An absolute bedrock institution for understanding how the planet works, just civilization-scaled vandalism by the most incurious morons on Earth

If you burn down a forest, you don't miss out on lumber for just that season. You have to replant all the trees, nurture them, and wait for them to grow. The science and research budget cuts happening now are wanton, senseless arson. Recovery, if it ever happens, will take generations.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd. It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

"We'll just terraform Mars," they insist, unable to terraform Earth, a planet that is already perfect except it's like 2° too warm.

And lo, the trailer did drop: www.apple.com/tv-pr/news/2... #murderbot

pencils down

All Systems Red is a book club pick for New Scientist, and there's an essay by me to go with it: www.newscientist.com/article/2432...

This is the reminder that sit-ins, protests, and many of the marches and gatherings of the Civil Rights Movement were illegal because segregation was the law. Good fucking trouble.

Nightshade is out, folks! This is from Ben Zhao and team at Chicago U, the same people who created Glaze. It's is a new way of defending your work from datascraping. tl;dr it poisons data well. Let's gooo Link to V1.0: nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/downloads.html