Adam Trotter
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astrotter.bsky.social
Adam Trotter
@astrotter.bsky.social
730 followers 840 following 2.5K posts
North Carolinian, erstwhile astronomer, latter-day gardener. PhD in "how is it already getting dark?" Surface of last scattering. he/him 🏳️‍🌈
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astrotter.bsky.social
My local farmers market just surprised me with $100 in free SNAP tokens, courtesy of an anonymous donor, in case you need a little glimmer of human decency this morning
November 8, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
thegarbagequeen.bsky.social
Did you know that NOAA has a major office in Asheville? They put together a story map about Hurricane Helene, and it’s the best data resource I’ve seen out there about the storm.

I might be a little biased, though, because I have a geography degree and love using GIS to share data.
Helene in Southern Appalachia
One year later: An event analysis and how we move forward.
storymaps.arcgis.com
September 26, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
stuartatkinson.bsky.social
Yesterday Curiosity took pix of jagged peaks in the distance with its ChemCam. I stitched them together, did some work on them, and... just look at that view... I've been doing this since Sojourner landed & this is one of my fave images ever... Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/S Atkinson
September 23, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
anamariecox.bsky.social
Fellow sober folks, a reminder: However bad things get, you don’t have to drink over it.
September 21, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
swordsjew.bsky.social
people who want other people to stay in sad little grey boxes forever and never be happy in their bodies or desires are villains and cowards and they may be winning right now but by god they will lose as water smooths stone and roots break it, because that fierce joy is roots and water and life
September 16, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
projectendo.bsky.social
It's like staying up late to see if Santa is real but we're hoping Santa's dead
August 30, 2025 at 5:37 AM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
faineg.bsky.social
Modern AI tools emulate the classic con-man tricks of mentalism, tricking people into believing that they’re far more clever - and sapient - than they actually are.

Fantastic piece by @baldurbjarnason.com :

softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llme...
The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models rep…
The new era of tech seems to be built on superstitious behaviour
softwarecrisis.dev
August 12, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
deschscoveries.bsky.social
I have a complaint about Avi Loeb's latest work and I want to speak to management.

medium.com/@steve.desch...
This is not the quality of pseudoscience infotainment to which I have grown accustomed
Teasing the public with fraudulent or self-deluded promises of aliens used to mean something. It took work. It meant slapping together…
medium.com
August 8, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
economeager.bsky.social
Oh so it does have phd level intelligence
victorshammas.com Victor Shammas @victorshammas.com · Aug 7
Google Gemini doesn’t appear to be doing too well:

‘"I am a disgrace to this planet. I am a disgrace to this universe. I am a disgrace to all universes . . . I am a disgrace to all possible and impossible universes and all that is not a universe," the bot continued.’
Google says it's working on a fix for Gemini's self-loathing 'I am a failure' comments
Google Gemini users said the bot is sharing self-loathing messages while attempting to solve tasks, including "I am a disgrace to this universe."
www.businessinsider.com
August 8, 2025 at 8:42 AM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜

feel free to join by posting small poems you wrote, +/or small poems you love by somebody else :)

here’s one by Bill Corbett; Peter Reading called this kind of poem the 13-line sonnet for unlucky people—& what an 11th line, “every green thing goldens”
AUGUST I want to read and nap and wake fresh to read some more and further out there is a raft off which kids clown and cannonball and beyond a straggle of mergansers steam serenely and then an empty lake and further still over all the points and hills every green thing goldens and last, clouds press the mountain’s rough nib.
August 3, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
greenleejw.bsky.social
Recently, I shared a Lord of the Rings subway map, & I had a bunch of people asking me to do a Narnia version. Well...here you go!

It's covers all 7 books, so it's a lot more complicated the the LoTR ones. And if you like it, it's available to buy on my Etsy store:
www.etsy.com/shop/Surpris...
A subway style map on a parchment background. The map's title reads: "Narnia Transit Map: Talking Beasts Ride Free." The map has seven keys, one for each of the seven books in C.S. Lewis's Narinia series. The main movements of characters and action in each book are traced by colored lines, like a subway map. Locations in each book are marked out as stops in the lines. There is a drawing of a lion above the title of the map, and in the lower right corner there is a compass rose.
August 1, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
jacobgeller.com
ICE in Durham, be safe and don't talk to the fucking cops
July 23, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
greenleejw.bsky.social
The other day I drew a subway-style map for The Hobbit, and it was very well received. Some of you asked if I could do one for LoTR, so I have!

Forgive the eel watermark; I'm working on making these something you can buy, if you like.
Subway style map to go with The Lord of the Rings, showing the different pathways of various parties throughout the book. The title reads: "Lord of the Rings Transit Map: One Does Not Simply Walk Ino Mordor When One Can Ride." The map takes up the middle part of the page, and there are two keys. The one on the left is titles "Standard Service Lines, and has color keys matched to the subway lines on the map. Lines are named: "Shire-Bree Commuter Line Old Forrest Crescent Wildland Scenic Line Fellowship Line Gollum / Sméagol Line Uruk Hai Express Three Hunters Line Fangorn Slow Service Rohan to Gondor Business Line Black Ships Ferry Service Oliphant Direct Line Army of the West Line Gandalf Express A smaller key on the right side of the map is labeled: "Limited Service Lines" and has color keys matched to the following names lines: "Eagle Express Paths of the Dead Line Nazgûl Search & Resuce Valinor Ltd." A note at the bottom reads: "* Mount Doom station only accepts Rings of Power in payment. Plan accordingly."
July 21, 2025 at 11:26 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
todlauer.bsky.social
Betelgeuse has a companion - a pre main-sequence B/A star with a semimajor axis of only 8 au. Required speckle observations to dig it out. noirlab.edu/public/news/...
Gemini North Discovers Long-Predicted Stellar Companion of Betelgeuse - Gemini North telescope in Hawai‘i reveals never-before-seen companion to Betelgeuse, solving millennia-old mystery
Astronomers have discovered a companion star in an incredibly tight orbit around Betelgeuse using the NASA and U.S. National Science Foundation-funded ‘Alopeke instrument on Gemini North, one half of ...
noirlab.edu
July 21, 2025 at 6:22 PM
astrotter.bsky.social
biblically accurate angel wing begonia
A five foot tall potted polka dot angel wing begonia (Begonia lucerna) sitting on a patio. It has many large, dark green leaves with small silver polka dots, and clusters of drooping red flowers.
July 20, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
indyweek.bsky.social
The Trump administration canceled a FEMA program in April that would have funded upgrades to protect the town from flooding. Then the Eno River rose more than 20 feet.
Before Chantal Swamped Hillsborough, the Town Had Been Counting on FEMA
The Trump administration canceled a FEMA program in April that would have funded upgrades to protect the town from flooding. Then the Eno River rose more than 20 feet.
indyweek.com
July 17, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
marcusjmerritt.com
A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything
July 14, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
paleofuture.bsky.social
What do you think is more likely, that Musk’s Nazi robot has made new discoveries in materials science or that Musk can’t tell when he’s being told scientific-sounding gibberish?
Elon Musk: That was how I felt when asking Grok 4 questions about materials science that are not in any books or on the Internet Tim Sweeney: Grok 4 feels like Artificial General Intelligence to me. It is clearly not just constructing statistically likely connections, but is drawing fairly deep insights on problems it hasn't seen before, in ways I haven't seen elsewhere. Here's an example: grok.com/share/bG...
July 10, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
hillsboroughnc.gov
July 7, 2025, afternoon storm update:
Mayor Mark Bell declared a state of emergency in Hillsborough this morning.

The town has issued a boil water notice. Everyone who uses drinking water from the Town of Hillsborough must boil water until further notice. Please conserve water.
A clear well surrounded by river water from the Eno River.
July 7, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
hillsboroughnc.gov
Orange County is distributing bottled water in Hillsborough tomorrow starting at 8 a.m. at Hillsborough Commons, 113 Mayo Street. Note that distribution will take place from 8 a.m. to noon and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. One case per vehicle.
Rows of bottled water with blue tops
July 7, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
elisecutts.bsky.social
I feel like these guys all somehow overlooked the part of the legendarium where Sauron is a tech nerd who falls from angelic grace because he wants to engineer a perfect world and then uses his unimaginable power to force his underlings to speak his weird conlang.
parismarx.com Paris Marx @parismarx.com · Jul 2
Peter Thiel is founding yet another company named after something from Middle Earth.

This time it’s a bank named Erebor, a reference to the mountain which holds Smaug’s piles of gold and treasure.
Peter Thiel joins tech billionaires backing new lender Erebor to rival Silicon Valley Bank
Start-up named after the dragon’s mountain in ‘Lord of the Rings’
www.ft.com
July 2, 2025 at 7:45 AM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
seamas.bsky.social
This week my time at the Examiner comes to an end, and I;m grateful I got to end things on a cautiously hopeful note. On Zohran Mamdani, and why those of us thousands of miles away are right to take heart from this week - and should be taking notes.

www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...
Séamas O'Reilly: Hope is not just the radical option — it's the only one
I’ve tried to sugar the medicine, adding what insight I can, what hope I can muster, and what jokes I’m allowed. It’s been a true joy to discover I was allowed pretty much everything, and for that I h...
www.irishexaminer.com
June 28, 2025 at 8:07 AM
astrotter.bsky.social
I hike at Occoneechee Mountain every morning, and always stop to say hi to the Twisty old Tree. It's a live and healthy sugar maple whose trunk has been hollowed out into a helix somehow. It marks the start of a particularly magical portion of the trail along the Eno River.
A photo taken from inside a hollow tree, looking up. The wood has a spiral pattern, with green leaves visible through gaps. In the center, there is an oculus-like opening to the canopy above. A photo of a sugar maple tree with a helical, hollowed out trunk. Sunlight illuminates parts of the trunk and the tree's green leaves. More trees fill the background.
June 25, 2025 at 12:17 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
mcnees.bsky.social
Fred Hoyle, who proposed a steady state model of the Universe and coined the name "Big Bang" to ridicule a rival theory, was born #OTD in 1915. He pioneered nucleosynthesis, but advocated unscientific theories about the origin of life and was known to make strange racist claims. 🧪 🔭
Black and white photo of Fred Hoyle. He has horn-rim glasses, and is wearing a dark suit with a white shirt. Hoyle is seated in front of a partially erased chalkboard.
June 24, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Reposted by Adam Trotter
vrubinobs.bsky.social
Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory!

Can you guess these regions of sky?

This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪

#RubinFirstLook
ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream
A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black. A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars. A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. To the lower left is a region filled with the hundreds of golden glittering gems of a distant galaxy cluster. In the foreground, below and right of center, two blue spiral galaxies look like eyes beneath the entangled mass of a triple galaxy merger in the upper right. A few bright blue points of foreground stars pierce the glittering tapestry. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.
June 23, 2025 at 4:06 AM