Paul Miller

It’s Whiskey Friday with Tony Dokoupil, and buddy, I’m all out of Tony Dokoupil

Space for Teachers

This is a cool opportunity for STEM teachers and their students, from Andy Weir, author of the (read it! liked it!) book (and upcoming summer movie) Project Hail Mary. 🧪🎢 🚀https://spaceforteachers.org/projecthailmary

I'm constantly trying (/failing) to get this point across.

If you're a trained expert in a field, then it may be worthwhile to question the scientific consensus of your peers.

If you're not, the scientific consensus is absolutely the best you can do and it's arbitrary foolishness to disregard it.

The El Paso story is a perfect little slice of Trumpism. You take the combined incompetence of our Dep'ts of Transportation, Defense & Homeland Security and create a major public safety risk, shut down a major airport, alarm our neighbors that we are about attack them & shoot down a party balloon.

Well deserved, talk was probably fun!

Painting created with dots and dashes of two Black girls in red and purple dresses walking away, one with their arm on the other's shoulder

Sister and Friend, 2024 ♀
by Betty Acquah, Ghanaian feminist painter #WomensArt

Can’t believe the whole country has to suffer through the return of Dickensian childhood diseases because the worst, most ignorant attention-demanders decided other people’s expertise makes them feel bad

‘Andor’ Writer Dan Gilroy On Disney Suspending Jimmy Kimmel & Hollywood Facing “Venomous Evil”: “This Isn’t A Skirmish. It’s A Siege” – Guest Column 'Andor' Writer Dan Gilroy On Trump's Jimmy Kimmel Pressure Campaign: "Artists Are Censored First Because They Fear Us Most" -- Guest Column

The writer of Andor, Dan Gilroy, wrote an op-ed in Deadline and it is as good as you might imagine. deadline.com/2025/09/ando...

Cool. And...is [Allen] how you pronounce Allain? If so, I've been messing it up for a decade...

Love it. Bonus: Chekhov's string dampener.

When my daughter was younger, I one day insisted she was a panda bear. She objected, so I itemized evidence in favor of my claim: “Pandas have two ears. How many ears do you have? Two!”

It’s often more useful to try to *falsify* claims. What would we see & not see if a claim were false? She got it

NSF, NASA and NIH budgets per year, inflation adjusted from 2000-2025 along with the proposed cuts. NSF includes research component only. Massive cuts across all sectors, well below support spanning 25 years.

How bad will it be? Catastrophic.

Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come.

But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget.

Speak up now before it is too late.

(inflation adjusted $-s below)

Those are chump change belief numbers, what’s the administration’s policy on ghosts

I just got the official email from the NSF about the drastic cuts and I think the correct translation is "if you are a young researcher who still wants to do science strongly consider leaving the United States if you can." which, really, is not an ideal message to be sending.

Certificate of Good Oral Health, printed in green ink with a cartoon tooth. Text reads: [typed] PAUL MILLER has honorably completed the Fluoride Mouthrinse program in [typed] THIRD grade at [typed] EASTSIDE School. [typed] DONALD R. PETRIE Principal [typed] MICKY KING School Nurse [typed] MISS MARY O'CONNELL Teacher.

For no particular reason, this is one of my favorite pieces of paper right now. There's no date, but probably 1978. Fighting about fluoride in 2025 is a symptom of a larger attack on science.

Happy Independent Bookstore Day! Why support indie bookstores?
👉 shopping local = most of your $ stays local
👉 staffed by actual humans who understand books (no AI/algorithms here!)
👉 hubs for community
👉 independent = not run by billionaires
👉 freedom to read = a pillar of democracy

For the last 3 yrs, I was the director for the Science of Science program at the NSF. We funded projects on science communication - science communication to the public, communication of public priorities to scientists, citizens engagement & participation in science. 🧵

In Trump America, Kennedys kill you

One of the things I think about often is a post I read probably twenty years ago from a math professor who was out walking on his beach with this dog, throwing a ball and watching the dog run out and catch it before it landed.

It was the worst of times, it was the even worse than that of times

Yup.

They saw such things as proof of tyranny.

Because they are.

(And in physics/astronomy, graduate students also have building access after hours.)

Yes. 20k student state university, faculty have building access where office/lab is.

Government efficiency is when every federal agency has to send a daily emergency email to its workers telling them to ignore another daily email from a different department trying to fire them without knowing what their jobs are.

When I started teaching physics in 1992, I got a lot of benefit watching Paul Hewitt's Conceptual Physics Alive! videos. They show Paul teaching intro physics at the U of Hawaii. It gave me confidence to see his approach in practice. Paul just posted them online: conceptual.academy #ITeachPhysics

How Elon Musk boosted false USAID conspiracy theories to shut down global aid Musk drove fringe viewpoints on USAID into the mainstream on X as the Trump administration halted the humanitarian relief agency’s work.

Mike Benz, the Alt-right YouTuber & brains behind the Censorship Industrial Complex is back — and his conspiracy theories are informing — or justifying — Elon Musk’s anti-USAID crusade. www.nbcnews.com/politics/dog...

It's actually theft of taxpayers money when websites go dark. We paid for that data

Science is political. It wouldn't necessarily have to be partisan.

But when one party is opposed to science-based policy, scientists have a choice between saying "you're right, thoughts and prayers are probably as effective as reducing carbon emissions" or saying "fuck that."

This Is Not Normal YouTube video by vlogbrothers

Appreciate how frank this is. Always concerning how many people implicitly feel progress of all sorts is inevitable.

youtu.be/ZfBkw0j-QIs?...