Katey Alatalo, Ph.D.

When I applied to grad school, it was the same year that Larry Summers was claiming women were biologically less capable of being scientists than men.

I still remember my anthropology professor’s favorite joke from college:
“What did Watson and Crick discover?”
“Rosalind Franklin’s notes.”

The depth of the shame of a country this wealthy and abundant allowing its people to go hungry is impossible to measure. The fact that a handful of people could fix this by paying their fair share of taxes while still remaining obscenely wealthy makes it even worse.

Yeah, I'd absolutely rather boil off more of our planet's fresh water making delicious al dente pasta than pointless slop videos

Your Brain, the Computer During my senior year in high school, I was at a crossroads, trying to decide if I wanted to go into a career in psychology, or keep going at the physics and astronomy that I loved so much. Obviously ...

Wrote another blog post! Hoping that maybe some of the insights I've gained from getting better at understanding my brain will help others. In this case, thinking about our brains like they were computers.

#neurodivergence #adhd

kateyalatalo.com/blog/your-br...

Southwest, thank you for letting me know that the gate has changed yet again for my late night flight tonight, but at the moment, I'm not sure it's pressing information.

I know that this is a little silly, but it GRINDS MY GEARS that the lies being spouted are not just lies, but ignoring that neurodivergence makes the world a richer place to exist.

Maryland joins Northeastern group to help form regional public health policy Maryland joined coalition of Northeastern states and New York City to protect “broad vaccine access,” among other public health initiatives.

Great job, Maryland!

www.thebanner.com/community/pu...

I made a friendly wager with some friends in March about the trajectory of #genAI. And I have to say, I'm beginning to feel pretty confident that I'm going to be getting that box of cookies 😎

Luckily, Sinclair has a helpful database of all their stations, so you can see if they're operating in your area and respond accordingly.

sbgi.net/tv-stations/

Really tough time to be an adult who actually did all the assigned high school reading.

Limits A software limit that tells a person “oh, you’re getting near a danger zone friend. Maybe you want to eat something, or take a break.”, a hardware limit that says “you’re getting actively sleepy from ...

Like the radio telescopes I used to observe at, brains also have varying degrees of limits. But some brains those limits are not wired very well. You can read more of my thoughts on it on my blog! #radioastronomy #adhd #blog

kateyalatalo.com/blog/limits/

Research shows that when people with different perspectives share ideas, it activates more creative neural pathways, fueling innovation across science, technology, and beyond.

Tag your go-to brainstorm buddy!💡

#Brainstorm #STEM

YouTube video by Josh Johnson The 10-Minute Mission: Katy Perry and the AstroNOTS

Watching this video and immediately going @aussiastronomer.bsky.social did you get to show Josh Johnson around because he's doing ASTROPHYSICS and I love it! #joshjohnson #jpl

youtu.be/Q0pMHmzH52Y

Why we need dark skies For anyone who has never lived outside of the city wouldn’t be able to understand the breathtaking wonder that the night skies can bring us.

A little blog I wrote about why we need dark skies
kateyalatalo.com/blog/why-we-...

#astrosky #darkskies #astronomy

It was my middle school social studies teacher. He dressed up as different cultures and concepts he was teaching us about.

I still remember Mr. Sypniewski all these years later and how cool I thought he was. Thanks for being part of the 15%, Mr. Syp!

Bluesky now platform of choice for science community It’s not just you. Survey says: “Twitter sucks now and all the cool kids are moving to Bluesky”…

Happy to be here! #sciencecommunity #sciencesky #astrosky

arstechnica.com/science/2025...

You ever get those little reminders that things you're now used to being 'second nature' from your job are actually pretty useful and valuable?

Because that happened today! Running reviews is a skillset that's now in my quiver and makes me so pleased to apply it!

#jobtalk

I also hate that "AI" means so many different things. Focused machine learning to identify useful proteins in medicine is different than "AI"/LLMs that are applying fancy statistics to the internet (and sometimes literally stolen copyrighted material), so I guess I'm antiLLM not antiAI

#antiLLM

Am I an AI Luddite? Yeah, I am. I can't get over the mass IP theft that it took to make them. A lot of it feels like hype to me.

And in the limited use cases where it actually is effective, I can't help but think about the water I'm boiling just to get a silly acronym suggestion.

#antiAI #antiLLM

I Tested How Well AI Tools Work for Journalism Some tools were sufficient for summarizing meetings. For research, the results were a disaster.

I'd been getting tired of "according to CEO of OpenAI, AI is amazing!!!" articles out there, so it's nice to see something written with rigor.

tl;dr For 200 word summaries, LLMs are fine. 500 words? Danger zone. Science literature search? OH GIRL NO.

www.cjr.org/analysis/i-t...

This administration has thrown literal grenades at the rickety foundations of American academia, and for some reason, neither the national media nor university administrations are actually talking about as the economic, social, political and cultural threat/crisis it is. What a terrible loss.

katey's website Dr. Katherine Alatalo's professional astronomy website

Who knew that revamping a professional website would be a LOT of work? But either way, I am super proud of it. Want to learn what I do or read bites of some of the papers I've worked on? Go take a look!

kateyalatalo.com
Come for the astronomy
Stay for the astronomy

Title: Papers Released by the Influential Research Group A graph with a Y axis labelled 'Citations' and X as 'Time'. Hit Debut Paper (high up) Difficult Second Paper (a bit lower) Break-up Paper (lower still) Unsuccessful Solo Papers (bobbing along the bottom) Greatest Hits Paper (climbing back up) Reunion Paper (high up, but still not as high as the debut)

My cartoon for this week's @newscientist.com

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume?

Astrophysicist: It's a new form of work called "dark work" that only interacts gravitationally.

(Writing this on my personal computer, during my barely available spare time.)

For the foreseeable future, I will not be using this account to discuss issues related to the science community, because the place I work depends heavily on federal grants.

#myopinionsaremyown

If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

#ihatethistimeline

Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.

From Gmail to Word, your privacy settings and AI are entering into a new relationship If there were ever a time to understand your online data privacy settings, it's now in the AI era.

There is no way to remove copilot prompts in Word on a Mac. So it appears the only way to remove copilot is to stop using Office. I like Pages but with is opened its data format so other programs could interact with it. #AIluddite #antiLLM

www.cnbc.com/2025/01/15/f...

Having migraines is like being in an abusive relationship with your brain.