This is true but I think it's important to clarify: we still know how to produce knowledge. Science, journalism, etc. still basically work, if done well. The crisis is that people don't trust those institutions any more. I'd characterize it as a social-trust problem.
So Iraq's WMDs, Iran's nuclear weapons, and Donald Trump's healthcare plan walk into a bar...
Stop me if you heard this one.
A photo of the Chicago skyline at night with a tangle of bright lighting lignite gap the night sky during a thunderstorm
Boom! Had a great ight show over the skyline tonight. Here’s my first big lightning shot of the season.
This is a 2-frame composite. Best as I can tell, two large, branching bolts struck the eastern antenna mast of the Hancock. #wxsky #ilwx
NEW: Before the Iran War, Trump ignored warnings that Iran could retaliate across the region and stop oil shipments. Now, with energy markets in chaos, some aides are pessimistic about the lack of a strategy to end the war. But they haven't told Trump. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/u...
Former federal military intelligence analyst here, and one that worked this set: All of this was known. All of it. I am more aggressive on conflict than a lot of folks, but this special military operation against Iran was a choice. A really bad choice. The Trumpers must own it. Period.
Photo of a cuneiform tablet fragment shaped a bit like an irregular diamond. It preserves nearly 20 incomplete lines of text separated by a horizontal ruling
There's a broken cuneiform tablet from the Old Babylonian period, nearly 4,000 years ago, which preserves a tiny portion of a dialogue between two friends.
It feels a bit like the conversations I've been having for the past week, so I wanted to share it.
Soon somebody, somewhere, is going to get a belt of Van Allen probe.
True. But most of those other things make me want to scream and cry. This just makes me want to barf, so it’s got that going for it.
Episode 43 of the Kilauea eruption is a BEAST. They just zoomed out and uhhh this may be on its way to setting a record for tallest lava fountains. What on Earth. 😍🌋
Cam 2 live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiyt...
Because I’d just started coming to terms with THIS and then IT happened?
onefoottsunami.com/2026/03/10/d...
The one in the White House is NOT funny.
Seriously, what is WRONG with this country?
I know, I know, the list is way too long to fit in a skeet.
A disgusting concoction of vanilla ice cream, ranch dressing, a carrot, celery, and… fried chicken? 🤢
If Cthulhu served snacks in R'lyeh…
As a species, we deserve the worst this planet can do to us. 🤮
#RanchDressingMilkshakeAbomination
Filed away under “Headlines I did not expect to see today—or ever really”
PeliCon 2026
We’ve been sick-rolled
Indeed it was—a welcome break from the snow and ice and damp gray weather that had been the norm for the previous two months. It’s going to get colder again, but for the next couple of days we’ll enjoy our warm respite.
We took advantage of the unseasonably warm and sunny weather to grab a margherita pizza & some beers at Brookeville Beer Farm this evening.
The warm weather also seemed to encourage the peeper frogs, as we could hear their chorus from some nearby pond or seasonal wetland as we enjoyed our treat.🐸
you rubes. you complete and utter fools. anyone with a brain can see this is a multidimensional, metaphysical conflict. a conceptual battlefield. we've only barely begun to end the start of this thing.
Email from Chris Reynolds to the AXIS Team. Subject is disappointing AXIS news. Text of e-mail reads: Dear AXIS Friends, The AXIS team has received some very disappointing news – we have been informed by NASA HQ that AXIS is not eligible for selection and hence the Concept Study Report (CSR) will not be subjected to the full review process. AXIS represents the scientific aspirations of a large international community. As a member of one of the AXIS science working groups, you deserve a candid explanation from the PI of what happened and why. That is the purpose of this note. NASA’s decision was programmatic and not based on a review of the technology or science; the mission profile described in the submitted CSR was over the allowed budget and schedule. How was such a thing possible? In short, with NASA-GSFC as the AXIS managing center, the mission formulation process was critically compromised by the seismic shifts occurring in NASA and the Federal government. The AXIS study team was hit hard by three unprecedented challenges: NASA’s Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) and the pressure at GSFC to resign/retire created a rapid and uncontrolled loss of over 20 personnel with key expertise during a critical mission formulation period, including the main GSFC Project Manager (Jimmy Marsh) and the X-ray mirror lead (Will Zhang) and many discipline engineers.
GSFC priorities rapidly realigned to the FY2026 President’s Budget Request (PBR) that eliminated the Probe program, further reducing the availability of GSFC engineering and mission formulation personnel (incl. cost analysts and schedulers) over the critical Summer and Fall months. Key work was halted for almost seven weeks when the core GSFC AXIS study team, dominated by NASA civil servants, was furloughed during the government shutdown. NASA HQ’s extension to the CSR submission deadline (from 18-Dec-2025 to 29-Jan-2026) was inadequate compensation for the disruption and lost time. Taken together, these factors disrupted the basic grass-roots costing process (which requires extensive “reach back” to the discipline engineers to assess labor requirements) as well as the cost-design iteration process that is central to the formulation of a cost-capped and schedule-constrained mission. While the mission design was finalized in April, our initial grass-roots costing (which was ~10% over budget) could only be completed in September due to the lack of assigned resources. With the subsequent government shutdown and then “pens down” in early-December forced by the GSFC Executive Review process, there was no opportunity to work through the set of cost/schedule savings that had already been identified by the AXIS team. Ultimately, the GSFC executive council gave AXIS leadership the choice of submitting a CSR with a non-compliant schedule and cost, or not submitting a CSR at all. We of course proceeded with the submission, including a narrative that we understood the path to a cost-compliant profile (that we would have discussed with the review panels during the Site Visit). NASA HQ has ruled this stance to be unacceptable. It is important to stress that NASA’s programmatic decision was before any technical review had been conducted. The decision was NOT due to any concerns about AXIS technology. Indeed, the AXIS Phase A work had major successes with furthering
Indeed, the AXIS Phase A work had major successes with furthering the key technologies. GSFC’s Next Generation X-ray Optics (NGXO) team successfully demonstrated iridium-coated, stress-compensated mirror segments that meet AXIS baseline requirements (i.e. segment-level performance at sub-arcsecond level). NGXO also built the first AXIS demonstrator mirror module, learning critical lessons about mirror alignment, mounting and bonding. On the detector side, MIT quickly moved to fabricate AXIS-like CCDs and, working with our colleagues at Stanford, recently demonstrated that they achieve the required readout rate and spectral resolution. Similarly, NASA’s decision was NOT a judgment of the importance of AXIS science. The AXIS science case was rated excellent in the Step 1 review, and it only became stronger during our Phase A study. The AXIS Community Science Book, which many of you contributed to, is an extremely powerful demonstration of the relevance and importance of high-resolution X-ray observations to all areas of astrophysics. The Science Book is one of the most important legacies of the AXIS Phase A study and, I believe, will help define future mission concepts for many years to come. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for all of your work on this. AXIS has been a long journey; we started under the leadership of Richard Mushotzky more than nine years ago. During that time, it’s been an enormous privilege to work with amazing people; the AXIS science team, the incredible/brilliant GSFC and Northrop Grumman engineers, and the wider astrophysics community. I am, quite frankly, livid that AXIS ultimately fell victim to the programmatic chaos of 2025. The astronomical community deserves better. I hope that NASA leadership, especially at GSFC and HQ, can have an honest discussion about how to better support and protect programs during extraordinary times.
For now, as a community, we must look forward. There is still one excellent mission under consideration for the Probe program, PRIMA, and we wish them a smooth and speedy path to selection and flight. In X-ray astronomy, the SMEX and MidEX programs represent concrete pathways for focused, high-impact missions, and the scientific case we built for AXIS provides a strong foundation for those concepts. The technologies we advanced in Step 1 and Phase A, particularly the NGXO mirror work and the MIT/Stanford detector demonstrations, can anchor the next generation of proposals. Most importantly, the AXIS Community Science Book, representing more than 500 scientists across, is a living document and a powerful signal to NASA leadership that this community is organized, serious, and not going anywhere. I encourage everyone to use it actively, as a resource for future concept development, for Astro2030 engagement, and for building the next mission that will deliver high angular resolution X-ray imaging to address the fundamental questions about black hole growth, galaxy evolution, and the hot universe that motivated AXIS from the beginning. This community built something remarkable over nine years and that doesn't end here. Thank you again for your support of AXIS over these times. Best Chris and the AXIS leadership team
The @axisprobe.bsky.social team learned that the phase A concept study report of AXIS (the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite) will not be reviewed because the lost personnel at NASA Goddard and government shutdown impacted our schedule and budget. 🔭 Here is the PI's e-mail with the explanation.
Last year, Live Nation donated $500,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund.
Nah, that’s just paweidolia.
😢💔
A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States. This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or “federalize” the coming Congressional elections.
snyder.substack.com/p/the-desire...
Once again, the MangoFührer’s brilliant strategy manages to help out Putin far more than anyone else on the planet.
Silly geese
This is true, and a key thing to reflect on: one can be agnostic about tech in the abstract, but this tech *doesn't exist in the abstract*. It only exists concretely, and do you imagine you'll have more control over its concrete expression than the wealthiest people in the world? If so, how so?
Just read his BBC obit. 😢
