“Second thoughts” implies “thoughts”, which just seems unlikely.
Author: defjaf
RIP David Berman. The Silver Jews and Purple Mountains frontman dies at 52. Very sad — my wife and I bonded over his music when we first met (and still do).
I remember when NASA was sci-fi, not retro.
Housing and transport for four.
Canal du midi
Thirty years ago today, I woke up before dawn in NYC to head downtown with @disquiet and listen to Sun Ra and Don Cherry celebrate the summer solstice at the southern tip of Manhattan.
I signed the contract. Now I have to write the damned thing.
Shin Egashira’s “Double Globe” (2019), riffing on Alfred Jarry’s Practical Construction of the Time Machine (1899), at Betts Project, London.
100 years ago today, by observing an eclipse in the Southern Hemisphere, Arthur Eddington and others tested Einstein’s General Relativity theory.
Congratulations to our students for finishing the Imperial Astrophysics exam (and to us for making it through without having made any mistakes). Next up: marking…
Excellent Planck swag: an original backup data DVD.
Planck launch, 10 years ago this week.
Commuting across London five days a week to nursery (day care) with my two girls, one in a buggy (stroller), another walking, is the most stressful thing I’ve ever done.
I just got my student tutorial evaluations, and scored very well, averaging somewhere between “agree” and “strongly agree” in all categories: good feedback, answers to questions, and preparation. Unfortunately, only 5 (of 40) students bothered to respond.
Congratulations to Nick Kaiser & Joe Silk for the 2019 Gruber Cosmology Prize, “for their transformational work on cosmological structure formation & dark matter”. I’m honoured to have worked with (and, long ago, been hired by) both of them!
Experiencing black-hole induced ASMR. #EHTBlackHole
Loved Fleabag, of course, though I preferred the family dynamic to the (neither particularly hot nor believable) priest shenanigans, and overall not as much as Catastrophe. (Is that just because I’m an expat American in London with kids rather than a Catholic-seducing Millenial?)
Dennis Overbye in the NY Times on the latest rumours: Expected Soon: First-Ever Photo of a Black Hole.
Yes, paradoxically, a picture of a black hole, or at least its shadow.
Even better, an op-ed from my colleague @SheerPriya, At Long Last, a Glimpse of a Black Hole.
@TheMekons make the world alright, briefly, at the 100 Club, London.
Our dishwasher has stopped working — any London appliance repair recommendations?
Varifocals?
It makes sense that the two leaders, a remain-supporting leaver and a leave-supporting remainer, closer to each other than to their own parties, would eventually work together.
At least there are still the Mekons, now reporting from the desert at Joshua Tree. My favourite band in one of my favourite places.
Corbyn set to whip MPs to back public vote as frontbench threatens revolt.
So Corbyn finally does the right thing. But…
He [shadow minister Gardiner] said Labour could not be portrayed as a party that wanted remain at any price.
I don’t understand — what’s the “price”?
The last Brexit vote that had as little legal force as today’s “indicative votes” was the referendum.
“The answer, of course, is not to abandon p-values entirely, but to bear in mind their, and our, limitations.“ — The Guardian (editorial)
It’s rare for a newspaper to have a view on the details of scientific methodology! (But I don’t entirely agree with that view…)
RIP Scott Walker, possibly the only person ever to write a song about a brown dwarf (an astronomical object, heavier than a planet, lighter than a star).
Theresa May’s Message to Britain at a Perilous Moment: It’s Parliament’s Fault
As a distraction from the terrible news, isn’t it funny that the NY Times style guide requires referring to Members of Parliament as “M.P.s”, as opposed to “MPs”, universal in the UK (sorry, “U.K.”)?
At least someone is taking back control.