Kevin Hainline

hell yeah

I always liked how he had terrible vision, just couldn't see anything, and so he would squint into the batter's box, just a nightmare if you're standing up there watching some dude who was not wearing his glasses or contacts hurl hundred mile an hour fastballs near your head

REAL FUN GAME / IT IS FUN TO PLAY TEAM SPORTS / IT IS FUN TO BE ABLE TO GET A TROPHY FOR SOMETHING

In last night's game we got into a jam in the 4th inning with runner's on base and two outs. I managed to strike out a pretty fierce hitter on the opposing team, swinging, and I'll tell you, striking someone out to end an inning in a championship game feels INCREDIBLY AWESOME.

As a kid, I watched a lot of baseball, and I always thought being a pitcher would be the most exciting thing. I've pitched every season I've played, and it IS THE MOST EXCITING THING. Even though it's "underhand, gotta make sure the arc is between six and twelve feet" there's a ton of skill to it.

A softball team posing with a big trophy on a large field. They're smiling, and in the background is a scoreboard showing the visitors with 2 runs, and the home team with 12 runs.

Last night, the Steward Observatory summer softball team (The "StrOHs") won the league championship game, 12-2. I've been playing summer softball through some good and a *lot* of bad years. It felt pretty damn great to win last night, capping a fun season. This was the StrOH's *first* championship!

ibex emerging from space portal, looking right

A few months ago Flandrau Planetarium asked if I wanted to do a show, so I said yes and then my wife and I wrote something and performed it tonight, some of it was me talking about astronomy and some of it was her playing music and it was good.

Sometimes you get through this all by loving.

second edit where egon is then replaced by henry spencer

he was saying that he saw them on the 4th of july and they hit 8 home runs for him. I think that there must have been a time when everyone had neighbors they cared for and liked enough to invite over.

hey I really recommend getting to know your nice retired neighbor and inviting him over for dinner and cooking a pretty good shrimp creole and just talking with him about his recent trip to Chicago to see the Cubs at Wrigley for the first time in his life

It’s a great way to spend an evening

I used to go to parties and eventually, without trying, I'd find myself forced to stand in what I called the Boyfriend Circle, a bunch of guys who all wanted to tell me their theories hoping I would respond "wow, that's so smart, *you* should have a PhD in astronomy, not me"

Anyway, they're gone today. And the world is a little lesser for it. Be kind. Be loving. That is the antidote that those who are cruel and in power don't want you to remember. Our ability to love cannot be destroyed, that Andrea, even gone, is still able to hold love, and give love, and transform.

But standing there, I got to see firsthand how important Andrea's poetry and very existence helped people who felt lost in the dark. It was a lot for me to hold, even as the hug bouncer, and I couldn't imagine what Andrea had to help process, night after night, on these tours.

This is kind of funny, if you know me, as I'm the least intimidating man in the world. I got to stand there for over an hour, politely requesting that the gathered fans, most of who were crying and crying, ask me first if they can get a hug with Andrea. Andrea's fans were so kind. And brave.

After each show, Andrea would meet with fans who would line up to talk with them, to have a moment of connection. They asked me, one night while I was there in support, to act as a "hug bouncer," to prevent fans from just hugging them without asking, which was important given their medical needs.

Andrea on stage, again, pointing. My wife Lara is at a keyboard behind them, playing music while they speak.

My wife, before the pandemic, went on an American tour with them, playing keyboard and singing while they performed their poetry. I had a chance to travel with the tour for a brief few spots, and meet Andrea, their partner Megan, and their dogs.

the poet Andrea Gibson on stage, standing in front of a microphone, performing. The backdrop looks like it has stars, and there are glowing orbs on the ground. Andrea wears a vest, and looks triumphant.

The poet Andrea Gibson passed away. They were an incredible writer, live performer, and their work had a huge impact on people around the world. I do a lot of these astronomy shows, and often I think about how I can soften the science, how I can make it something more like what I saw from Andrea.

Thank you! I’d like to think I give a great colloquium!

I'd love to come talk about JADES galaxies (or thick disk and halo T and Y dwarfs 😉) and it would be great to talk with you about source selection!

Two people standing next to each other. I'm on the right, wearing a white shirt and holding a bottle of celebratory champagne. Jake, who was just awarded his PhD, is on the left in a blue suit and his cape and crown. The crown is painted gold, and has little puff balls above representing galaxies in the early Universe.

Here's Dr. Helton, wearing the cap, and the (also Basquait-inspired) crown, complete with a pom-pom galaxy overdensity on top.

It's filled with references to his thesis (the plots on the left), little in-jokes like "This is a true weirdo," which is what I wrote about JADES-GS-z14-0 when it was first discovered, and there are three cats, his very beloved Oswald and Theo, and my own tiny cat Jeezy.

a colorful painting illustrating the history of the Universe, with the Big Bang at the top, and time moving down towards the bottom, where the words JAKE HELTON, PHD are painted. The center shows a graphical representation of his history, with changing colors and galaxies emerging from the cosmic fog. On the right are labels of the major events, The Big Bang, The Universe Cools, Recombination, The Dark Ages, Cosmic Dawn, Reinoization, The Fog Clears, and then we are left with A Universe of Galaxies. Humanity is indicated with an arrow pointing downward. On the left are painted representations of Jake's PhD work, with paintings of JADES-GS-z14-0, a spectroscopically confirmed galaxy at z > 14, which Jake helped identify as a source detected with MIRI. There are also paintings of his overdensities, and his work exploring how MIRI effects derived galaxy properties.

My grad student Jake Helton defended his PhD successfully today. I'm so excited for him to head on to Penn State for a postdoctoral appointment in the fall. At UofA, grad students are awarded crowns and capes for their PhD, and here's the elaborate History of the Universe cape I painted for him.

About to go live here on Youtube!

www.youtube.com/live/hQWt3P4...

JWST’s Tiny Red Sources and the Big Questions They Raise

THIS EVENING, I'm talking about those mysterious "Little Red Dot" galaxies seen with JWST in a public "Deep Space Dialogue" facilitated by the Space Telescope Science Institute. Little Red Dots are super weird!

4:00 PM Pacific / 7:00 PM Eastern, live on Youtube!

www.stsci.edu/contents/eve...

the employee just stood at the window holding the empty cup upside down, looking very distraught. I got a picture of the carnage below

I was in a DQ drive thru and the employee did the flippy thing and we both noticed at the same time that the blizzard was in a cup, which was in a second unnecessary cup and we noticed this right as the inside cup came out and landed upside down on the ground between my car and the window

That's part of the fun! Within JADES, the fraction is low, but there are still dozens and dozens across our tiny area, and GOODS-S/N are not in the plane of the Milky Way! I'm as pro-galaxies everywhere as the next person, but I spend most of my days looking through these datasets for the weirdos.

(well, as we've discovered with JWST deep fields, the dots aren't *all* galaxies, there's probably a few M dwarfs and brown dwarfs in here, too, which is an exciting prospect given the cadence of Rubin observations, seeing their proper motion)

no links / let the past die / kill it if you have to

(but also, as I discovered when brant robertson asked me about it on googling my dumb name a few years ago when he was writing a letter of recommendation, it is Not Hard To Find)

I just checked, somebody posted a comment on the video 18 hours ago, another person 21 hours ago, listen everyone you can have a pretty ok career studying the Universe but it won't matter compared to one dumb thing you did in graduate school