Hmm. The best evidence that dark energy is evolving rather than constant just got a little weaker. The statistical significance of observational results don’t really have “momentum,” but we’ll have to continue to wait and see about this one.

Congratulations to my wonderful colleague John Clarke! And to Berkeley, and to UC. And to everyone who still believes that foundational research is worth investing in

3 new Physics Nobel Laureates from the University of California! 🥂🤙 (and one less parking space for the rest of us at Berkeley 🙃)

Everything is completely normal. Nothing to see here

Industrial scale corruption www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

Academic freedom is "do you want the next generation of medical doctors to be trained?" It is "do you want vaccines?" It is "do you want your kids to learn true things?"

“The damage that has been done to our world-leading scientific research infrastructure will take decades to repair, if we are ever able to.”

A public lecture/fireside chat at a pub in Marin, hosted by Wonderfest

(Hint: bad but probably not the worst. Also, we do have a solution.)

On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of children he killed?

Rubio just told 275000 people who did nothing wrong that he plans to destroy everything they worked for their entire life. This is utter madness and depravity

In a universe with many matter fields, the geometry does not fluctuate. Then we know what we mean by the Generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics, and we know what we mean by a Bounce (or cyclic) Cosmology. My recent theorem says you can't have both.

Do singularities exist? I'd always thought they were purely mathematical artifacts, but recent work in mathematical physics work from @bousso.bsky.social and others hint otherwise (for sufficiently broad definitions of "singularities" and "exist"). www.quantamagazine.org/singularitie...

Science in the US is being actively destroyed simply by deliberately doing nothing. This article does not mention DOE, NSF, etc but it’s the same story. Processing freeze means: grants appear on paper but disappear in real life

Brian Greene is a national treasure, a singular amalgam of grace, professionalism, and brilliance. Also, he's pretty good at explaining stuff youtu.be/16kzFN0SWYg

What's happening with these grants is much more complicated and mostly unknown. None of the NIH have been officially cancelled. The NIH was just ordered to stop paying. They got the Unis to enforce silence on their own campuses because they thought they were "negotiating" and cld get the funds back.

My kingdom for a moderately okay government

Panch resigns: www.science.org/content/arti...

In addition to the terminations of existing awards, new NSF grants are still stopped completely since DOGE was granted access to systems a week ago. Last Thursday, an agency spokesperson said "NSF continues to issue awards." That does not appear to be the case.

Pope Francis was a friend of science. I am proud to have met him, and I am saddened by his death.

"I guess it really is a Big Tent" I yell over the sounds of breaking glass caused by David Brooks throwing a metal trash can through the window of a Starbucks to distract the police while Bill Kristol spray paints NO SYSTEM BUT THE ECOSYSTEM on a cop car

Honestly I'm glad they picked Harvard to try out this novel "we're mad" legal theory of revoking tax-exempt status, given its infinite resources, deep network of powerful alumni, and law school attended by 142 sitting federal judges. Good luck! 🫡

I want to tell you why the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia should matter to you. The one power you cannot give the executive is the ability to imprison or expel anyone regardless of their legal rights. That is our key check against autocracy. And we are watching it disappear.

Donald Trump has committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded econ.st/3YbbFjq

“The overwhelming claim has been that dark energy is no longer consistent with a cosmological constant […] However, this conclusion — despite how widely reported it’s been — is completely premature”

Could someone just unplug the US and then plug it in again?

Francesco the taxi driver was listening to a discussion of European security (or lack thereof) on the radio. Literally as we passed the Roman Forum, he addressed me with real sorrow: people have forgotten history. My Italian is poor but the context helped

Trump was right! When you hire people for their race or gender, you don’t get the best and brightest

The signal that is being reported everywhere violates the null energy condition and is (theoretically) a very very unlikely interpretation. But even without that theory prior, there is way too little skepticism of their interpretation. The data is only 7 points, it could be many things

fulfilling my obligation to repost at least one cat video in my life

Another line crossed in the descent into authoritarianism. Government strong-arming a law firm into compliance. (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/u...

A correct decision, too late. Irredeemably tainted by the stain of succumbing to a bigoted authoritarian regime

It’s important to map out our universe! But dynamical dark energy remains wildly implausible. It’s a fanciful notion, requires fine tuning worse than a pencil on its tip, and yet more tuning for the sole purpose of hiding itself from observers for so long. I call it a unicorn in a duck suit here:

Today Donald Trump called Canada the "nastiest" nation. Good grief

Signs of life in recent days from the judiciary www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/u...

“There isn’t a mirror on the planet big enough for the Democrats and the left to look into, to see all the ways that they elected Trump. No mirror is big enough for them. But now this is what we have.” www.newyorker.com/news/the-new...

Highly authoritarian behaviour to deport lawful residents for saying & doing things that don’t violate the law. The same powers could be abused to target a wide range of politically dissenting voices with a chilling effect on free speech.

The Trump regime is doing a trial run at disappearing people, and they are starting with those least likely to cause a pushback. If you accede merely because you despise the first victim, you are legitimizing the authoritarian. Push back now or forever hold your peace.

I doubt that Khalil would go out of his way to defend liberal democracy, if his side were calling the shots. He is the mouthpiece of a movement that selectively condemns Israel’s war crimes but not the Hamas atrocities that led to that war. I am not on his side.

This is when it counts. An easy scapegoat was arrested without (so far) any criminal charge—ironically, under the pretense of fighting antisemitism. A president who embraced white nationalists is bragging about this outrageous abuse of power.

CDU/CSU &SPD have just proposed a sea change in German fiscal policy: - defence spending above 1% of GDP exempt from debt brake - 10-year €500bn special fund for infrastructure - looser debt rules for states - further debt-brake reform in new Bundestag

There is a scenario (probability: 30%?) in which Merz just happens to be a counter-intuitively good fit for the moment. A peculiar combination of curmudgeonly old-West German conservatism, Atlanticist realism, and European romanticism that somehow blasts Europe's caution away.

Donald Trump is aggressively undermining America’s significance on the world stage, except as a pariah state and sad servant of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation. Any of us in America who believe in democracy must look to leadership in Europe.