David Grinspoon

Interesting. Made me realize (among other things) that the landscape for astrophysics is different than for planetary science. @hogg.bsky.social makes good case for astrophysics having no “clinical value” for humanity whereas planetary science clearly does.
I have to think through the implications.

It helps to have a receiver…

A tube of Mars dirt sits on a pebble-strewn, dusty red patch of Mars in front of a rover tire track.

Admittedly NASA’s plan for Mars Sample Return was like throwing a long bomb downfield and hoping like hell someone would be there to catch it.
(But oh it’s infinitely frustrating to have those carefully curated, painstakingly collected tubes of precious Mars dirt w no clear path to return them!)
🧪🔭

New StarTalk episode I did with @chucknicecomic.bsky.social and Neil Tyson just dropped.

Missions to Venus, Aliens, Star Trek, History of the Future… Fun!
🧪🔭👽🪐

youtu.be/lpY0iY5PgRg?...

Black text on book page reads: Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits, nevertheless, calmly licking its chops. - H.L. Mencken

@drfunkyspoon.bsky.social btw, I love all the quotes at the start of each chapter 👏🏻

But this H.L. Mencken quote at the beginning stole my heart.

Thanks!
Yeah I love collecting and choosing them. A really fun part of. Ok writing.
And oh yes, that Mencken quote!

Screenshot of a Wall Street Journal article titled "The Big Money in Today’s Economy Is Going to Capital, Not Labor." Two charts show trends since 1980: corporate profits rising as a share of gross domestic income, while labor compensation steadily declines.

The Wall Street Journal just illustrated the core argument of my book: a system rigged to reward capital over labor is one in which even full-time work no longer secures the most basic material needs.

This is the economic order that produces the "working homeless."

www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

New StarTalk episode I did with @chucknicecomic.bsky.social and Neil Tyson just dropped.

Missions to Venus, Aliens, Star Trek, History of the Future… Fun!
🧪🔭👽🪐

youtu.be/lpY0iY5PgRg?...

Move the hands closer to midnight… 😢🌎❓

Great thread breaking down a lot of the details of that epic halftime show:

Our “president “ is such a cruel lying bastard.

Four Um - Scarborough Fair[USA, Lounge Funk](‘72) Seriously hypnotic!

Four Um - Scarborough Fair[USA, Lounge Funk](‘72) Seriously hypnotic!
https://redd.it/ihwp8h
https://youtu.be/A7rUC3YyIPI

Get up. Stand up. Stand up for your rights.
Happy 81sy birthday to the immortal duppy conqueror Robert Nesta Marley.
One Love!

Good point, Ray!

This especially applies to Star Trek Picard, where the United Federation of Planets exists to promote peace and mutual benefit, wherease in the Q induced alternate future we had a polluted Federation of Earth, which was an Earth First tyrrany. Sound familiar?

Yes, Star Trek fans.
@chanda.blacksky.app tells it like it is here.
Or as I’ve posted before:

1. [Title Panel]: Is Your 17th Century Astronomer Spending Too Much Time on His Telescope? 2. [Text -only panel] These days, more and more 17th Century Astronomers have access to telescopes. Here are some warning signs that they are on the slippery slope to Godless heliocentrism! 3. STAYING UP LATE WITH THEIR TELESCOPE [GALILEO is looking through his telescope out the window at a starry sky]. GALILEO'S WIFE: Go to bed, Galileo! GALILEO: In a minute... 4. ‘FOMO’ (FEAR OF MISSING OBSERVATIONS) GALILEO'S WIFE: Dinner, Galileo! GALILEO [Looking through telescope]: Just need to check my orbits 5. WITHDRAWING FROM REAL-WORLD ACTIVITIES [Galileo's friend the POPE is now standing next to Galileo, who is still looking through his telescope] THE POPE: Come to church, Galileo! GALILEO: Not now... 6. FALLING OUT WITH FRIENDS GALILEO: [Showing The Pope the book he's working on) I'm just working on my book challenging the Bible's view of the Universe 7. BEING ARRESTED BY THE INQUISITION [GALILEO is being dragged out of the room, hands outstretched to his telescope. He is calling to it]: GALILEO: Telescooope 9. GETTING SENTENCED TO HOUSE ARREST UNTIL DEATH FOR HERESY [GALILEO sitting in front of his telescope, now with bars over the windows] GALILEO: Ah, crap. 10. CONTINUED TELESCOPE USE DESPITE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES [GALILEO in same position but now with long white beard, he is looking through his telescope through a barred jail window at the sky] GALILEO'S WIFE: Go to bed, Galileo! GALILEO: In a minute... [Ends]

Another comic I never bothered posting
This one from 2023. Topical galileo humour apropos of precisely nothing at all

Kate, have you written up this wonderful, important thread elsewhere? I want to share it for folks not on Bluesky. Many thanks.

Yes, Jamelle, check out this wonderful thread on this topic by @katestarbird.bsky.social

bsky.app/profile/kate...

“Discovered the U.S.A.”
The stupidity, it burns.

If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania movie & $500 million for a yacht to sail off to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring, please don't tell me he needed to fire one-third of the Washington Post staff.

Democracy dies in oligarchy.

ICE at the polls! Bannon is basically yelling “fire” in a crowded theater here. His objective is to cause chaos (and suppress votes on the left). And it’s already working.

This threat works on multiple levels and doesn’t have to be “real” to serve its purpose.

Let me explain & offer some advice.

Musk utterly destroyed Twitter and turned it into a Nazi cesspool from day one.
It’s indeed all part of a execrable trend but the parallel is arguably inexact.

Perhaps this is the case. I can’t see inside his sick head but there are real journos who worked closely with him for years doing good and important work who see it as more of an evolution (or devolution?) Was he just playing some Jedi tricks on all of them which they bought?

I agree. Just trying to understand the whole history. Maybe I have too many friends at the Post who’ve been doing vital work on important issues for years.
It’s a strange way hatch your evil plot if that’s all it was all these years.

I guess this is really not the place to ask such questions.

Certainly some Pulitzer winning journos who did years of vital investigative work for him, believe this to be the case. Was it all an ingenious evil plot all along? Perhaps.
But before the reprehensible failure to endorse, & the destruction that followed, it almost seemed he wanted a real paper.

Of course. If you want to reduce everything to a binary then Bezos = bad I agree.
But some things have more complex (and tragic) trajectories and his sorry history with the Post may reflect that.

Like have you seen what Martin Baron wrote about it today?

I absolutely agree about his behavior post Trump reelection. Not sure that’s why he bought it originally. Some who seem in a position to know seem to feel that his motivations and morals have declined, perhaps due to the Trump moral distortion field that seems to especially afflict the powerful.

A dapper young man in a 3 piece suit with round framed glasses sits at the controls of a large antique looking telescope.

Happy birthday to Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto in 1930 (when he was 24 years old).
🧪🔭