Amazon, Salesforce, and (American History) X

Posted on October 24, 2025 by aknudson

First off, apologies for missing the last couple of updates. I was working on query letters for book 1 in my series, while simultaneously finishing book 2. The good news is that the first batch of query letters are out, and now I’m waiting; the better news is that I finished a complete first draft of book 2, and I’m now working on the editing. Ping me if you’d like to read it and give me feedback, or learn more about it!

Second, earlier this week, I saw one of my LinkedIn connections’ post, saying goodbye to Salesforce. His farewell post reminded me of my own, when I left Amazon earlier this year. In his, he called out Salesforce’s CEO Marc Beninoff, who said that the Orange Cheat-o should send the National Guard into San Francisco (in clear violation of the posse comitatus act, since he specifically said he’d be “all for” the military being cops). Then, a few days later, it became public knowledge that Salesforce made a pitch to ICE. Specifically, they offered AI tools to help ICE staff up quickly, as well as other services.

My connection bravely stood up for what he believed in, gave his notice, and left his job without knowing what was coming next. I applaud his courage, and wish him the best.

I’ve noticed several connections leave Salesforce in the last few weeks. He was the first one I saw who specifically called out Beninoff’s craven capitulation as his justification. It made me wonder how many others left for the same reason, but weren’t comfortable saying so.

Personally, I’m not going to look towards Salesforce as a potential future employer, and I discourage others from doing so.

This also made me think about a lot of tough questions, and I’m curious about what y’all think.

The first question is: how do we categorize and document which companies are bending the knee?

Second: how can we fight back against them? I’ve already canceled my Disney+ account. I locked down my Facebook account, deleted my Twitter account, and moved to BlueSky. I’m not going to work for any of those companies, and I won’t be using their services. What else can we or should we do? (And I’m only asking for legal options.)

And third: when the dust settles, and if there is justice to be found in this world, what do you think the repercussions will be for those like Bezos, Beninoff, Ellison, Musk, Thiel, and Zuckerberg? The ultra-rich who abused their power and wealth to gut the social safety net, promote racism and transphobia, and subvert democracies around the world – what’s justice for them?

History, I hope, will mutter their names in the same breath as Henry Ford and Fritz ter Meer. But the near term? Sadly, probably nothing.

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Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) (and Some Other New Stuff)

Posted on October 22, 2025 by aknudson

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) made its closest approach to Earth on Tuesday, October 21st at just under 0.6 AU – so about half the distance from the Earth to the Sun. I had a clear night last night, and was able to capture some pretty good shots. I had a very hard time keeping tracking – it was very low on the horizon, and it was a humid night with a lot of atmospheric distortion. I only got two shots that were able to keep track for longer than 10 seconds. I included the first one because I think it shows the best true-color representation: a slightly blue-green coma with two distinct tails – one dim and diffuse, and the other sharp and narrow.

The other distinct feature, visible in the last of the 3 images, is how fast the comet is moving relative to the background stars. Compare it the 4 minute picture to the 8 second picture, and you can see that the bright center of the coma moves up and to the left about 2 to 3 times its apparent width over the course of only 4 minutes.

This creates two interesting feature requests for Unistellar: 1) let us take time lapse movies. Maybe 10-20 second stacks per frame, so you get a nice bright resolved image? If that was possible, you’d DEFINITELY see the comet moving (and probably even the tail!) in the 3rd image. 2) I wish the auto-tracking software would give you the option to track the motion of the COMET rather than the motion of the stars. This comet was NOT in the Unistellar list of targets, so I had to manually enter the right ascension and declination. This was fine, but if it HAD been in the catalogue, then that feature would’ve been awesome. If that were the case, then the 3rd picture below would be a beautiful well-tracked image, and the stars would be slightly streaky – which is a fair tradeoff. I’m sure this isn’t an easy feature, but it would be a very cool one.

As always these will be added to the Solar System Objects and Nebulae pages. Enjoy!

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon)

8s

2025-10-21

The best “short” shot I got of it this night, showing what it would look like if you used a pair of binoculars (which I also did). The tail was VERY long – about 3 or 4 diameters of the moon, I’d estimate.

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon)

2m

2025-10-21

The first of the two decent dwells that I got, showing a beautiful pair of bright tails.

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon)

4m

2025-10-21

You can really see how fast the comet is moving relative to the stars – compare the wide bright line at the center of the coma with the smaller circular dot from the 8s shot above.

NGC 7023 – Iris Nebula

56m

2025-10-22

This is another one that the Unistellar catalogue doesn’t have good data for, and you have to force it to go find it. I’m glad I did, because this is a very beautiful nebula.

M1 – Crab Nebula

13m

2025-10-22

This nebula was the result of a supernova in 1054 C.E. which was observed and documented by cultures from Central America to Asia. It’s a nice little supernova remnant, and it’s actually bright enough that you can see it pretty easily with binoculars.

Ceres

2m

2025-10-22

I’m not sure which of the dots in this picture is Ceres, but one of ’em is. I’m going to try to get another picture of it in the next few days; if I can, I’ll try to overlay the pictures, and if we’re lucky, we’ll get to see it move.

Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN)

7m

2025-10-21

My second attempt to catch Swan in about a week, and this was about as unsuccessful as the first attempt. Either I’m missing it entirely, or it’s really small/dim. I think I might be missing it.

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Looking for an elephant, and finding some new clusters

Posted on October 15, 2025 by aknudson

Finally! It’s been weeks of high clouds, rain, smoke from forest fires, and nearly everything else imaginable that’s prevented me from getting the telescope back out on the back porch. But a few nights ago, we had a big thunderstorm roll through (which is quite rare for Seattle, actually), and the next day, we had clear blue skies. I’ve had two good nights since then, and I took advantage.

I’d tried a couple times to hunt the elephant, unsuccessfully. This time, I’d done my research. I wanted the exact right ascension and declination of the key part of the elephant’s trunk nebula, and one google search later, found this: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noao-ic1396hapeman/ … which led me to the WorldWide Telescope, which is AWESOME.

By using that tool, I could figure out the exact coordinates, and I plugged ’em into the telescope, and told it to start a long dwell. It came up with this:

IC1396 – Elephant’s Trunk Nebula

53m

2025-10-13

It’s the right spot, and it’s a long dwell time, and you can baaaaarely make out the hints of a nebula.

Compare that to online pictures of the nebula, and you’ll get a sense of my disappointment.

If I were to speculate – and it’s pure speculation – I’d guess that the Unistellar Vivid Vision Technology (VVT) software is programmed on the basis that “the background is black,” rather than – as in the case above – “everything in the background is slightly red.” The elephant’s trunk nebula is HUGE – about five or six times the angular size of the full moon – and so ALL of the sky in that area is slightly red. As a result, you get pictures like the one above – some red highlights, and you can tell that it’s kinda there, but not a great nebula picture.

The other speculation (and it’s possible) is that the nebula is REALLY dim, and I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m not getting a great photo of it from the greater Seattle metro area. Which do you think? I’m not sure.

I was happy that I could put that one to bed, though – I now know that I’m not likely to get a better shot of the nebula in the near future.

But it was two clear nights in a row, with no moon, so … more pictures!

M71

5m

2025-10-13

The M71 globular cluster is a new one for me. It’s only about 27 light-years across, and is about 13,000 light-years away.

M15 – The Great Pegasus Cluster

6m

2025-10-13

M15 is one of the most densely packed clusters in the Milky Way, with over 100,000 stars inside a diameter of only 175 light-years. Its bright center is a dense sphere of closely-packed stars, possibly orbiting a central black hole.

NGC 0247 – The Claw Galaxy

25m

2025-10-14

I think it’s called the claw because of the large void on one side of the spiral disk – and you can see it here. I think another attempt, with a longer dwell (this one got interrupted) might be worthwhile.

NGC 7000 – The North America Nebula

35m

2025-10-14

This might be the new elephant – the North America Nebula is about 3 to 4 moon-widths across, and I just picked a spot inside it and took a picture. Turns out, I picked one of the most boring spots. Note to self: next time try 20h58m25s / +43:24:26 or 21h00m21s / +43:53:23.

Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN)

11m

2025-10-14

I’m not sure which one of these smudges is the comet. I created the before-after below with what I think is the comet circled, but … yeah, I might be wrong.

Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) — maybe?

M110

5m

2025-10-13

Not a great photo – it cut off after only 5 minutes (I’m not sure why). M110 is a dwarf galaxy orbiting / interacting with the Andromeda Galaxy (like M32).

M2

8m

2025-10-13

M2 is a dense little globular cluster in Aquarius. It’s both one of the oldest (about 12.5 billion years old) and one of the largest (175 light-years in diameter) clusters in the Milky Way. It’s possibly part of an ancient galaxy that collided with the Milky Way 8-11 billion years ago.

As always, the above images will be added to their respective pages.

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What To Do When Things Go Wrong

Posted on October 3, 2025 by aknudson

Another one of my mantras (witticisms? Sayings?) is:

People don’t remember what you did when things were going well. People remember what you do when things go wrong.

If a leader walks up to your desk and things are going great, then they usually don’t remember the interaction. But if they walk into your office because the website is down, they’re definitely going to remember how you behaved, how quickly you solved the problem, and how you kept the problem from ever happening again.

Many people have told me that I’m calm and focused during a crisis. This is partly because of this mantra – people remember what you do when things go wrong. But it also goes back to my childhood.

I was an excellent swimmer (e.g., I set the all-time record on my community swim team for the 14-and-under 50m breaststroke). And excellent swimmers become lifeguards. And lifeguards learn CPR and first aid. And the relevant bit – how to focus in a crisis – has stuck with me.

Within the professional setting, I learned that when things go wrong, that’s the time for you to think very hard about what the BEST thing you can do is, and then DO IT. Don’t let fear hold you back or drive up your anxiety. Don’t hesitate, but be slow, thoughtful, and calm. In a crisis, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

And I also learned that the best way to deal with a crisis is to be prepared for it, train for it, and make dealing with it routine. That’s the reason that CPR has a book, and why ER doctors ask you what day it is when you roll into the room, and critical software systems have disaster recovery plans.

Good leaders invest time to ensure that your best practices and SOPs are well documented. Ideally, get them done before the code goes live, but realistically, as soon after the launch as you can. Document what you should do when things go wrong, BEFORE they go wrong, because they will go spectacularly wrong.

The first and most important thing is “stop the bleeding.” On the internet, this usually distills down to “never roll forward; always roll back,” because 9 times out of 10, that’ll stop the problem. Yes, it means that feature you rolled out earlier today isn’t live anymore, but hey, the checkout page is back, and we’re back to selling products, so that’s a good thing.

During this phase, don’t ask why it happened. Don’t focus on finding the bug in the code, and don’t try to blame someone for writing that bug. Sometimes, yeah, you need to understand the bug to understand the problem. But most of the time? Roll back the deployment. Get to the last good state. Stop the bleeding.

But sometimes rolling back isn’t an option, or doesn’t solve the problem. In those cases, take in all the information available. Scour your dashboards. Listen carefully, find the thing that smells fishy, and relentlessly poke at every assumption. When you’re brainstorming hypotheses, look for one that explains more symptoms than the others. Then look for other signs and symptoms that would be related, if that hypothesized root cause was true. If they’re there, then you’re closer to truth. If not, try another idea. Again, your goal is to stop the bleeding; prioritize the thing that does that.

Once you’ve stopped the bleeding, then start doing the investigation into why it happened. This can happen right away, or the next day, or during the next ops review meeting, but it has to happen. If you want to learn how to do that, check out the “5 whys” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys] for a great summary. Amazon uses the 5 whys because ultimately, you need to be able to ask, and then answer, the real question: how can we do better next time, or ideally, keep this from ever happening again?

To answer that question, you’ll have to ask others: What changes to our processes should we make to prevent a recurrence? Did the SOP tell you how to identify the root cause? Did it tell you how to stop the bleeding? Was it clear enough for you? Do we need to update it? If things had gone worse, how would they have done so? Assuming that worst-case scenario, what should we do that we didn’t do this time?

Every time an engineer gets paged due to an issue, as a leader, you should ask those questions. My goal was always to create a culture where we get paged less often next week than we did this week. This kind of continuous improvement means that two weeks (or six months, or two years) from now, we’ll be building new code, rather than fixing the code we’re writing today.

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Don’t Be Afraid

Posted on September 26, 2025 by aknudson

Another one of my mantras is: don’t be afraid. It’s easy. I tell it to myself all the time. When I get worried, or stressed, and I’m not sure what to do, I’ll tell myself: don’t be afraid.

Why? Because fear is an overweight counterbalance in the risk equation, and measured risk creates progress. When you give into fear, you’re sacrificing potential for comfort. You’re giving up the long term for the short term. You’re saying safe is better than awesome.

Don’t be afraid…

… to ask questions. Questions are the best way to learn. It’s not showing that you’re stupid, it’s showing that you are curious and want to do the right thing.

… to look for answers on your own. You’re getting paid to solve problems. Getting better at the meta-problem of how to solve problems is the best way to create long-term success.

… to try something that you’re not sure you can do. We grow by getting slightly outside our comfort zone, trying something new, and learning from it.

… to ask for help. Nobody can solve every problem. Not all problems can be fixed by one person. Your boss’s job is to help remove roadblocks and obstacles. They can’t remove obstacles that they don’t know about.

… to try to do it on your own. You’re usually more capable than you think. Even if it’s scary, it’s usually the fear that undermines your success, not your skill.

… to make a mistake. We learn from our mistakes. Good leaders embrace mistakes as learning opportunities. Bad leaders criticize or fire people that make mistakes. If they do, it’s their problem, not yours.

… to escalate. If you think you’re right, and they’re wrong, push it up a level. If a peer manager is blocking you, escalate to their boss and your boss. Talk to your skip-level manager if your boss is being a bad boss. Speak up when your boss is screwing up.

… to move to another role. We grow not only by being promoted, but by trying new things. Go back and read my article about how you gotta do what makes you happy, because it talks a lot about how to do this.

… to persevere through difficult times. Perseverance and grit usually lead to better long-term happiness. You get a salary because what you do is sometimes hard, boring, or annoying. Get through those tough times, to get to the good ones.

For me, the key is that you need to check yourself when making a hard decision, and ask if fear is what’s holding you back. If it’s a reasonable fear – meaning the risk of something going horribly wrong is reasonable – then yeah, don’t do it. But if it’s irrational fear (as it usually is), and the likely outcomes range from “good” to “meh, kinda bad, maybe?” then you should go for it.

Particularly if one possible outcome is “awesome.” Never devalue awesome!

Now, I also recognize my privilege. I talked about it in my post about luck. I’ve had the luxury of never being afraid to speak to power. What are they going to do, fire me? For me, that’s always only been in the “meh, kinda bad, maybe” category. Therefore, I recognize that ideas like “don’t be afraid to escalate may not always be the best advice. If you’ve got a job that’s keeping your head barely above water, and you’ve got a boss that’s a jerk, and you’re sure you’re going to get fired if you go over his head, then yeah, maybe don’t escalate. Remember, if the fear is rational and reasonable, then don’t do it. (But maybe look for another job? If you can, of course.)

Unfortunately, I’ve also worked at companies where, if you make a significant mistake, the CEO will walk down the aisle and fire you on the spot. The result is stagnation – people will put in a lot of effort to look busy, without actually doing anything. At those companies, “don’t be afraid to make a mistake” can be bad advice (and yes, I looked for another job).

So… what are you afraid of?

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How To Ask For Help

Posted on September 19, 2025 by aknudson

So the last article was about gophers vs. hair-on-fire, and how they do (or don’t) ask for help. In it, I alluded to coaching people on HOW to ask for help – and that’s what this article’s going to be about.

First, before you ask for help, you need a problem. I recommend against asking for help when you don’t have problems – in fact, it’s a good way to get fired.

I’m not going to go over basic problem solving, like sizing problems, effective searches, and the like. That’s perhaps a different article for a different day; if you’re interested, let me know. Today’s article is how to ask for help.

So, assuming you’ve hit a wall, and assuming you’ve invested a reasonable amount of effort to get over it, the right thing to do is to go to someone that you think can help. When you do, say the following three things:

  1. This is what I’ve done: …
  2. This is what I plan to do next: …
  3. Am I on the right track?

If you say those three things, in that order, it tells people:

  1. You’ve thought about the problem, and
  2. You have a plan (maybe not the BEST plan, but A plan), and
  3. You’re open to feedback if it’s not the most effective or efficient one.

The key to this problem-solving technique is that it lets them help you with the meta-problem of how to solve problems, rather than asking them to solve the specific problem for you. This is the best possible outcome for the long-term: you expand your library of resources, you learn new things, and (hopefully) you can solve the next problem on your own.

So you’ve gone to someone, used the three lines, and asked for help. Their possible responses are:

(1) Yeah, you’re on the right track, go for it! – this is great! Congratulations! And if you’re the type of person who leans towards the hair-on-fire approach to problem solving, this question and response shows that you’ve done the leg work, and they can tell that you’re approaching problems in a reasonable way. It’s much less annoying to them, and much better for you in the long run.

(2) No, the wiki’s wrong, the answer’s actually over there… – this is also great! You’ve short-circuited the issue, and you’re on the right track quickly. You also learned about a new source of information, which will be useful in the future. If you’re the type of person that leans towards the gopher approach to problem solving, this means that rather than wasting an hour on your (bad) plan, you have an answer in seconds. Oh, and if you can fix the wiki, that means the next newbie’s not going to have the same problem you did, so probably do that too…

(3) I don’t know, but person X knows more about it. – also great! You’ve found something out about the team, and the people on it. Next time, you’re short-circuiting the problem again and can approach the right person the first time. Go find them, use the same three lines, and lather, rinse, repeat until you’ve made progress. Don’t forget to update your library (and the wiki)!

(4) I don’t know, that’s a good question! – the best! You both get to learn the right answer! This is the best possible response, because you’ve found an interesting and difficult problem, and you’re probably going to make the team, the org, and the company better by solving it.

I’ve used this pattern – this is what I’ve done, this is what I plan to do next, am I on the right track – at every stage of my career. It’s the most useful approach I’ve found to not only solving the immediate problem, but also getting better at the meta-problem of problem solving. The best leaders (and the best employees) are the ones that are good at the meta-problem, because it makes every problem easier.

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New Hires: Gophers vs. My Hair’s On Fire

Posted on September 12, 2025 by aknudson

In my last article, I made the point that people are complicated, diverse creatures with many motivations, quirks, and ideas. Trying to distill them into models that lump people into categories, like Myers-Briggs, is always wrong, because no one is ever that simple.

I then disregarded this point entirely, and proceeded to wax philosophic about a particular vector that I use: enablers vs. fixers.

So what next? Let’s do it again! This time, it’s gophers vs. “my hair’s on fire!”

Remember, first and foremost: this model is wrong. People are diverse. Don’t treat them as things, treat them as people. Use this model to think about certain behaviors, not certain “kinds of” people. I’ve found that it helps me be a better coach, particularly when working with either a new hire or a new professional (i.e., a recent college grad or an intern).

The “gopher vs. hair-on-fire” spectrum measures how someone behaves when encountering an unexpected, blocking problem. They’re stuck, and don’t know how to proceed.

At one end of the spectrum are the gophers. They take the problem, retreat into their hole, start searching and prototyping, and a week later, they emerge with a solution.

At the other end are the people whose hair is constantly on fire. As soon as they hit a snag, they leap up, start running in circles, and scream “help me! Help me! Help me!”

Both extremes are bad, and nobody is ever fully one extreme or the other. Everyone is smeared out somewhere on this spectrum. But if someone leans heavily on being a gopher, they might spend a week solving a problem that, had they asked for help, could’ve been done in an hour. And hair-on-fire is bad because (a) it’s annoying, (b) you’re interrupting other people with a problem that could’ve been solved with a 5-minute wiki search, and (c) you’ve been hired to SOLVE problems, not have other people solve problems for you.

As a leader, I pay careful attention to how new hires and interns respond to their first significant problem. I talk to their peers, review their updates at daily standup, and watch how they interact with the team. I try to assess where, approximately, they are on this spectrum.

Most novice professionals (i.e. new college grads and interns) tend to be more extreme on the spectrum, but even experienced individuals in a new job or role can exhibit poor behaviors. This may be because it’s a new experience for them, and so they might be prone to being more panicked, and thereby more hair-on-fire. Or they might want to prove they can “do the job,” and so they take it fully on themselves and go it alone.

What’s even worse is that new college grads have been coached for years that they must NEVER plagiarize, that the work they complete MUST be their own, and nobody’s told them that’s not true anymore. Good professionals steal code, ask for help, use LLMs, and do whatever they need to to get the work done quickly. New hires – particularly gophers – often need to learn that.

I coach both of them on how they should ask for help (which is the topic of a future article!). I coach both of them on how to be a more effective member of the team. And I help them learn the meta-skills on how to solve problems in general, rather than helping them solve ONE specific problem at a time.

So for gophers, I teach them about timing and sizing the problem: if they hit a problem, that they think might take a few hours to figure out, then go ahead and work on it for a half-hour or an hour, and then ask for help. I encourage them to not be afraid to ask for help, and I teach them about the sunk-cost fallacy. I check back with them, and with the team, to monitor progress, and give positive feedback when they’ve done the right thing.

For hair-on-fire, I teach them basic skills on how to search wikis, how to assess problems and impact, how to map out potential solutions, and then how spend a reasonable amount of time trying to solve it for themselves before asking for help. I might then give them – or ask a peer to give them – a relatively straightforward problem, and watch them apply what they’ve learned. Then give them feedback, coach, observe; lather, rinse, repeat.

So which are you? Which one’s better, and why? Feel free to leave a comment or question, I’ll try to respond.

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Trying to become a writer…

Posted on September 5, 2025 by aknudson

I’ll be attending the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association (PNWA) conference from September 11-14!

Ping me if you also plan to be there and would like to meet up. I’ll be attending a bunch of seminars & sessions, plus pitching my book to try to find an agent / publisher. Wish me luck!

(Margaret Atwood’s giving the keynote, which is going be pretty amazing…)

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Fixers vs. Enablers

Posted on September 5, 2025 by aknudson

People are complicated, diverse creatures with many motivations, quirks, and ideas. Everyone has dozens of vectors of motivations, each one pushing them in different directions within their “behavior space,” and each vector gets increased or decreased in magnitude, minute-by-minute, based on their background, personality, coffee intake, or who won the Westminster Dog Show last night. Leadership gurus like to create models that lump people into categories, like Type A vs Type B, Myers-Briggs, or men-are-from-Mars, women-are-from-Venus.

All of these models are wrong. Nothing and no one is ever simple. Humans are complex and fickle beasts.

So… yeah, I’m going to talk about a spectrum that I find useful – because I find it useful. I recognize that it’s fundamentally flawed, and there’s no way to simplify people down to just this one dimension. It’s never true, but thinking about it helps me help other people.

In this model, the dimension that I want to investigate is the “enabler vs. fixer” spectrum, specifically as it applies to managers.

The question is: given a problem, when does your manager step in? Fixers will step in at the slightest hint of trouble. Enablers will let the team solve the problem themselves.

Both extremes are bad. 100% fixers are micro-managers, telling you what to do, how to do it, and taking full control at the slightest hint of a problem. 100% enablers are laisse-faire, do-nothing bosses, that teach people what to do, but then never step in when something goes wrong, thereby letting other people take the blame.

Fixers can be very successful leaders, because they get shit done. Senior management tend to notice when shit gets done. Fixers fix stuff through sheer will. But when a fixer fails, they fail hard.

Enablers, on the other hand, usually fail more often, but less severely. They almost universally end up with happier and smarter teams. They create cultures of trust, they educate rather than direct, and they share the celebration on wins. They let their diverse teams solve complex problems that one person alone couldn’t solve. But when an enabler succeeds, they often don’t get the credit for the success.

Neither of these are good, just like neither one is bad. Every leader is smeared out somewhere on this spectrum, each person perhaps leaning more in one direction than another.

Where I find it most useful is when I change teams. I also coach people on what to do when they’re thinking about changing teams, or jobs, or roles. When they do, I tell them to ask your new (potential) boss: are they a fixer or an enabler? Understanding your manager’s style helps you better understand when, and how, they’ll step in when something goes wrong. And when compared and contrasted to your own style, it tells you a lot about how each of you will react when that happens.

I know, for example, that I lean slightly towards being an enabler. I do step in when I need to, so there’s no small amount of fixer in my boss DNA, but if I was forced to pick one, I’m definitely more enabler than fixer.

Early in my Amazon career, I learned when that can be a problem – specifically, when my boss was a fixer (and a pretty strong fixer). One day, I walked into his office, because I had a question that needed a lawyer’s opinion. It was a question related to sending emails to customers, and I don’t remember the specifics, but I needed to know the answer to clarify some software requirement. I asked my boss, “is so-and-so still the right person if I have a legal question?”

He said, “yeah, what’s the question?”

And I told him, because it was the natural thing to do. And the next logical and natural question was, did he know the answer? He didn’t, but he slapped his knees enthusiastically, jumped out of his chair, said, “let’s go find out!”… and walked past me and out the door.

We went upstairs, and learned that the person we were looking for was out of town. We poked our heads into a few more lawyers’ doors, and eventually found one that knew the answer. Satisfied, we both went back down the staircase.

And as we walked down those stairs, I had a realization. I said, out loud, “I just let you do that.”

I’m an enabler. I came to him asking if person X was the right person. I had the right intent to get the right answer, and was just looking for confirmation that I was on the right track.

He was a fixer – and so he decided to step in and solve the problem. I didn’t ask him to solve my problem. I essentially asked: this is what I know, this is what I plan to do next, am I on the right track? And when he didn’t answer the question, and instead inserted himself into the solution, I let him. I enabled him! Without thinking about it!

We talked about it, and agreed that both of us were wrong, and we both needed to be better about it in the future (which we were). I learned from that point that I needed to be more clear and more assertive when I just wanted confirmation that I’m on the right track. And he learned that when the question is just that – am I on the right track – the right answer is a simple yes or no.

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That Supernova Was Weirder Than We Thought

Posted on August 24, 2025 by aknudson

So one of my happiest sets of pictures is the supernova that happened in the Pinwheel Galaxy in 2023. Below is a sequence of 5 photos; they’re the same ones you can find on the Galaxies page. The first is May of 2022, a year before the supernova. Then May 26th, 2023, just after it happened. Next is a week later, on July 1st; and then almost 2 weeks later on July 13th; and then finally 3 months later, in October. Note that the position of the supernova changes relative to the camera. I’ve rotated the 2nd and 3rd image so they align with the orientation of the first image, but images 4 and 5 are rotated about 90 degrees counter-clockwise. The supernova appears in the top-right arm of image 2, at about position 2:00 on a clock (with up being 12 o’clock), and then images 4 and 5, that arm is around 10:30 on the same clock.

  • May 2022
  • May 26, 2023
  • July 1, 2023
  • July 13, 2023
  • October 6, 2023

I don’t usually discuss scientific papers on this blog – it’s mostly about astrophotography using a cool telescope – but I first saw a video, and then skimmed the actual paper, about how weird this supernova actually was, and I wanted to share. The video is one of Anton Petrov’s: https://youtu.be/7KAurwygjgc?si=pYE0VyAQH39hieq5 (and he’s a great science communicator, check out his channel). The paper, referenced in the video, is here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/adea38/pdf – feel free to read it if you want. I only read the abstract, skimmed most the rest, and spent some time looking at the interesting graphs and pictures.

The short version of why this is weird is: this appears to be a case where two stellar objects – one, a large, bright star, about 10 times the mass of our sun, and the other, a black hole also about ten times the mass of the sun – spiraled into each other. It’s even possible that the black hole went inside the larger star! For the four to five years prior to the explosion, the spiraling black hole ripped off 2 different chunks of the star’s gas and spewed them into space, causing the apparent brightness of this star to grow. And when I say “chunks” getting spewed, I mean “about two or three solar masses of material,” each ripped away over the course of a few months to a couple years. And when I say “ripped away,” it’s possible this was caused by the black hole, or just instability of the star itself; either way, stuff got thrown into space.

Finally (and this is where the black hole may have actually gone into the big star), the black hole caused enough instability to make the star explode. The huge explosion of gas and dust then raced outwards, smashing into the closer bubble of previously-ejected material (causing the initial brightness spike), and then around 240 days later, hit the earlier-ejected material (causing a second brightness spike). Now, 240 days after May of 2023 is mid-January of 2024, and unfortunately, I have no pictures of this galaxy from around that time.

So the weirdness of this supernova comes from two things: one, the fact that those before-the-explosion events caused a brightening of this star for years beforehand; and two, the fact that this explosion was caused by instability due to interactions with a companion black hole, rather than the more humdrum stellar-collapse supernova, making it a type IIn supernova. Type IIn supernovae have been theorized, but Anton’s video seems to imply that this is the first time that a paper is claiming to have evidence for one.

It’s very cool that I got to take pictures of what may have been a previously-unobserved phenomenon!

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