iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 07/08/2026

I am absolutely thrilled to present to you: How to Build a Universe (Theoretically Speaking) available for pre-order now, wherever you buy your books! www.simonandschuster.ca/books/How-to...

Cover of the book "How to Build a Universe (Theoretically Speaking)" by Katie Mack. The top right corner says "Author of The End of Everything" and the bottom left says "Brilliant and thrilling! - John Green". The cover motif is a space image made of puzzle pieces.

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Dr Hannah M. Rowland @hannahmrowland.bsky.social · 11h

Hope your day was better than Darwin’s, on this day 165 years ago

I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody &everything.

Charles Darwin
Letter to Charles Lyell
1st October 1861

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Simeon Schmauß @stim3on.bsky.social · 15h

I hinted that there would be more images from the Juice flyby, so here is the timelapse of the full event! It's always amazing to get these views of our fragile Blue Marble from the spacecraft we send out to explore the solar system! 🔭🧪 #planetsci

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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 11h

I keep seeing this Semafor graph that seems to show the Trump administration’s effect on international visits is comparable to the pandemic. My first thought was “that can’t be true” and indeed it is not. This is monthly data. We only have to Jun/Aug 2026. The lines are over-fitted to the months.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 16h

Debating adding "champion amateur horologist" to my bio

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 17h

I know I should always just block and delete but every time I get one of those LLM author scam e-mails I REALLY want to write back and yell at them for being awful. 😠

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Ariel Edwards-Levy @aedwardslevy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I think this qualifies you to be time's person of the year

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 01/10/2026

I went to Geneva a few weeks ago and spoke on a panel about the nature of time for a Geneva Watch Days event. While I was there, on a lark, I entered a competition to most precisely calibrate a Swiss watch. And today I found out that I won! 😃 www.instagram.com/reel/Dd6hUTB...

Me peering through a little magnifier at a tiny watch mechanism connected to some monitoring equipment, while making adjustments with a small screwdriver

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Earth @earthin24.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

🌏 2026 🗓 29th - 30th September 🕛 12:00Z 🛰 Himawari8

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 30/09/2026

One of the most harrowing things about academia, when you're a grad student, is how vulnerable you are to how you're perceived by more senior researchers. Your career advancement depends on confidential letters of reference & private discussions amongst faculty. You have no information or control.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 30/09/2026

Several people are mad about this so I will briefly clarify! No, I’m not saying a novel is comparable to a real-life assault in any way. No, I’m not saying the author is bad or responsible for bad things. I am saying I’ve seen real bad stuff come from “consensual” student-faculty relationships.

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Brian G. aka urbanbohemian 🪩🥂💖 @urbanbohemian.com · 30/09/2026

We're on Bluesky, put the link in your post. Put the link in your post. Put. The. Link. In. Your. Post. Links in posts aren't buried or de-prioritized here. This is one of the last platforms you don't have to make interested users do detective work to find the link. Just put it in the post.

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 13/02/2025

I am no longer accepting the argument "there are bigger problems than this!" unless you are personally working to stop the ultimate Heat Death of the Universe.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 29/09/2026

In a variant on the "oh so you hate waffles" tedium, today I received "oh so you think pancakes and waffles are equally bad" 🙄

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 29/09/2026

A small quality-of-life thing I recently discovered is that if there is some artwork you really like or some photos that make you happy you can get them printed as a custom calendar (there are several print sites that do this) and every month a lovely new bit of joy is there for you on your wall.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 29/09/2026

Thinking a lot lately about the men I know who are willfully ignorant about power dynamics and how I don’t *know* they’ve done anything specifically worse than be willfully ignorant about power dynamics but also if I had to guess which of my acquaintances had, I’d guess them first.

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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

you will encounter more opportunities in life to change the batteries on a smoke alarm than you will to run into a burning building and no one gives a shit you changed those batteries but it is still very important and why are you waiting on a burning building, know what i’m saying, it’s a metaphor

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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

that chatbot doing that unsafe/violative thing is not it 'going rogue' or an 'unfortunate incident of unintended consequences,' it’s the logical and devastating consequences of an unsafe product put out by irresponsible companies that have been conditioned to believe consequences dont exist for them

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⭐ ᗰᗩᖇᛕ ᗩ. ǤᗩᖇᒪIᑕᛕ ⭐ @markgarlick.com · 25/09/2026

Interior render of my space hotel scene, created in #Blender. All my own work except the character. #sciart #scicom #scifi

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Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Kinda wild to see candidates tacking right to an imagined center when gas is on track to cost infinite dollars by election day

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 24/09/2026

ATTENTION THE BEST THING ABOUT AUTUMN HAS FINALLY ARRIVED IT IS TIME FOR TINY DOGS IN TINY SWEATERS

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 23/09/2026

Excited to reflect, absorb, and emit light EXTRA WELL today ✨💃⚡️ #BiVisibilityDay

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Lisa 🇨🇦 @peacewind.aero · 23/09/2026

Katie talks a bit about the Chipmunk trip to Oshkosh in this episode. But also she give some solid general life advice that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU needs to hear. Go on! Give it a listen!

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 19/09/2026

When we talk about the costs that LLMs impose on society we should not forget the fact that nothing works anymore because everyone is so scared of getting their shit scraped. I can't even use google scholar from my university or starlink because they send too much traffic.

Google
Sorry...
We're sorry...

... but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.
See Google Help for more information.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 23/09/2026

i think you can fairly say that the second trump administration is the most racist federal administration since woodrow wilson and honestly i'm not sure that it isn't more racist than wilson's

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 22/09/2026

Today is my “recover from all the travel” day and my brain is switched off for the duration so here are some photos from my LA trip

Me smiling next to some hills with the Hollywood sign sort of visible in the distance

Me and my friend Alicia in a Cessna. Out the window you can sort of see a shoreline, which is probably San Pedro, California (we were on our way back from Catalina Island)

A movie screen with the preview image for the Apple TV movie Tenzing, in a theater

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Cedar Riener @criener.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Every innovation and change in business these days is either: We took this product you like and turned it into a subscription We took this subscription you begrudgingly pay and added some ads We took these ads you found annoying and found more ways to find you

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Mike In The Front✈️ @mikeinthefront.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

We’re back with Season 2! Episode 16 features my friend @astrokatie.com who is known for her universal research. But did you know she’s also a warbird pilot? Check out our conversation here or wherever you get your podcasts! www.mikeinthefront.ca/e/ep-16-dr-k...

mikeinthefront.ca

EP 16 - Dr. Katie Mack: From Dark Matter to Yellow Birds | Mike In The Front

Dr. Katie Mack is known best for being a theoretical astrophysicist who studies questions in cosmology (the study of the universe from beginning to end) at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Phys...

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 20/09/2026

Fully electric aviation has some major challenges (mostly: batteries are heavy and don't get lighter as they get used up) but I love the idea of decreasing aircraft emissions through a hybrid approach, perhaps as a step toward new, clever solutions for fully electric air transport in the future.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 20/09/2026

I enjoyed fall more before I moved to Canada and it started carrying with it a sense of impending doom.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 20/09/2026

Apropos of the campus-setting novel I’m currently reading, I’d just like to put out there that I am available to authors to consult on what grad students and researchers and professors actually do and act like and my rates are reasonable.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 19/09/2026

If he just wants an existing government division without the R we can manage that with the legislative branch in November

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Mark Dowhy @empiricalcuriosity.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Given all that is going on in the world, here’s a great discussion to make us feel there is hope. 😉😁 Thanks @particleclara.bsky.social @astrokatie.com youtube.com/shorts/_K4XZ...

youtube.com

The universe will end one day #science

YouTube video by Dr Clara Nellist

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David Blue @davidblue.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Pretty cool getting to see a friend kill in on a stage of badasses. But no surprise, as they are, themselves, a badass. Thanks for the invite @astrokatie.com! Cool getting to chill with @hankgreen.bsky.social , Mark Rober, Abigail Thorn, and so many more. More pics on my insta. 🖖

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 15/09/2026

I wrote back to an author-scam AI slop e-mail to tell them to go away and the bot replied that it would never contact me again and then a few days later the person replied at a completely different literacy level, offended I accused them of using AI and saying I should be nicer & give them a chance.

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Luke Dones @lukemeister.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

🧵 "... ∼40% of realizations [undergo] disruption or violent scattering before the white dwarf forms and ∼90% self-[destruct] within 3 Gyr. The outer Solar System’s dynamical lifetime thus collapses from 10^18 years to approximately a gigayear after white dwarf formation." 🪐😢

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 14/09/2026

When we talk about how science is broken, maybe at least consider how a huge collaboration measured the ripples in spacetime resulting the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light years away, as counterweight the guy who had to fake his data to show that people who procrastinate fall behind.

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Jonathan McDowell @planet4589.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Apparently the commander of the International Space Station brought her dancing pants to space with her

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Mike Morrice @morricemike.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

We’re throwing a party you don’t want to miss! 🎉 Join us as a Green Party of Canada member for a night of live music, astrophysics, comedy, and drag! Not a member yet? Sign up at mikeforleader.ca or at the door! RSVP here: action.qomon.org/3728b90b-ral...

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Olivia Campbell @oliviacampbell.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

In which I recommend 5 recent/forthcoming books that sound intriguing. Featuring work by Moiya McTier @goastromo.bsky.social, Katie Mack @astrokatie.com, Hillary Rosner, Kristin Hugo @kristinhugo.bsky.social, & Caroline Tracey @cetracey.bsky.social oliviacampbell.substack.com/p/nature-is-...

oliviacampbell.substack.com

Nature is Healing! - 5 Books I’m Looking Forward To

Or, science books are making a comeback

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Rebecca Watson @skepchick.org · 12/09/2026

If you’ve ever tried writing grants for a nonprofit you know how incredible this is. People work for weeks on proposals, jumping thru hoops to funds like Chan Zuckerberg asking for crumbs only to be rejected. And Scott just…throws money at orgs bc that’s what a good person does.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 12/09/2026

“these solutions are announced in a rush, leaving no time for a proper writeup, the isolation of new methods & ideas, & citing relevant previous work of others. … We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose.”

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Aliette de Bodard @aliettedebodard.com · 10/09/2026

Did you read the Belgian Maths society enquiry into the matter? It's clear, well balanced and completely searing as indictments go bms.ulb.ac.be/data/uploads... (Yes it's in LateX I am sorry)

bms.ulb.ac.be

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 10/09/2026

A small request: If you're sending people a form in which there are fields for "Name" and "Title," please specify whether by "Title" you mean "honorific" (Dr/Prof/Ms/Mx etc) or "job title" (Professor of Physics) because I absolutely never know which is being requested and the answers are different.

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