Rosalind Franklin died at 37 of ovarian cancer attributed to radiation exposure from the methods she & her assistant used to photograph a cross-section of the DNA double helix. Meanwhile, Watson won a Nobel off that work & survived to the ripe old age of 97 by simply: stealing those notes!

Hey, astronomers. Can you imagine astronomy research without ADS?!?!? No? So, have you filled out the ADS survey yet? Help archives help you! (Help archives keep funding!) docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Hey planetary scientists! I don’t know about y’all, but ADS makes my life so much easier.

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House. Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity. They are not the same.

NEW WRITING: It's aimed at students, with some specific examples for astro/physics folks, but I think other people may find it useful too. 🔭⚛️🧪 "Knowledge is worth your time because of how it shapes your mind. And the authoritarians may take many things from us, but they cannot take our minds."

ladies, this is how gullible Silicon Valley tech bros think you are

my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵) www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...

Your periodic reminder that you have the right to find out why your health insurer denied your claim. We built a tool to help you do it: projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

🧪The NSF has made changes to the GRFP solicitation and eligibility TODAY that may change your eligibility! PLEASE read through the solicitation if you were planning to apply and speak to your mentors about the merits of applying: www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Don’t resubcribe to Disney just yet folks. PBS still needs help! NPR still needs help!

Love is real and it’s stored in two spacecraft observing the same moons 🩵. #EPSCDPS

I'm scared I will draw the Wrath of the Fanboys, but... this week on my newsletter I wrote about why I think the "Golden Age of Science Fiction" writers have so little appeal to a huge swathe of today's SF/F writers & readers. undercover-in-the-apocalypse.ghost.io/this-is-why-...

Hey, everyone! The world maybe on fire, but Io is... also on Fire! But in a good way! And we have a new paper out in JGR - Planets (OPEN ACCESS) with all the goods about Juno's JunoCam observations of Io (more) agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

I want to touch it

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Highly recommend this incredible series! One of my favorite reads of recent years for sure

Those of us in STEM must vocally affirm that the humanities are our allies, and no department is expendable. Arguing we can survive by cutting whole disciplines isn’t just inhumane, it’s nonsensical. The humanities tell us why we’re here in the first place, and what to do about it! This isn’t hard!

BIG BOAT STUCK

Seeing a lot of inevitability on the timeline, a feeling that we are all doomed and following some sort of predetermined tragedy. But can I encourage you instead to spread love and joy in your local community? Can I interest you in doing your part to counteract alienation and despair?

One thing that doing creative work teaches you is that ideas are worth nothing. Anybody can have an idea. In a writers room you have to come up with a hundred ideas a day, and most of those don’t make the page. It’s the work of making something that gives it value. The patina of humanity.

Wake up babe, new Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation OceanGate report just dropped

Mary Shelley doesn't get enough credit for not only anticipating the silver-spooned narcissist techbro who recklessly creates technology without thinking through the consequences, but also for knowing that said techbro would be an absolutely terrible father.

Saying goodbye to a pet is never easy, especially one who I’ve had since I was 13. I’m so thankful he (and his sister, who’s still okay) came into our lives. He was a giant goofball and I’ll miss him so dearly 🧡. I know he’s at peace now and I’ll love Simba forever.

NASA Planetary Science funding update moodboard:

current mood:

It is an extraordinary loss of intellectual expertise that the American people invested millions in developing Every scientist who earns a graduate degree in the US is the product of an investment by the public This is like setting money on fire

I can confirm the PBS Passport is a very good deal for $5/month or $2.50/month if you do yearly. Thousands of hours of top notch content. NOVA is great. The new Ken Burns doc on Leonardo da Vinci is excellent. You can sign up at the link below! www.pbs.org/passport/lea...

I spent a lot of time yesterday on here advocating for space science, today I need to actually do some space science. So instead of writing the a new thread I'm just going to re-up this one, with an addition: the markup is now on Thursday. We have an extra day to call and Save American Science!

👀 NEW: We'll hear more *this Thursday* about: Does the Senate have the appetite to slash FY26 budgets for NSF, NOAA, and NASA? See here: www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/ful... Let's convince the answer should be a resounding NO! See excellent 🧵 below about key states.

Are you from one of these states? Then we need your help to save American science! The Senate Appropriations Committee will be marking up the President's Budget Request for science on Wednesday. People have been saying the proposed cuts "decimated" US science, but that's wrong: they are apocalyptic

DOGE cut hundreds of jobs at the National Weather Service, but experts who spoke to WIRED say the agency accurately predicted the state's weekend flood risk. What’s more, they say it underscores the need to sustain funding to the crucial agency.

The Senate reconciliation bill passed yesterday is separate from the annual appropriations process, which determines funding for our federal science agencies. Learn more about the differences here: aas.org/posts/news/2...

spite is a powerful motivator they should never know a moment’s peace or quiet phone lines

i've been seeing more and more people unwittingly sharing AI images in hobby forums, meaning well but making suggestions that are completely implausible. the wildest imo are the fb groups dedicated to low cost home renovations. so many gravity-defying images of shelving installs and new kitchens

I just stumbled across bad AI generated "images" of Saturn's moons and I think I took extreme psychic damage. None of them are geologically even possible and their captions are just full of nonsense. I wish this trend would just die already. It's harmful to the environment and harms science comms.

new close all tabs! this is a deep dive into why animators suck at getting Black hair right. we also profile two researchers who developed a new way to animate 4c hair — but faced immense resistance in academia in the process. plus, we get into killmonger locs lol www.kqed.org/news/1204576...

Folks, if you are in the US, please call your representatives **right now** and demand they do not pass *demand they vote against* the current budget bill. Ask that they please protect Science in America for the sake of the economy and the advancement of humanity. www.usa.gov/elected-offi...

According to the EU website, the EU's GDP is €17trillion = $20 trillion. This is still 1/3 the US budget. Other economies just aren't large enough to absorb all the cuts being made in the US. We can do that for other nations; they can't do it for us. Let's look at each major agency we partner with

In prep for today's @astronomycast.com recording, I looked up budgets for major partner space agencies to explore the "Other nations will step up" storyline regarding sci & space exploration in particular. - NASA proposed FY26 cuts: $6.1 billion - JAXA+ESA+ISRO+CSA budget FY25: $12.2 billion 🧵

Also, I don’t crochet, embroider, or knit much anymore, but bullshit AI patterns and faked photos are fucking destroying those communities. And honestly, a lot of it doesn’t even seem to have any products they’re trying to sell attached; it’s just pollution.

Mai is my beloved friend. Mai is a single mom who’s been forcibly separated from her children. Mai goes 4-7 days at a time without eating. Mai also has a landlord extorting her for rent. But you’ve helped. Give/find her individual link here. 413/1700 by Friday: chuffed.org/project/hope...

"AllTrails has a new generative AI feature that can be asked to 'shorten my route' or 'make this more scenic.' But the people in charge of searching for lost hikers say the feature is going to exacerbate an issue they’ve been warning about for years: hiking apps providing false information."

I refuse to give the NYT my eyeballs, so I can't speak to the specifics of this article. But any historians attempting to use AI for either writing or research should be run out of the field. AI is inherently unable to do anything we need it to do to understand and communicate history.

This is something that most people will miss, because they're not in the profession and haven't ever really thought about historical knowledge is produced. But it's an incredibly important point.

I was a NASA Space Grant Student in my junior year of undergrad, it was through this program that I really started to see what a career in planetary science could look like and where I could fit within it.

No support in 5 days. No one supports the individual campaigns of these 6 families + a displacement camp, and now we have lost support for this giving circle that was meant to get around that. Let's turn that around!! A donor is matching the next 200: tinyurl.com/HopeGivingCi...

Happy pride month! I worked with some LA-based scientists and engineers, and we have a kickstarter for space pride t-shirts! Consider backing! 🛰️🏳️‍⚧️🚀🏳️‍🌈🪐 www.kickstarter.com/projects/spa...

(•_•) <) )╯Publique fundinge / \ \(•_•) ( (> of the artes and humanityes / \ (•_•) <) )> doth benefit everyone! / \

Pell grant cuts threaten state college access goals In my latest, I explain how the multipronged cuts to federal financial aid would shift costs to states, who in turn will likely have to shift costs to students to take on more debt or forego college www.brookings.edu/articles/pel...

DO NOT KEEP YOUR MONEY IN AN APP CAUSE THE APP CAN JUST BAN YOU AND KEEP THE MONEY AND YOU DON'T HAVE RECOURSE