Bonus happy goats: a neighbour dropped off a bucket of apple peels. The goats like the apple peels so much they mostly ignored the geese, who also really liked the apple peels (but you'll notice the goats gave the geese a wide berth: geese are jerks)

The forecast went back down to 0 for tonight, with an official frost advisory. So I'm glad we planned for frost tonight even though it was looking iffy earlier. There are no more frosty looking temperatures in the next week, so hopefully we'll keep getting garden produce a little bit longer, we'll see how much damage happens tonight.

Harvested the monster zucchinis, non-monster corn, the last of the shallots, most of the onions, and some potatoes, beets and carrots for good measure (they will be totally fine with a light frost, I just want to eat them).

Then we put straw hats on all the squash and pumpkins - the vines will die tonight, but the squash will be fine out in the field with just a little cover, it's not THAT cold yet. We also put row-cover over the tomatoes, maybe we can get a few more days of tomatoes.

Finally, one of these little thunderstorms is going to rain on us instead of disappearing! (I hope. I maybe just jinxed it. Gosh we need some rain...)

I've got family coming to visit today (YAY) but that means I need to do a whole bunch of cleaning and organizing, including freezing/dehydrating a bunch of veggies I picked yesterday, I need to send off 2 letters for review for the American Astronomical Society to officially comment on stupid things that are proposed to happen in orbit, do a little bit of writing, and the goats are insistent that I need to move the fence to new grass today.

Last time I was on a BBC podcast I tried to describe one of the pieces of debris that fell as about the size and shape of the hood of a semi truck. The very proper hosts with very proper British accents paused for a few seconds and then very politely asked "...a what?" And I stammered something like "uhhh... a lorry? Is that a lorry?"

And then they cut in me saying "lorry" in a different tone of voice over "semi truck" and it doesn't even make sense. Wish me luck with my English words today!

Today's only(?) media interview is for the BBC Rethink podcast. There's construction going on outside my office on campus, so this'll be another record-from-home-and-hope-my-non-Starlink-rural-internet-doesn't-crap-out.

@Strider_UK @sidereal There's a big difference between spellcheck and LLMs that are built on stolen IP. You know that.

RE: https://raggedfeathers.com/@lilithsaintcrow/117020904859904785

The book contract I signed a few days ago has a "no genAI" clause. Neither I, the author, nor the editor/publisher are allowed to use genAI. I am extremely happy about having that written officially in the document!

The astronomy cloud computing system is down. Again.

(It is down a lot, but I don't use it that often lately. Otherwise I would complain a lot more)

Always makes me so sad that there's just buttloads of money being dumped into AI data centers so people can make awful slop no one wants, but the science computing infrastructure is held together with hope, duct tape, and someone's leftover grant money from 5 years ago.

@mayintoronto I want to read more fantasy books, do you recommend starting on wheel of time if I've never read it?

Or this shit: https://www.cnn.com/science/space-forge-factory-semiconductors-spc

I guess factories in orbit are already a thing? Tiny factories, for now. Which then have to drop their precious cargo back through the atmosphere somehow and recover it? How does this make any sense economically at all?

Like this shit: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/27/meta-inks-deal-for-solar-power-at-night-beamed-from-space/

Don't worry guys, the CEO says you can stare right into the infrared beam and it's totally safe! I trust him, don't you?

(How you transmit usable amounts of power with a beam that's so diffuse that you can look at it I have no fucking idea.)

I'm trying to rage-write an article about all the completely awful, useless, polluting, dangerous shit that companies are proposing to launch into orbit and I can't even tell what's fake and what's real on these fucking techbro websites anymore. It's all so fucking ludicrous.

I have a really nice (horrifying) image stack that one of my research team members made, that powerfully demonstrates what a huge problem satellite streaks are for wide-field imaging. This is a 3 hour stack of star-subtracted 5 minute exposures using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The short diagonal lines are asteroids. The long diagonal lines are sunlit satellites that passed through the field of view during the exposure.

My mom is having major surgery right now, and for a lot of reasons I can't be there, and I'm a ball of stress and guilt. Other family is there and keeping me updated, and I'm trying to help keep them distracted during surgery.

Can I channel this stress into work I need to do today? Probably not, but I will attempt it...

Upside to 2am barn checks for the #BabyGoatCountdown: there were full-sky auroras! (It *finally* wasn't cloudy, yay)

Good morning! It's very cold and sparkly. And there are no new baby goats. But the 5 baby goats so far are SO CUTE and very healthy. #BabyGoatCountdown

Oh my god the "PUBLIC INTEREST" section is a giant love fest over all the things that AI isn't actually doing. Don't worry guys, if you launch data centers into orbit, they are way greener! There's always solar power in space! Please just ignore all the rocket exhaust, ablation products, and shit hitting the ground... Also the fact that data centers in space are almost certainly physically impossible...

"BLUE ORIGIN BACKGROUND" a.k.a. the grandiose greenwashing section. Oh they named this Project Sunrise?! Project Sunrise sounds like a billion times worse than Reflect Orbital...

Whatever it is, at least they didn't name it Project Sunshine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SUNSHINE

You just never fucking know with these techbro companies...