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Carl Rodriguez

@carlrodriguez.bsky.social
3.5K followers 749 following 715 posts

Professor of astrophysics at UNC, studying colliding black holes, swarming stars, and other things that go bump in the night. Big fan of transit, biking, climbing, Durham NC, he/him dynamics.unc.edu

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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I get why people think so much of the grandiose statements from LLM world are a grift (because everything is these days). But I think it's equally possible everyone there actually believes every word of it because they, like members of a cult, have simply gone insane.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
tf happened to AAG?!
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I love any excuse to visit Chicago but could have done without 3 days of rain 😭
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
🥳 First-light doughnuts from the very recently launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope! 🔭 Fear not - it will all look a lot prettier when focused!
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Happy birthday to the launch of gravitational-wave astronomy!
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Is it just me, or is ADS really struggling to extract references and match citations from new papers lately? It used to take a few days but now I have papers that have been up there for months where the references never got fully extracted.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
"both calorie restriction and the GLP-1 quieted down inflammation and fat processing, and both stepped up the genes for handling blood sugar and maintaining proteins, [but] the GLP-1 mice had better memory scores, curiosity levels and blood sugar." Seriously what the hell are these drugs?
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
One annoying side effect of LLMs is that the "can I do research with your group" emails I've been getting have gotten a lot more verbose, annoying, and completely unbelievable.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
wow that plot is brutal
Plot showing the decrease of NSF ast funding per year, with a 50% decrease for FY2026
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Various pictures of the Roman launch. Definitely one of the coolest moments I’ve gotten to see in my career.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Soon!
Predawn picture of a rocket
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Damn!
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Every class taught brings exciting new challenges, such as “what is our accommodation center calling itself this semester?”
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
It would be like hiring a postdoc to work on GR who will only work on the ether, but also used their “work” to harass my colleagues. People would 100% blame me as the PI and I’d 100% fire their ass at the first opportunity.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Ooof
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Logging into Canvas for the first time this semester
meme from GTA IV with the character say. "ah shit, here we go again"
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I feel like, unlike some of my colleagues, I'm not nearly as pessimistic about LLMs (I wish people would stop calling them AI). I think they are going to fundamentally change how we do certain things in astrophysics, especially those related to coding and certain mathematical calculations.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I feel like there's a pretty straight-forward project in just downloading a bunch of publicly available astro/physics codes, feeding them and their publications into an LLM, and hunting for bugs and inconsistencies.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
8 episode HBO limited series of the Left Hand of Darkness you cowards!
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
All our lives from now on
Kahn (from Wrath of Kahn) talking about the project called Genesis.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
How is this game so tense and so boring at the same time?
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Just add it to the list of FIFA crimes I guess
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
This is disappointing: super bowl halftime shows can honestly be great (Kendrick, Bad Bunny) but this one just doesn't have the juice. Don't know why!
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Since its his last world cup I'm just gonna say Messi has always looked like a butch David Tennant
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Richard Bell @richardbell.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Argentina vs Spain is gonna be craaaaaaazy
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
The telemundo broadcast keeps panning over to a very disappointed Mic Jagger
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Bill McKay @mckay4senate.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
At long last, Mitch McCo—wait, what?
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Our KITP program on stellar and galactic dynamics probes of dark matter is now live: www.kitp.ucsb.edu/activities/d...
kitp.ucsb.edu
| KITP
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Me to my DOE-funded colleagues
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
That the U.S. appears to have completely visibly given up after a catastrophic own goal fuck up is a little on the nose.
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brent 🌹🗽 @therealbrent.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
We definitely deserve this as a country
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
What the fuuuuuuuck this is embarrassing
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
So fam, do we think it's worth putting together an NSF CAREER this year or nah?
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Always wondered how anyone from my alma matter would stand up to basic oppo research.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Meanwhile, in Aspen:
Screenshot from a bagel place in Aspen, featuring a $40 bagel with caviar
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
This definitely jives well with my own observation (though I’m a bit skeptical of the whole pop psych “we can measure narcissism in your signature” bit). It’s been interesting to try and find a balance between this for my own group. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Unfortunate side effect of Overleaf is that your advisor can now watch in real time as you implement corrections on a paper...
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
I dont care if no one likes this it's 100% true
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Ruh roh
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JP @jpbrammer.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
the phrase "lipstick on a pig" has always inspired a deep sadness in me. I think of the pig, looking forward to her big night out, and I bring myself to the verge of tears.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
I worked in an Indian restaurant in high school that only had a single CD (soundtrack to some Bollywood movie) it just played on repeat. For three months. 20 years ago but if i ever hear it again I expect to go full Winter Soldier (if he was, you know, a waiter).
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Well there goes my summer (fall?)
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arr @arr.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
english isn't for cowards. if you're not saying 'torpify,' that's a skill issue. there's no Académie Française telling you what to do. if you try to type 'pallific' and freak out when you see a little red underline, maybe you're not ready to roll with the big dogs.
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The StarXiv ✨ podcast @starxiv.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Michelle discusses the detection of Phoebe, a possible primordial black hole (PBH) in the Milky Way halo. Using DECam and microlensing, this object was found and the paper describes how they come to the conclusion that it is a likely PBH. Tune in to discover more! arxiv.org/abs/2605.19375 🔭 ☄️
The discovery light curve of Phoebe is shown. There is data across 5 nights in December 2019, and in panel 4 (the 4th night) you see brightening in the light curve, typical of what would be expected for a microlensing eventThis figure shows a cut out image of the Phoebe event in its neighbourhood. A few other sources can be seen around it, and on the right hand side, several light curves of non-Phoebe sources are shown. These are flat and quite different to the lightcurve showing the Phoebe detection.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
The next US president could instantly rebuild 50-60% of our credibility in Europe and Latin America if they just have Delta Force snatch Gianni Infantino Maduro-style.
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Max Woolf @minimaxir.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Reddit post: In "The Odyssey" (2026), Odysseus speaks with a Boston accent, despite being from Ithaca, which is in New York.
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Julianne Dalcanton @dalcantonjd.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Please spread the word! In addition to becoming an important part of the MESA project, the person in this role would have opportunities to collaborate on scientific software across CCA, which has a vibrant, interactive community of scientists and code developers.
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Carl Rodriguez @carlrodriguez.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Me trying to learn string theory
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