Shout out to fantastically nice and helpful rural neighbours!! Catastrophic farm infrastructure problem fixed!

First major infrastructure disaster back home on the farm that we're having to figure out remotely. Scary awful medical things happening with a close family member. Reflect Orbital fucking sucks. I am hopelessly behind on a bazillion things I said I would do. Feeling very stressed.

But I have a pre-interview for CBC's Cross-Country Checkup in a few minutes, because they want to talk about space exploration and satellite pollution. So at least I'm succeeding in science communication?

For no reason at all, please give me your favourite cow-related figures of speech! (Stuff like "No use crying over spilled milk" or "until the cows come home", puns extremely welcome)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/111926354737647084

It is pancake day! I know what I am definitely making for dinner (though I should have planned ahead better and bought maple syrup to NZ with me from Canada...yikes it's expensive and in teeny weeny bottles here!)

What the actual fuck. It's not April Fools Day, right? This is real?! Fuck you, SpaceX. Maybe this will help regulators realize how fucking shortsighted companies' plans in orbit are?

Surely the FCC won't rubber-stamp-approve this one??... ONE MILLION STARLINKS FUUUUCCCKKKKKK

https://au.pcmag.com/networking/115649/spacex-eyes-1-million-satellites-for-orbital-data-center-push

In 1964, the first simulation showing that Pluto is in a mean-motion resonance with Neptune was published: https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1965Obs....85...43C

They ran a 120,000 year simulation that showed libration of the resonant angle for the first time. This must have been terrifyingly hard to do. Punch cards, vacuum tubes, FORTRAN? I don't even know how they did this, but it was run on the Naval Ordnance Research Calculator

This was the first time Pluto's orbital stability was explained.

A paper from a few years ago by Dung et al. looked at how often programmers were not credited as authors in genetics research papers from the 1970s and 1980s, but were acknowledged as programmers who ran the code for the analysis, and how often those uncredited scientists were women https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/211/2/363/5931132?login=false

It used to be very common practice to have a programmer do your analysis for you, and they weren't considered a co-author (probably because many were women)

I'm sorry to see obituaries for Dr. Gladys West this morning: https://thezebra.org/2026/01/18/dr-gladys-west-mathematician-whose-work-made-gps-possible-dies-at-95/

She was brilliant and did a lot of incredibly important scientific work, a lot of which was hidden/uncredited early on, because she was a mathematician in a time when "computer" was a job description.

Funny observation from driving across nearly half of Canada in the last few days: in Regina it was -25C, in Calgary/Banff it was -10C, and around Vancouver and Victoria it's been 0 to 5C. And everyone wears the same clothes (big coat, hat, scarf, gloves) in each of these places, because it's the typical cold winter temperatures. Acclimatization is impressive!

#ProfSamLectureTour

DarkSky International just posted their position letter on Reflect Orbital. It is direct and to the point:

"Based on current scientific evidence, DarkSky does not see a viable pathway for such systems to align with responsible lighting principles or with our mission to protect natural darkness. These systems would introduce significant ecological, human health, safety, and astronomical risks at a global scale."

Read their letter and add your name here:

https://darksky.org/news/organizational-statement-reflect-orbital/