White House Begins Christmas Season With Ceremonial Lighting Of Cross

Presidential budget is out. Here's NSF. Biggest cut, by amount, is $1 billion, or 66.8%, from MPS (Physics & Math directorate). nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

As a physics journalist, it is fairly wild to see the names of the PIs with terminated grants: Misha Lukin, Philip Kim, Lisa Randall, Subir Sachdev, John Doyle... bsky.app/profile/benn...

To the extent that Trump / Vance have a strategic vision for the US-UK relationship, it is not to strengthen the UK. The vision is to weaken Europe by severing UK from the continent. Trump-Vance true "special relationship" is with Russia. Russia desperately fears UK-EU unity 2/x

3/4. If we accept the idea that moving a person from one place to another undoes rights and disempowers the judiciary, we are endorsing the basic Nazism practice that enabled the killing of millions.

Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions - rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking steps to make sure students can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope others follow suit.

The hope that universities nowadays are more than financial institutions with an attached educational/research department and that there might even be university leaders with some spine is, unfortunately, just not very realistic: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/o...

2025 Trump inauguration ceremony vs 2025 Breakthrough Prize ceremony www.youtube.com/watch?v=on5L... According to quantum mechanics, it is perfectly fine to put scientists on the pedestal and simultaneously also throw them under the bus.

BREAKING: First direct experimental observation of closed timelike curves! The team behind this effort is guaranteed to get both the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics as well as Economy. data-and-politics.ghost.io/70-million-i...

"Die Europäer müssen verstehen: Das ist das Ende der Affäre. Amerika geht unter. Lasst euch nicht von uns mit in den Abgrund ziehen. Ihr müsst euch mobilisieren. Das Schicksal der Welt – ganz buchstäblich – hängt davon ab."

U of W talk of possible financial crisis alarms faculty www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews...

The University of Winnipeg is looking at a serious financial situation. Here is a news story about it. With an inflation increase of 2.7%, a 2% increase in prov funding is effectively a cut. Strike 1. But this is only part of the story. 🧵 (1/7) #mbpoli news.uwinnipeg.ca/budget-updat...

An absolutely crazy story. One would hope that people put into these roles are capable to learn at least the very basics about how to perform their jobs. What an embarrassment.

So true… in today’s @newyorker.com #academicsky #chemsky

BREAKING: In an unprecedented move, the Nobel Prize committee has preemptively awarded the 2025 Physics prize to Microsoft! Read the full citation below. 👇

An important, excellent speech. One can only hope that Europe finally comes to its senses.

Students at the University of Manitoba will be going to classes next week after a potential strike by academic staff was averted early Saturday morning.

Microsoft's extraordinary claim last month—to have created a bonafide topological qubit—was met with caution by many experts. Now, a physicist is raising specific and substantive concerns about a key test that underlies Microsoft's approach. My reporting: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

FAZ 05.03.2025

Ok. Once and for all. Trump is anti Ukraine, anti Democracy, anti Europe and, above all, pro Putin. There can be no more doubt—it’s just a disaster it’s taken so long for people to understand it.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland’s then-president Niinistö said that the masks had fallen. If anyone was still clinging onto some kind of hope of Trump coming around on Ukraine, this disgrace of a press conference should make everything clear now. Trump is anti-Ukraine. Pro-Russia.

Good to see a detailed analysis but who really believed in stable topological regions after seeing these figures which looked nothing like one would expect theoretically?

The chaos and confusion of the Trump administration's science policy is taking its toll on early career researchers. Some prospective PhD students I spoke with have had informal offers rescinded as universities reduce or outright halt their programs. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Nature hiding their reservations about the latest Microsoft paper in the review file: "The editorial team wishes to point out that the results in this manuscript do not represent evidence for the presence of Majorana zero modes in the reported devices." worked really well, see the NYT article:

Non-hermitian Hamiltonians are used to describe open quantum systems. As in Hermitian systems, topologically protected modes can exist. However, there has been considerable confusion about which modes are protected. We provide clarification in a recent paper in Phys. Rev. Lett. shorturl.at/jdegf

In 2016, we could console ourselves that however big a disaster Trump was, at least Canada could profit by offering an attractive landing spot for international S&T talent. We sure as hell aren’t saying that in 2024. Lack of science investment and a disastrous housing market have consequences.

Change is possible. Don't say it isn't. #infrastructure

Very concerned about the cap on international grad students. Research is international and Canada's competitiveness relies on student exchange and the influx of international talent. This is counterproductive.

@cityofwinnipeg.bsky.social Send a service request last Thursday about walking/cycling paths along Waverley from Taylor all the way South. Still have not received a reply. The paths have not been plowed at all so far and snow drifts are a foot or more. Unusable.

#MathSky #iTeachMath

I'm sure this will be greeted with the calm dignity that characterizes high-level academic discourse... www.chronicle.com/article/we-a...