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  Noooooooo Damn I need to figure out how to watch some TNG tonight (or finish the very last section of my stupid awful grant application that I hate)

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  I started trying to de-google myself by moving some personal email usage to proton. Apparently that was a bad decision. My university email is through Microsoft, and I have another email through Microsoft for committee work I do with the American Astronomical Society. So right now I regularly check 5 different emails through 3 different providers. Forwarding won't help, all are evil. And I guess I should find YET ANOTHER PROVIDER for my personal emails, because all are evil. This sucks.

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  RE: https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/117515229068094233 New dwarf planet!

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  After my dress rehearsal for the fancy-pants talk I'm giving tonight, I had a very nice chat with lovely people who make my university run and are self-proclaimed AI-haters. Will lean into that energy a bit more for my talk on orbital AI data centres...

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  In other news, Reflect Orbital is still completely dangerous and useless, and everyone knows it (except the FCC, apparently): https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/astronomy-and-society/a-satellite-company-tested-sunlight-as-a-service-without-astronomers-knowledge/

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  I LOVE starting a very stressful day by spilling cheese curds everywhere and then getting an email saying that I have an overdue bill for publication fees for a paper that was published 18 months ago, that was supposed to have a fee waiver, so I never received a first bill. Did they take a page from US medical insurance companies or something? What the fuck. I fucking hate everything about academic publishing.

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  I just finished rewriting the biggest part of my grant proposal (after staying up way too late last night trying to finish it). But I still have like 7 other smaller parts to rewrite... I am so far behind where I should be on this...

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  I truly cannot believe how much time writing this grant takes. There's such specific ways you have to write each of the multiple sections. I screwed up badly, very much underestimated how long it would take me... It's due to the university ASAP, due to NSERC on Monday. I have teaching/meetings tomorrow and a fancy-pants lecture I'm giving tomorrow night, and Wednesday hosting a (really cool) visiting speaker allll day/evening. I haven't screwed myself over this b...

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  Ok, this looks really cool "A breathtaking bike journey to the darkest places on earth": https://thedarkestskyfilm.com/our-mission/

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  Good moonrise, good dogs. Our planet is really a neat one. Worth fighting for.

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  This week is bad, but next week everyone in Canada (really, everyone) will show up at the wrong time to all their meetings whether or not they are in a place that does daylight savings time... I guess I should give myself some slack on this, since even Weather Canada can't get it right, apparently???

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  If I had some funding for every time I wrote "While satellites provide humanity with many benefits..." then I wouldn't have to write that phrase again in my stupid grant application... In any case, I guess I will just have to go rage-scream in the hayfield under the full moon as I write that phrase yet again.

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  It's very cold out (was -9C when I went out for morning chores) and everything is terrible. Like, really terrible. And I really need to buckle down and finish re-writing my stupid neverending NSERC grant proposal even though it all seems futile. This giant awful grant is really the main way I pay students, so I need to do it, and I need to do a decent job of it, and I need to finish it today because this week is going to be completely bonkers.

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  One last post that's not depressing before I force myself to go into writing mode until I finish this thing: My 10yo just finished her halloween costume: she's an owl pellet. She came up with the idea herself! Proud parenting moment. (We got a thrift store long fuzzy brown jacket that she glued plastic bones all over)

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  Started the morning with ridiculously high winds and a little bit of snow. Went into the city (found that there was no snow in the city) and bought perhaps a bit too much yarn from a bunch of local fibre producer fair. Came back home and took the squash out of the greenhouse and found places to stash it all in the house, tried to harvest the last of the beets and carrots (failed, too much), and got the last sad harvest out of the greenhouse. Everything in the greenhouse will freeze tonight.

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  I know I post about Saskatchewan weather a lot. But as someone who has lived in many different climates, I'm still regularly stunned by the weather we get. Today's weather adventure will be going from 20C with a chance of thunderstorms to flurries with 90km/h wind gusts in less than 12 hours. Wow.

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  I hate Reflect Orbital so very very much. They are trying to provide expensive, dangerous "help" for problems that already have better, cheaper, less destructive processes in place. The one thing this article fails to mention is not only could the light from orbit go out at any second, it would be constantly moving, making all the shadows slowly swing around the light source's motion. I've never done any search and rescue, but this seems extremely unhelpful. https://darksk...

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  Would you like to take a break from whatever you are rage-screaming about to rage-scream about a different topic? Now published, by me: https://theconversation.com/corporate-orbital-data-centre-proposals-are-dangerous-for-humanity-293085

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  I woke up at 3:30am and couldn't get back to sleep. Luckily there were auroras and good stars, so I put on my snowsuit over my pajamas and got some nice photos. Going to be a very long day though. Starting with an important meeting that will be 100% apologizing for not doing things I was supposed to do, and ending with a talk this evening at the public library in the tiny town of Grenfell... Yay coffee.

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  YET ANOTHER article yelling about satellite pollution submitted to The Conversation Canada. That'll be my 6th one in 2026. I should really rewrite my stupid grant proposal now...SIGH.

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  Something about the slight change in text colour or brightness means I can't use the default dark mode anymore! Hurts my eyes. Weird. I guess it's light mode for me now. Don't like CW hiding up under settings either. Or the new post appearing on top of what I'm reading rather than over the settings sidebar which I'm not reading. And I closed the little note about Mastodon 5.0 so I don't know how to submit this feedback other than complaining in a post! #Mastodon...

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  New podcast interview out: I got interviewed by Therese Markow for her podcast "Critically Speaking" about the mess in orbit: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-samantha-lawler-dangers-of-satellites-in-space/id1463016517?i=1000797217991

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  I made this plot to try to visualize how crowded these sun-synchronous terminator orbits are going to get with all the "orbital AI data centres" that companies want to launch. Diagram needs a bit of work still, but it's a start. These names are awful, huh? (So are the plans. The plans are awful too) These would all be in near-polar rings around the Earth. More details here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.02757

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  The first sentence of the abstract for the physics department colloquium this week should win some sort of award for understatement: "Fusion energy promises to produce clean and safe electricity on a large scale, but it still faces some challenges"

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  Searching for sources while writing has now taught me that SpaceX sells a t-shirt with a fucking Kardashev scale diagram on it. It doesn't appear to be an April Fool's Day joke, and it's not even a nice looking t-shirt. UGH. No I won't link to it. UGH UGH UGH.

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  Ooof I started grumpy posting way too early today. Let me start over and try again. Good morning.

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  There are quite a few stars visible while I'm out doing evening chores now, so I spend a lot of time glancing up while moving between tasks. Just now, I glanced up at Cassiopeia and there were so many satellites, I actually felt dizzy while my brain struggled to figure out what was stationary and was was moving. Around the 5 stars visible in Cassiopeia were 4 crawling satellites (all brighter than the stars). While I stared, there was a bright flash from a tumbling piece of space junk.

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  It took most of the day, but we finally took the rail off the barn, dug out all the rotten wood it was attached to, replaced it with new wood (well, nice wood that came with the farm), bought a new rail section to replace the one that was hopelessly warped, and attached it! Still have to put the barn door on, but we'll wait until next weekend when a friend will be able to help us. (That barn door is HEAVY!) Hopefully this fix will last another 50-70 years? (Doubt it, but I can dream)

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  😬 😬 😬 "Why Canadian Starlink subscribers (probably) shouldn't worry about U.S interference" https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/satellite-us-government-starlink-starshield-9.7383834 Ok time to go for a (cold but not windy) bike ride

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  Woooo Friday night partaaayyyyy* *No auroras, so I'm heading to bed at 9pm to read some fluffy science fiction!! Wooo!!!