ROI horseshoe theory has arrived

Let me end here by saying the U.S. research enterprise has been led out back behind the barn and is being butchered. Right now.

Oh that's definitely not going to end in a stampede or other mass casualty event...

I find it entertaining how often I see people try to be inclusive by including Arabic text, only to completely mess it up by not connecting *any* characters. The bit of sympathy I do have is for the people actually doing the graphic design because a lot of software does not work well with Arabic

It just me or is Bsky crashing a *lot* more often now?

I was also on a boat today! *Way* less impressive one though

AI data centers themselves really aren't destroying as much as some people claim. Of the data center deals being announced all the time, few are actually being built and even fewer are being finished. Part of that is from push-back, yes, but more of it is that AI data centers just aren't profitable.

Finished my sisters of battle kitbash for a challenge on instagram From the Order of the Cog-Toothed Crown, a minor order from a convent on a forgeworld. Worshiping the omnissiah aspect of the emperor and revering his divine machinery

Of course I forgot this was today and now I'm at work

Japan is one of the most R&D intensive non-US countries, and RIKEN is its most prestigious (non-university) research institute. If you isekai’d it into the US, it only has the fourth biggest R&D budget in the state of North Carolina, which is like the twelfth biggest state bsky.app/profile/awma...

the $100M Choose Europe initiative meant to attract American researchers could sustain the University of Arkansas biology and chemistry departments for 5 years.

Many people have a vested interest in pretending otherwise, but the US research university is globally dominant to an almost unbelievable degree. The typical state university is a football team stapled to a R&D lab with a budget bigger than the entire nation of Belgium.

🧵 The idea that other rich democratic countries are going to wholesale poach 🇺🇸 academia because of Trump is laughable, because other countries are also in the process of dismantling their universities & research funding infrastructure.

So I've been wanting to start a patch jacket for a long time, and I finally found a good base while at a local thrift store...this is the front lmaoo

I keep saying this but the U.S. has historically been the Indispensable Funder. It can’t be replaced easily.

It is particularly confounding to read people saying this at the same time as I hear from my colleagues in other countries about their own threatened budget cuts. Yet again: Block the threats to science here, United States.

To the EV people I see being smug, last time I checked you still need to eat food. Unless you're very rich, very self-sufficient, or preferably both you are going to get hurt by this right next to the rest of us. And globally we'll still probably be some of the luckier ones.

It's unbelievable how little understanding there is of this imminent reality.

Always fun hearing about new insane petitions / proposed ballot measures. Apparently one here in Oregon is getting attention because it would make all hunting, fishing, animal farming, pest control, etc illegal. Sure that will work lmaoo

Fun fact: if you wear your nice, new magnetic watch band into a steel mill, you will leave with a bunch of metal filings and dust stuck to it that is quite hard to clean off 🫠

It’s truly astonishing to see how comprehensively the US government is tearing down every part of the system that has made it up until now a world-leading power in science, research, and technological development. The entire world will suffer from this wanton destruction.

People are laughing, but rockets only do this when they're very stressed smfh 😪

So way too early to tell what the broader implications are here but this is BAD bad. Blue Origin as a company will almost surely be alright, Bezos has infinite money and appetite to fund them, but the ramifications for Artemis are going to be considerable.

Like, seriously. This is like, really bad and very much beyond the like... actual expectations (from what I understand) for what a fully-fueled methalox rocket detonating would be. I imagine going to be *massive* investigations over this considering the kind of detonation you had here.

Ok, it's good to screw with Musk or whatever but please, not another megaconstellation, I beg you. Astronomers everywhere beg you.

Coyotes are very good at pulling off a look that says 'We could make fun terrible decisions together'.

Real ones don't buy Patagonia because they don't want to look like a fed

Current US science policy, at both state and federal levels, seems to amount to "You get no money and make sure you never, ever come within 100 feet of a Chinese scientist."

Using the backdrop of actual persecution of queer people to try and frame the unnecessary and unwinnable legal fight you picked *entirely* to get attention as "persecution" is shit-head behavior

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always remember to cool off your yotes

MIT closing three of its four libraries is shocking and appalling and underscores that the source of so much of the crisis in higher education comes not from attacks from the far right or the collapse of public trust, but rather from the university administrative class itself.

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I observe with my students using a .5m telescope every year. The satellite interference has increased aggressively.

This administration is dismantling the scientific infrastructure that we've built for almost 100 years in the US, and they are getting away with it. OMB is gumming up the works and the agencies are stymied across the board. Congress is sitting in their hands. Fight fascism, fight for science.

Just because you combine two hobbies or interests doesn’t mean they’re not still separate interests and hobbies.

Post your warning sign

I worry that this move to shutter university libraries is happening at the same time as AI slopification is seriously messing up the ability to find good sources from browsing online. This is *not* a good time to be shifting entirely towards internet-based systems for accessing academic sources.

What an absolutely horrific news day in general for American higher ed.

How many ways can Donald Trump be wrong about nuclear issues? A thread. 🧵 The errors in this post are probably shared by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, or at least they have to translate back to Trump in the terms of these errors.

For all the people getting conspiritorial about this, screw off. This isn't even the first multi-casualty accident at an American paper mill this year. These places are dangerous because of good ol fashion corporate greed, not some grand conspiracy.

My guess if it's an implosion: white liquor (strong base of NaOH + sodium sulfide) outlet pump to primary pulping had a clogged filter- common prob in Kraft Mills. Faulty process controls or something of that nature didn't trigger shutdown, pump dead heads. Sulfide gas + explosion on tank failure

as always, the consent violations are part of the point

Furlandia really scored in so many ways. Pretty much the best of Portland weather the whole weekend, good location in town, the new larger location (and it was still overflowing lol), etc

Fashion designer Jeremy Scott delivers commencement speech to Kansas City Art Institute graduates. Wait for it…

“The Al is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you”

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking Al to write their breakup texts. So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world. What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.