Prof. Sam Lawler on nostr

Recent Notes

@Prof. Sam Lawler 1777419388

I need to finish the talk I said I'd give soon about environmental consequences of genAI. A lot of the talk will focus on the situation in orbit and the parade of ludicrous proposals for orbital AI data centres, because that's my area of expertise, and because the talk is here in Saskatchewan and SpaceX shit keeps falling on us from orbit so it's pretty relevant!

Prof. Sam Lawler @Prof. Sam Lawler · 1w

Prof. Sam Lawler

@Prof. Sam Lawler 1777396622

Woo!! The Honours thesis student who I worked with this year just successfully defended his thesis on the mixed-mode dynamical structure of the 10:7 mean-motion resonance! (Yes, I still get to do a teeny tiny bit of obscure orbital dynamics research that's not watching satellites crash in LEO or screaming about satellite pollution, but it's pretty much only by working with students at this point...)

Prof. Sam Lawler

@Prof. Sam Lawler 1777385760

Woke up super early and super stressed out about a bunch of things. But there are still baby goats!

ARGVMI~1.PIF · 6d

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqfpz0cq655sgdgqnr4ty7txp4gare2w6jl9zdch3q2rrdkau6mz0qknu3cu Kessler syndrome in low Earth orbit won't entirely prevent the deployment of replace...

Prof. Sam Lawler @Prof. Sam Lawler 1777347304

@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... It'll just make it WAY WAY WAY riskier and more likely to require multiple attempts.

ARGVMI~1.PIF · 6d

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpquw8g8f3g29gw8uxfcj5863rnc783xyk0alqm9mcsx3leut98dausvd2wxk Not according to the numbers in the linked article. 0.5% chance of collision per launch is not great, especially if the mission isn't unmanned, but with odds like that you can still pu...

Prof. Sam Lawler

@Prof. Sam Lawler 1777326831

I guess if I take enough pictures of the baby goat snuggle pile, eventually one will be sorted by colour. Cute!

Prof. Sam Lawler · 1w

Prof. Sam Lawler @Prof. Sam Lawler 1777305818

Some questions that keep coming up:
There are gaps in the lines because this is a bunch of shorter exposures over the course of 10 minutes added together

Kessler Syndrome is extremely bad for everybody, don't hope for it (though on my grumpier days I can definitely understand that perspective)

The many parallel lines come from the orbits that have been chosen by megaconstellation operators, mostly Starlink. You can see that somewhat in various satellite visualizers like https://satellitetracker3d.com/

Prof. Sam Lawler

@Prof. Sam Lawler 1777298149

Don't worry, Sam, SpaceX won't ACTUALLY launch 7,000 satellites! (There are currently 10,296 Starlink sats in orbit)

Don't worry, SpaceX said they'd get their satellites below magnitude 7! (They have not https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/link_gateway/2025MNRAS.544L..15M/PUB_PDF)

Don't worry, they won't actually start Kessler Syndrome! https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/

Don't worry, they won't actually launch a million AI data centres into orbit!! https://theconversation.com/a-new-space-race-could-turn-our-atmosphere-into-a-crematorium-for-satellites-276366

This is the fucking worst I-told-you-so https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Prof. Sam Lawler · 1w

Prof. Sam Lawler @Prof. Sam Lawler 1777226426

An educational add-on, because a lot of people are asking about it (which is hilariously meta, I suppose, but here we are)

Sealioning (the Wikipedia article is quite good): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

Mansplaining: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180727-mansplaining-explained-in-one-chart

Stargeezer Smith · 6d

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpquw8g8f3g29gw8uxfcj5863rnc783xyk0alqm9mcsx3leut98dausvd2wxk Mansplaining is interesting. I know it exists, I've seen it. I'm male, so I've never experienced it. But it occurred to me that I have experienced something early in my career that wa...

Prof. Sam Lawler

@Prof. Sam Lawler 1777225664

The first purple martins are here!! I thought we still had another month until they got here - there is still snow on the ground! They are super cool birds and my bird biologist friend gave us a purple martin house last year (so he can band them and track them). I'm very excited to have them back again!

Prof. Sam Lawler

@Prof. Sam Lawler 1777212667

Lately I have been trying to tell manplainers and sea lions what they're doing before blocking them, to give them a shot at apologizing. But it almost always results in angry dudes saying obnoxious things, not apologizing, and that doesn't make anyone feel better.

This is just a reminder to myself to block more people.

Prof. Sam Lawler · 1w

An educational add-on, because a lot of people are asking about it (which is hilariously meta, I suppose, but here we are) Sealioning (the Wikipedia article is quite good): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning Mansplaining: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180727-mansplaining-explained-i...

Matt Blaze · 1w

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpquw8g8f3g29gw8uxfcj5863rnc783xyk0alqm9mcsx3leut98dausvd2wxk Big fan (and practitioner) of blocking! But it's still valuable - to everyone else - to see prominent people articulate why bad behavior is unacceptable. It helps reinforce norms. But it...

Prof. Sam Lawler · 1w

Goat morning. The slightly older baby goats managed to walk all the way to the daytime pen from the barn without me carrying them, but required multiple eating breaks along the way. https://files.ma...

Prof. Sam Lawler @Prof. Sam Lawler 1777212189

Baby goat barn chaos

Prof. Sam Lawler

@Prof. Sam Lawler 1777211933

Goat morning. The slightly older baby goats managed to walk all the way to the daytime pen from the barn without me carrying them, but required multiple eating breaks along the way.

Prof. Sam Lawler · 1w

Baby goat barn chaos https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/471/373/304/940/228/original/a4774be4af77f85e.mp4