I had an incredibly lovely, tasty, fun, relaxing day with my partner and kids. I'm really grateful.
Tomorrow is a holiday here but I have a bazillion very stressful things I need to work on writing, so I should probably mostly do that. It's also supposed to snow (I've seen predictions from 2-10cm...)
Please enjoy these goats who somehow ended up like this.
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...
Space Weather
The first CME and geomagnetic storm hit this morning at around 07h UT (09 Oct). Sub-storms followed causing auroras at high-latitudes.
NOAA has downgraded the storm watch for 09 Oct to G1 from G2 and added a G1 watch on 10 Oct. They have a G2 watch in effect for 11 Oct.
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.
Don't have access through Kanopy? Ask your library to purchase a license for the film - this helps support an independent filmmaker!
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.
One positive of digging through SpaceX FCC documents is that I learned about this excellent (scary) debris fall database: https://reentry.esoc.esa.int/home/recovereddebris
T-Mobile's CTO pours cold water on SpaceX's plan to become a major US wireless carrier using recently acquired spectrum. It might sound like sour grapes, but financial analysts are similarly skeptical. https://www.pcmag.com/news/t-mobile-cto-gives-spacex-a-reality-check-on-its-starlink-mobile-ambitions
2026-10-09 19:00:00 UTC
KESSLER SYNDROME WEEKLY
🌐 Total 11,130 tracked Starlink satellites
🟣 The latest Starlink launch
- COSPAR ID: 2026-225
- 26 new satellites
Just got a spam email from a textbook company trying to sell me access to OpenStax Astronomy (which I use for my Astro 101 class) which is... you know... free? https://openstax.org/books/astronomy-2e/pages/1-introduction
This is wild - somebody did a deep dive into the real stories behind this famous XKCD:
https://sheets.works/data-viz/holding-up-the-internet
RE: https://mstdn.ca/@Paulatics/117407302645777705
If you would prefer to read the transcript of my speech on Bill C-22, Canada’s controversial “lawful access” legislation, you can read it here. (Or watch below.) https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/simons-paula/interventions/705280/31#hID
My stress level shows via the ratio of satellite yelling to goats in my recent posts.
Trying to lower that stress level by making some cheese this morning before all the meetings start. This is the only cheese I've had consistently good results with aging. I made a batch of extra-dry chevre (drained longer), blended it with a few garlic cloves, rolled it into balls and covered them with smoked paprika. They'll air dry for a few days then keep in the fridge for months. Really tasty!
Oof. My dark sarcasm levels have shot through the roof and entered orbit. Time to sign off for the night.
But DON'T WORRY EVERYONE, the FCC will almost certainly approve SpaceX's one million satellite filing soon, so this will seem like nothing!
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.
On the day that Margaret Hamilton, whose software helped land Apollo 11 on the Moon, died at 90, it's worth noting why computer programming became so dominated by men.
It wasn't remotely because men were better than women at programming. It was because, as soon as men realized how important programming was, they bullied and intimidated women out of the profession. And then smiled smugly and said: "Women can't program".
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.
Co-author paper accepted dance!! (It's a doozy of a long paper too. FINALLY DONE.)