iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 27/09/2026

A fellow S6 enjoyer! I think the trio are the scariest villains because they are the closest to existing irl and the show was way ahead of its time in portraying what actually happens when incels get power. Very fitting that Warren did the most damage to Buffy and the scoobies of any big bad.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 27/09/2026

“up to and including Babylon 5” told me everything about this person. I keep wanting to write a paper with some fellow astrophysicists about how the way the EA people talk about the math in their future-casting (using astro in the razzle-dazzle) is so wrong that they are clearly not fully numerate

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 14/09/2026

You’re not alone. It was a childhood staple. I still have grape nuts in yogurt pretty frequently, but I haven’t had hot grape nuts for ages. I remember the satisfaction of hitting the sweet spot where it was no longer tooth-crackingly hard, but wasn’t yet mushy. Thank you for the reminder!

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 23/08/2026

Make a band bigger Nirvanae

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 17/08/2026

Here’s to speaking up! 🍻 I once answered that question with, more or less, “have you tried actively looking for them?” and was met with blank stares. (Not in my current Astro group, which is great)

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 17/08/2026

Ughhhhhhh But srsly what if you got up and left though

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 14/08/2026

His rendition of “Friend Like Me” is legendary!

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 14/08/2026

This confirms the rumour that every Astronomer Royal has to do a solo performance/interpretation of a Disney animated film. As part of the duties of the role.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 14/08/2026

“Phenomenal cosmic powers…”

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 12/08/2026

Lovely - and congratulations!

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 09/08/2026

Yay, pre-ordered! Based on the video preview soundtrack I assume it has mystical creatures and sword fights and stuff? Dragons are how you build a universe?

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 09/08/2026

Gift card to a place that very openly supports progressive causes? A card that says “congratulations, in your names I’ve donated to X charity for helping trans youth”?

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 07/08/2026

Many years ago I had a paper where revisions took six weeks solely because every time my self-reminder that critiques are helpful was overwhelmed by intense frustration with a difficult referee, I put it down and came back the next day. That was a long one. But the final paper is probably better.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 05/08/2026

I’ve arrived here too. I’m still at the point where the things they’re best at are also the things I most enjoy doing myself, but the prospect of choosing either falling behind or having less fun in my work isn’t my favourite

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 04/08/2026

Huzzah, congratulations!

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 01/08/2026

I was pretty late, I think, to the understanding that Google and others let their plain search get so awful in large part because they knew that eventually their LLMs being better at it would be a way to monetise users directly, while still serving ads. And people are eagerly signing up for it.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 01/08/2026

These replies are good for finding fellow hesitants. I’ve deliberately used an LLM 3 times, once because I wanted to see how well it did on the UG astro worksheets I used to set, and 2x because plain search utterly failed to find the answer I knew existed. Still had to verify the output, of course.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 31/07/2026

That’s one way to go, but also, the funding level for calls directly for AI is currently quite imbalanced compared to other calls, in a way that we could easily deal with all these cuts and still be giving disproportionately to it bsky.app/profile/kirs...

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 31/07/2026

Science has always been political, Margot, even if we might individually like to avoid that. Gutting the budget for curiosity-driven research to give it to AI grants without transparency was at least partly a political decision. It doesn’t help anyone to pretend otherwise.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 30/07/2026

Ah, yes, that familiar refrain. It’s almost a rite of passage at this point, the bastards.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 26/07/2026

These are great so far - I’d only watched one before this one and, with both, I learned loads and found nearly everyone charming and kind. Top notch public outreach. Also I really want to know how the interaction played out where the kid asked why she was dressed like a ninja. 😂

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 24/07/2026

That sentiment is everywhere, yes, but my point is that it doesn’t dominate our field, despite this one talk. Sometimes the person winning the big career award got there with an approach that’s out of date, whether the awardee realises it or not. We continually choose our culture and it isn’t that.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 23/07/2026

It was pretty much exactly what I expected from this speaker. And what the RAS should have expected.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 23/07/2026

Not exactly refreshing, original, or as edgy as it seems to end a talk on a confirmation of the “publish or perish” mentality. ECRs should take this as informative about one person’s attitude, one which is not necessarily broadly shared in modern astrophysics culture #NAM2026

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 23/07/2026

To those at the #NAM2026 plenary hearing things like “and that’s when I knew we were going to win [over other survey teams]”, know that you can do brilliant science in a collaborative and mutually encouraging way, rather than treating everyone else as a competitor. We decide/set our culture. 🔭

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 22/07/2026

Congratulations, Professor! 🎉

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 19/07/2026

Of course, “not faster, just different” is assuming testing and validation will occur at a level such that the scientists can still truthfully claim ownership of the work, rather than editorship or supervision.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 19/07/2026

I doubt it’s a disadvantage, but then I’m still a skeptic about where (if) it might fit into my scientific process myself. I doubt it’s faster, just different. OTOH People using it for translation, for writing while dyslexic, etc? I can absolutely see it levelling the playing field for them.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 19/07/2026

I’m hearing this sort of thing too about genAI, including people using it as an advanced search for niche papers in a less familiar subfield, and people using it for code. In follow-up questions, the same people don’t mind the validation of papers, and prefer code review to code writing.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 16/07/2026

I added it up a few years back and if I leave every light on in my house it costs about 2 pennies a day. I started wondering if power cycling risked breaking the LEDs (I’ve had to replace a few) and if I thus should just leave them always on as policy. (I don’t, yet.)

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 16/07/2026

I am glad that textile-based sun protection is more normal now. When I was a kid it was deeply uncool to wear a t-shirt at the beach/in the pool, and I’m fair enough that I should have been reapplying SPF every 20 minutes in SoCal, and as a result I will always be on Shoulder/Back Melanoma Watch.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 12/07/2026

Huh. So was the professor suggesting 65% was too low?! 😂 I suspect no response is really needed, unless you think it affected your mark? Sorry you’re having to deal with that.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 11/07/2026

Oof, that’s rough. Did you ever respond? From my instructor POV, apart from never writing that comment, a top-notch response to it would be something like “I am at your disposal to meet anytime, anywhere for an in-person assessed conversation about my work in this paper, which was entirely my own.”

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 11/07/2026

(I think the whole world adopting UTC is also extremely sensible, and obviously our primary motivation for doing it should be because it will make planning my observing nights easier)

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 11/07/2026

I happen to live in the time zone that matches UTC when it’s not DST and I just want to shout “just start work & school at a different time! Don’t kill the celestially grounded clock that you all insisted on baselining!” when there are murmurs of the government here killing GMT 😅

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 11/07/2026

I’m more thinking that “midday on the solstice on a designated meridian” is supposed to be physically meaningful in a larger sense, and then we have a relatively simple way of explaining deviations from that based on geography, and it’s the notion of a permanent +1 that puts me over the edge 😂

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 11/07/2026

As a night owl I love DST, but as an astronomer, I can’t get behind a proposal to make it permanent. Midday already has enough approximations around its intended definition.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 04/07/2026

This is the first year since I started sewing that I have enough linen and/or viscose tops & bottoms to wear them 24/7 during an entire heat wave and OH BOY does it ever make a huge difference! (I know everyone knows this; it’s just my first lived experience of the difference.)

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Reposted by Brooke Simmons

Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 28/06/2026

We are running a crisis mapping project to identify road blockages in Venezuela following the earthquakes. It’s been cloudy, which obscures satellite imagery, but there are some clear areas to classify right now: www.zooniverse.org/projects/ali...

zooniverse.org

Road Blockage and Bridge Damage | Planetary Response Network: Venezuela Earthquake 2026 | Zooniverse - People-powered research

Help humanitarians deliver aid in Venezuela

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 28/06/2026

zooniverse.org

Road Blockage and Bridge Damage | Planetary Response Network: Venezuela Earthquake 2026 | Zooniverse - People-powered research

Help humanitarians deliver aid in Venezuela

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 25/06/2026

But maybe it’s not ridiculous because of subsidy rules and the notion of making incremental improvements for financial reasons and the fact we in The North still need heating 20x more than cooling. It’s probably a rational choice, but it doesn’t feel like it. Anyway. Hope you can cool down. /rant

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 25/06/2026

At the same time, I could easily become That American in local conversations offline. My campus is putting in a bunch of heat pumps as part of a Net Zero thing but they *only* talk about heating efficiency, and possibly aren’t doing infrastructure work to enable the cooling side. That is ridiculous.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 25/06/2026

If the person whose years-old video helped me decide my criteria for selecting a portable AC unit that is sadly my best current option is writing stuff like “it’s not hard” about European solutions but citing Walmart devices and prices… what even is the point of the conversation, you know?

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 25/06/2026

It certainly doesn’t help the mood to not be able to escape the heat despite my actually trying to make informed and affordable decisions about doing so (everything’s been backordered for weeks!), and then come here and see someone I respect write “you can always put a hole in your wall” and so on.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 25/06/2026

As an American now settled in the UK, this has been fascinating to watch. The vocal posters on both continents seem to be assuming those on the other side of the pond are, in some way, doing anything other than making the best decisions they are individually able to.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 22/06/2026

Yes, swamp coolers work, to a point. They work far better in a dry heat, which this isn’t, plus at some point (and at some times of day in front of some windows) they heat up the room by the fan motor warmth and drawing in warmer outside air. But, used mindfully, they can help prevent heat stroke.

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 20/06/2026

Oh wow! Totally understand keeping the wheel going right now. But glad you had a chance to smile at yourself for finishing. It’s such a big deal. Good luck with everything else!

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 20/06/2026

Yeah. There are medications that make people more prone to heat stroke too, often because their body signals about overheating get suppressed. (Incl some hormones iirc?) In addition to cool showers, I recommend an ice pack in the pillowcase under the neck, to cool you down enough to fall asleep. ❤️🧊

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Brooke Simmons @vrooje.net · 20/06/2026

Congratulations! Well done, hope you can take a moment to celebrate before diving into viva prep. Such an achievement! 🎉

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