“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime” is something that would be a dril post

i firmly believe that kennedy wants preventable diseases to rip through american communities since, in his warped mind, those who survive without vaccines will have proven themselves “healthy.”

“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my entire life,” Rep Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) said, fighting back tears. The Tucson Democrat described the way people were laying down inside as “like sardines.” “It is frightening in there,” Grijalva said. “It is disgusting.”

Exciting good news- I’m delighted to share that the new astronomy minor at the University of Oregon has been APPROVED and sent to the registrar! Starting this Fall 2026 we will be offering the FIRST EVER astronomy program in the entire state of Oregon!!! 🥳🤩🔭🧪🎢

"It's never possible to directly simulate astrophysical regimes—the best we can do is study similar regimes and extrapolate" Nope! Check it out: 3D direct numerical simulations of chemical mixing in stellar interiors using the actual parameters of these regions iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Star Wars would be a stronger franchise in 2026 if they had taken the feedback about the pod racing sequence in Phantom Menace and made that the entire franchise for a decade

I need someone with an obnoxiously large computer allocation to spend 10’s of millions of CPU hours on one or two giant simulations of salt fingers/thermohaline convection and let me know if there’s an “ultimate regime” à la RBC, please and thank you

Submitted, and should be on the arXiv on Wednesday

To paraphrase Nixon, “It’s not new math when the President does it.”

For those of you who care about thermohaline convection in stars; coming soon to a preprint server near you:

The @ligo.org and @egovirgo.bsky.social collaborations officially announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves #OTD in 2016. Hard to believe we are ten (ten!) years into the gravitational wave era of astronomy and astrophysics. A remarkable tool for understanding our Universe. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️

The thing where ICE parks masked men in school lots is something I would not have believed unless I saw it with my own two eyes. They do it constantly. It’s purely a terror tactic and they’ve done it to schools over the region. Our schools are collapsing - often at 50% attendance or less.

mr president, you've lost the silksong subreddit

If only Americans had a recent way to know how crucial immigrants were for the success of the Manhattan Project. A big Hollywood movie where a lot of the nuclear scientist characters speak with accents and talk about fleeing Europe that makes tons of money and wins a bunch of Oscars, perhaps.

*scratching head*

Why is there not enough content on Bluesky this morning talking about how absolutely wild this news is www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/b...

Would be an absolutely devastating blow for science on an international scale, not just within the US. Hard to comprehend.

CDC has overhauled its website to assert that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim”

Hey astrophysicists, a presence (absence) of KH billows in some astrophysical shear flow doesn't always imply a lower (upper) bound on the local magnetic field strength! See arxiv.org/abs/2510.031...

Trump is pronouncing "acetaminophen" the right way. by Ezra Klein

Friends, colleagues, my heart is heavy as I share with you some deeply saddening news: “asymptotically spicy” will not, in fact, survive to final publication of this manuscript. But it will live on in the arXiv preprint, at least

Where do people study MHD turbulence in The Netherlands? Asking for a friend looking for a job

Like most modern astrophysicists, Trump is quickly realizing that he can’t keep neglecting magnetic fields

Suddenly thinking this old proposal idea might have a chance

If this continues, the most talented American students will want to study abroad, because they'll want to study with the most talented students and faculty from around the world, and those people won't want to come to the United States even if they can. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/u...

NYT spelling bee takes all kinds of niche words but NOT “adiabatic”??? Anti-science sentiments from NYT in the Trump era, you hate to see it

BREAKING: The NIH director has ordered an immediate review of all the agency's research activities. Any projects that don't fit agency priorities "may be restricted, paused, not renewed, or terminated." My story:

So bad.The EO institutionalizes and intensifies the politicization of federal research funding. The provisions weaken scientific expertise in funding decisions and effectively cede control to political appointees. The basic logistics here will also further slow walk release of federal research funds

The ratio (length of proposal in pages)/(years of funding awarded) is an important thing. Too large, and the proposal writing process feels like a waste of time if the program is competitive. Too small, and it’s hard to convince people you know your stuff. No idea what the optimal value is.

the one thing i genuinely did not anticipate from this administration was its vicious, know nothing hostility to any and everything that might even be adjacent to science and scientific research. they genuinely one to destroy the entirety of the nation’s research capacity. and for what, exactly?

Fresh on the arXiv today: if you take a thermally stably stratified (AKA subadiabatic AKA Schwartzchild- & Ledoux-stable) layer and sprinkle just a tiny bit of salt on the top, the salt fingers that form drive a helical mean flow that twists them into corkscrews arxiv.org/abs/2506.22581

I have a coauthor who is extremely skilled at cutting down text to fit a word/page limit, and I’m immeasurably pleased to see that they’ve retained “asymptotically spicy” in the draft

The cruelty in today's politics feels horribly corrosive. Bringing up that hard-working immigrant families — undocumented, yes, but not violent criminals — are being ripped apart based on immigration status doesn't bring compassion or even pause, but gleeful cheers.

must be incredibly frustrating and disheartening to have federal funding that was promised to you for important work suddenly and arbitrarily ripped away

AAS and 52 other science societies and organizations sent a letter to Congress this morning expressing concern over recent organizational and financial developments at NSF, and urging Congress to exercise its oversight authority to preserve American STEM leadership. aas.org/press/letter... 🔭

Accepted into ApJ Letters 🥳

What happens to science under autocracy? The rise of the National Socialist Party in 1930s Germany provides an (admittedly extreme) example. Prior to the early 1930s, scientists at German institutions won a third of Nobels. 10 years later, that number was 5%, and has never recovered.

The new pope was a math major? God save us.

Rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection exhibits a rich variety of flow morphologies (e.g., cells, plumes, QG turbulence) depending on rotation rate and heating. Inspired by this, CU PhD student Whitney Powers explored rotating moist convection to seek similar regimes and found very different ones!

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

It is a little weird to me countries aren’t more aggressively, formally trying to take advantage of the U.S. science brain drain. Once in a lifetime opportunity to buy low on Non-Dumbass Americans with PhDs who just wanna look into microscopes and quietly cure ass cancer as our country eats shit.

I just got the official email from the NSF about the drastic cuts and I think the correct translation is "if you are a young researcher who still wants to do science strongly consider leaving the United States if you can." which, really, is not an ideal message to be sending.

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Jupiter Core xkcd.com/3083

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Einstein was one of many scientists who came to the US in the first half of the 20th century and made us the science & tech (& thus economic & defense, for instance) powerhouse we were for the next several decades. It’s a bit ironic to highlight him now, as we completely gut US basic research.

I’ve been looking at salt fingers in a particular limit where it becomes technically correct to describe the flow as “asymptotically spicy” and thus I am of course obligated to somehow state this in the paper

The problem with most machine-based random number generators is that they’re not TRULY random, so if you need genuine randomness it is sometimes necessary to link your code to an external random process like a physical noise source or the current rate of US tariffs on a given country.

Polluted WDs actively accrete rocky debris. Most models assume accretion to the surface is balanced by material sinking via diffusion + gravitational settling. The resulting equilibria are often thermohaline-unstable—people keep ignoring that process, but shouldn't! arxiv.org/abs/2503.208...

‘I Messed Up At Work Again,’ Crestfallen Michael Waltz Texts Wife, National Geographic Editorial Staff