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/10/the-bezzle/#marty-hench

This is the northern rose window from Notre-Dame de Paris. I was there not that long before the fire. Amazingly, it seems as though all the stained glass in this photo actually survived the conflagration. This window was originally made in about 1250, and most of the original glass is still in place.

#FensterFreitag #WindowFriday #Photography #Travel #Church #Glass #Colour #Paris

@delawen Fun Fact: https://startrek.website is part of the federation.

There goes @caseynewton with Platformer, one of Substack's largest newsletters 👋
https://www.platformer.news/p/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack

"Substack’s tools are designed to help publications grow quickly and make lots of money — money that is shared with Substack. That design demands responsible thinking about who will be promoted, and how." @caseynewton

Newton had way more reason to be hesitant about moving than most people who've dithered, but he nails why it's the right thing to do here. Kudos.

#Substack #NaziBar

https://www.platformer.news/p/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack

Thanks, American Dialect Society, for choosing "enshittification" as the 2023 Word of the Year. @pluralistic's apt term describes how online platforms decay by showing users less and less of what they came for, while keeping them trapped and unable to exit for better alternatives. https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

In case you haven't gotten sick of hearing me talk about this issue, I was on CBC-Yukon this morning talking about satellite pollution: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-393-yukon-morning/clip/16034585-the-story-one-astronomers-battle-satellites

The short version: satellites are super annoying for astronomy, but are completely terrifying for what they might do to the atmosphere as they deorbit in large numbers.

The Dude abides.

I Made This: https://hypercritical.co/2024/01/11/i-made-this

Okay techies: Every time I post a link to my website on Mastodon, everyone (including me) is shut out of my website for about 5 mintutes with an "error 500" message.

This doesn't happen when I post anywhere else, and I get 10 time the traffic from other sources.

People have offered me and my tech support staff (my husband) solutions. None of them worked.