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Reposted by Benjamin Pope

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 36m

One of the terrible things about the conservative elites’ attacks on higher education is that they are giving their constituents the impression that the universe isn’t big, complicated, and fascinating — that it really does take this many people to work out how even a small fraction of it works

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 2h

trying to decipher is this an LLM tell or just how Zoomers describe their interests

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 2h

why is it consistently the case that application materials now use the word "align"?

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 2h

No the Conversation team did! Sydney Morning Herald has a cool one coming, going between the interferogram and Io too

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 2h

I loved the slider image. Wish we could have put that in the paper instead of the contour overlay!

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Reposted by Benjamin Pope

👻SAAAAAAAAHHHHHHvik Ford 🎃 @saavikford.bsky.social · 3h

Check out the lovely slider image for NGC 1068 at The Conversation!

Looks like saying, ‘Computer, enhance!’ On Star Trek (only with a LOT more work by Max Charles!)!

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 16h

in remarkable detail. 🔭 🧪

These are the two research papers:

➡️ arxiv.org/abs/2510.09806 (led by Louis Desdoigts)

➡️ arxiv.org/abs/2510.10924 (led by Max Charles)

Read Benjamin Pope's thread here.

Dive into the story on The Conversation: theconversation.com/how-we-sharp...

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AMIGO: a Data-Driven Calibration of the JWST Interferometer

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) hosts a non-redundant Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) in its Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument, providing the only dedicate...

arxiv.org

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 3h

true that

Reposted by Benjamin Pope

Francis Markham @francismarkham.bsky.social · 5h

Yesterday was the two year anniversary of the Voice Referendum.

I didn't see any media coverage marking that date. Efforts to memoryhole the episode seem to have been remarkably successful.

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Reposted by Benjamin Pope

ClimateBook @climatebook.bsky.social · 4h

investment would have solved an actual, known problem. But suddenly large language models come along -- which solve no known problem -- and trillions of dollars magically appear? What fresh hell is this?

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Reposted by Benjamin Pope

ClimateBook @climatebook.bsky.social · 4h

Every time the cost of investment needed to decarbonise came up over the last several decades, we were told the money needed for the investment just isn't there (even though it would avoid costs and be profitable in the long run). Such

Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 6h

never has there been a solution looking more desperately for a problem than ChatGPT

The Verge @theverge.com · 10h

Sam Altman says ChatGPT will soon sext with verified adults

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Reposted by Benjamin Pope

Nick Evershed!? @nickevershed.bsky.social · 4h

between this sort of thing and the misinfo firehose that Sora has turned into it is honestly amazing reading OpenAI's original mission statement lol

OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact.

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 6h

Yep

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 6h

doing Manhattan Project levels of investment of human talent and resources, not to beat Hitler but to beat the creditors

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 6h

got served an ad for Perplexity that was just straight up, use this to cheat on assignments. it doesn’t have to be this way

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 6h

never has there been a solution looking more desperately for a problem than ChatGPT

The Verge @theverge.com · 10h

Sam Altman says ChatGPT will soon sext with verified adults

ChatGPT is about to get flirty.

buff.ly

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Reposted by Benjamin Pope

Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 7h

So many spectacular, kind, brave people who I've worked with for years being let go from JPL today. We will all be poorer for their absence from the forefront of human knowledge.

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 15h

not gonna lie

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 16h

I think so. It might take more GPUs, and some clever optimisations to work in reduced precision to make it fast, but I think there is no fundamental reason you couldn’t do the phase retrieval and visibility extraction very fast with a nonlinear detector model

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Reposted by Benjamin Pope

AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 16h

Amazing work solving a tricky calibration problem with JWST aperture masking data! Any hope to improve ground-based systematics with this general approach?
@benjaminpope.bsky.social

arxiv.org/abs/2510.09806

AMIGO: a Data-Driven Calibration of the JWST Interferometer

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) hosts a non-redundant Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) in its Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument, providing the only dedicate...

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Benjamin Pope

Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 18h

Cosmologists! We have a faculty job going here in Oxford - happy to answer questions. Brief version is that this remains a great & collaborative place to do science and the students are superb. 🔭 www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOP628/a...

Associate Professor of Cosmology at University of Oxford

Recruiting now: Associate Professor of Cosmology on jobs.ac.uk. Click for details and explore more academic job opportunities on the top job board

www.jobs.ac.uk

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Reposted by Benjamin Pope

Louis Desdoigts @gradientrider.bsky.social · 20h

Thanks @benjaminpope.bsky.social! None of this would have been possible without your guidance and unending dedication to your students 🙌🙌🎉

Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 1d

Thrilled to have two years' of work out, in a pair of papers led by @gradientrider.bsky.social and @maxecharles.bsky.social.

We've built a data-driven calibration of the James Webb Interferometer to near its fundamental limits for high-res imaging - explainer at @aunz.theconversation.com!

How we sharpened the James Webb telescope’s vision from a million kilometres away

The only Australian hardware on board the legendary telescope is starting to fulfil its duties.

theconversation.com

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 21h

awesome!

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 23h

how did we get this way as a culture

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 23h

I should have done that to get it on the feeds shouldn't I

Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 23h

Congratulations!

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