who only by moving can balance

The link to an NPR article on Newly Discovered Auroral Form has been doing the rounds (with an especial hat-tip to redbird, who provided the version I finally mustered the executive function to click on), and includes an onward link to the publication itself (open access), which I have been finding just charming. Five of the 13 authors have their affiliation listed (in the PDF) as "Citizen Scientist, Finland", which is exactly right and proper and as it should be and has been giving me warm fuzzies all day.

I just. The sheer delight:

On 7 October 2018, the auroral watchers spotted the dunes again, this time marking the start of a detective story uncovering the physics the dunes represent. We organized an ad hoc campaign in the evening of 7 October 2018, where the scientists and the citizen observers from different parts of Finland were in real‐time connection. As a result, we gained several consecutive and simultaneous pictures with calibrated camera clocks throughout Finland. These pictures, presented in this paper, formed the backbone of this study.

You can tell, because I got home at around 8.30pm after a 12+-hour day at work - most of it in lab - and because actual food sounds difficult and like effort... I have a from-scratch quiche in the oven (membrillo paste made by my mum, caramelised onions, a metric fucktonne of vintage cheddar, rosemary crust), new potatoes coming to a boil on the stove, and dough for chelsea buns murbling away to itself in the breadmaker.

Important Alex Facts: when food is too much like effort, I do this kind of nonsense, because it is ritual and calming and the process is an ends in itself, and as and when everything is done I'll suddenly go "... huh. Food. Sufficient food for the next few days. ... APPARENTLY I AM HUNGRY."

(Meanwhile all the washing up has happened - or at least the first round - and I've sorted the recycling. Domestic bliss, or something.)

00:17 < kaberett> me: I'm a bit worried that I'm only actually running at ~80 papers cited
00:17 < kaberett> C: ... is that a problem?
00:17 < kaberett> me: ... it's a literature review?
00:17 < kaberett> C: You were highly selective!
00:18 < kaberett> me: ... you mean I only took papers from the first three pages of Google Scholar results.
00:18 < kaberett> C: That's highly selective!
00:19 < kaberett> me: ...
00:19 < kaberett> C: You should put it in your methods section!
00:19 < kaberett> me: ...
00:19 < kaberett> #OVERLYHONESTMETHODS

eta I am seriously considering turning this icon into an appendix, okay