Stephen Shankland

@stshank

Head of Content at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a company commercializing fusion energy: clean, safe, affordable, secure. Former science and technology journalist. Bird nerd. Assigned to the Conehead clique as a teenager.

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Stephen Shankland@stshank· 19h

Here's a good footnote to check. Google's Pixel 11 Pro main camera is the best yet — but only when compared to last year's camera? blog.google/products-and... #Google #Photography

Stephen Shankland@stshank· 6d

Frijoles Fire in the Pecos Wilderness in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains north of Santa Fe, NM, yesterday with a helicopter returning to get more water to dump. Truchas Peaks in the background. #wildfire #NewMexico

A plume of gray smoke rising from lower forested elevations of mountains with treeless higher elevation mountains behind.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· 8d

Western tanager that showed up at my mom's house in New Mexico for a few days in July. Pretty unusual at her house, though I've seen them at lower elevations near the Rio Grande. It looks kind of chunky here but I saw it stretch its neck a lot to peer around. #birds #birding 🐦

A boldly colored bird, red-headed with black wings and bright yellow underparts, perches on a tree branch.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· 10d

No cheating post your lock screen Chandelier in Casa Battló (by Antoni Gaudí), Barcelona

Stephen Shankland@stshank· 20d

This western tanager has been showing up for the last few days. What a glorious creature! #birds 🐦 #NewMexico

Stephen Shankland@stshank· 23d

A human sundial with month-based gnomon placement and separate arcs for standard vs daylight time.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Jul 9

Umm, that image sure looks a lot like our SPARC digital twin, not Realta Fusion's magnetic mirror setup.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Jul 9

My mom bought "Fiery Feast" birdseed infused with chile pepper that birds are supposed to like while squirrels don't. Here's the scorecard on who actually likes to eat it, based on my last week visiting her in New Mexico: ❌ birds ✅ black bears ✅ skunks ✅ squirrels

a skunk eating some birdseed on some flagstone

a squirrel eating some birdseed on some flagstone

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Jun 25

Northern cardinal this morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Such a good song. #birds #birding #Massachusetts #NaturePhotography 🐦

A bright red bird with a thick bill and raised crest on its head perches on a branch with blurred green tree leaves behind it.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Jun 10

Does time spent on word puzzles count toward the kid's daily reading requirement?

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Jun 9

As with many things in fusion energy, I hadn't fully appreciated the importance of diagnostics until I started digging in. Diagnostic systems gather visible and invisible information so you can understand your plasma characteristics like temperature and density that are difficult to infer. 🧵 1/3

A white concrete wall with a vertical line of box-shaped protrusions, each oriented slightly differently to point a single location out of the frame to the right.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Jun 6

Fond memories of this moment in New Hampshire.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· May 19

Tonight's crescent moon with Venus to its lower left, setting over the ridge west of our house. 100mm view, 400mm view.

A suburban hillside scene at night with a crescent moon, its shadowed side embraced by its bright side, with a bright dot of Venus nearby.

The moon, its shadowed side visible within the its bright sunlit crescent, with a dot of Venus nearby and dimmer stars scattered around.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· May 17

3D printed Bitcoin doodads for your kids' Crocs at the town fair today. Probably not uniquely Silicon Valley, but...

Stephen Shankland@stshank· May 13

Web developer graffiti scratched into the basalt in New Mexico. HTML + CSS + JavaScript + PHP + geolocation. I was amused but also with so many ancient petroglyphs in the area, I get pretty nervous about stuff like this.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· May 12

The fun side of generative AI visual hallucinations is when you deliberately ask for them. ChatGPT and Gemini results here for comical yoga poses suffering from AI hallucinations.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· May 5

Though if you look at interconnect queues, getting a solar farm online also takes years. And in places like California, where there's already tons of solar on the grid, it's chiefly helpful as a hybrid system with batteries. eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/defaul...

Stephen Shankland@stshank· May 4

It's safe to say I would not have pulling my high school team over the finish line in DOE’s 36th Annual National Science Bowl. science.osti.gov/wdts/nsb

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Apr 26

Whale watching in Monterey Bay last weekend. Three moms and their calves form pod CA51, plus Jimmy from CA50 hanging around, showing off a huge dorsal fin. The moms would surface and then the calves would surface right next to them. I found the calves chubby and cute (caveat: I'm not a sea lion).

An orca calf surfaces for air, showing its snout, white eyepatch, and dorsal fin.

An orca mother surfaces for air, followed by her calf, with the Monterey, California, headlands in the background.

Six orcas surface in a "chorus line," a male with a very large dorsal fin at left, then two mothers with calves right by their sides, then a third mother.

An orca calf surfaces just after its mother, a splash of water coming from its mouth.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Apr 21

Instagram's loathing for links irritates me no end. Here's an example. NASA says if you want to find out more about the Artemis II heat shield (non-)issue, you have to look it up in their stories. Ugh.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Apr 21

I suspect that if you take a younger consumer to a 10,000-cow dairy farm, they'll be even less likely to want consume meat and dairy. www.semafor.com/newsletter/0...

Screenshot text:
Beyond seeking to reduce emissions, the push is part of efforts to court younger consumers who, Simmons noted, were put off by the environmental impact of eating meat as well as concerns surrounding animal welfare. “I could take you to a farm in Kansas right now with 10,000 dairy cows that will be climate neutral by the end of the decade,” he said.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Apr 19

Some of the 27 Hudsonian whimbrels I saw yesterday at Asilomar State Beach in Pacific Grove, California. There used to be just whimbrels, but ornithologists split them into Hudsonian whimbrels (Americas) and Eurasian whimbrels (Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia) in 2025. #birds #birding #California 🐦

A Hudsonian whimbrel landing on Alisomar Beach, Pacific Grove, west of Monterey, California.

A Hudsonian whimbrel probing for food with its bill on Alisomar Beach, Pacific Grove, west of Monterey, California.

A Hudsonian whimbrel in splashing surf on Alisomar Beach, Pacific Grove, west of Monterey, California.

A Hudsonian whimbrel flying over the surf at Alisomar Beach, Pacific Grove, west of Monterey, California.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Apr 17

I'm glad Logan International Airport is promoting subatomic particles, but their typography team really needs to improve this kerning.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Apr 14

Shot and chaser. March: www.npr.org/2026/03/23/g... April: www.semafor.com/newsletter/0...

screenshot with the headline: "Trump administration to pay French company $1B to drop U.S. offshore wind leases"

Screenshot spotlighting this quote: “It’s obvious to me that the consequence of this crisis is that the countries will look to domestic solutions, and obviously renewables are a domestic solution.”

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Apr 14

American avocets feeding and flying at Baylands Nature Preserve on the San Francisco Bay. #birds #birding #NaturePhotography #California 🐦

An avocet with feet and wings outstretched comes in for a water landing.

A mostly black and white American avocet flies above water, its wingtips coming close to their own reflection

An American avocet uses its characteristic sideways bill-sweeping motion to find food in shallow water

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Apr 5

Five California quail came by our house yesterday. Very hard to see in the underbrush with various plants in the way, but they stuck around for awhile and eventually perched on an oak. They're very round. #birds #birding #California 🐦

Three quail with geometric patterns and ridiculous but adorable (IMO) plumes on their heads perch on an oak tree branch.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Apr 2

Our expertise made this partnership possible: our magnet factory — check these photos for a look inside — and other capabilities we showed when designing, making, and testing magnets for the WHAM project that paved Realta's fusion energy path.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Mar 30

Washed the solar panels after sunset tonight. This is why people on movie sets water down the roads for night scenes. #solar #sunset #California

A rectangle of solar panels reflects a dusk sky with a pale orange to blue gradient. Behind are hills dotted with the lights of houses and streets. A few conifer trees are silhouetted against a bright sunset-lit sky.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Mar 6

I set my alarm for 3 a.m. to photograph the blood moon (lunar eclipse) but alas, it clouded over. The good news is that my test shots from before I went to bed came out. An weirdly flat moon — no shadow contours except a smidgen at the lower left because the sun was directly behind me as I shot.

Stephen Shankland@stshank· Feb 24

Dear 1Password: Just bite the bullet and say "Important: We’re increasing the cost of your subscription." Because we all know what "updating the cost" in the subject line will mean. Also, aren't subscriptions supposed to pay for ongoing development and innovation? Gripes aside, I like 1Password.