carlrodriguez.bsky.social
Professor of astrophysics at UNC, studying colliding black holes, swarming stars, and other things that go bump in the night. Big fan of transit, biking, climbing, Durham NC, he/him
dynamics.unc.edu
452 posts
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Also you can’t just mothball one of the sites and then bring it back later. If the vacuum isn’t maintained it’s a *significant* cost to bake out the arms again.
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(To be clear it’s all just advisory at this point, so it’s possible we’re all freaking out about something that won’t happen).
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Honestly it’s humiliating for us professionally. Why would any of y'all trust us as international partners again after this, even if it gets rolled back in 4 years? Again, here’s hoping none of this makes it into the final budget.
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Here’s hoping this is all just whinging bullshit and congress does something completely different. If they actually incorporate this a lot of US Astro is dead. Forget about getting another multi messenger event.
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Jesus fucking christ
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Thanks, though at least I'm not up until next year. But the 2 people I know from the College who were supposed to be voted on this cycle are, understandably, *super* worried and angry.
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Super fun for those of us up for tenure this cycle or the next (e.g. me). Not exactly a great time to have to go on the job market either...
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🙃
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Yeah here’s hoping Harvards lawsuit smashes this to pieces
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Dumbasses now, dumbasses tomorrow, dumbasses forever.
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Been saying it for years: Delaware isn't a state, it's a tax loophole.
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I’ve been worried about that since this started. People seem to think LIGO will be ok, but I don’t know how long that’s true if the whole agency gets reorganized from the top down.
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The Onion always delivers
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Yessss I knew there was a reason I subscribed to @theonion.com
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Yes this is the content I crave
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“100% Certified Organic”
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100%. What I’ve really been struggling with is how to teach students to use it intelligently (and test it!) while still understanding the core concepts.
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It's given me algorithms that don't actually produce the output they claim they do (but *look* like they do), and if you don't test it you never catch it.
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I have, and tbh it's very helpful. But only for tedious things I already know how to do, or cases where I can test the output. But that requires understanding what it's supposed to be doing, which is what really scares me about students using it without learning the underlying concepts.
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Yeah it's unsettling having a student turn in a perfectly written algorithm in python but being completely unable to tell you how it works (or, more frighteningly, not realize that it isn't working).
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lol right?
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This is when you click on “Instructions for Project Outcomes”…
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ok
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My comment had nothing to do with pay, it has to do with overall resources. None of these counties, even collectively, support a fraction of the US research endeavor (and everything mentioned in this thread is still several *orders of magnitude* below replacement for that).
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Yeah exactly, but even then you’d still need access to NASA resources I assume? And I can only imagine how much harder that whole calculation is for trans people (the UK seems to have lost its damn mind).
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Yeah exactly; ESA and ESO can definitely hold their own but it NASA missions and NSF facilities suddenly disappear our entire field globally gets crushed.
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Like as an astrophysicist, if NASA and NSF fold, that’s the ballgame on my career. Even if I could move to Canada or Europe, there’s no point in me doing theory work with no data/observations.
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The problem is there just isn’t any country (or even collection of counties) that gets close to the US in terms of funding and support (that’s why all the scientists from those countries came here in the first place). Not worth poaching people if you have no labs to put them in.
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Not yet, and now we never will.
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It’s a surprise for us physicists too.
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Fairly certain that's Pilot Mountain State Park in North Carolina.