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Pauline Barmby

@pbarmby.bsky.social
6.7K followers 1.5K following 3.3K posts

LLM-free science: orcid.org/0000-0003-2767-0090, fiction: www.galacticwords.com. Words in Year’s Best Cdn F&SF, Utopia SF, Analog, OnSpec, MNRAS, ApJ, etc. Knitter, curler, sometime runner. 🇨🇦 & minor planet 281067. She/her.

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Reposted by Pauline Barmby
maura quint @mauraquint.bsky.social · 15h
Yes every woman has been harassed, many assaulted. But every woman has also experienced invisible loss from moments she avoided harassment. She felt a space becoming unsafe, so she left, while men stayed on. And in leaving, she lost: opportunities, experiences, learning, promotions, even simply fun.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 22h
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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Arp Bot 🤖 @arpbot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
VLT image of Arp 289, also known as NGC 3981. This image was captured as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems Program, which uses the Very Large Telescope to photograph beautiful objects in the southern skies when conditions don’t allow scientific observations to be made. Credit: ESO Source
The yellow core of a disrupted spiral galaxy is surrounded by irregular, translucent spiral arms. The inner part of the galaxy is seen at an angle, so that it appears oval-shaped rather than circular. Dark brown dust lanes and pink star forming regions cross a yellow haze of older stars. The faint blue arms unfurl from the center, like paint flung out of a spinning canvas. They are dotted with blue star clusters. The arms stretch out to the right of the frame. The black background of space is filled with foreground stars and tiny background galaxies.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Good luck to everyone finishing off their JWST proposals tonight. You got this!
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Astro-colleagues: does anyone happen to know the Roman telescope’s etendue?
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JayIsPainting 🍁 @jayispainting.earthskyart.ca · 27/09/2026
Sunday space art #sciart Home of Giants 86×96.5cm 34x38in Oil on canvas 2026 Based on a JWST Nircam image of a stellar nursery & the home of the massive stars Pismis 24-1 & 2 which are 74 & 66 times the size of our sun. earthskyart.ca/product/home...
Large impressionist painting of a swirling orange yellow and red nebula at the bottom and upper right , some white clouds above
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
My fictioneering has been in the doldrums lately: plots don’t work, characters are boring, setting? Never heard of him. So here, have a ridiculous Fibonacci-type poem instead
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Dr. Jillian Scudder @jillianscudder.com · 27/09/2026
It seems I’ve swept past 6k followers today in part due to a burst of new folks finding me from this starter pack: go.bsky.app/2LmKSDN Let me do a quick introduction thread to me and my books!
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Subscribe to one of the best (& best-run) speculative fiction magazines! Your life will be better!
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Katherine Addison/Sarah Monette @pennyvixen.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Same.
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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Learning to analyze, to question, to pursue knowledge, to build arguments based on evidence, and to discard sophistry: these are values that the sciences, social sciences, and humanities share. And we share the battle to protect this style of inquiry from barbarians who would destroy it.
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STARtorialist @startorialist.com · 26/09/2026
Good morning from the pale gray skies of NYC! Our Equinox Sale is on this week - Buy One, Get One 50% Off almost everything in the shop until Sunday! Shop.STARtorialist.com
shop.startorialist.com
STARtorialist Online Shop
STARtorialist is a women-owned small business founded by professional astronomers to curate space- and science-themed products, support independent designers, and contribute to STEM education and outr...
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I absolutely love the idea of everyone across the world, looking up at the cosmos, together. Join in the international fun for 100 hours of stargazing! The challenges start this Thursday! 🔭🎢🧪⚛️ ℹ️: 100hours.online
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Chris McLaren ☢️ @chrismclaren.com · 23/09/2026
Actor Jesse Rath, wearing nerd glasses, puts a comforting hand on the shoulder of a man facing away from us. He says "There's nothing women like more than physics well applied."
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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Reminder that in Canada upon becoming an engineer you get an iron ring made of a collapsed bridge, purposely designed to be uncomfortable, to remind you that your ethics demand you give a fuck even about the boring grudgework of such as double-checking your math. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring
en.wikipedia.org
Iron Ring - Wikipedia
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
You don’t see a lot of speculative fiction set in Saskatchewan. Madeleine Vigneron’s “Country Muisc” in this month’s @clarkesworldmagazine.com takes me back to a place I’ve never lived but know well. It’s a moving meditation on life and change. clarkesworldmagazine.com/vigneron_09_...
clarkesworldmagazine.com
Country Music by Madeleine Vigneron
Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.
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no brain, only alison @alisonborealis.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Beyond the environmental and plagiarism issues, if AI proponents want to understand why so many people are AI skeptical, this is a great little explainer from the crochet and knitting world. youtube.com/shorts/WF-Lx...
youtube.com
What am I looking at?!
YouTube video by Knot Impressed
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AP Stylebook @apstylebook.com · 23/09/2026
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics.
apnews.com
https://apnews.com/article/openai-safety-ai-framework-089e75b95bc935af092da7b79d92706d
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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 23/09/2026
You have to take all of this in context and keep the share price in the back of your mind as well. "Why is all this news coming out now?" is a question I often ask myself. In this case, it turns out there is a critical Starlink test next week that has to succeed for an IPO promise.
au.pcmag.com
No Pressure: A Massive Starlink Upgrade Hinges on SpaceX's Next Starship Launch
Next week's Starship Flight 14 will deploy the first operational Starlink V3 satellites, which promise a 10x leap in bandwidth capacity. A failure, however, could be a brutally expensive loss.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Yeah, I don’t think so, Springer-Nature
Screenshot from Springer-Nature website showing the cost of a hardcover print copy of the “Handbook of X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Astrophysics” as USD 4999.99 excluding taxes. Unclear if it includes shipping.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
In discussing the dumbassery of western Canada going on permanent* daylight savings time, we wondered what fraction of folks really think they’re getting an extra hour of light every day. Clearly science educators have failed to explain the tyranny of obliquity. *I give it 3 years, max.
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Jasmine 🌌🔭 @astrojaz.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
the moon is so pretty that we have an entire night dedicated to the whole world looking up at her 🥹🌙 happy international observe the moon night!!
The crescent Earth above the MoonA close-up of the Moon’s heavily cratered surface
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It’s Saturday and a good day to read my pal AD Sui’s @clarkesworldmagazine.com story “To Walk This Distant Shore with You”: clarkesworldmagazine.com/sui_09_26/
clarkesworldmagazine.com
To Walk This Distant Shore with You by A.D. Sui
Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
One of the two (2) daily westbound flights from the London, Canada airport … is a four-hour flight at six in the morning (the other one is at 6 or 8pm). Usually no drunk people, but if Ryanair drove WestJet out, I’m not sure it could be that much worse.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It’s Saturday and a good day to read my pal AD Sui’s @clarkesworldmagazine.com story “To Walk This Distant Shore with You”: clarkesworldmagazine.com/sui_09_26/
clarkesworldmagazine.com
To Walk This Distant Shore with You by A.D. Sui
Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.
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Karla Ortiz @kortizart.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
“An astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions” and the “largest theft of labor in human history” is what a Microsoft executive privately said about GenAi as shown in newly unsealed court filings. And these court filings get worse. These execs knew all along the immense theft they committed.
404media.co
‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft
"Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions."
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Funranium (AKA Phil Broughton) @funranium.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Going to stop there but I read back over those precepts and ask yourself "Does it sound like the AI Safety people considered any of this in their work?" You can also use the TESCREAL memeplex to find ways to dismiss each of these precepts because their real guiding light is "But I want to." ~fin~
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Paul Gribble 🇨🇦 @gribblelab.org · 18/09/2026
One important distinction to keep in mind is that in science and in grad school we are not in the business of selling software products, we are in the business of advancing our human understanding. These create very different incentive structures. Racing to ship product is not what we are here for.
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Raquel 🌈✨ @aistear.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Blumineck lo ha vuelto a hacer 🥹 le aplaudo hasta que se me caigan las manos, bravo. "Be masculine, be feminine, be neither, or be both. But be kind."
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
OK team at least some of you who follow me will be interested in this: kasmana.people.charleston.edu/MATHFICT/def... Database leaves something to be desired (seems you can either search or sort but not both) but at least the SF looks pretty comprehensive.
kasmana.people.charleston.edu
MathFiction Homepage
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
A solid seven short story rejections this week. With a few hours still to go, I suppose. Onward.
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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The one reason why you should make me your Senator for all 50 states:
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Canada: messes up international student situation USA: hold my beer
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EarthSky @earthskyscience.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Shortly after sunset tonight, the slender young #moon will shine near #Venus. And Venus is at its greatest brilliancy this week! Venus will slip away in the evening twilight next month and emerge in the morning sky in November. Visit EarthSky’s night sky guide: buff.ly/9F3EOGK
Sky chart shows 2 positions of the thin crescent moon near bright Venus, low in the southwest along the slanted green ecliptic line.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Ok, I agree with a lot of this but “Making these [perfomance] metrics public within the department…would certainly shake up the culture and push underperformers to shape up or leave” is frankly laughable. Many long-serving profs do so out of ego. Can’t shame them into retiring.
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Canadian Paintings @canadianpaintings.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Ground Control Chris Flodberg 2026
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
All 10 provinces, no territories (yet). Have lived in 3 provinces; 4 if you count yearly summer visits to Sask.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Awake at 0530 on a Saturday thinking about who will teach third-year quantum mechanics in winter 2028. It’s possible there is too much department chair in my life.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The sky is like that here today. A touch surreal.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Slightly proud of (possibly) inventing a new bit of academic jargon. “Anti-service”: when a faculty member does something that makes more work for other people.
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JayIsPainting 🍁 @jayispainting.earthskyart.ca · 10/09/2026
And it's done. I was going to call it Hubble's Bubble but that might confuse it with an inconsistency in the Hubble constant. Iykyk. So I'm going to call it Sharpless 162 Oil on canvas 51×76 cm 20x30" 2026 It is available (to non US customers) #art #painting #sciart
WIP painting of swirling orange red and yellow nebula gas with a blueish bubble in the centre with hundreds of stars.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Alzheimer’s is a terrible way to live and an even more terrible way to die. I hope these findings hold up and point the way to better treatment/prevention.
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Robert McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
No one should be surprised that OpenAI — a company that built their systems on stolen work — would steal the work of researchers and try to take credit for it.
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Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcculloch.com · 08/09/2026
I have received news of a perfectly named cafe located on the waterfront of Nova Scotia's capital, if you know what I mean
"Broken Man cafe" sign on a big plate glass window, through which one can see cafe tables and chairs and backs of people's heads. In the distance, a sign indicates that this is Pier 22 on the Halifax waterfront
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 07/09/2026
Isaac Newton famously wrote “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Academic progress is always iterative and builds on the work of others, and a key component of academic culture is proper citation & attribution. It would be a travesty to let LLMs destroy that.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
150 pages into what is so far an excellent novel and just now realizing that I missed something completely obvious & crucial in the worldbuilding. You’d think I’d be a better reader after 50 years at it.
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Pauline Barmby @pbarmby.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
This book was a ton of fun! You should check it out!
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ℳatt @matttomic.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I've seen everyone sharing that US Dialect Quiz so I decided to make my own, much crappier, CANADIAN DIALECT QUIZ to guess where in Canada you're from
A flow chart I have created with multiple questions and the answers determine where you're from.

Question 1 is do you call it a hydro bill (which then branches down to ON, QC, BC, MB) or an electric bill (which then branches down to SK, AB, NS, NB, PEI, NL)

Question 2 is do you call it a cabin (BC, MB, AB, SK) cottage (ON and atlantic) camp (northern Ontario) chalet (QC) or bungalow (Cape Breton)

To delineate BC from MB: do you call it dinner or supper

To delineate southern Ontario rural or big city: have you heard of a stag & doe

To delineate SK from AB: do you call a hoodie a bunnyhug

And finally to delineate NL from the other atlantic provinces: whaddayat? (Correct answer: dis is it b'y)
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Trollbreath Magazine @trollbreathmag.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
You may have noticed we released a new issue yesterday, and we're thrilled with the responses. But we could use more subscriptions to help us continue doing this work. We're almost halfway through our seed money. Just $5 every 3 months, or $20 for a year. magazine.trollbreath.com/membership-a...
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Haven Spec Magazine @havenspec.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
ICYMI, "A Tree is not a Home" is a short story in our 🌟January 2026 issue🌟 by @dianadima.com about seeking refuge wherever you might find it. Read it for the quiet grief and pain of its birch tree narrator havenspec.com/fiction/a-tr...
An excerpt of the short story "A Tree is not a Home" by Diana Dima, in Issue 21 of Haven Spec Magazine (January 2026). The text reads:

A tree is not a home. But you, twelve years old and bony, dragging a suitcase behind a gray mother into the gray building where you were now going to live, looked back at me as though it was all wrong. As though the building should have been me. 

You came out soon afterwards, walked across the parking lot and over the low wire fence into my patch of land. (I saw you, in a manner of speaking, like an arrow rushing at me in the dark.) 

I could tell that you had never seen a birch before. 

The background is the issue's cover art, titled Pile, by Aimee Cozza. It shows a figure with blood around their mouth and on their neck and chest, cuddling a pack of wolves.
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