Michael Zingale
computational astrophysicist
open source tool developer
professor
blower upper of stars
can recite π to 2 decimal places from memory
star wars fan
coffee aficionado
https://zingale.github.io
- Reposted by Michael Zingale[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Michael ZingaleNo joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
- Reposted by Michael Zingalethis lady is the reason I can go anywhere w/out getting lost 🙌
- No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
- one of my fears with the looming accessibility deadline is that people will remove their online open educational resources. That's why I am learning as much as I can now to get my class notes fixed-up (almost there, I think). Some of my colleagues are reverting to paper printouts of slides :(
- couldn't figure out why I had 40+ notifications in slack. Then I remembers I have SLURM dm me when my jobs start at NERSC.
- More fun with accessibility: how to add alt-text for a matplotlib figure in a Jupyter notebook when it is converted to HTML. Lots of github issues about this when you google, but no firm standard. Wound up with a hackish postprocessing script that does the job: github.com/zingale/matp...
- Reposted by Michael ZingaleInteresting paper on requirements for undergraduate astronomy degrees and how non-uniform they are, and how this impacts students with these degrees: arxiv.org/abs/2602.03959
- also just learned about the `sphinx-rtd-theme-ext-color-contrast` package to fix color-contrast accessibility issues in the popular Sphinx Read The Docs theme. So far, the pydata-sphinx-theme seems to be the most accessibile (that I've tested). #accessibility
- alt-text for matplotlib figures! arxiv.org/abs/2503.20089 gotta add this to my course notes. #matplotlib #accessibility
- when did the job of being an astronomer become just reading and responding to emails... ?
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- Look who's 15 today!! My profile pic is from when we adopted her at 6 mos.
- We should have high speed rail between NY and Chicago
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- managed to get an accessibility checker (pa11y) running on my personal web page, so everytime I git-push, it checks against WCAG 2AA.
- no thanks #noai
- fun google calendar event. If I put an astro course on my calendar like "5pm AST 200", then it interprets the "AST" as atlantic standard time, and the calendar entry is 4 hours off. I wonder what other disciplines have this problem.
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- how are Profs who use LaTeX for teaching materials preparing for the April PDF accessibility law? I've had some success with \usepackage[tagged]{accessibility} but it is not compatible with everything, and no longer actively developed. #astro
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- Reposted by Michael Zingale#NASAWebb has set a new cosmic distance record: MoM-z14, the furthest galaxy ever confirmed (for now). In this image we see the galaxy as it appeared only 280 million years after the universe began in the big bang: news.stsci.edu/49Uanyg
- do any astro software projects have AI policies in their github (akin to codes of conduct, community statements, citation files, etc...) #astrocode
- no email has ever "found me well"
- First day of classes, snowstorm edition Already another nor'easter threatening the upcoming weekend...
- Reposted by Michael Zingale1. The thing about science that these jokers don't understand is that science cannot be vibe-coded. Whatever its flaws, the point with vibe coding is that you're trying to quickly make something that sorta works, where you can immediately sorta see if it sorta works and then sorta use it.
- Reposted by Michael Zingale[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Michael Zingale[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Michael ZingaleNew job opportunity at @stsci.edu: Senior Astronomical Data Scientist for data analysis tools, working closely with my team and me. This role is very similar to mine. If you have questions, I'm happy to answer them. 🧪🔭
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- made plans today to debug some code instead spent the day debugging a compiler...
