Anshuman Acharya
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anshumanastro.bsky.social
Anshuman Acharya
@anshumanastro.bsky.social
380 followers 420 following 32 posts
BCCP Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley| PhD at MPA '25: Epoch of Reionization, 21-cm cosmology 📡, Machine Learning, cosmological sims | MS: CfA, Stellar X-rays | BS-MS IISER Mohali '21 | Sci-Comm | Sometimes write/doodle/make music! 🎸🎙️
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anshumanastro.bsky.social
Was swapping my dish scrub for a new one, and had this thought pop up:
Two dish scrubs, of the Scrub Daddy brand, so they're both with smiley faces. One is new and looks fresh and is labelled as being a first year PhD, all full of hope and energy. The other is old and looks withered and has lost colour, and is labelled as being a final year PhD. But the old one is also still smiling!
May 13, 2025 at 10:41 PM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
Definitely thankful to my supervisor for doing this though. It helped build the courage to eventually approach people myself. 😁
Caption reading as from the supervisor, who's saying "I'll introduce you to this potential collaborator, make a good impression!", and they few minutes later, the scene is of a derpy orange kitten lifted up in one hand, with it's tongue sticking out. The kitten is the PhD student!
January 26, 2025 at 5:22 PM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
Sometimes you need to respond with a bang 😁
The caption says "What's an effective way to respond to a harsh referee report?", and the attached picture is of Captain Holt from Brooklyn 99 showing and declaring, "Grenades!", which is what my response is to the question in the caption.
January 18, 2025 at 9:02 PM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
Found an old meme of mine from Twitter, and realised that the alt text was a little Easter egg of its own. Proud of past me for this!
Old dude in flamboyant clothing represents my plots in the paper which were made ages ago. Tiger Woods dressed in black and white represents the text in my paper that seems to worsen with each iteration. Two golf balls near the flamboyant old dude are labelled as "underfull hbox" and "overfull hbox". Why are they labelled so? Nobody knows. It's a mystery of LaTeX that scientists have just accepted as a part of life.
December 17, 2024 at 11:27 AM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
Wrapping up on a busy 2024! From @astroai.bsky.social to @scienceacademyswe.bsky.social, and from Cosmo21, Radio 2024 to CCA @flatironinstitute.org, it's been a busy year of presenting results ranging from EoR 21-cm signal extraction with ML, to large-scale simulations, to plans of super-resolution.
A collage of me giving talks of my PhD work at various places and some nice pictures of those places.
December 16, 2024 at 12:41 PM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
An unfortunate event at any astro institute/department:
Darth Vader representing the admin, saying "coffee prices will go up", while everyone at the institute is represented by Luke Skywalker screaming "nooooooooo"
December 6, 2024 at 11:19 AM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
On a paper with both theorists and observers, I managed to annoy both!

f_esc here represents the "escape fraction", or the fraction of ionizing photons escaping out of galaxies and reaching the Intergalactic Medium.
Regular Winnie the Pooh is labeled as "theorists" saying that the escape fraction is 10%. Then Winnie the Pooh with a tuxedo is labeled as "observers" saying that as it's a fraction, it should be 0.1. Then the third Winnie the Pooh has the tuxedo, but also a top hat and monocle, and is labeled as "me", saying that as it's a fraction it should be 1 by 10.
December 5, 2024 at 12:01 AM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
With the final conference season of the year upon us in the next two weeks, I believe this is apt:
A screen capture from Smosh's Ultimate Werewolf Gentlemen edition, with two guys dressed in top hats, suits and bowties look at each other smiling conspiratorially. One of them has a fake cigarette, while the other has a lollipop in hand. The caption reads: "PhDs when the two rival profs at the conference start fighting", because PhD students tend to find the drama entertaining.
November 30, 2024 at 1:12 PM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
The coffee has to hit right after all!
A caption saying "PhDs for half an hour after saying that they've to do something immediately", with the word "immediately" written in all caps. The photo is that of a cute hamster making coffee, with no care in the world.
November 28, 2024 at 11:50 PM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
Summary of the postdoc application process discussion today amongst final year PhDs (over cups of coffee):
A caption relaying a proclamation by PhD students that they won't wait until the last moment to do things, but invariably, on the day of the deadline, things end up as shown in the attached picture. In the picture, a sleepy cat labelled as the PhD students' brain is getting strangled by another cat labeled as the "8th coffee of the day as there's still a lot to do".
November 25, 2024 at 9:45 PM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
Going from the first meme to the second took a while. Still, it's amazing how many things I had barely any clue about are now things I am helping make sense of. 😁
The "are you winning son?" meme template, but that's replaced with "are you binning son?", with the caption saying "Postdoc who's not sure if I'm plotting a histogram or the points directly", while the stick figure sitting at his desktop is marked as "me, with no thoughts, but many plots". Gif with caption saying "me sending plots to collaborators showing that I've resolved the issue we've been worrying about for a month". The gif is of Barney from How I Met Your Mother, saying "I request the highest of fives".
November 23, 2024 at 11:56 AM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
Perhaps it's time to start sharing on Bluesky the memes I've been making to document my time as a PhD so far.
Caption saying "my Overleaf when I start a new postdoc proposal after completing one", with the gif of Steve Harrington from Stranger Things opening his ice cream shop and saying "again? Seriously?" with absolute exasperation and a little bit of disgust on his face.
November 23, 2024 at 12:20 AM
anshumanastro.bsky.social
Reminded about this meme I made earlier, after some discussions on different hydrodynamical simulations.

(it's time for astro/academia memes on Bluesky!)
Caption saying "cosmological simulators whenever they meet for absolutely no good reason", for an image where one cat seems to be absolutely pummelling another cat with punches as it's already on its back. The fallen cat is an orange cat, as expected.
November 23, 2024 at 12:10 AM