Really saddened to hear the American soprano Roberta Alexander died yesterday at the age of 76. A wonderful Jenufa at Glyndebourne, and Handel's Theodora on disc with Harnoncourt. Here singing Samuel Barber's Sure on This Shining Night. A lovely, lovely artist. RIP www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgsk...

Flotilla member tells about thuer treatment.

Flink meer Amerikaanse studenten meldden zich dit studiejaar bij de UvA. De politieke situatie in Amerika maakt het land minder aantrekkelijk voor studenten. ‘Ook het collegegeld is hier lager.’ www.folia.nl/nl/actueel/1...

Significantly more American students applied at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) this academic year. The political situation in America is making the country less attractive to students. “Tuition fees are also cheaper here.” www.folia.nl/en/actueel/1...

There is an important conversation that should be going on (maybe at the UN level?) about this, as it will become worse with time (as more satellites are orbited). Nations worked together to build the Montreal Protocol to protect the Ozone Layer. These constellations threaten all of that work.

"There are currently one to two Starlink satellites falling back to Earth every day ... Soon, McDowell told us, there will be up to 5 satellite reentries per day." 😳

BREAKING: Our client Mario Guevara, an Emmy-winning journalist detained by ICE in retaliation for livestreaming law enforcement activity, will be deported tomorrow to El Salvador. Mario and his family are being punished for his reporting. This cruelty is meant to stifle our free press.

These towers surround Gaza's Roman Cemetery — an ancient intact burial site with 125 tombs that was discovered in 2022. @premiereurgenceint.bsky.social worked on the site before the war: www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/07/26/r... Can see the site in a video from 2023: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VStQ...

Pritzker: "One of the reasons Trump wants to send troops into cities is bc he wants to be able to take control of the 2026 elections...if they've got troops in cities, & it becomes a kind of norm for people, then it won't be abnormal for them when they're going to vote having troops at ballot boxes"

If not stopped. This will effectively finish killing the research and teaching infrastructure of universities in the US

Dutch late night TV has its take

In China wordt de term enshitification wel heel letterlijk genomen…. Beelden van Chinees toilet gaan viraal: pas na bekijken reclame een paar velletjes wc-papier www.ad.nl/buitenland/b...

ERC Starting Grant voor astronomen Ziggy Pleunis (UvA) en Tim Lichtenberg (RUG) www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/erc-s... @erc.europa.eu

About 26 years ago, the Chandra X-ray Observatory released its "First Light" images. The supernova remnant Cassiopeia A was the highlight. All of these years later, Chandra is still delivering discoveries about this exploded star. chandra.si.edu/press/25_rel...

For the EU, this should be a very urgent matter of national security. All EU member states should build on Denmark's wise strategy to phase out Microsoft products

‘Speciale eenheid van Israëlische leger belast met het framen van journalisten als Hamasstrijders’

Fascinating, but also very slimy: two leppard slugs mating. #slugs #mating

Door het rondreizende planetarium van wis- en sterrenkundige Jaap Vreeling (1956-2025) werd de kosmos gemeengoed 🔭 www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/d...

A truly outrageous and sickening request from the Netanyahu government. The U.S. should not be complicit in or use ANY governmental, American taxpayer resources to aid and abet what amounts to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians from Gaza.  We cannot stand for this.

The US Senate is not willing to go along with Trump’s proposed cancellation of dozens of NASA missions. 🧪🔭 #planetsci

Trump didn’t increase the ICE budget 20x and start building concentration camps just to deal with illegal immigrants. He wants his own personal army, a federal national guard, like Putin’s Rosgvardiya. And he wants people to get used to their doing whatever they want, 4th Amendment be damned.

“I see a truly great artist in Gergiev, together with the soloists from Saint Petersburg. I want to express particular satisfaction at this presence.

On July 27, as part of the Un’Estate da RE festival, a performance by Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and soloists from the Mariinsky Theatre is scheduled in Italy. Vincenzo De Luca, the founder and patron (president) of the Un’Estate da RE festival, said:

When history marks the point where we lost the future to China, this will be it.

From out @esa.int Director of Science @cmundell.bsky.social >> europeanspaceflight.com/esa-director...

👇👇

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started theonion.com/netanyahu-ca...

A message from Carl Sagan from 1995—some of his last prophetic words.

Breaking news: The Trump administration is planning a major increase of deportations to Guantánamo, including citizens of Britain, France and other allies. Officials said they are unlikely to inform the foreigners’ home governments about the transfers.

Finally an explanation that makes sense! Not that it will matter to the hardcore conspiracy mongers.

Pretty clear from this readout of call with Putin, that Trump sees Russia as an ally on Iran and not an adversary in Ukraine. Any hope he might have turned and agree to impose new sanctions on Russia is all but gone.

Casey Eberl, a Canadian nurse, recently returned from #Gaza after two assignments with Doctors Without Borders from Aug. to Oct. 2024 and Feb. to Mar. 2025. Watch her firsthand account of the challenges medical teams face during mass casualty incidents with limited resources.

Four charts showing the extent of cuts to NASA in the FY26 budget: - Cuts to every science division - Smallest science funding since 1984 - 19 active, inflight missions cancelled - Smallest NASA budget since FY 1961

Following the inspiration of @ohdearz.bsky.social @theplanetaryguy.bsky.social @jtuttlekeane.bsky.social here’s the NASA fleet with the proposed budget cuts. Red X’s will be fully defunded, green X’s will lose all NASA funding but have other funding sources, and exclamation point means >50% cuts

The details of the proposed budget cuts to NSF are just horrific. 🔭🧪⚛️☄️ Example: "the astronomical community will be stunned that the agency intends to wind down one of the sites for the celebrated Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)." WTF? www.science.org/content/arti...

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.

If a former Israeli prime minister can say this, what is stopping European leaders?

I hope legacy media covers the connection between last night's memecoin dinner and this morning's social media tariff threats. He's manipulating the stock market.

In memoriam Jaap Vreeling (1956-2025) 🔭 Dutch: www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/in-me... English: www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/en/in...

I like to bring your attention to a recently accepted paper by me, my student Manan Agarwal and several members of the XRISM science on the magnificent supernova remnant Cassiopeia A: arxiv.org/abs/2505.04691.

Serious conflicts of interest here (not surprisingly): www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

NEW: There’s the quid pro quo www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Het voedsel in Gaza is vandaag op. Uithongering inzetten als wapen is een oorlogsmisdaad, en toch doet Netanyahu precies dat. Nederland mag niet stil blijven bij zulk onrecht. Laat de regering eindelijk een lijn trekken en overgaan tot harde sancties om serieus druk te zetten.

Extremely bad to deregulate anything of Musk's, the man with no boundaries. His satellites already have had a major impact on astronomy. And, the people in our world no longer look at the same night sky all of humanity has seen for millennia.

🚨SCOOP: Musk's empire is pressing Trump to waive longstanding satellite rules. If the waiver is approved Monday, SpaceX could monopolize satellite services despite concerns that the waiver threatens competition, blinds telescopes & endangers spaceflight. www.levernews.com/superchargin...

Crisis at NASA It's very bad news all round for NASA science, but the worst hit is Astrophysics (which includes cosmology) where the proposed cut is about two-thirds, which would be devastating.