I actually don’t care what the founding fathers would say about the present and I don’t think you should either

A delightful thread for those of you at Universities that prize Nature articles above all other... #cosmology 🔭

dammit.

After Nottingham, now Sussex: ~35% cuts proposed to Particle Physics & Astronomy. A world-class department, built over decades, gutted to patch a temporary budget gap. Reputation and talent like this don't come back. Add your name to the open letter: sussexphysics.github.io/Open_Letter/

The publisher Springer claims it can only discuss why it retracted Planck's paper with... Planck! But until they hold a seance, they are happy to sell you a completely redacted version: a blank page for $39.95.

Horrified to learn that the Particle Physics and Astronomy groups at Sussex University are facing a proposed 35% cut in staff numbers! That would be devastating to a high quality department.

oh? you think we can cope??? Let me introduce you to Venus. Thanks to the greenhouse effect, it is an inhospitable hell-hole, with temperatures over 400°C (750°F). The probes we've sent usually lasted mere minutes on the surface due to the heat. Venus is why fucking with our climate is a bad idea

Feels like endless bad news for basic science research funding in the US and UK these days. All to throw money at AI and other sectors that were nurtured by basic science in their infancy. www.science.org/content/arti...

The policy treats foreign STEM graduates as a drain. A sustained one-third drop in their numbers cuts US GDP by up to $481B a year, PIIE finds. Another of this administration's self-inflicted wounds

An associate editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience has resigned. He asked the editorial office to turn off the AI assistant, and was told it was "not possible". 😵 Read the whole thread!

This is such a bummer.

A24 announces that they want to put storyboard artists out of work. That's what the headline should be written as. Becuase we should be honest about what these AI "tools" are trying to do, and who it is trying to circumvent. variety.com/2026/film/ne...

Know what TV show actually wouldn’t get made today? The Twilight Zone. Half of these fuckin’ episodes are about fascism.

In spot tests I've done, I see this happen *all of the time*, such as with my own papers. The LLM would often rather hallucinate a male scientist than get my name right. 🤷‍♀️ It's kind of unsurprising that models trained unscrupulously on the entire internet are misogynistic

Demon-Haunted World reference ftw

They came here fleeing persecution; rather than give them refuge, Marco Rubio’s state department will send them to die in countries they’ve never been to. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/11/w...

Elon Musk incited pogroms in Belfast.

Mon Mothma said what needed to be said in opposition to an evil, authoritarian regime.

In general relativity, a point mass just sitting there is inevitably a black hole. But that's when you're living in 3d space (and one dimension of time). In 2d space, a point mass creates a less drastic singularity: a 'cone point'. I've been studying these cone points lately, just for fun. (1/n)

If you tax a billionaire 8%, you know what they still are? Still a billionaire. Their kids' kids' kids' kids are gonna be rich. Maybe they could pay a little bit more so that all of our kids can go to good schools and travel functional roads and get good healthcare.

AI-based AI detectors do not work

IMO, senior faculty at top R1 institutions rushing to use AI to flood journals with papers before future students or early career researchers can have an opportunity is not just greedy, it's salting the earth of the discipline.

I've had so many conversations with non-technical friends & family who are completely duped by headlines like this. I also think it's sad to not tell the public about the huge range of AI/ML research. It would be so cool if the public knew how many cool new methods exist, LLMs are just the surface

Amazon will spend $200B this year on AI infrastructure — including data centers — while forging ahead with over 30,000 layoffs. And don't forget: the company paid nearly $8B less in taxes last year thanks to Trump's big ugly bill. This is what corporate greed looks like.

Great piece especially last paragraph "The objective is a world in which we are seamlessly shuttled from one managed (and, ideally, exploitable) activity to the next – with no break or chance to look around us – from cradle to grave. The death of the university will bring that world a step closer"

The smarmy comments from Americans about how Europe is too stupid to take advantage of all the US fired scientists are falling really really really badly here at a time of mass layoffs at my university cause of budget cuts fueled by the same type of fascism But they don't bother reading about us

Senior PIs when Postdocs discuss the job market

After seeing the headline "SpaceX IPO: How to Buy and Why You Shouldn't" on @barrons.com, I decided it was time to read the prospectus. I'm only a few pages in and folks... the implications of this document ... Do you want to go on a journey with me? Because I'm about to enter the rabbit hole.

crashing out over a woke Odyssey is just premature. save it for the Aeneid when 1/4 is about a refugee from Tyre and 1/2 what it means for refugees to found a settler colony. solid interlude in the underworld and an ekphrasis on a shield both ambiguous about the Roman Empire. disk horse singularity

Reposting for the Sunday morning reading crowd with a free-to-read link that isn't behind the Nature paywall! 🔭⚛️🧪👩‍🔬 📖: rdcu.be/floXQ

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.

"new rule threatens to exile hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants — including physicians at understaffed rural hospitals, gifted technologists at Silicon Valley firms, the spouses of US citizens, and parents of American children. " www.vox.com/politics/490...

This is bad. Bad for researchers. Bad for science. Bad for universities. Bad for professional associations. For example: 1. Every award would be vetted by political appointees, who could overrule peer reviewers and deny the award if it doesn't advance the president's priorities. 1/🧵

As you can see, Newtonian Mechanics is very simple...

"Someone, somewhere, has taken the decision to defund astrophysics research in the UK, but no-one seems quite sure who that was, or why." The latest on the impact of the catastrophic funding cuts to UK astrophysics, by me, in @natastron.nature.com 👩‍🔬🧪🔭 ✒️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

zohran mamdani announced a plan to seize properties from bad landlords and private equity if tenents suffer from neglect and i genuinely do not think i’ve seen rightwing circles this mad in reaction to anything i’ve ever seen before lol

Quick note: if I block someone on here, that's the end of the conversation. Don't email me a manifesto about why I was "afraid of the truth." I wasn't. Bsky has a block button and it's my favorite feature

“'If we can repeal Roe v. Wade, then I think we can overturn the 19th Amendment,' said Dale Partridge, pastor at King’s Way Church in Prescott, Ariz." The 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, giving women the right to vote. baptistnews.com/article/yes-...

there should be a word for the feeling of being somewhere with a breathtakingly dark sky and realizing you left your telescope at home

“We’re not here for trouble… we’re just here to see our family members.” Outside Delaney Hall ICE prison in Newark on Day 4 of the hunger strike, a 10-year-old whose father is detained inside confronts masked guards, asking why they won’t show their faces. WATCH @jordanchariton.bsky.social LIVE ⬇️

A US-born woman born was confronted by sheriff deputies in Louisiana who were convinced her ID and social security card were fakes. They turned her over to ICE, who shackled her & took her an hour away. Even after a lawyer convinced ICE of the woman's citizenship the sheriff says they did no wrong

yeah, curious and curiouser

A man with a default avatar explaining to a female archeologist what her own discipline is, based on a Greek prefix. Peak internet.

This isn’t even about AI - this is just straight-up misogyny.

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Bayesian:

hey everyone wanna see what a manufactured hate campaign is shaped like???

Anthropic already blamed Claude breaking bad on science fiction, why stop there arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/a...

I have been thinking a lot about the dozens of people ICE has sent to what is now the Ebola outbreak zone, especially Adriana Zapata, and I really appreciate @melodyschreiber.com reporting this out. 🙏🙏🙏

Laws aren’t real, 404 Error edition: