🌗The Moon has two faces—and the difference runs deeper than we ever knew. Analyzing historic samples from Chang’e-6, PKU researchers and collaborators found that the lunar farside’s interior is about 100°C cooler than the nearside. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PKUResearch @natgeosci.nature.com

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Congress has not authorized the use of military force.

this is great - we’re not gonna scicomm our way out of this

In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists when unprovoked — what would we call it? If federal agents marched down streets demanding papers — what would we say? Authoritarianism — let’s not pretend it’s something else when it happens in our American cities.

Academic freedom will not survive by encouraging professors to censor themselves more. “Too much of the response to the Trump admin’s repression has been driven by fear & cowardice. We need to fiercely support #academicfreedom as a fundamental right for all.” — @johnkwilson.bsky.social

I don’t see enough stories connecting deals like this to crime. When you cut services (i.e. social safety nets) while giving tax breaks to the wealthy, you hurt society.

Cornell is cancelling a distinguished professor's classes on Gaza and suspending him because of the complaints of a student who previously served in Israel's military surveillance agency and was literally recording the comments of other students in class and deliberately derailing discussion.

The clock is ticking... Somewhere between the return of martian samples and a successful crewed lunar landing, historians will one day place the moment when China took the global lead in space exploration.

This is *incredibly stupid*. 2nd year PhD students are usually getting ready to start their actual dissertation work after doing the up-or-out exams in the spring of their 2nd year--Graduate Research Fellowships are *perfect* for funding that part of a PhD.

Excellent read highlighting the importance of volcanoes 🌋 to the earth system and their impacts on society.

Almost inevitably, a white liberal pundit who finds a way to “hear out” or “find commonalities” with white supremacists eventually starts saying depraved shit. I need to understand why that’s not the last strike for white people that it is for Black political observers.

I haven’t said this in a while, and it bears repeating: it is actually very easy to not work with abusers and rapists in the field! Moreover, we owe it to ourselves, our colleagues, and our future.

The Democrats are not in opposition. They are in collusion. Disgraceful.

As I've been saying. As a Fed contractor, the entire DoGE project was a giant scam perpetrated by clueless morons to leverage our personal data.

SEPTEMBER 2025 I’m drafting the first version of this blog on a 6-hour layover at Amsterdam Schipol airport. SONG INSPIRATION This blog is inspired by Emmit Fenn’s single, Painting Greys. HELSINKI Given the current funding climate and the lack of a permanent position, I am seizing every…

Things won’t go back to normal. There may be a new normal. What that “normal” is will be completely up to the American people.

Sinclair, run by right-wing media mogul David Smith, says suspending the Jimmy Kimmel show isn’t enough. It is going to run a tribute to Kirk during Kimmel’s time slot. Sinclair stations will run not consider putting Kimmel back on air until he apologizes and donates to Turning Point USA

Flying over the southern tip of Greenland never gets old 🤩🤩

I have written and deleted a lot of posts but I keep thinking about how the brutal assassination of Minnesota State senator Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark, and their beloved dog Gilbert in June did not prompt this same level of calls for empathy, sympathy, and flags at half-mast.

Pardon me, but what the fuck?

A gorgeous day to tour the streets of Helsinki! Lovely treat after a week of science and camaraderie.

We’re going to Weimar Republic ourselves into a full blown autocratic takeover. The main stream media is complicit in the destruction of republican democracy.

Charlie Kirk spewed so much hatred throughout his career it was impossible to include all of it in my story. And yet the mainstream media is largely whitewashing what he said and stood for. Stop supporting them. www.dailykos.com/stories/2025...

My employer, Williams College—A PRIVATE INSTITUTION—has its flags at half-staff for Charlie Kirk. There is a MA state proclamation but it applies only to public/state/military buildings. We are not any of those. What. The. Actual. F***. I am sick to my stomach. www.mass.gov/info-details...

The sad thing is Democrats could use this moment to point out that guns are a problem and that’s why we need to enact meaningful gun control laws… and instead they capitulated in advance to expected right-wing responses and instead eulogizing and further platforming his hate.

Finally made it to the beautiful Finlandia Hall (Room Sun) after 11 hours of travel!

Y’all, this is LITERALLY Palpatine 😭😭😭😭!!

Excellent piece by Ezra Klein: if Dems really believe that Trump is creating an authoritarian government they should not continue to fund it. The shutdown is their only leverage right now to draw attention to what is happening and maybe force change. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/o...

People from all over are showing up for DC. This is not a moment. It’s a movement. We are united in our demands. We are all DC! #FreeDC

Stopping dictators later means guns and bombs and the bodies of hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. Stopping them now means legislative tricks and pissing off people who already hate you. I wish the remaining sane members of Congress and the judiciary woukd realize that.

What the fuck is wrong with CNN? This is how they describe an all-out assault on Article I of the Constitution.

If 10 Dems try to find common ground with a Nazi, you have 11 Nazis.

Okay. I just came back to this and you aren’t calling these efforts resegregation yet, you absolutely should be

Jasmine Crockett is one Woman I Believe,and I Believe In Her......

“You know what, democracy is actually good. Diversity is good, equity is good, inclusion is good. Education and knowledge and research are good. This is not controversial.”

What a cursed sentence (gift link) “The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.”

The way I still teach about the most traumatic day in my life as if it were last year. But if a hurricane hits another majority black city, I have no faith in state and federal government to react any differently.

👇🎯 Stunts are good politics because they send signals of how serious problems are to the public & media. This is why, e.g., university presidents should have gathered en masse on the Capitol steps to make the public aware of the existential threat to higher ed all the federal budget cuts pose.

It is a tribute to our dysfunctional information environment that right-wingers can basically commit 99% of the domestic terrorism, for *decades*, and that simple fact never penetrates to the public. They pay zero political price.

The top three science funders are the US, China, and Japan. The three fund more science than every other country, combined. In 2024, the US funded more scientific research than China and Japan, combined. The US also funds more science than every other country except for Japan and China, combined.

For the eleventy billionth time: Attacks on science funding and science jobs in the United States don’t mean that science will just move elsewhere. It means a lot less science for everyone. There aren’t enough jobs or funding everywhere else )combined) for US scientists to just move.

Oh look, it's the thing every fascist government says about the opposition party before they dissolve them and turn the country into a one party state.

If you as a political professional can’t figure out how to turn fed independence into a ~kitchen table~ issue then you should find a different line of work.

AUGUST 2025 Summer ends. Leaves turn. Fall approaches. SONG INSPIRATION This month’s blog is inspired by MONEY by LISA. FALL APPROACHES – NEW COURSE AND ANOTHER CYCLE Less than 2 weeks until classes start. The dregs of summer are almost over. The upcoming semester feels a lot different than…

Juno is an AMAZING mission. The camera onboard was never supposed to last this long (the radiation around Big J should've zapped it a while back) but it just keeps on ticking. Killing this mission while it's still working and producing great science is a crime.

People are STILL minimizing b/c the worst hasn't happened. Sure, DC now has military checkpoints, but isn't crime bad there? Sure, people are being dragged away by goon squads, but aren't they mostly illegal? Sure, universities and the media are being strong-armed, but aren't they too liberal?

Democrats have so failed this moment in US politics.

Every Democratic member of Congress should be in the streets of DC saying this dangerous authoritarian escalation must stop. Do they not grasp what’s going on here?