The Government Workers Donald Trump Discarded www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

So... spells. We're using spells to undo the work we've done... tricking rocks into thinking with lightning. And trapping evil cars in circles of salt. The old ways are new again.

Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..." https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1

Apply for the next #URSSI winter school on research software engineering, 15-17 Dec in Portland, OR: urssi.us/blog/2025/11... For: grad students, postdocs, & other early career researchers (or beyond!) looking to increase your software dev. skills. Applications close 21 Nov, so apply soon!

There are more of us than there are of them.

Wow it turns out the entire country is not permanently reactionary because Trump won an election by 1.5%

Corvallis Oregon says NO KINGS. @wyden.senate.gov

lmfao keep sharing this stuff. such a balm.

Here outside the House chamber with folks chanting “LET HER OUT!”

I'm Associate Editor-in-Chief at @joss-openjournals.bsky.social for Physics & Engineering, I'm looking for folks who can contribute in my track. We particularly need people with expertise in energy systems, sustainability, nuclear science, and manufacturing. blog.joss.theoj.org/2025/08/call...

Interested in helping out with one of the most innovative, grassroots, publishing efforts around? The Journal of Open Source Software (@joss-openjournals.bsky.social) is looking for editors. We conduct collaborative checklist-based peer review of research software using GitHub issues.

We’ve extended the deadline for the 2nd round of #URSSI early-career fellowship applications to 10 August. Please share with anyone who might a good fit!

Hi everyone, just a reminder that this Friday (25 July 2025) at 11:59 pm PST is the deadline for round 2 of #URSSI early-career fellowship applications. If you work around scientific software development and have project ideas that align—even loosely—to the focus areas, please apply!

One of the things that *actually*, *truly* makes America great is NASA. And Trump has slit its throat.

ALL CAPS THIS IS CATASTROPHIC FOR SPACE SCIENCE AND ASTROPHYSICS ... GLOBALLY CATASTROPHIC, NOT JUST FOR AMERICANS 🔭🧪 www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

Obligatory retweet.

Can you hit repost? Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't want you to know the name of her opponent but will try every desperate attempt to save her seat. My name is Shawn Harris. I am a Democrat, husband, father, Retired Brigadier General, farmer, and I'm running against MTG. Can you share and follow me?

To my fellow Americans on this Fourth of July, I hope you share my patriotic fury at what a right-wing minority is currently doing to destroy our country. It’s going to take a generation to fix.

Freedom from kings. Freedom from fascism. Power to the people forever. ♥️ Happy Independence Day 🇺🇸

America is a system and that system has crashed. @lopatto.bsky.social and @sarahjeong.bsky.social don’t mince words here www.theverge.com/policy/69730...

The winery chose *just now* to send this email, with this subject line? Read the fucking room

#WeKnowThemByTheirVotes www.govtrack.us/congress/vot...

This is a tragic day in American history. We deserve better. Our children and families and citizens deserve better. I’m ashamed of what’s just happened. This is not a vote that cares about voters, this is greed, recklessness, violence and immorality. We will all suffer from this.

Hi friends, happy to announce that we’ve opened applications for the second round of URSSI early-career fellows! tl;dr: $10k-25k for US-based early career researchers to do projects related to topics in scientific software (see post for specifics). Applications due 25 July urssi.us/blog/2025/07...

In a country characterized by the rule of law, some regulation of immigration is a legitimate function of government. In a lawless, expressly bigoted, and expressly corrupt regime, it is not. Download IceBlock and defy this administration.

It's a very, very good point. The earlier crises were vast and required huge amounts of spending. We have no economic crisis now. We have a vast political and constitutional one. It's when you'd want to keep deficit/debt stable with respect to size of the economy.

National Science Foundation staff were notified that their office space will be taken over by Department of Housing and Urban Development. It's unclear where the 1,800+ NSF employees will work. Renovation plans apparently include a personal gym for the HUD secretary & family eos.org/research-and...

Trump Administration Ousts National Science Foundation from Headquarters Building www.scientificamerican.com/article/trum...

<endless screaming>

the destruction of chattel slavery is one of the great accomplishments in our nation's history and the reason conservatives hate celebrating it is because doing so legitimizes the black counter-narrative of the united states

I suspect that fact that the vast majority of LLM users don’t seem to have received this (really very simple!) message is because the AI companies have a vested interest in us not understanding it. “ChatGPT is smart, it just makes mistakes sometimes” is much more marketable than the truth.

Oh shit, that’s a good ad

Software & open science folks: @madickenmunk.bsky.social is organizing an #URSSI Summer School this August on open science and research software engineering in Fairbanks, Alaska: urssi.us/blog/2025/06... Please share with early career researchers who might be interested—or apply, if that is you!

must be incredibly frustrating and disheartening to have federal funding that was promised to you for important work suddenly and arbitrarily ripped away

Andrew has posted the full opening credits/theme song to The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon!

This is completely false. Even the largest university endowment cannot sustain large-scale scientific research. In my 25 years at my school, the most monumental research fund drive raised $325M in *total*. Federal research here costs $200M per *every year*. This is an extinction-level event.

Murderbot tomorrow!!!

I had to confirm twice that this was, in fact, the Onion

the fundamental disconnect between the manosphere and reality is that they are incapable of understanding that this is - according to every woman I’ve ever met - the sexiest thing a man has ever done

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Say it after me: Chat GPT is not a search engine. It does not scan the web for information, it just generates statistically likely sentences. You cannot use it a search engine, or as a substitute for searching. Now. Please never use an LLM for information searches ever again.

Please highlight this story. ICE stormed into the wrong house, trashed the place, and made women/girls stand outside in the rain in their underwear. ICE also stole phones, laptops, and cash savings from the family, who moved to OKC two weeks ago. kfor.com/news/local/w...

I'm excited to (belatedly) announce the two inaugural #URSSI Early Career Fellows, @matthewfeickert.com & @samzhang.bsky.social ! You can read more in our official post: urssi.us/blog/2025/04... We'll be opening our next call for fellowship proposals in the coming months, keep an eye out!

Please read and submit comments!! People without scientific training should not be assessing the merit of grants or grant funding! Making these political appointments prevents functional continuity that our federal agencies need to be successful. This is critical!

The NYT wants you to think universities became dependent on government. This is false. The government invested in the national research infrastructure by competitive grants to universities. The taxpayers built this. It got us to the moon. Won the Cold War. Created Silicon Valley. Made the McRib.

The land grant university system, the research university innovation engine, the national lab system, America perfected these. They are as American as apple pie. We don’t have a king. These are America’s Crown Jewels.

faculty and universities need to hammer home the point that these are not “subsidies” but - competitive contracts - awarded through an extremely competitive, well vetted process - subject to a host of legal conditions that benefit American taxpayers

A relief to hear this said. Trump operates from the same untested, blustering ideas he had in the 80s. They weren’t good then and even less so now. It would be great if BUSINESS LEADERS were prepared to say what they clearly know - that Trump only knows how to run a muscle racket. And here we are.

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world. 
I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.