here you go!!

Disabled students in this country are about to get bounced between three different federal agencies just to get the education they’re legally entitled to.

Planetary Science xkcd.com/3255/

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.

wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖

Reading a fellowship announcement that’s just like Harvard Harvard Princeton Princeton Stanford Stanford. Like congrats for sure to the awardees but maybe they should just tell people at other schools to not bother trying lol

If you liked/understood the quoted post (looking at you @chowlandgfd.bsky.social), or otherwise care about salt fingers, ultimate regimes, or the different thermohaline models in MESA, then you should check out this neat paper on the arXiv today from Valentin Skoutnev: arxiv.org/abs/2605.038...

Hey that’s my paper! Cool!

I feel like we’re willing to make Pluto a planet again, at least provisionally, if they’re willing to fund astrophysics. I’d say $100 billion/year is reasonable But if you keep cutting our budgets, I swear we’ll keep eliminating them. Hope you like a three planet solar system!

I’m tired so I first read this as “stardew valley” and was ready to fight about it

Reminder: we are hiring a Research Software Engineer @flatironinstitute.org !

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.