I'm famous in Ituna!

I've got the house totally opened up to absorb that last bit of warmth! The animals seem to know they should be out and enjoying the sun also.

It's supposed to be 25C today, and snow tomorrow. (And that is well within normal for Saskatchewan temperature swings, but I'm sure climate change has added its extra special boost to this).

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disasters, and destroy the night sky, is going to launch.

A bunch of astronomers and I have sent out a fact sheet about them to a bunch of journalists, but very few are going to write about this. So, let me try posting it all here.

Here's what I know about Reflect Orbital and all the downsides:

Damn, it sure was nice not hearing much about Poilievre for a while there. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-byelection-parliament-return-1.7612438

Alberta, you suck. (Of course, Saskatchewan has the same vote-for-absolutely-anything-conservative mentality...I just don't get it).

I'm really hopefully freaking out about nothing, but I am working with a Canadian student based at a high-ranking US university, and I haven't heard from them at all after they were supposed to get back to their university after an international trip.

Are they being a typical busy grad student and just not responding to email or texts? Or are they sitting in a cell in a for-profit concentration camp somewhere? I can't believe this is a thing I have to consider. FUCK.

Well fuck. Reflect Orbital just filed for their first satellite with the FCC. https://www.reflectorbital.com/

I hate them even more than AST SpaceMobile. At least AST does something mildly useful, unlike Reflect Orbital, which is 100% a scam and will collide with a lot of junk in orbit.

Time to go rage-scream in the hay field. And then go to a meeting with astronomers to talk about what we can do to fight it.

Good morning from the goat-and-llama parade

Hahaha well, I just got elected to be on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Astronomical Society. I'm also the co-chair of the light/satellite pollution committee for the American Astronomical Society. I think I have volunteered for tooooo mannnnyyyy thiinnngssss! (Good thing they're all full of truly awesome people that I'm excited to work with.)

Now I can *officially* yell a bunch about satellite pollution in TWO countries!

I almost forgot! Happy Billionaires-Dropping-Shit-On-Canada-From-Orbit Day!!

1 year ago today, a SpaceX Crew Dragon cargo trunk, ejected by the the Axiom 3 private astronaut mission, made an uncontrolled reentry and sprayed potentially lethal debris across Saskatchewan farmland. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacex-dropped-space-junk-on-my-neighbors-farm-heres-what-happened-next/

SpaceX has dropped a bunch of other shit from orbit on a bunch of other places since then, so I guess this'll be a recurring "celebration"

Good morning from a moon of Jupiter, apparently

This is a joke, right? RIGHT? Please let this be a joke

https://www.reflectorbital.com/lighting

Whoa, I have almost 10,000 followers.

Hi everyone! Enjoy this goat on a tire, as a little treat.

Everything on here seems to be really awful horribleness (everybody please stop actively committing genocide?!) I'm feeling quite overwhelmed at the scale of all the bad things that are happening.

After this news interview about SpaceX dropping garbage from orbit on everyone, today I'm going to focus on small things I can directly improve. Taking care of the land that I am so lucky to live on. Growing and making good food. Making my goats happy.

I will share happy goat pictures later!

Ooo I like this piece of accidental Kuiper Belt art

My partner took our older farm dog to the vet today because she hasn't eaten much for a couple days and found out she's got a massive abdominal tumor. Decided to have her put to sleep at home as soon as possible. I am totally still in denial, it's so sudden. (Nobody is showing up to the meeting I'm supposed to have right now, maybe I'll go hang out with her in the barn and try to process this...)

Just a reminder that there's not a binary "we're doomed"/"we're not doomed." Every single thing you and I do to use less energy makes the future less shitty. Don't give up hope.

Don't write back to me with all the reasons to give up on the future. If you give up on making the future better, you are part of the problem.

Tell me something you're doing right now to make the future better, even if it's something small!

I hate hate HATE dealing with anything related to mechanics or auto parts stores, because I really don't know what I'm talking about with the workings of cars, and that makes the men (always men) working there treat me like an airhead and I have to resist the urge to scream "I am an astrophysicist! I'm not stupid! I just don't know the proper name for that car thingie I'm asking about!!" and I feel stupid and ragey the whole time I'm there. AAAGGGHHH.

I am a ball of guilt. So many emails asking me to do so many things. I should be getting ready to travel to a workshop on satellite pollution but instead I'm home sick and doing a shitty job of pretty much everything, and feeling bad about pretty much everything.

Mostly, I am so incredibly angry about getting covid. I am grateful for the vaccines that I've gotten that made it not a big deal, and the tests that let me diagnose it, but SO MAD that everyone is ok spreading it.

Everyone in the family is testing positive now :( We were pretty sure that kid #1 had it a couple weeks ago already and just never tested positive, but they're testing positive now, so I guess that was a different illness?? UGH.

Anyway, it's going to be a very very long week with all of us stuck at home.

Please send kid-friendly craft or drawing tutorial recommendations and nature/cooking/cute videos!

I'm talking about gravitational waves and black holes in today's lecture and I just watched a bunch of the simulations here and now I'm feeling slightly anxious about getting swallowed by a black hole.

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/videos?category=simulation

(I know, it's not going to happen. But entire stars are getting swallowed by black holes somewhere in the universe all the time! Wild)

nostr:npub15878x9ccu54yvm7ucw6w8zpcnv98e906fgtkwffxwxz0zllkhckq4kc8yf It's just a tad below freezing. It's supposed to be up in the 20s (C) in a couple days though.