Neil DeGrasse Tyson's _Cosmos_

Clearly u are a war criminal

thanks for that, tlg -- v interesting

I'm sure it means you pause before saying "i wouldn't like to see a Space Force launched with the Grifter as the Cmdr-in-Chief"

xxp

not really sure what you're getting at, nobody really gives a fuck what i - and neil de grasse tyson for that matter - think of the space force

i guess he thought his Twitter followers would

i think JD had it right - he's not actually providing an expert opinion on space force, he's just using it to set up the "truth force" punchline

the military industrial complex's relationship with astronomy is complicated. it is basically impossible to do professional research astronomy in the US without using military infrastructure and/or receiving military money. it's something a lot of US astronomers feel conflicted about, but consider the price of admission. if you want the data, you join (or you leave the US and go to a country where astrophysics and space program are less synonymous).

but tyson doesn't do research astronomy, and hasn't done for 30 years. which makes his decision to work with them ... less complicated. he literally has no incentive reason to sit on boards like that other than his own ego.

tyson's fine as a science advocate. his style grates on me a little, but at least he gets some people to pay attention and learn something.

i'm not sure about his idea for a Truth Force, though. who's going to be in charge of determining the truth? jared kushner?

Advisory board issue #1 for 2018 - send Trump to mars

Two more women come forward

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/nosacredcows/2018/11/two-more-women-accuse-neil-degrasse-tyson-of-sexual-misconduct/

on the scale of this kind of thing that doesn't seem that horrible but it does sound p creepy and unpleasant, which is disappointing.

i would just like to note that i have been otm on this thread.

I miss Carl Sagan pic.twitter.com/jUKrBgFSFs

— Oedipa Maas (@bridgietherease) August 22, 2017

a friend retweeted that back then and i still think about that tweet all the damn time

i was at that AAS meeting. the "secret" after party thing was, well, "infamous" is the wrong word because these are huge dorks we're talking about. but it wasn't secret, and generally people who weren't either predators and/or colossally excitable nerds steered clear.

Boy Erased (2018) pic.twitter.com/RFYdplgtao

— Hayes Davenport (@hayesdavenport) December 14, 2018

https://www.amazon.com/Accessory-War-Unspoken-Alliance-Astrophysics/dp/0393064441

i saw someone reading this, immediately thought "oh i should read that" but then saw it was by NdT so nope, won't

all i can remember from the one about black holes are bad jokes (not like good bad jokes, like dad jokes, just bad bad jokes)

like all i remember from the chapter about the sun was this long setup where he talked for a few paragraphs (almost poetically) about how ridiculously long it takes photons to make their way from the inside to the outside of the sun, only to spoil it all w/ a lame "think about that next time you get a sunburn on your butt at the beach!" ending

I've been to an AAS meeting (honolulu). I am actually hanging at an astro conference right now. caek are you an active researcher?

i was until 2014

I am at the end of an AGN obscuration conf (whatever that means). I just tag along to these things 1-2 times a yr for the last 15 yrs when they are in nice locations (spouse).

nice! i was on a paper about that! (i did some of the modeling for it, but it was not my field and i very much did not understand the paper lol academic publishing.)

conference and observing travel is definitely one of the perks of the job in astronomy (relative to most other academic fields) that somewhat makes up for the precarious academic existence.

although this is real https://arxiv.org/abs/0903.3384

I won't try to guess which one you are. You did instrumentation? Yeah, all these guys publish a lot.

i wasn't on that paper. that's a weird one about how astronomers fly too much!

i was observation rather than instrumentation (although the AGN paper i was on used some wacky instrumentation i did not understand)

derp I was analyzing the names instead of reading the abstract. Almost everyone at the conf flew over 20 hours so this is true. I only had to fly 2 hours.

I just showed this to my spouse and he brought up that we spent a holiday in India for 3 weeks and went to Patagonia with the 8th author (which I totally missed, and he totally flies a lot too still).