iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel, Disney Animated or Pixar.

media.tenor.com

a man is saying never give up never surrender !

ALT: a man is saying never give up never surrender !

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Oh boy, autocorrect got me. Should be blaa's of course.

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

As a proud Deise man I have to speak up - Boyle was from Waterford, not Cork. Please don't take him from us, we have him and blahs and that's it 😅

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

I think I say this during every observing run, but a great benefit to remote observing is the excellent company.

A photo of a cavachon dog sleeping on a blanket.

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

I've been using this template for daily notes. It's been good in the mornings for getting me focused for the day: dannb.org/blog/2022/ob...

dannb.org

My Obsidian Daily Note Template

Updated January 2024. A brief tour of my Daily Note template for Obsidian, using the Templater and Dataview plugins.

Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

So in the end, even if we make our course as engaging and interesting as possible, the students inevitable look "big picture" and just focus on the grade anyway.

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Difficult nut to crack. @michaeltremmel.bsky.social and I have had numerous conversations about this. Always boils down to realising that no matter what changes we make to a single course, the students know everything is grade incentivised (funded internships, likelihood of success for PhD funding)

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

I'll be around. @jacobsphysics.bsky.social happy to go grab a coffee and chat on campus in University College Cork either Thursday or Friday!

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Having been given a "Fundable but not funded" decision on an RI grant recently, this is mildly infuriating. Plenty of excellent researchers are already here begging to be funded.

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

Looking forward to having you at the meeting Peter, and hope the Irish community proud. And of course, very excited for your panel discussion!

Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

As requested, I've added all these locations to a custom Google map, might make them easier to find: maps.app.goo.gl/KSNnw9aQHf3b...

maps.app.goo.gl

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

*Some of us do also look at the stars from our back gardens.

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

I'll make a separate thread about one of these events later. For now, details of public talks at #EAS2025Cork can be found here: eas.unige.ch/EAS_meeting/...

eas.unige.ch

EAS 2025

European Astronomical Society Annual Meeting 2024

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Reposted by Mark Kennedy

Contingent Magazine @contingent-mag.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

"But let’s be clear: this 'burnout' that secure scholars are feeling is phantom pain where their colleagues should be . . . You are suffering from the effects of intentional systemic understaffing."

contingentmagazine.org

A Profession, If You Can Keep It

Imagined meritocracies mean little to extractive institutions.

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Reposted by Mark Kennedy

David Webb @djphysicswebb.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Re-posting and including picture showing no gender gap on low stakes in-term exams and significant negative gender gap on medium stakes in-term exams. Gender gap on the high stakes final exam is 50% larger than on the medium stakes exams. #iTeachPhysics 🎢 #Physics ⚛️ #EduSky 🍎 #academia #HigherEd

As explained in the text, each in-term exam was z-scored on a class-by-class basis and the gender gap for each group of classes was determined with HLM while controlling for each student's incoming GPA. This in-term exam score gender gap is plotted as a function of time through the 10-week term at the times the exams and retakes were taken. On the right, after the end of the term, are the overall averages for those first-attempt exams and for the recorded scores after retakes were completed. One sees that the female students generally had higher exam scores (i.e. a positive gender gap) after the first attempt and that, overall, retakes favored the male students. For reference the (clearly negative) gender gaps for 179 non-retake classes are also shown on a week-by-week basis through their terms.

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I can't not post a cute dog picture now.

A cavachon dog lying on his back, paws up looking at the camera.

For anyone who's just curious about how the planning for this is going, I'm currently trying to find a room to store a very large crate from ESA. This has involved me random walking around campus with a measuring tape in hand while looking increasingly worried...

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Thanks Sarah, I really wasn't sure whether this belonged in the astronomy feed or not (and was too nervous to take the risk).

Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Anyone who is attending #EAS2025 in Cork this June, you should look at booking your accommodation within the next week the student accommodation available through the EAS website is only on hold until then, after which it will be released to the public (and subject to price increases)!

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Cooking Christmas dinner using the wonderful apron my first years got me.

An apron saying "Physics Teacher. Just like a normal teacher except much cooler"

Johanna Vos @johannavos.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Reposted by Mark Kennedy

🚨🚨 I'm hiring!!! 🚨🚨 Postdoc and PhD positions available to join my ERC project Exo-PEA at @tcddublin.bsky.social. The project aims to understand weather in giant extrasolar worlds ☁️⚡🪐 📆 Deadline: Jan 6th Postdoc ad: tinyurl.com/2ufcwvxf PhD ad: tinyurl.com/5amcea6p Please share widely! 🔭🪐

tinyurl.com

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Great job on organising and promoting Michael, here's to many more of these!

Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 08/10/2024

Initially I thought the same, but then I read the science press release and was more convinced that it's not a terrible fit.

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 07/09/2024

It's very frustrating to see the far right getting any sort of foothold here.

Michael Tremmel @michaeltremmel.bsky.social · 23/08/2024

Reposted by Mark Kennedy

Just got the email that it’s time to submit proposals for sessions at EAS 2025 in Cork! We can’t wait to welcome many of you into the best city in Ireland (and of course the true capital). Im sure it’ll a great meeting and lots of interesting sessions! mail.eventsairmail.com/ls/click?upn...

mail.eventsairmail.com

EAS2025 Call for sessions

We hereby invite proposals from colleagues who are interested in organising a Symposium, a Special Session, or a Lunch Session at the EAS Annual Meeting 2025. For full details: https://eas.unige.ch/E...

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 30/07/2024

I'd thought about the cost of training, but I'd never thought about the cost of inference when using GPT. Just one of the many, many things I've now started thinking about because of this newsletter. Fascinating read, recommend taking 15 mins of your day to look at it.

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 28/07/2024

S-tier walk for the dog and baby this morning along the old rail way in Cork. Flat smooth surface for the buggy, smells for the dog, and a coffee shop/pastry for dad. Smooth surface! The things I care about on a walk have changed over the last two months 😅

A sail boat leaving Cork harbour, framed between trees.

A long stretch of smooth paved surface with a dog and a pram in the foreground.

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Reposted by Mark Kennedy

Molly White @molly.wiki · 24/07/2024

An extra long newsletter today, because things have been about as wacky in crypto as everywhere else. Featured: Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto Alliance fudges the numbers, a (former) industry CEO has a meltdown, and an exchange suffers a nine-figure hack. www.citationneeded.news/issue-62/

citationneeded.news

Issue 62 – Grassroots

Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto Alliance fudges the numbers, a (former) crypto industry CEO has a meltdown, and another exchange suffers a nine-figure hack.

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 17/07/2024

Most days I forget how beautiful the campus I work on can be. Today is not one of those days.

The Aula Maxima of UCC, which is a stone, castle-like building, stands on a hill behind trees and a field of wildflowers.

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So there we have it. Another "spider" that might have a massive neutron star in it - but usual caveats apply.

Finally, the light curve changes with time. This is normal behaviour for spiders, but it makes modelling them a real pain. And since the mass estimates of the neutron star depends on accurate modelling of the optical data, this leads to pretty large uncertainties in the mass.

What makes this system so interesting is that the companion star is being heated only a little bit by the neutron star. Normally in these systems, the companion is being blown away, and heated by thousands of Kelvin. Likely due to the geometry of the system.

The Orbit and Companion of PSR J1622-0315: Variable Asymmetry and...

Wonderful paper by PhD student Bidisha Sen at NTNU. She led the analysis of optical data of a "spider" pulsar system: arxiv.org/abs/2407.10800. These are binary systems with a neutron star that's ablating a nearby companion star - this behaviour gives them their "spider" name. 🔭🧵

arxiv.org

The companion to PSR J1622-0315, one of the most compact known redback millisecond pulsars, shows extremely low irradiation despite its short orbital period. We model this system to determine the...

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 12/07/2024

At that close a distance, it should be pretty constraining on whether or not it's a white dwarf. Very cool that more of these are popping up!

Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 09/07/2024

Feel like it would be wrong to not comment on how bad the weather's been this Summer regularly. Not saying anything would be like waking up every day for a month to find your body is 5 degrees colder than it should be and just pretending it's fine.

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 07/07/2024

Evidence that there has been one morning this summer where it's actually felt like summer in Ireland.

A tree in front of a nearly cloudless sky on a July morning. I'm sure there'll be a follow up photo later of it being a nearly cloudfull sky

Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 05/07/2024

Really looking forward to hosting the European Astronomical Society's annual meeting in Cork next year - the craic will be mighty! #EAS2024 #EAS2025

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 02/05/2024

The 2024 edition of the Irish National Astronomy Meeting will take place in Galway on August 29-30. If you've never been before, it's a great opportunity to meet the wider astronomy community working on the island of Ireland. astro.universityofgalway.ie/astro/inam-2...

astro.universityofgalway.ie

INAM 2024 - University of Galway

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Mark Kennedy @mcantwell.bsky.social · 06/04/2024

Launching a rocket at the moon during an eclipse is genius. You get the combined gravitational pull of the ☀️ and 🌝. Did you learn nothing from yesterday's movie?