Statuses

Gove: reopening England’s schools will involve ‘trade-offs’.

As a country we have decided… that we prioritise children returning to school. But… we have also had…Christmas mixing.

So we haven’t really prioritised schools, have we?

Latkes, cooked in Vegetable oil, not schmaltz, but served with applesauce (pink, of course, in honour of my grandmother)

We organised our wedding in two hours to beat tier 4

Call me a curmudgeon, but this shouldn’t be presented as a couple heroically working to save their wedding at the last minute, but rather as selfishly endangering people when they already have the information to know better.

I’ve eaten pork and shellfish my whole life without any guilt, but this feels really transgressive.

RIP Arecibo Telescope, Puerto Rico, USA. The passing of a literal giant of astronomy.

Peace & love, everyone. We’re crying with relief and joy.

I assume the CNN US Election Coverage/Octonauts demographic overlap is pretty small, but in our house, when we hear “Key Race Alert” we think “Creature Report” (and hope for a dance break).

“Breaking News: No winner has been called in Presidential election” -CNN

Trying not to cry, scream, or drink at 7:30am in front if the kids.

More bourbon, or a few hours of sleep?

The country had been brutal for a very long time, from the beginning actually. And now the rhetoric began to mirror reality.

—well-known humorist and actor Wallace Shawn.

Warning: not funny.

R.I.P. James “The Amazing” Randi, a hero from my youth as a magician and my adulthood as a scientist. (h/t @telescoper)

I voted. In San Francisco, from London, via fax (because that’s somehow more secure?) Well, via a web-to-fax service. Surely there’s a better way?

Whatever it takes.

(Surprisingly?) nervous about running my first online @ImperialPhysics undergraduate tutorial in 8 minutes…

New book (first in ~15 years) from statistics/design master Edward Tufte — Seeing With Fresh Eyes: Meaning, Space, Data, Truth! (Astronomers: includes an example from Kepler exoplanet/exomoon analyses.)

The 2020 Physics Nobel goes to Roger Penrose “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of… relativity”, and Reinhard Genzel & Andrea Ghez “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.”

Tech friends: I’m getting very slow Time Machine backups (can be several days) from my MacBookPro (10.15.7) to Synology NAS (SMB, 1000M wired) w/Netgear Orbi router. Seems due to many small files. Problem occurs w/Mac either WiFi or wired (‘tho somewhat better wired). Any ideas?

McConnell, Graham, & the Republicans are all rank hypocrites, and I’m deathly afraid of a conservative court too, but I’m a little disappointed that the rest of us are now on board with their 2016 ‘no confirmation near an election’ nonsense, now that it suits us.

Received my absentee ballot for Nov 3… I am not the most strategically useful voter — I still vote in San Francisco. But can any of my SF friends recommend a good source of information and endorsements?

Life on Venus?

Earth-shaking news if this really is a signature of life…

I said when it drops
Oh you gonna feel it
Oh that you were doin’ it wrong, wrong, wrong
Now when it drops
Oh you gonna feel it
That you were doin’ it wrong and how

R.I.P. Toots Hibbert

After 20+ years, the last @ESA @Planck paper has been accepted, and we’ll be commemorating the event… with a Zoom meeting tomorrow of the only remaining official committee, the Planck Editorial Board.

Imperial mathematician Martin Hairer scoops $3m Breakthrough Prize.

Really digging @XTheBand‘s Alphabetland, like, I guess, everyone else (of a certain age, at least, because who else would care, really?).

Aside: Am I the only who really loves See How We Are?

I never understood why you might want the title in the header of every page until our two-year old starting tearing up the books.

The government continues to implicitly & explicitly encourage all sorts of risky behaviour (e.g., flights, restaurants) which seems likely to bring an autumn (read: school-time) resurgence of the virus. Holidaymakers’ plans in disarray after quarantine imposed on Spain

Why aren’t face coverings compulsory in the UK? There’s no social or governmental pressure at all. At least it’s controversial in the US — no one even talks about it here.

Thinking, as I do every year on the Summer solstice, of venturing at dawn with @disquiet to join Sun Ra and Don Cherry welcoming the sun at the southern tip of Manhattan.

Not sure how to process this from my undergrad alma mater. It actually seems that they are admitting to systemic racism but are unwilling to call it that.
Yale Astronomers Said Their Department Isn’t Racist Because They Hired One Black Employee In 1985

Welcome triumph of privacy over a centralised database — from an institution with a very bad IT track record. UK virus-tracing app switches to Google-Apple model – BBC News