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Elise Cutts

@elisecutts.bsky.social

1.1K followers 1.3K following 1.6K posts

Science journalist is just a fancy way of saying "professional nerd." USian in Austria, language geek, collector of fine yellow zigzagged sweaters and etymology fun facts. Get my newsletter about big questions in science: www.reviewertoo.com 👽🌀🦋

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Reposted by Elise Cutts

Dr. Emily Gilbert @emdwarf.bsky.social · 19h

I would like a refund on 2025 please.

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 8h

This feels like watching someone burn down an old growth forest. It's like, no, you cannot just replace those trees.

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 8h

Ah yes, fire the rocket science people. That'll sure help send astronauts to Mars.

Reuters @reuters.com · 20h

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to lay off about 550 workers reut.rs/4302N2L

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to lay off about 550 workers

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Monday it will cut nearly 550 jobs as part of a restructuring, not related to the current U.S. government shutdown.

reut.rs

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 8h

Fascinating stuff! The idea of creative destruction seems like an echo of how evolution innovates through turnover.

(And I know the committee member you quoted said there was no connection to science funding cuts, but it's hard to imagine they couldn't have anticipated it'd be seen that way!)

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 8h

My science conspiracy theory is that literally everything is the Ising model

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 1d

As someone from Portland I can't even begin to describe how in-character it is for this city to produce iconic resistance pictures of people dressed up in animal onesies.

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 1d

a man in a black turtleneck stands in front of a window with perfection written on the bottom right

Alt: Magneto from X Men says "Perfection."

media.tenor.com

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 1d

No notes. 🧪

BIRB: A Generalization Benchmark for Information Retrieval in Bioacoustics

The ability for a machine learning model to cope with differences in training and deployment conditions--e.g. in the presence of distribution shift or the generalization to new classes altogether--is ...

arxiv.org

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 1d

Where do these guys hide to avoid becoming snail raisins when the sun comes out 😬

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 2d

Amazing, thank you!

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 2d

Feel free to recommend whatever, but I'm personally most interested in: sci-fi, surrealism, landscapes, art that translates some abstract concept into visual language, weird/creative uses of media, really distinctive styles, and comics. I'm less interested in character art (e.g. for RPGs) etc.

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 2d

As a small act of anti-AI rebellion, I'd like to start following more human artists and see more human creativity in my feed.

Who are some of your favorites?

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

Now I want to know what the spookiest possible celestial body is, haha.

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

And of course there's the Van Gogh painting visible-wavelengths look, a classic.

Image: NASA/ESA/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M.H. Wong and I. de Pater (UC Berkeley) et al.
Acknowledgments: M. Zamani

Jupiter the way you imagine it: red and white striped, big red spot, lots of little storms, just a dazzlingly beautiful space orb.

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

Radio Jupiter is dressed up as... a bee?

Imagge: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), I. de Pater et al.; NRAO/AUI NSF, S. Dagnello

A radio telescope image of Jupiter that basically just looks like a striped marble. The stripes are red and yellow and there's a big black stripe down the middle. No red spots or storms in sight.

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

UV just at the poles can add an aurora hat to any costume.

Credit: NASA / ESA / J. Nichols (University of Leicester)

A visible wavelength image of Jupiter looking classic with its red and white stripes and great red spot, but with a swirling purple-ish aurora on the north pole.

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

Ultraviolet Jupiter is dressed up as an oil slick or an opal, depends on how edgy it's feeling when you ask.

Image: NASA, ESA, M. Wong (University of California - Berkeley), G. Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

A composite UV wavelength Hubble telescope picture of Jupiter looking PSYCHADELIC with cotton-candy pinks and blues everywhere and a great BLUE spot instead of a red one.

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

Different wavelengths ranges are... Halloween costumes for planets?

IR Jupiter is a pumpkin, a classic if maybe a little low-effort spooky look. (1/n) 🧪🔭

David Grinspoon @drfunkyspoon.bsky.social · 4d

Since spooky season is here: Jupiter in the infrared looking like an angry red pumpkin planet.
(Square-root-enhanced images of Jupiter's thermal emission from cloud tops at 5.1 microns from NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in October 2020)
🧪

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

I don't know how we could ever transcend story or what a "simple reality" would look like without one, honestly. Arguably scientific theories are stories that that explain data. Collecting observations without theorizing wouldn't be very helpful for predicting things about the universe.

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

I've come around to thinking it's preferable to provide a least-wrong story than to provide no story at all. Because if you don't tell a story, someone else will.

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

Given the storytelling instinct, I actually think there's a danger in ~avoiding~ storytelling language in science communication. Scientists can't just present facts and expect people to receive them neutrally. Narrative abhors a vacuum.

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

The internet isn't dead yet

Amy @lolennui.bsky.social · 5d

oh hell yeah youtu.be/nGZOFyLrCwk?...

Slug Eating Spaghetti Time Lapse (With Stopwatch Timer)

YouTube video by Nature's Fantastic

youtu.be

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

If you walk on the beach, there's clearly no perfect boundary separating land and sea.

But if you want to draw a map of the beach for someone else, you'll need to draw a line somewhere — preferably somewhere reasonable.

Even if we have to write fictions, we can do our best to write true ones.

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

The frontier of science — especially in speculative fields — is a beach, not a cliff. There's no fine line between the known and unknown. Are you in the ocean once you're standing on wet sand? Does it only count once you're up to your ankles in the surf? Up to your knees?

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 4d

More specifically, this post argues that our drive to turn everything into a story essentially guarantees that we'll fall for illusions of consensus — false impressions that scientists agree, even if they don't.

I think this is sort of inevitable, even if care is taken to communicate nuance.

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