Notices by Prof. Sam Lawler (sundogplanets@mastodon.social)

... or maybe the people who wanted to meet with me won't actually show up. That's cool too, I guess. I have lots of writing to do...

2 more zoom meetings to go. Will I manage to stay awake? I think I've hit my Friday wall...

Meeting delayed via email, people still didn't show up, sent apologetic email asking if I could still meet, no one showed up to my second zoom meeting, and now I'm playing email tag with the first people and severely regretting not blowing everything off and going for a bike ride instead. Which might still happen if they don't respond soon.

Additional info you should know to more fully appreciate the video: the loudest, most terrible-sounding goat is aptly named Goatzilla.

It sounds like something truly terrible is happening to these goats.

The truly terrible thing that's happening? I am not walking fast enough toward them with the evening grain bucket.

Poor poor goats.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/117407467076790059

They plan to continue to control orbit ("control" until they Kesslerize it, I guess)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/117412755207753942

And if you have it available to you, go watch Shifting Baselines! It's the most beautiful way to learn about how terrible SpaceX is...

(And yeah, I'll email the all-Canadian filmmaker team again today and try to find out if there's a way to watch it inside Canada yet)

SpaceX is now requesting 456 launches per year from Boca Chica https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-20963.pdf

As my colleague pointed out, that's more than the current launch rate for the world (245 launches so far this year according to https://orbitalradar.com/satellite-launch-log), from a single site that was sold to the public as a testing and development site.

That follow-up conversation with my colleague went as well as it could. They were actually a lot more careful about their genAI usage than I initially assumed. I'm still very much not happy about it, and I expressed that, but I'm not completely horrified as I was initially.

They did say they would ask consent in the future (which I won't give haha) and I did plant a seed, pointing out that I, their collaborator, won't purposefully use genAI for anything as an ethical/environmental statement.

I really appreciate all the great advice and suggestions. I'm just... so disappointed and know I have to approach all my interactions with this person differently in the future. I've written up a long email, but I'm realizing that won't work as well as having a conversation with the person. Especially because I'm likely to start crying during the conversation. So. That's going to be FUN.

But maybe it will help one person be less addicted to the forest-burning plagiarism machine? Maybe?

Does me not using genAI make a difference? Probably not. But it's my choice, my own little tiny act of defiance.

Also, I got really good research feedback and advice from the person, not chatGPT, during the discussion. That was the whole reason I asked this person for feedback! They're really good at this.

Still a lot to think about from that interaction. Enough people responded to my initial post here that I felt like I had to share the thrilling (ok not thrilling at all) end

I asked a trusted colleague for comments on a written document and they fed it in to chatGPT and sent me back that output and I just want to cry.

Guess I won't be asking that person for help or advice on anything anymore. Enshittification happens in people's writing skills too, I guess.

I also have absolutely no idea how to respond to them. If you're that far down the genAI black hole I don't think pointing out the ethical/environmental/cognitive issues will help. Fuck.

Fall is pretty!...

....short.

It might snow tonight.

Happy goats, delighted to eat invasive leafy spurge, burdock, and wormwood. Might be the last new grass patch they get this year before all the grass dies from cold weather and they switch to eating hay until like... May. We'll see...

This paper title is 🔥🔥🔥

"Systematic non-compliance of satellite megaconstellations with IAU brightness limits" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.10834

Congrats to the Global Meteor Network team on a great paper demonstrating how bad SpaceX and other satellite operators are on following through on their promises to make their satellites fainter.

I just learned that the documentary Shifting Baselines https://f3m.ca/en/film/shifting-baselines/, about the environmental destruction caused by SpaceX, is available through most US libraries streaming on Kanopy

I'm in it. So is @planet4589.bsky.social. So are my goats and my llama! (RIP llama. Glad he was immortalized in such a key role in this film hahaha)

The director described it to me as "Depressing. But with goats!" It's truly a beautiful film and I hope lots of you get to watch it.

I just saw "PCT" instead of "PDT" or "PST" in an email from a colleague in BC (which has decided to stay on daylight saving time all year round). While I am glad they are staying the same time difference relative to me (Sask stays on standard time all year), the rest of pacific time (where most of my family lives) is still shifting and I am going to lose my mind keeping track of this.

Feeling very stressed about everything, and I went out to do some astrophotography. I was hoping for auroras, and was first excited to see an orange glow on the horizon, then annoyed as I realized it's probably a combine still harvesting, then delighted again as I realized it's the moon! Hello, moon. (Also hello Pleiades, hello Andromeda galaxy, hello Milky Way, and fuck you, Starlink)

SpaceX just got approved for 15,000 more direct-to-cell satellites: https://www.fcc.gov/document/spacex-approved-ngso-mss-system-direct-device-services

Giant, bright, radio-loud. Fuck. I just saw SO MANY SATELLITES in my sky. Guess there will be more. And then lots of debris.

Everybody has to coordinate with Starlink because SPACEX CONTROLS ORBIT. That's against the Outer Space Treaty.

Your engineering challenge, SpaceX, is to provide your services with fewer satellites. Not yell at everyone else for having satellites too.

https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/117407452552952599