Posts by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
(DIR) Post #AYkgdffE0UfuHLUIOe by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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PSA: Anyone showing up in my mentions trying to defend or excuse bigotry and things that kill people gets reported and blocked.
(DIR) Post #B4ABpeHzxytQP9lp0y by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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Yet again, USA:Require that Congress do its job, end all of this, #ImpeachHegseth, and #ImpeachTrump.Give them no choice otherwise.QT Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com2026 March 6The killing of Iranian children during an illegal war is an impeachable offense (not to mention a grave crime) and Congress should really act like it. 15 Republicans in the Senate could end this nightmare before it somehow gets even worse.https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mggquwmxos2q
(DIR) Post #B4ABpgY1ZMttPRHeGu by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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Now I am wondering how many Republican members of Congress will need MRIs sometime soon.If they cannot be made to care about anything other than immediate personal consequences.QT C&EN (Chemical & Engineering News) @cenmag.bsky.social2026 March 7The war in Iran has taken one-third of the world’s helium supply off the market. And if the conflict continues for more than 2 weeks, disruption for helium users could take months to resolve. https://bsky.app/profile/cenmag.bsky.social/post/3mgi65sinds2e
(DIR) Post #B4ABxWmhkjPrRhtEcy by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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219 Representatives refused to do their jobs and stop Donald Trump's illegal war.While they did, Trump threatened to start another.Yet again, USA:Require that Congress end all of this, #ImpeachTrump, and remove him.Give them no choice otherwise.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/05/us-house-war-powers-resolution-vote
(DIR) Post #B4cdukpvI001IijszA by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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This is an occasional reminder that there is most of a century of wizard-school stories written by authors who are not horrible people.From Le Guin's "Earthsea" through to Novik's "Scholomance Trilogy".
(DIR) Post #B5MDuYCAd38gYfXmlM by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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Today in Research Notes of the AAS:Lin & Sie 2026, "Mercury: A Planet by Solar Proxy?" - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ae5e75Provocative title aside, the interesting thing here is the review of how fast volcanoids get destroyed: Tens of thousands of years for ~1 km objects and hundreds of thousands of years for ~100 m ones at 0.387 au.
(DIR) Post #B5MDuYR3jh35IqVfyC by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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If you should want another way to get planetary scientists to argue, here is another question:Is Mercury a comet?
(DIR) Post #B5laXAatMoOAb5vS8u by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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RE: https://mastodon.com.br/@xkcd/116480390342730879As an astronomer; I once spent six months working on a project that turned out to be impossible because Earth has an atmosphere.RT: https://mastodon.com.br/users/xkcd/statuses/116480390342730879
(DIR) Post #B5noSyFH7ln0oZctKC by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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Starlink continues to have been designed to sell a small number of users lower-latency links at a steep premium.And it remains way past time to stop letting corporations make a mess of the sky.https://www.fastcompany.com/91532281/spacex-starlink-fcc-complaints
(DIR) Post #B6CDbbnD8IbsQuklIO by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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@josephcox @sundogplanets One pattern that particularly annoys me is people presenting something and saying "I used AI to make this, but I checked that it's right" when they very obviously didn't (a text generator paragraph with errors that any human who knows the material would catch; image generator slop with impossible geometry; whatever).It makes it hard to trust anything else the person doing it might do - even when I know they aren't using the slop machines.
(DIR) Post #B6m7YvzcRkMBXiCrwW by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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It remains way past time to stop letting corporations unilaterally make a mess of the sky.And, no, we cannot avoid the problem by putting telescopes in space.Borlaff et al. 2026, "SPHEREx confirms predictions for artificial satellite trail pollution in Low Earth Orbit" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.27501
(DIR) Post #B6m7Yx8ADSmn4VDCts by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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With "et al." including @planet4589 .
(DIR) Post #B6m7Yx9a8Bv78tsL6u by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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Refer also to commentary on Bluesky by Alejandro Borlaff:https://bsky.app/profile/asborlaff.bsky.social/post/3mmwocefycc2w
(DIR) Post #B9clsUAL6mATRXUmcC by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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@ashwin @futurebird Hi. I rely upon the ACA healthcare coverage mandates to get the healthcare I need to be sure that I will not suddenly drop dead.You can critique ACA and advocate for universal healthcare without lying about what the law did or conflating it with GOP sabotage of it.(Pre-ACA, I could be denied health insurance for pre-existing conditions including "has cardiomyopathy" and "needed NICU when I was born.")
(DIR) Post #BA794qMogxaKcUiYVs by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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@internetarchive Delete this.And stop promoting the use of automated plagiarism machines that have ruinous environmental impacts.