Dr. Teddy Kareta
@teddykareta.bsky.social
planetary astronomer by day, also by night
asst. prof. @ villanova, movie buff, he/they, 🏳️🌈
https://tkareta.github.io/, formerly lowell obs., uaz
asst. prof. @ villanova, movie buff, he/they, 🏳️🌈
https://tkareta.github.io/, formerly lowell obs., uaz
one of the students in my gen-ed astronomy class came up to me and told me excitedly that they'd already signed up for my class next semester and were looking forward to it -- an extremely sweet little gesture -- and I didn't even cry! not even a little!
November 7, 2025 at 6:31 PM
one of the students in my gen-ed astronomy class came up to me and told me excitedly that they'd already signed up for my class next semester and were looking forward to it -- an extremely sweet little gesture -- and I didn't even cry! not even a little!
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
Not impeaching and removing every official involved with this remains one of the biggest failures of constitutional governance ever, and there is a direct line from that to where we sit today.
#OtD 6 Nov 1986 the Iran-Contra scandal — where the US sold arms to Iran to fund right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua — began to break. Acting Pres Ronald Reagan said the revelations had "no foundation", which turned out to be a lie stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1065...
November 6, 2025 at 12:54 PM
Not impeaching and removing every official involved with this remains one of the biggest failures of constitutional governance ever, and there is a direct line from that to where we sit today.
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
Strange Tales 72, 1959. Art by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.
November 6, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Strange Tales 72, 1959. Art by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
Zohran at the rally for trans youth on february 8 ❣️ he was polling single digits.
June 25, 2025 at 4:51 AM
Zohran at the rally for trans youth on february 8 ❣️ he was polling single digits.
it's venus week in my "life in the universe" class so I'm getting ready to push this class fully off the rails (e.g., attempting to get a bunch of business majors to care about D/H ratios and phosphine and the weird ultraviolet absorbers in its atmosphere)
November 3, 2025 at 4:02 PM
it's venus week in my "life in the universe" class so I'm getting ready to push this class fully off the rails (e.g., attempting to get a bunch of business majors to care about D/H ratios and phosphine and the weird ultraviolet absorbers in its atmosphere)
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
some jazzers have been griping about Hancock’s vocoder ad-lib segment, which he’s been doing every set. Allow me to set you straight. Herbie Hancock is one of the greatest musicians ever to live and in the context of music if he makes a choice then that is the right choice. Hope this clarifies
just saw Herbie Hancock at the Strathmore. played almost exclusively progressive jazz, went ~1 hour over time, much of the overage stemming from a nearly 40m lecture on evolution, compassion, & futurism done entirely via vocoder, and saved almost all the accessible fusion for post-lecture. the GOAT!
November 3, 2025 at 11:13 AM
some jazzers have been griping about Hancock’s vocoder ad-lib segment, which he’s been doing every set. Allow me to set you straight. Herbie Hancock is one of the greatest musicians ever to live and in the context of music if he makes a choice then that is the right choice. Hope this clarifies
happy slippery rail season to all regional rail riders who celebrate
October 31, 2025 at 1:40 PM
happy slippery rail season to all regional rail riders who celebrate
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same.
Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Experimental evidence of the effects of large language models versus web search on depth of learning
Abstract. The effects of using large language models (LLMs) versus traditional web search on depth of learning are explored. A theory is proposed that when
academic.oup.com
October 28, 2025 at 3:14 PM
When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same.
Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
teaching rules. my students wrote a bunch of super interesting essays about this movie connecting it with the class ('is macready's "blood test" scene technically a hunt for biosignatures?' being my favorite out-there idea) nobody phoned it in, no AI bullshit, just good stuff.
I'm giving out an extra credit assignment this week for my gen-ed "Life in the Universe" class to watch "The Thing". the exciting thing about the thing is that the thing is available (the whole thing) on the internet archive as a scanned-in VHS, scan-lines and screwy audio and all -- it's amazing.
October 28, 2025 at 2:14 PM
teaching rules. my students wrote a bunch of super interesting essays about this movie connecting it with the class ('is macready's "blood test" scene technically a hunt for biosignatures?' being my favorite out-there idea) nobody phoned it in, no AI bullshit, just good stuff.
got interviewed for this short & sweet article in the atlantic about moons, not-moons, "moonlike objects", mini-moons, moonlets, quasi-moons...
As researchers have discovered more moonlike objects in our solar system—including 128 moons orbiting Saturn just this year—our concept of what counts as a moon has been forced to expand. Lila Shroff reports:
No One Actually Knows What a Moon Is
The universe has quasi-moons, mini-moons, and moonlets, but no official definition of what counts as a moon.
bit.ly
October 28, 2025 at 1:36 AM
got interviewed for this short & sweet article in the atlantic about moons, not-moons, "moonlike objects", mini-moons, moonlets, quasi-moons...
the title of this article feels like the kind of thing only a court astronomer standing on top of a step pyramid should be able to say
www.space.com/stargazing/s...
www.space.com/stargazing/s...
See Comet Lemmon cross paths with a cosmic serpent this weekend
Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) will pass through the neck of the great celestial serpent represented by the constellation Serpens Caput on the nights of Oct. 26-27.
www.space.com
October 27, 2025 at 9:19 AM
the title of this article feels like the kind of thing only a court astronomer standing on top of a step pyramid should be able to say
www.space.com/stargazing/s...
www.space.com/stargazing/s...
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
in a hundred years i think Blade will be as well known and iconic as vampire as dracula. because Blade is like if dracula was cool and carried a katana
October 26, 2025 at 7:54 PM
in a hundred years i think Blade will be as well known and iconic as vampire as dracula. because Blade is like if dracula was cool and carried a katana
this new fun paper in Science calls the extinction of the dinosaurs "iconic" in the first sentence -- couldn't agree more
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
October 24, 2025 at 12:48 PM
this new fun paper in Science calls the extinction of the dinosaurs "iconic" in the first sentence -- couldn't agree more
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
Jacob Cuno, 1556, on ☄️ C/1556 D1:
"Unfortunately, in these times the brute rudeness is the reason that no one looks into the sky and at the beautiful heavenly bodies. And they wouldn’t notice if the whole sky and its course would change. They just want to keep their lust, money and belongings."
☄️🔭
"Unfortunately, in these times the brute rudeness is the reason that no one looks into the sky and at the beautiful heavenly bodies. And they wouldn’t notice if the whole sky and its course would change. They just want to keep their lust, money and belongings."
☄️🔭
October 23, 2025 at 9:19 AM
Jacob Cuno, 1556, on ☄️ C/1556 D1:
"Unfortunately, in these times the brute rudeness is the reason that no one looks into the sky and at the beautiful heavenly bodies. And they wouldn’t notice if the whole sky and its course would change. They just want to keep their lust, money and belongings."
☄️🔭
"Unfortunately, in these times the brute rudeness is the reason that no one looks into the sky and at the beautiful heavenly bodies. And they wouldn’t notice if the whole sky and its course would change. They just want to keep their lust, money and belongings."
☄️🔭
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
Oh ok they just said AGI is a decade away. Wow it sounded like they were really close there for a while. Lemme go ahead and check up on how long cold fusion has been a decade away
October 20, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Oh ok they just said AGI is a decade away. Wow it sounded like they were really close there for a while. Lemme go ahead and check up on how long cold fusion has been a decade away
assuming this new paper is right and that the CI chondrites formed beyond Uranus, that means that I accidentally inhaled a bit of trans-Uranian material when my hands were shaking working with the CI Orgueil and a bit of the dust got in the air back in 2020.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Different arrival times of CM- and CI-like bodies from the outer Solar System in the asteroid belt - Nature Astronomy
Simulations show that the Solar System’s gas disk shaped how and where primitive bodies were implanted in the asteroid belt, revealing different arrival times for CM and CI parent bodies and identifyi...
www.nature.com
October 18, 2025 at 2:18 PM
assuming this new paper is right and that the CI chondrites formed beyond Uranus, that means that I accidentally inhaled a bit of trans-Uranian material when my hands were shaking working with the CI Orgueil and a bit of the dust got in the air back in 2020.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
something about the crispness of the air during the fall in the northeast keeps reminding me of early winter in the desert, so here's a picture I took a few thousand feet above and a few miles north of Tucson about five years ago minus a few weeks
October 17, 2025 at 2:06 PM
something about the crispness of the air during the fall in the northeast keeps reminding me of early winter in the desert, so here's a picture I took a few thousand feet above and a few miles north of Tucson about five years ago minus a few weeks
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
NEW — I dug into the story of ICE abducting a 13-year-old boy in Massachusetts and moving him 500 miles across state lines without notifying his mother, local cop's complicity, and how the federal government's justification for such cruelty is already falling apart:
ICE took a 13-year-old they said had a gun. Local cops say he didn’t.
Now he's detained 500 miles away from his Massachusetts home.
www.thehandbasket.co
October 15, 2025 at 1:44 PM
NEW — I dug into the story of ICE abducting a 13-year-old boy in Massachusetts and moving him 500 miles across state lines without notifying his mother, local cop's complicity, and how the federal government's justification for such cruelty is already falling apart:
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
> It is 2025 BC. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis
> It is 2025 AD. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis
> It is 2025 AD. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis
October 11, 2025 at 5:32 PM
> It is 2025 BC. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis
> It is 2025 AD. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis
> It is 2025 AD. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis
Reposted by Dr. Teddy Kareta
Planetary scientists - we have a continual lament that goes like, waaah we have too many meetings how can we work and put in so many abstracts! Here's a solution! Choose a different meeting!
It's really disheartening to try to talk to colleagues about boycotting a conference that removed all its records of abstracts pertaining to DEI, only for the response to largely be "I don't want to go, but..." But what??? Each of us has agency! You can choose not to go!
October 10, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Planetary scientists - we have a continual lament that goes like, waaah we have too many meetings how can we work and put in so many abstracts! Here's a solution! Choose a different meeting!
just sprinted through a busy train station with a briefcase in hand and successfully caught my train, in 1958 news
October 10, 2025 at 8:05 PM
just sprinted through a busy train station with a briefcase in hand and successfully caught my train, in 1958 news