SCIENCE POLICY NEWS: During Yom Kippur, all the members of the High Energy Physics Advisory Committee (HEPAP), myself included, received a letter thanking us for our service and telling us essentially that the almost 40 yo standing federal advisory committee was no more. ⚛️🧪🔭 Why that matters 🧵

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory laid off 11% of its staff today, including many people working on an active Mars rover mission. “There’s no whitewashing the ‘doomsday-eve’ feeling that's looming over all our heads,” wrote one JPL’er. eos.org/research-and...

It’s so weird after all those years of listening to John Sterling to hear these TV announcers praise 3 run homers but not cite Earl Weaver. Sterling cited him all the time. The actual quote seems to be “The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers."

"The liberty and security of our fellow citizens is our great object, and not the prompt execution of the laws. Indecision, delay, blunders, nay villainous actions in the administration of government, are trifles compared to legalizing the full exertion of a tyrannical disposition."

Courtesy of colleagues at Penn

Great game. #MLB

if this game keeps going we'll get the new Spelling Bee too

Well, you know Torres always turns the double play in the critical situation. Sigh.

Such a brutal loss.

"The average listener is not under the impression that a diss track is the product of a thoughtful or disinterested investigation, conveying to the public factchecked verifiable content."

It’s Gleyber Day! #MLB

I confess I lost faith at 6-1. #yankees

If you've never seen this, do yourself a favor and watch why the old folks gripe about "movies these days"

This is a great choice.

Just going to say that it is hurtful when a systematic study effort by the global small-body community, with many of the campaigns led by women, with results being pushed to free open-source arXiv & data repos for scicomm as quickly as possible, is described as lacking coordination/communication

This is complete and utter pompous bullshit. It's telling that of the people proposing it wants to anoint themselves director general when every one of his claims of having discovered technosignature interstellar objects has been debunked by the planetary community. arxiv.org/pdf/2510.01405

The effort put into understanding 3I/Atlas has been spectacular, imaginative, professional and well-organized. Planetary scientists don't need Avi Loeb put in charge of an international directorate to tell them how to do their jobs.

Well, I would not take Gausman out, that seems crazy.

Frank Sinatra - New York, New York youtu.be/le1QF3uoQNg?... #Sinatra #NYC #jazz #music #JazzSky #musicsky #NYY #FilmSky 📽️ 🎶🎬🎷

Although I cannot speak officially for the UD data science institute, I strongly urge the Yankees analytics department to play both Jazz and Rice tomorrow.

Wife: “I don’t know why they didn’t play him last night” #NYY #yankees

OK, sure, let's add a program that can't do basic arithmetic to Excel. OTOH, maybe it can add "1-2" to excel without it instantly turning into January 2

For those frantically trying to submit their Gemini proposals tonight, it’s broken: www.gemini.edu/news/science...

Worth a read for folks who don't have lines into NASA. It is truly heartbreaking.

Happy Silent Movie Day! Post an image from one of your favorite silent movies.

Astronomy 🔭 and physics ⚛️ GRFP applications are due Nov 14! Only seniors and 1st-year grad students can apply now (no second years).

What a game. I was extremely worried. #NYY #Yankees

This is Philadelphia. No one wants to see 60 minutes talk about butterflies instead of showing Earth Wind and Fire. #September21

Ben Rice! #NYY

This is when you start to worry it might not go your way this week:

Yesterday I found myself needed to understand some old data. “Helpful” file names from past me: Plot3bands. Plot3bandsfinal. Plot3bandsfinal2. Plot3bandsMEDIAN.

Incredibly self destructive policy for USA

So we’ll try to work out the DESI “w0waCDM” model in class tomorrow. What a name by the way.

I am a professional writer not least because a prof lost the only copy of a chapter of my diss in the mid-'70s. I cussed across campus, mostly "Gotta be another 🤬 way to make a living!" I hauled out an old ms., started reworking it, and... So yeah, back up. (The chapter did eventually surface.)

ah, well

The replies give more great films.

An abandoned plan to visit another star highlights the perils of billionaire-funded science

QUIZ SHOW is one of the great, under-appreciated gems, which somehow makes you *feel* what it was like when lying on TV still counted as a major scandal. Robert Redford made too many great films to list here, but this one’s never been more relevant. #RIP

Stephen Graham, known in our household as “Al Capone” . I thought it was the best show of the year.

This was shown in Netflix’s Adolescence… the cops (and we the older audience) have no clue what the teens’ posts and emojis mean. Red pill etc

This is so important to remember and a thing that makes Bluesky different. Because of the way the protocol works, nothing is ever actually deleted. You can remove if from the service of Bluesky, but it will always exist in the protocol. Post cautiously with that in mind!

bluesky hive mind: is this unhinged conference poster design actually any good? I really want to make something eye-catching that's not just the normal black-text-on-white-background, so I turned the entire background into the main figure still needs layout, text, & figure work, but basic concept:

Have you voted yet today?!? (Also: typo—BY finding the sun…) #MinCup25

I never read Friedmann’s classic 1922 cosmology paper before, in which he discovers non-stationary (expanding) universe solutions in General Relaivity. He ends by saying we don’t know enough to calculate the universe’s age, then proceeds to estimate 10 billion years. Pure theory! So impressive.

I enjoyed this. And what an infectious laugh. ❤️ "Reporter left speechless after witnessing Japan's new $70 million Maglev train in action at 310 mph"

#MinCup Round 1 Match 2 is underway! It’s dark & dramatic #Stibonite vs fluffy & adorable #Okenite. Kohl or cottonball? VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2025/vote/r1... Check results: www.mineralcup.org/2025/results...

I keep playing this 1976 Freddie Hubbard #jazz song because I like the name: “Philly Mignon”

First time in three decades teaching at University of Delaware’s beautiful Memorial Hall in the center of campus. (Of course, I’m actually in the basement). #UDel

Making them wear high-visibility vests over camo is such a good joke you couldn’t write it