iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 5h

It’s confusing that @theatlantic.com described this man as a “a lifelong Democrat who had voted for Trump for the first time in 2024” who when these are some of his very easily findable FB posts:

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 3h

They have the second chance tournament now, which was not a thing when Austin had his run

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 6h

(I still need to get my covid vaccine, since my office only did flu and I failed at both locations I went to today to get one)

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 6h

We arrive, check in, and then at 3 PM they say "Oh, it's going to take 45 minutes for the vaccine to thaw." WHY THE FUCK DID YOU LET ME SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT PRIOR TO THAT, THEN????????? Anyway, at 4 PM they finally vaccinate him, so we have 5/6 of the vaccines done for this household.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 6h

As of this week they still did not have it and were not sure when they would get it. I found the one Walgreens in the entire city of LA that will vaccinate 3+. It is in Hollywood, which is inconvenient for everyone. I got an appointment for 2:40. It takes 30 min to get there.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 14h

CVS: we take walk ins for vaccines Also CVS: we can’t take walk ins today

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 16h

Also one of the main characters in Numb3rs was a theoretical cosmologist!

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 16h

I'd totally watch a dinosaur for Christmas

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 16h

Haha in real life we spend most of our time in front of our computers making plots. If we're observing, we're probably not actually at the telescope but a remote observing room, staring at a computer, drinking coffee, and eating snacks. Even if we're actually at the telescope we're still doing that.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 17h

How are there so many of these?! (I know it’s because so many people have a romanticized view of what being an astronomer is really like. I had a boyfriend in college who wanted to go observing with me because it would be romantic. It was remote observing, we were clouded out, and he was in my way.)

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 17h

Haha oh yeah that’s not happening at a SLAC.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 17h

I can’t believe there’s more than one hallmark Christmas movie with an astronomy professor!

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 04/10/2026

I have not seen that, but I think maybe @astronomisty.bsky.social did a live tweet of it? Or was that a different one? I went to a SLAC in CA, and we did have a football team, so that's not so far-fetched. We were terrible, though, even by DIII standards.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 04/10/2026

Anyway this is why you don't have a roof on your ball park

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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"You do know you fail more [dissertation] proposals than any other committee member" A postdoc. On multiple dissertation committees. You can't just find and replace professor with postdoc, homies.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 04/10/2026

This is like the main reason I refuse to read this book, so at least they changed it for the movie? As a female PhD scientist I cannot believe a female PhD scientist wrote this book.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 03/10/2026

I can’t deal with humidity. When I lived in Boston I was miserable in the summer. And also the winter. And also the spring. So basically a good 80% of the year.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 03/10/2026

It has gotten worse because of climate change but yes October is frequently quite warm in LA. But it’s finally stopped being humid, so there’s that. The humidity fucking sucked and was all climate change.

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dan sinker @dansinker.com · 03/10/2026

You'd think that the Democratic party would be making hay over their opposition's biggest donor fighting to let his bot keep making revenge porn.

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Rodger Sherman @rodger.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I thought I'd seen every "make daylight savings permanent" pro/con argument and Trump storms in with: —the PGA Tour needs more afternoon daylight hours to finish golf tournaments —it's too expensive and dangerous to have people adjust the clocks in America's highest steeples and clocktowers

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 03/10/2026

Some of this is choir stuff because we are doing some deceptively tricky pieces that I have to memorize and I'm not even kidding when I tell you that one of the things I considered when quitting was that I'd have time to work on my music.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 03/10/2026

I do not understand how I have so much to do and I do not know how I would get it all done if I still had a job. (OK, some of the things I have to do are exercise and I wasn't getting that done when I was working. But Jesus. I am v privileged and have a lot of help and I still feel underwater)

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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And, for the coup de grace, two bills protecting fire survivors from predatory insurance companies, which he vetoed, deliberately, to punish fire survivors for rejecting his "reform" bill that was actually a huge payout to SCE for starting fires. calmatters.org/economy/2026...

calmatters.org

Newsom vetoes insurance-claim bills: Is it ‘petty’ politics?

California governor rejects legislation sponsored by LA fire victims, who had spoken out against his wildfire-liability effort.

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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Things Gavin Newsom has vetoed this week: -A ban on secretly recording people with smart glasses -A ban on ICE agents working for the state government -A ban on websites selling your data -A bill giving native tribes more say over water rights -A bill protecting transgender healthcare providers

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Jerry Chen @jcsalterego.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

first known snickers ad

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darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

every day it seems like a brand new sentence is written to describe the state of the world

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 02/10/2026

Indeed, and I'm looking into it! I'm also interviewing for a couple of things right now and just submitted a faculty application (long shot, for many reasons). So I've got a lot of irons in the fire and we'll see what happens! But also, I need a few weeks to recover from my last job.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 02/10/2026

Much of my wardrobe is black, although the reels are telling me it's not just if you like to wear the color black but how the color black makes your skin look. And, well, I think I look pretty damn good in black. But maybe I'm delusional.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 02/10/2026

Wait is that a new typing system? I do not know what Korean winter cold is. I’m fairly certain I’m a bright winter.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 02/10/2026

I 100% am interested in moving to Hawaii but unfortunately I’m not sure my husband would be. Also I can never move because our interest rate is 2.8% and interest rates will never be that low again.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 02/10/2026

I went down a color analysis rabbit hole about a month ago and now I keep getting reels about color analysis and now I want to get my colors done. I do not have a job, currently. Send help.

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Dr Hannah M. Rowland @hannahmrowland.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

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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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 01/10/2026

I know him personally and I don't even know if that's a real movie he was in and I don't care to look it up

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 01/10/2026

Maybe I'm a bad mom, but I don't want to watch their POV of while they play the sport? I'll probably be the mom on the sideline with a book. (Not even getting into the obvious privacy problems)

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Kirsten Bladh @kerstanley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

LA’s zoning rules require that the building not create shade but also that the developer must plant 53 trees on the lot to…create shade.

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Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈 @maxdubler.com · 01/10/2026

People are going to clown on this but we need to remember that planning for local context is important: a city with Los Angeles, California’s semi-arid Mediterranean climate only gets sunshine ~300 days a year; so it’s important to make sure you can never ever find shade in the middle of the day.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 01/10/2026

Maybe Michael Knowles can resurrect his failed acting career

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

His vocabulary is so limited it’s like reading a transcript of Koko, the gorilla who knew sign language, if Koko were a white nationalist

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Anjali Dayal @anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

these are our pianos, not theirs! I know this stuff can feel secondary with all of the immediate pain this admin causes, but in the face of such personalism, it also feels important to assert the democratic principle that these cultural inheritances don't belong to the president, they belong to us

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 01/10/2026

"they really believe it"/"they will try to do it"/"the promises are real" are things that most americans refuse to believe about politicians but if you take them seriously will help you predict political behavior more often than not

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

For a long time I've wanted a sense of how trump has or hasn't interacted with chatbots (we know he posts a lot of slop sure). And this TIME anecdote about Grok arguably leading Trump into war is just extremely bracing

Since returning to office, Trump has marveled at AI’s capabilities. He is increasingly in thrall to the tech executives courting him. In December 2025, Elon Musk returned to the Oval Office for a clandestine meeting. Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy, according to an official present. At the time, Trump was ordering missile strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were smuggling drugs into the U.S. He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Maduro. According to the official present, the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.

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Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

So much work making proposals. So much work reviewing proposals as if we could meaningfully distinguish between the 9th and 11th percentile. And then next year so many brilliant people who are going to be disappointed.

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Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This graph represents probably more than a hundred thousand hours of work by our community. Every year when I look at it I think our current proposal model is broken.

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Jared Yates Sexton @jysexton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Anyone who, in 2026, is already saying “I don’t want to vote for Newsom but I will” is part of the problem. This man is a fucking monster and has betrayed everyone imaginable. He is unacceptable in every possible way. There is no world in which this piece of shit should be trusted with power.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 30/09/2026

GOAT OR BIRD????

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 01/10/2026

Truly I find this baffling. Like, how a woman in STEM could even write this. I watched how one professor taking advantage of at least two of his undergrads had sweeping repercussions not just for them but for his grad students, as well.

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 01/10/2026

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 01/10/2026

Damn, I just finished, otherwise that would go in, for sure

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Rachel P-M @rpmastronomy.com · 30/09/2026

I have written my research statement, my teaching statement, and my inclusivity statement and I need to do my cover letter and I feel like I've hit a wall.

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