Daily Note (3rd August 2026)
First day as faculty at the Institute for Astronomy in the University of Hawai'i1. Didn't get much research done, mostly just going through orientation, riding my new bike, and getting to know the campus a bit better (and wading through reams of admin and training).
The campus is really nice, with the mountains as a constant backdrop. The deparment is adorable. It will turn 60 next year, and is filled with old paraphernalia, including a bulletin board chock full of photos from department members and their families, a board that proudly proclaims 'space is gay!', and an old-school graph (literally, it's a pushpin board with x- and y-axes marked out with string and little photo cutouts of galaxies pasted at the appropriate coordinates) outside Brent Tully's office2. People get coffee and have lunch together in the courtyard outside, and there's astro-ph every day.
The next few days will have a lot of catching up for me, but the experience promises to be interesting.
that little diacritical mark is called the 'okina, and represents a glottal stop, creating a brief pause in speech. the other Hawaiian-specific one to be aware of is the Kahakō (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū), A macron placed over a vowel to lengthen and stress the sound.↩
and my new favorite sticker that says 'if at first you don't succeed, keep trying until your failure is statistically significant'↩