Randall Smith

@brucelevenstein.bsky.social question: who else besides The Pixies has been fame-adjacent without being truly famous. 4AD bands excepted.

Oh, an easy one! 0%! Rhubarb is perfect by itself. (I’m so helpful…and it’s a good thing the rhubarb season is so short….)

I have not yet been able to review proposals electronically. I need to scribble on them if I’m going to remember anything, and pdf edit functions don’t count.

What, they’re not fluttering down the stairs as well? Remember, only those that make it all the way down face up survive triage…

When I lend books I just immediately buy a new copy. I think I’ve bought 4 copies of Cryptonomicon.

I feel you. Been an absolute pill of a week, with food poisoning just being the icing on the cake.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Short 2023) ⭐ 7.4 | Short, Adventure, Comedy 40m | PG

Dahl wrote about this: m.imdb.com/title/tt1696...

It has not, on balance, been a good day. Hopefully tomorrow is better.

Trust me, such people exist. Just because you are not one of their tribe doesn’t mean you should make common ground with them.

Quote from Terry Prattchet’s Going Postal,”He dreamed of mechanisms, of making things work better than they’d ever done before “

Perhaps the best definition of “engineer” ever….

Absolutely true, but even so the standard has to be somewhat less than “perfect” to make progress. So few of us are…

Hey, @brucelevenstein.bsky.social , did you know His Name Is Alive remastered Livonia a few months ago? Not sure why, interesting listening though.

Postdoc at Black Hole Initiative (directed by Peter Galison), at Harvard University & Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (in Cambridge, MA)
AOS: #philsci, Philosophy of #Physics, #histsci
Deadline: December 3, Start: September, 2025
academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/14118

S-wave is still good though, yes?

Tokyo works here, if you’re willing to forgo the US only…

As a CMU grad, I’m happy to chat about the pluses and minuses if it makes the maybe-visit list….

these noise canceling headphones are terrible. i can still hear the voices in my head

Also a speech-ender for Cato the Elder, of course, calling for the Carthaginian genocide. A phrase with history…

Oh, come now! It’s straightforward to control if you’re willing to accept a certain amount of variation. Just dramatically increase the infrared opacity of the atmosphere by, say, increasing the carbon content. That will guarantee significant heating. There will still be variations, of course…

ULA Vulcan Rocket launch from Cape Kennedy

Vulcan final certification flight successfully launched and separated. Beautiful daybreak launch.

And LOFT, and AXTAR, and…the X-ray timing community has had it tough, I know. Gotta keep plugging away. I can tell you that XRISM has some great capabilities for X-ray binaries…

NASA Establishes New Class of Astrophysics Missions, Selects Studies - NASA Two proposals for missions to observe X-ray and far-infrared wavelengths of light from space were selected by NASA for additional review, the agency announced

AXIS and PRIMA:
www.nasa.gov/news-release...

Press release is expected momentarily.

Being the top Preservation expert in dealing with contract law in the Corporation Rim apparently made Pin-Lee like the CombatUnit version of a lawyer.

A fiery-looking sun on a black background, with a particularly bright flash at lower left—the solar flare. According to NASA, this image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares, reproduced in red and orange.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of today's strong solar flare, which peaked at 6:20 p.m. ET. blogs.nasa.gov/solarcycle25...

Tori Amos' Real-Life Stint as a Cornflake Girl Long before Tori Amos sang “Cornflake Girl,” she was Cornflake Girl. Back in 1984, when Tori was just 21, she beat out Sarah Jessica Parker to star in ads for Kellogg’s Just Right, a breakfast cereal...

Doesn’t explain the lyrics, but I found it interesting… web.archive.org/web/20230326...

One of mine was “Yes, we need to redo the kitchen. Let’s do it right.” Another was, weirdly enough, remembering the book “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.” But at just the right time.

Kris Kristofferson, Country Singer, Songwriter and Actor, Dies at 88 He wrote songs for hundreds of other artists, including “Me and Bobby McGee” for Janis Joplin and “Sunday Morning Coming Down” for Johnny Cash, before a second act in film.

Unacceptable. No.

I sometimes wonder if there is a “Muse of Saying the Right Thing” who is very busy and rarely visits more than a few times in any person’s life. But each time it’s life-altering.

Traditionally, such pitches begin: “Boss, I have two story ideas and can’t decide which to go with. One would be an in-depth look at last year’s holiday party, and the other…”