The change could make life difficult, especially for fields with concentration in top institutions. Current rules note that: “If individuals from [major institutions] are excluded from serving” on the panel, “it will reduce the quality and diversity of the merit review process."

This is really fucking idiotic considering that there are VERY FEW UNIVS in the US that even have marine science/oceanography depts. So, nobody from Scripps/UCSD can be a reviewer if another Scripps/UCSD person has a proposal in???? Just the dumbest fuckin ppl heading NSF rn.

More changes at the NSF, this time to elevate certain (often benign) conflicts-of-interest to the point of disqualifying reviewers from serving on entire panels. A nice write-up from Dan, which includes some quotes from Bluesky's 74th most popular astrophysicist.

Is someone calling zotero and the ilk (functionally databases that contain your refs) genAI???? JFC COME ON. A database=/= genAI #stupidesttimeline

tell them there’s a sex criminal in the building

NSF GEO has *A LOT* of fucking nerve to ask for rotators right now. Who wants to be complicit in killing programs within GEO??? GEO has already killed: the JOIDES Resolution contract, the icebreaker N. Palmer lease, and all arrays operated by OOI. What programs will they cripple or kill next? #jfc

Our DHS grant was terminated last week. This was awarded via the University of Alaska Anchorage's Arctic Domain Awareness Center, which was dissolved by the Trump administration last year and then brought back by Senator Dan Sullivan. We were barely allowed to spend any of the funds. The reason?

The American Chemical Society's magazine, C&EN, says that the Iran war has taken about a third of the world's helium off the market. Helium is needed to keep magnetic resonance scanners cool and to make semiconductors. Prices are going up.

It’s funny how the federal government professes to hate Communism but is effectively creating a late-Stalinism scientific environment by forcing direct top-down political approvals for grant funding by people with purely ideological motives and no scientific grounding.

Some cnidarian #pride for you 🐡

I love how programs like the Tony Awards are fucking impossible to watch live without a TV. The CBS website just gives an error when I log in thru my provider.THIS IS BROADCAST FOR FREE. I SHOULDN'T NEED FUCKING PARAMOUNT+ TO WATCH IT.

The only annoying thing about the California system is that the vote dumps make everyone who failed intro to statistics absolutely feral for 2 weeks.

GDI

"nearly 75% of instructional staff in American higher education now work outside the tenure system. Contingency no longer exists at the edges of academic life; it increasingly defines the structure through which the university teaches, adapts, + reproduces itself." working-mass.com/2026/06/04/i...

It's absolutely infuriating that blue-state governors do not see this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to launch their schools into the stratosphere. And I don't mean that in a greedy way. I mean that they could actively work to save US higher ed AND make their schools even better.

It took 4.5 billion years of precise cosmic history to build an Earth that can support human life. Yet, we are risking it all for quarterly earnings. True intelligence means recognizing that a dead planet has a GDP of exactly zero. 🛑💼 #ClimateAction #EarthFirst

People love historical what if scenarios. What if JFK was never assassinated? What if the Nazis won in WW2? A scenario I never see discussed is what if the aids crisis didnt decimate the gay men of America in the 80s-90s? Its easy to forget 1 in 15 gay boomer men died. An estimated 300,000 deaths-

More young men were lost to aids than the Vietnam War, many of them creatives at the peak of their careers. Howard Ashman, Derek Jarman, Keith Haring and Freddie Mercury are some of the most famous but there are so many unknown writers/actors/artists/filmakers cut down before they even started.

Anthony Head as Frank-n-Furter. ❤️😢❤️

There was absolutely not silence. I've been *SCREAMING* about the loss of the JR since they announced it in 2023. I'm pissed about the Palmer too, but know much less about the inner workings of the polar programs division.

"Last September, [NSF] removed 2 of its 3 floating observation stations off Newport, OR, and all 3 of its stations off Grays Harbor, WA, from the water and warehoused them in Corvallis, OR" Excuse me they did WHAT last fall???? #JFC

At no point was "maybe you guys and your professional orgs really should advocate for more funding for NSF from congress." 🙃

It's *great* to see people encountering the late Obama "let's defund scientific infrastructure" thing for the first time. Head of NSF GEO during that time was going around asking the community if they should "fund people or fund infrastructure" at places like UArizona during talks.

Classicist here to inform you all that this is ancient Greek for summoning a cat

This is obviously correct. Anyone who does not see it is delusional.

Witnessing Vought saying this for two full years now, doing it for more than a year, and yet Congress not acting so far to remove him remains confounding.

Would *LOVE* to, but I made $700 last month so I'm probably not the resource to retain a lawyer rn tbh.

A reminder that Canada's cabled observatory started operating in 2006 or so. The CORK at 1026B was connected to the cable shortly after our summer maintenance cruise in 2008. My partner installed the thermistor string that was in the CORK until 2014 (we pulled it and the downhole Osmos at that time)

If you want to find people who might be a bit more aggressive in the research community, you need people with less institutional and social buy-in: grad students, postdocs, people on short term contracts. They're not going to have access to much in the way of resources though. A fun paradox.

Another fun fact! NSF commissioned the decadal ocean science survey that produced this (and other) reports. There's also one for scientific ocean drilling, which (IMO) doesn't chastise NSF NEARLY enough for killing the JR contract without having a plan/timeline in place to replace the ship. 🤦‍♀️💀

The 2 southern arrays were discontinued mostly bc NSF started self-imposing a "no more than 50% of the OCE budget can be on infrastructure" in like 2013-14. This hurt multiple infrastructure-heavy programs like #IODP and #OOI. IODP did fewer legs per yr. OOI lost 2 arrays.

🚨A proposed OMB rule could let political appointees override peer review, cancel grants mid-project, ban certain research topics, restrict publishing, and more🚨 Stand up for science 💪 🧪 Learn more and use our resources to submit a public comment today ⬇️ agu.quorum.us/campaign/163...

Does #OOI have a lawyer? They should absolutely be suing NSF/the govt because, once again... THE. PROGRAM. IS. FULLY. FUNDED. #JFC

Someone who doesn't know much about oceanography asked me if the dismantling of ocean monitoring capabilities was stupid and/or evil. It is stupid AND evil. The War on Science continues. As more people see it and push back, maybe the tide can be turned. 🌊🧪 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Some more #OOI context: size. Please see below for how large some of the floats and instruments are. These aren't things you can just go grab with a dinghy. 🤦‍♀️ Specialized research vessels (and occasionally deep submergence vehicles) are absolutely required.

ICYMI, I broke down everything deployed in the various OOI arrays that NSF wants to dismantle. 🤦‍♀️💀 🌊 🧪

You don't save money by destroying the $360 million in equipment you've already bought. Remember: if you're in the US, your tax dollars paid for the OOI. It belongs to you. It was deployed to serve you. Fight for it.

...and here's the bit from early last year where Trump and Musk cut funding for screwworm control.

Statement linked in this article: "The initiative...will include existing European services like Copernicus Marine Service, EMODnet, WISE Marine, and WISE Freshwater...This system will also include the European Digital Twin Ocean, set to be fully operational by 2030" I've never heard of these. :/

Or (if you're me), wanting to write some good ol' Olympic defection fanfic (based loosely on the themes in "Chess") for your tiny ship leads to reading/owning basically every English book on the history of Soviet hockey (focused on 1970-80), including Anatoly Tarasov's own writing. 🙃😎

From the CEO of AAAS: “If this rule becomes final, Americans' hopes for future cures, national security and economic strength will rely on the scientific sensibilities of the nation's chief bureaucrat. Alzheimer's disease will not be cured by a budget analyst from either political party.”

#DearDrMcNutt: I'd like to suggest a big challenge to address! We could monitor important regions of the ocean/seafloor long-term and have the data be available to all in real time! Oh wait, that's #OOI. Which NSF announced that it's going to dismantle FOR NO FUCKIN REASON WHILE IT'S STILL FUNDED.

ICYMI -- this is a big deal, and we have a limited time to comment. We need everyone, including (especially!) non-academics to 1) make public comments, 2) write op eds, 3) contact your elected representatives, and 4) ask societies and advocacy groups to speak out against this and mobilize members.

This is why technical language editing services exist (aka my freelance #editinghell gig). LLMs DO NOT KNOW HOW TO WRITE ACADEMICALLY. It's a word predictor on steroids. I promise, your own English words are way better than whatever genAI is going to shit out.

Half-assed public comment on the OMB things submitted, focusing on the bits I kind of understand the most. Go! Do your own half-assed comment on the bits you understand the most. Together we shall collectively provide a rich resource for congressional and judicial challenges to this bullshit.

I mean, we *were/are* doing big challenging science in IODP, in OOI. BUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE TO DO SAID BIG CHALLENGING THINGS IS ACTIVELY BEING REMOVED. So, big fuckin surprise, WE CAN'T DO BIG CHALLENGING SCIENCE WITHOUT A) DATA/SAMPLES AND B) THE FUCKIN SHIPS/INSTRUMENTS TO COLLECT THEM. #JFC

Wow. Dismantling the OOI arrays is a major loss for oceanography. 🧪🌊 oceanobservatories.org/2026/05/anno...

No rabble rouser gets to be a big wig in academia and what we need the most right now are some rabble rousers...

Really missing the advocacy that the Consortium for Ocean Leadership used to provide for LARGE swaths of the deep sea science community, including IODP and OOI.

How we tracked China’s deep-sea mining fleet news.mongabay.com/2026/06/how-... 🧪🌎🦑