Erik Tollerud

The beauty is: it *is* an act of courage to step away. An ICE agent or an ICE clerical staff or a contractor who supplies them with food or weapons deserves great praise for saying "I cannot do this, it is wrong." It certainly is more courageous than firing 10 bullets at a man on the ground.

Tell them that you will welcome back with all the joy and love and care and money that you have the day they are willing to say "enough is enough, I cannot do this". But if they do not they are aiding and abetting murder of your fellows and deserve nothing until they can see that.

Folks, I'm trying not to turn this account into a fully political place. But I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, I cannot stay silent on this. If you have any friends or family who are connected to ICE, there is action you can take: cut them off. Tell them you will not speak to or aid them.

ICE agents are responsible for the majority of homicides committed in the Twin Cities so far this year.

In most US cities, homicides committed by armed police represent a significant fraction, but I can’t think of any prior examples where it was as high as 2/3.

And to be clear this does not require dressing to the nines or wearing something unprofessional. Often just having a brightly colored shirt will make you stand out from everyone else!

Unsolicited advice for those giving talks at science/technical talks: wear distinctive clothing on the day of your talk! It's a lot easier for someone who wants to talk to you later to find you if you are not wearing a generic gray skirt/button-up shirt 🧪🔭

And of course gotta thank @emily.space for the hard work making the astrosky world!

Gotta share this from @emily.space 's excellent #adassxxxv talk on ATProtocol (the thing behind Blue sky) and how it's a chance to free scientists from the profit-motivated version of social media. More to the point, I love the metaness of posting a talk on bluesky about bluesky.

This slide by @mubdi.bsky.social at #adass2025 should be on ever astronomer's wall. Software is a central part of science and should be published accordingly!

About 20 Pounds

Harsh but fair: xkcd.com/3085/

A bit snarky but also honest question: If you asked people "Do you think stores are inefficient?" I suspect they'd almost all respond with "well some stores are, but not all, it depends on the store". Why don't people have the same reaction when asked "Is government inefficient?" ?

Fantastic talk by @niais.bsky.social on instrumentation esp UV and multi object capabilities that are being developed/will be available for the Habitable Worlds Observatory... I'm not a hardware instrumentalist, but I love love love these tech nerd-out sessions for astro

Who could have guessed this administration would have a lot of trouble with classified information. Oh wait ... That's right...

Cosmic Distance Calibration

Ah! The classic astronomer colloquium joke, now in context and friendly to the masses: xkcd.com/3066/

Trump funding freeze a blatant violation of Constitution, federal law: Legal experts The Constitution, federal law and court decisions make it clear: President Donald Trump's order to pause federal funding is against the law, legal experts tell ABC News.

It would be fantastic if major federal institutions would acknowledge that the executive branch cannot legally unilaterally cancel or redistribute congressionally appropriated funding on ideological grounds and thus they have no legal obligation to comply with such directives

A positive trend that's been happening for years but has been particularly apparent at #AAS245 : most of the Q&A askers are beginning with "I really liked your talk" or similar. Really improves the general mood and collegiality IMHO.

Oh yeah good point. It wasn't even mentioned in the talk how much the "no dark energy of any kind" scenario was ruled out probably because it's like 10 sigma or something confirmed that there is some kind of acceleration.

@eteq.bsky.social Diffords guide predicts 2025 could be the year of the blue drink.

Some amazing cosmology results from DESI presented at #AAS245 by M Ishak (from their massive paper drop in Nov): Hubble tension persists with DESI (DESI matches CMB, in tension with local H0)... But more provocatively, cosmological constant ruled out at > 3 sigma!!! But no deviations from GR. 🙀

Exciting professional news: I have just been awarded Tenure at the Space Telescope Science Institute! Thanks to all of you who have supported and encouraged me these 15 or so years. I came for the science but stayed for the community, and this is a good day to celebrate both! #bluedrink

Exciting news to share: Astropy has been awarded the 2025 Lancelot M Berkeley AAS Prize! (aas.org/press/astrop...) So if you'll be at the AAS this year be sure to stay to the end for the Prize talk by me and fellow Astropy Coordinators Kelle Cruz and Clara Brasseur.

I would definitely go to this movie

E di Teodoro in #iaus392 at #astronomy2024 (with @jegpeek.bsky.social) gives a really nice clean story of disentangling gas flow directions to show that at least radial gas flows aren't bringing in enough fuel to sustain star formation at the present day

Nice summary of some LADUMA results in talk by A Baker from #iaus392 at #astronomy2024. Particularly neat was showing work by @jwuphysics.bsky.social showing that you can pick out even individually undetected HI features using CNNs trained on multiwavelength data

From J Healy in #iaus392 at #astronomy2024 : in an HI survey of cluster Abell 2636 (with MeerKAT I *think*), some evidence that subgroups within the cluster protect galaxies' gas from the broader cluster environment. I wonder if this happens at LG scales (and if it could ever be observed...)?

So enjoying hearing about neutral hydrogen observations of the Milky Way from Snezna Stanimirovic this morning. #astronom2024 🔭👩‍🔬

Neat dataset by P Mancera Piña at #astronomy2024 of HI rotation curves of several UDGs, showing that while their dark matter halo concentrations are hard to explain in CDM (and even harder with MOND), they are much more likely to exist in SIDM...

F Maccagni at #iaus392 of #astronomy2024 describes HI stripping data from a MeerKAT survey of the Fornax cluster. I found this plot especially impressive: a *very* clear floor where all the has gets stripped under a certain magnitude

Fair, I mean we are astronomers here so who cares about just one order of magnitude ;) but I was more surprised by how *qualitatively* different the morphology was. But I see your point that might be as much interpretation as the sims themselves

E de Blok kicks off #iaus392 main session at #astronomy2024 by summarizing resolved HI observations now and in the near future. One fresh item I thought was especially interesting: "observing" TNG50 and FIRE2 sims just like MEERKAT shows the simulations are not getting the fluffy outskirts right