Chad Reznicek

@estherzelda0514 This.

Because I'm old and was of an age to be sentient when the Prequels were released, I can tell you that, until The Clone Wars was released and redeemed the series, the hatred for the Prequels was incandescent and pervasive and much worse than the hatred for the Sequels, although the Sequels (IMO) are much worse. You have to understand, the Prequels were not "nerdy" when they began releasing in 1999. They were as mainstream as Jurassic Park or Titanic. Everyone watched them. You would be made fun of if you didn't, actually. Back then, we had a distinct monoculture, where everyone was expected to know of certain things. We did not have the fragmentation of the market into niches or gatekept streaming services. The Prequels were absolutely one of those things. Picture the cultural event of the Barbie movie, except ten-fold. The Phantom Menace was released in 1999. The hype was absolutely massive. However, this was then met with almost uniform backlash. Most people, even famous standups or talk show hosts, were making fun of how incredibly annoying Jar Jar Binks and young Anakin were. This was extremely mainstream, it was not consigned to just fans. While the podracing and Obi-Wan's duel with Darth Maul were praised, the rest of the movie was considered childish, with stupid dialogue, and bad CGI. While Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, and Natalie Portman were sparred, the voice actor for Jar Jar, Ahmed Best, and the child who played Anakin, Jake Lloyd, faced such severe harassment that they later admitted in a documentary to suffering severe, long-landing mental health issues. Attack of the Clones came out in 2002, and this was was considered not as childish as the Phantom Menace, but still very stupid. Everyone harassed Hayden Christensen for his wooden dialogue. The cultural consensus was that he was a pretty boy that lacked talent. This took its toll, as after the Prequel series, Christensen left mainstream Hollywood entirely. People really started concluding, around this time, that Lucas himself was to blame for how bad the Prequels were, citing the incredibly unconvincing romance between Padme and Anakin, and the ridiculousness of the dialogue in those scenes. However, Ewan McGregor remained very popular, Natalie Portman grew in popularity, and the key action scenes (e.g., Kenobi versus Fett, Yoda versus Dooku, and the Battle Of Geonosis sequence) were praised. Outside of the action scenes, people still criticized the CGI. Revenge of the Sith is what this sequence was from, and it came out in 2005. This was, far and beyond, the most well-received of the Prequels. People liked the dark tone, increased action, and how it finally linked the Prequels to the Original trilogy. However, Padme's death sequence was the subject of mainstream and late night talk show ridicule, and people still noted Christensen's poor performance, melodrama, and stilted dialogue. There were some slap fights among fans whether this was on par with any installment of the Original trilogy, with people who had spent the last six years despising the Prequels extremely loud and insistent that it was still unredeemable garbage. None of these movies were at all safe to admit that you liked until The Clone Wars, nostalgia, and the poor quality of the Sequels redeemed them in retrospect. However, what is interesting is that the action sequences in the Prequels were always its strongest point, and most reasonable haters could admit that they were quite good. In contrast, the action sequences in the Sequels were always noted to be lackluster in comparison, and were criticized at release. However, the Sequel hate did not reach anything like the volume of the Prequel hate. Even The Last Jedi, the most controversial installment, was criticized only in niche circles. It wasn't the topic of mainstream jokes. When The Rise of Skywalker bombed, we all collectively winced and agreed it was bad, and moved on. There was little of the overwhelming monoculture discourse that accompanied the Prequels. Remember, the Prequels were released at a time when the monoculture was relentless in immiserating pop stars it deemed fair game. That dynamic of the culture no longer existed by 2015.

@erfmufn Lol...

My boy found this beautiful 1978 Astro navigation calculator that sailors used to calculate from stars in a local Woolies recycle bin! They’re worth $150+ to collectors. The calcs are off after 1999 unless adjusted for precession. They’ll be way off now with no way to update.

@MrSatur92913572 Good job! I did one last weekend too. Got all but m30, rose too late. I should have waited another week. But at least I had clear skies all night.

先週末、有名な天体リストである「メシエカタログ」に記載された110天体を一晩で巡るメシエマラソンに挑戦しました！ 全天体コンプリートはできませんでしたが、多くを観ることができました😊 画像は全て2分露光、クロップ無しで、1枚に複数のメシエ天体が写っている場合は、同じ画像を使ってます！笑

@Heebie314 @fandompulse This.

Brandon Sanderson on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: "My end opinion of it was meh. I thought it was fairly mediocre. Some strong elements. Some very weak elements that I think are towing it down. And the good elements were mostly bungled, I felt. The big one for me is the Harfoots. The Harfoots, I feel, were just utterly bungled. ... In these last episodes there was a woman who comes to the guy in charge and says, ‘It’s time to execute them. Let’s take their wheels and make them die.’ Like what are you thinking? We do not need Hobbits talking about murdering other Hobbits. And this is our second time. It’s so baffling and then they only accept the Stranger in after he proves useful. There’s no big-heartedness to that. That is pure utilitarianism." Is he right?

@stargaze_trip That is a great image of that cluster! Detail all the way in the center of the core. Fantastic!!

こっちでは貼ってなかったので...。 ブログで掲載したω星団の写真を追加で弄ったものです。 地の利が大きい（撮影地沖縄）とは思いますが、1インチセンサーでも大迫力で撮れてます！

@peachastro @tw__astro Damian, how would you compare using a 24" dob to your normal 14" sct both visually and for astrophoto??

Jupiter with GRS and Europa on March 21st. Obtained and processed by @tw__astro and myself during our observing session together a couple of nights ago. This was the best of the true colour data and very closely matches how the colours appeared through the eyepiece. Many interesting details can be seen. The GRS is of course obvious but to the left are two long lived bluish cyclonic circulations. In the far north the long lived NNTZ Little Red Spot is visible (famously imaged in close-up by the Juno spacecraft.) This storm has been present on Jupiter since the early 1990's. Europa alongside shows a shaded area on its surface which very closely aligns with the map of Europa of the region presented at the time. 60cm Dobsonian with Uranus-C camera.

@GJDonatiello I did one Fri night / Sat morning. I got 109/110 objects, only failing on M30. I'd have been better off waiting another 7-10 days until it rises sooner. But at least I had clear skies all night.

Messier marathon Full-res poster with suggested ride from start to finish here: flic.kr/p/2s3mNrX ESO/dss2,Giuseppe Donatiello (CC BY 4.0)

@erfmufn Wow. Glad there's something they can do. Hope it does the trick. Praying for you dude.

Soon, a surgeon will cut my stomach out because of the cancer. So for the rest of my life, if I don’t want to do something, I can say “I really don’t have the stomach for this.” ✂️

@s76689153 Globs are great. Very underappreciated. And yes great to look at with the naked eye in a telescope. I've seen M13 through a 24" scope several times, stunning.

球状星団はあまりXでは流れて来ませんがなんでだろう？ 短時間露出でも良く写るし、望遠鏡で直接見てもキラキラして美しい！ #Seesta S50 M3 20分

@KevinAstrokev Beautiful.

View from a window. My C11 viewed from my little warm room 🙂

@erfmufn What do you do to get rid of sat trails? I see a few small ones perhaps, maybe you got lucky. Is that with your allsky cam? I just got a new S30 Pro and have been having fun with its star trails mode. Here's my in-process dome rebuild with pretty northern trails in the back.

Never Eat Soggy Wheetbix

@astrocatinfo Your imaging really stands out from the crowd due to your massive long integration times and ifn that most astrophotographers don't put the time in to resolve. Mad props.

My latest 2026 images 📷 all captured from my backyard 🔭 ✨ A globular cluster: M13 ✨ A distant galaxy: M51

@exQUIZitely The soundtrack!!!! Such a groovy game. Played it a ton in the arcade. Don't remember if I beat it until maybe years later on an emulator.

Rolling Thunder turns 40 this year. It was developed by Namco and released in 1986. Highly addictive and brutally hard, it was generally considered one of the toughest games of its era. You control Albatross, a secret agent from the elite "Rolling Thunder" unit, on a mission to rescue his captured partner, Leila Blitz, from the terrorist organization Geldra and its leader Maboo. 80s games didn’t have the deepest stories :) It had a pretty epic spy-thriller aesthetic inspired by 1960s espionage films (hello, Bond!) and paved the way for later hit titles such as Shinobi.

@leroyb756 This was a fantastically written response. I follow very few on X. But I'm adding you. God bless.

Secular scientism is the disease that's strangling science and must be stopped. What we actually know: - The fossils on Everest are marine. - They are in limestone. - They are consistent with rapid burial in a high‑energy water environment. - The “450 million years” date is not measured from the fossils but assigned based on the assumed age of the rock layer, the assumed rate of plate uplift, and the assumed timeline of the Paleozoic. There is no radiometric dating of the fossils themselves. There is no direct measurement of the age of the limestone. It is a model‑dependent secular fable. And even if the fossils were directly "dated" radiometric dating is itself an assumption driven model. Not an empirical finding. "Shallow sea" is a shallow explanation. The limestone is broken, folded, and thrust, not the calm, undisturbed bedding expected from a quiet shallow sea. The fossils are consistent with violent transport The Himalayas show catastrophic deformation, not slow uplift. The Himalayan peaks should be the most eroded part, instead they’re pristine. Under long-age assumptions, that’s a major inconsistency. A global marine inundation followed by rapid tectonic uplift fits the physical evidence better than the secular slow‑and‑steady model. “Trilobites went extinct 252 Ma, Everest formed 60 Ma.” This makes the unsubstantiated assumption that: - the extinction date is correct, - the Himalayan uplift date is correct, - the fossil layer age is correct, - the geological column is globally synchronous. But none of those are directly measured. They are all model outputs. If the timeline is wrong, the argument collapses. If the Flood model is correct, the timeline is wrong. You can’t use an unsubstantiated, model‑dependent set of assumptions to disprove a model that challenges those assumptions. “You’d need 5.8 billion km³ of water to cover Everest.” This is an argument from ignorance. The biblical text itself says the pre‑Flood world had “high hills”, not Himalayan‑scale mountains. The post‑Flood world is explicitly described as tectonically transformed. This is a category error using present topography to model past conditions. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) predicts: - Pre‑Flood Earth had low relief. - During the Flood, rapid subduction and plate motion created massive orogeny. - Post‑Flood mountains rose after the inundation. If Everest rose after the Flood, you don’t need water to cover Everest. You need water to cover a much lower pre‑uplift terrain, which is trivial. More ignorance “Sea creatures couldn’t live at -46°C at 8,900 m elevation.” Correct, and irrelevant. Marine organisms did not live at 8,900 m. They lived at sea level and were buried in marine sediment. The mountain moved, not the animals. “Fossilization takes a long time.” False. This is only made necessary in uniformitarian models. In reality: - Rapid burial + mineral‑rich water = fossilization. - Catastrophic conditions fossilize organisms quickly. - We have modern examples of rapid fossilization (trees, fish, jellyfish, even hats). The Flood model predicts: - massive sediment transport, - rapid burial, - mineral saturation, - high pressure, - rapid lithification. This is exactly what we see. “The Flood myth came from Gilgamesh.” The claim, “We have flood stories everywhere, therefore none of them are true,” is not a coherent inference and the idea of “unbroken, continuous, well‑documented history” is a modern myth. the uniformitarian model assumes the timeline it needs to prove, assigns ages based on circular reasoning, treats present conditions as proxies for past ones, and ignores the catastrophic signatures that dominate the rock record all to promote a contemporary, ungrounded origin fable. This is how atheists have defaced science and history for decades.

@ofctimallen Isn't it AMAZING to see another planet with your own eyes through your own telescope!?! Here's my shot from a few years ago hooking my Canon camera up to my Celestron 8" scope. Keep exploring and keep sharing!

Thru my telescope last night, Jupiter. Or the same name my kids call me: The Gas Giant

@Toshiya7553 Excellent, very beautiful! I got it a few years ago when it had the supernova.

この銀河はこれまで何度も撮ってきましたが、過去イチの解像のものがゲットできました。 おおぐま座 M101 回転花火銀河 光学系：Mewlon-300CRS+0.73RD カメラ：ZWO ASI533MM-PRO 露光：L:42x5min(3.5h)　R:10x5min(0.8h)　G:10x5min(0.8h)　B:20x5min(1.7h)　Ir:18x10min(3.0h) total 590min(9.8h)

What Colors of the Universe Can Seestar Capture? #SeestarS30Pro #Seestar #SmartTelescope #Astrophotography #Stargazing #NightSky #DeepSky #Space

@Seestar_astro Just got mine and took my first photo of the horsehead and flame last night before clouds moved in. Only 1 hour of integration but it looked amazing. Thanks ZWO!

What is the Seestar S30 Pro? 🔭 It’s a smart telescope that makes astrophotography simple. Just power on, align, and start capturing the universe. 🌌✨ Ready to explore the night sky? #SeestarS30Pro #Seestar #SmartTelescope #Astrophotography #Stargazing #NightSky #DeepSky #Space

@peachastro Magnificent. Thanks for sharing.

Sunrise across the Ptolemaeus Trio An unusual view from Feb 24th catching the first rays of sun across this famous trio of large craters. I was particularly struck by Ptolemaeus at bottom whose floor is pitted with impact craters to the limit of resolution as well is being very bumpy and uneven looking (rather reminiscent of the roads here this winter!) Under more typical illumination its floor looks very flat and smooth. Alphonsus at centre has its central peak just catching the sun, while Arzachel at top right looks similar - with sunlight just catching the top of its central peak.

@erfmufn Nicely framed with the clouds! Clouds are our nemesis, but with eclipses they can actually frame it nicely. Unless your clouds are like mine, rain and 0% visibility. Thanks for sharing!

📷 0.3s / F11 / ISO 4000 / Canon 6DII 🇦🇺 #LunarEclipse