Benjamin Pope

How Bad Are A.I. Delusions? We Asked People Treating Them.

The nuclear industry never managed to solve its waste issues. Cigarettes were always carcinogenic. Its increasingly clear that AI chatbots have structural hazards that the tech industry can’t or won’t solve www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/u...

this has really been quite extraordinary to see and gives me hope

The Telescope That Sees Time - Drinks & JWST! Explore the universe over a beverage! Expert breaks down the James Webb Space Telescope in a fun, beginner-friendly brewery talk.

A few tickets still going for my talk about JWST this Thursday in St Peters!

www.eventbrite.com.au/e/the-telesc...

someone described MAGA as worshiping Jesus as a sort of pagan god of violence and money and, yeah, that's it, that's exactly correct

won’t have a national day to celebrate until we have a national treaty

This was announced late yesterday, so ICYMI …. Aussie astronaut named Australian of the Year!

I’m *very* excited about how this will now lift Australia’s space and science presence across more conversations that Australians will have.

Some folks here still don’t know we have a space agency!

one would think the supplier would be a bit concerned about this

absolutely cracked thing to do

am I reading too much into it or are the NSN dickheads always wearing Helly Hansen for the initials

wanting to do academia this way is like wanting to be a professional athlete but not getting off the couch

Secret chats reveal $10,000 plot to kidnap PM as police raid neo-Nazi associates Apparent threats, including a recording of a man being offered $10,000 to rent a van and kidnap Anthony Albanese, were posted in an online chat room run by March for Australia organisers.

it could happen here and we mustn't let it

every day another depravity from that regime

Just remember that right now the Albanese Govt is spending billions to the fund the USA military.

Sorry to hear that Sky at Night stalwart, historian of English astronomy, high powered lecturer and friend to astronomy societies everywhere Allan Chapman has died. He’ll be much missed.

Hottest 100 - Number 10

Album artwork for "Please Don't Move To Melbourne" by Ball Park Music

🥁 Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2025: #10
#Hottest100

#NowPlaying
🕖 7:23 pm

🎵 Please Don't Move To Melbourne
🧑‍🎤 Ball Park Music

🎧 Apple Music / Spotify / YouTube Music

Don’t love “electrons” as a label here

Couldn’t get it out of me with thumb screws

Indonesia naming its HSR "Whoosh" to stand for the Indonesian "Waktu Hemat, Operasi Optimal, Sistem Hebat" which means something utterly contrived (Timesaving, Optimal Operation, Outstanding System) is phenomenal, I love everything about it. More railways should have bilingual onomatopoeia names.

Arxiv's lack of commitment to its author page feature is so disappointing. Why, when I click on the link that is an author's name, am I sent to a search page of "F. Lastname"? This is ridiculous

On Isherwood posts:

Cabaret is a great film and an outstanding play, but to get a real feel about early 1930s read the Isherwood source material: the Berlin stories and diaries.

Like Zone of Interest the menace and horror is what you can sense off-page/off-screen.

And it was written at the time.

Always love the rainbow houses

I thought this was going to be worse than it was. It was just his conversations? Surely anything important is in real files somewhere?

Dr Kareem Carr man: i wish to publish @kareem_carr Jan 21 reviewer 2: your paper is no good man: i'll do anything to improve reviewer 2: it's simple. you must read the work of the great scientist Pagliarini man: *bursts into tears* but i am Pagliarini Andre Pagliarini @apagliar Jan 21 a first: in rejecting an article I submitted to a journal, reviewer 2 noted I failed to engage the work of one Andre Pagliarini Jan 21, 2026 • 3:47 PM UTC

I just thought everyone should see this

Q: How do I unlock Sunglasses Macron?
A: It's very difficult to unlock Sunglasses Macron in the course of a normal game because it requires a specific and unlikely sequence of events. While default Macron is ruler of France, the USA must choose the monarchy path and then lay claim to Greenland.

Imagine making a shitpost on Cyberpunk only for William Gibson to answer it.

The jackets are here, but not evenly distributed.

I think we’ve got better and more culturally-varied street food than I could have imagined, cool jackets galore, and drugs that make us think we’re really fast and strong before they kill us.

A slide advertising the Stibbs Lecture at University of Sydney. The key information is: Join us for the 2026 Stibbs Lecture - Deciphering the Music of the Stars: Asteroseismology, presented by renowned astrophysicist Professor Conny Aerts. See main post for registration link.

Join us @sydney.edu.au for the annual Stibbs Lecture.

Deciphering the Music of the Stars: Asteroseismology, presented by astrophysicist Professor Conny Aerts.

Listen to the music of the stars, and see them in a whole new way!

Thurs 12 Feb 6pm.

Register: www.sydney.edu.au/science/news...

🔭 ⚛️ ☄️ 🧪

Left: Assistant Professor coming into class
Right: Dean giving your department the news about the budget that prevents you from (re)filling the four retirements

i'm going to spend the rest of my life figuring out how a small band of elites decided that acting as the global currency and primary military hegemon was gay and feminine coded