Brutkey

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

It's so pretty and so nice to have so much water!

But I am really starting to miss the sky... Better odds of seeing it because we're closer to the ocean the next couple of nights, but it's cloudy always and forever...

#ProfSamLectureTour

Looking down a hillside covered with tall, mossy pines and low ferns, toward the Cowichan River, which is flowing fast Looking up a fairly big tributary to the Cowichan river, which has lots of mossy trees bowing over it. The sun is lighting up a few small patches of moss on some of the trees and it's quite pretty looking. The sky above is a little cloudy A view of a swampy area full of live and dead ferns, and tall mossy trees all around the edges. All the trees have moss on them, and some of them are lit up by the sun peeking through the clouds.
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Ohhhh Vancouver Island I have missed you so much!!

#ProfSamLectureTour

Looking down from a very tall bridge onto a pretty large stream, with tall, mossy pines on each side. The sky above is cloudy. Looking down onto a little waterfall, with lots of tall trees on either side. Everything is covered with bright green moss.
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Say what you will about the suburban hellscape of Surrey, BC, they have done a fantastic job of protecting their waterways!

Also, frost flowers are super cool (I forgot about those! Too cold and dry in Saskatchewan)

#ProfSamLectureTour

A view looking down a beautiful stream through a park inside a park in Surrey, BC. Water is flowing across rocks between bare trees that are very tall, and the sun is shining nicely on the stream. Blackberry thicket on the side of a stream, with lots of tall bare trees above, and a partly cloudy sky above. The blackberry leaves are all rimmed with white frost. A frost flower erupting from a dead branch on dead leaves on the ground. The frost flower is many incredibly thin, parallel strings of ice. It looks like fiberglass fluff, or cotton candy, but melts at the slightest touch. Weird tiny ice crystal pillars that froze out of the ground, and I smooshed with my foot. They look like a pile of tiny beautiful ice columns next to my boot on the ground.
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

We made it to Surrey yesterday, and had a lovely Christmas meal with family of our friends (who are basically adopted family at this point)

The drive was a bit sketchy along the Coquihalla with multiple smashed semi-trucks along the shoulders as warnings to drive slow. But after 2 back-to-back blizzards in Saskatchewan right before we left, it was pretty manageable.

First impression of the lower mainland after not being here for 6 years: holy cow it's green here!!

#ProfSamLectureTour

Looking along a muddy, slushy highway road with lots of snow on the sides toward a somewhat smashed semi-truck on the shoulder up ahead. There are tall pines on both sides of the road with snow, and tall mountains. The sky above is blue with some clouds A view of temperate rainforest wild parkland, with lots of moss on everything. It's super wet, and the sky is grey above.
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
christmas ramble

My family always celebrated Christmas, even though we weren't very religious. Christmas eve at one grandparents' house, Christmas morning at home with my parents and siblings, and Christmas day at the other grandparents' house. But I have lived very far away from my whole family for many years now, and Christmas traditions seem weirder and weirder to me (though many times I or my partner have been able to bring my kids to spend Christmas with some part of my family).

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
christmas ramble

And so I find myself on this Christmas morning waking up in a hotel room, with my partner and kids, getting ready to drive across more mountains to visit a family we lived with while I was finishing up my PhD, my oldest kid was a baby, and we got priced out of Vancouver. Should be a good Christmas, if a bit weird.

So, merry Christmas to all of you who want to celebrate it in some way: I hope you find a small way to celebrate, no matter how weird your current situation is.

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
christmas ramble

My family always celebrated Christmas, even though we weren't very religious. Christmas eve at one grandparents' house, Christmas morning at home with my parents and siblings, and Christmas day at the other grandparents' house. But I have lived very far away from my whole family for many years now, and Christmas traditions seem weirder and weirder to me (though many times I or my partner have been able to bring my kids to spend Christmas with some part of my family).

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

I finally got to watch Shifting Baselines! https://www.greenground.ca/shifting-baselines

(Again, huge shout-out to my university library for making it accessible for me and anyone else at my university, yay libraries!)

I am SO completely impressed by how the film came out. WOW WOW WOW. I hope they make it easier to stream somewhere soon!

And especially since I'm now in full goat withdrawal while I'm travelling, it was absolutely delightful to see my goats (and llama) in the film.

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Snow and rain and snow and rain for today's drive through a lot of BC mountains. We could theoretically make it to the lower mainland in BC today, but that's totally not going to happen given the likely road conditions! Shout-out to all the snowplow drivers and maintenance workers keeping the roads as safe as possible, even on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

#ProfSamLectureTour

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

...and how hardy it is to debris hits. That's a big cross-section: 2,400 square feet, a bit bigger than a basketball half-court. This paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027311772030644X suggests 1 hit energetic enough to penetrate 1 mm of aluminum per m^2/yr from debris and 1 from micrometeorites at AST's altitude, so about 1 hit per day. Good luck...

(Especially given a much smaller Starlink satellite and the similar cross-section Chinese space station both likely got hit by debris in the last few days)

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Are direct-to-cell satellite connections useful? Yes. Are the benefits for a small handful of people who can afford access to those satellites worth the increased collision risks in orbit, the atmospheric pollution from launching and reentering all of them, the ground casualty risks from reentering them, and the light/radio pollution they cause? I would argue, no. Invest in better remote ground-based infrastructure! This scramble for direct-to-cell sats is NOT going to work.

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Damn, looks like the freaking huge AST satellite launched successfully. I guess we'll find out soon how incredibly fucking bright and radio-loud it is 😭😭

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:vqtp5dj2o6rqnge56sz2db5a/post/3mapcxxetwk2o