I hope you're right!
11.03.2026 22:09
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I hope you're right!
NEWS: The Trump administration confirmed it bombed a girl’s school in Iran.
It's one of the most devastating military errors in decades.
Trump lied about it. Pete Hegseth gutted the office preventing civilian casualties.
175 are dead. Most were kids. Hegseth should be fired.
Not a novel reflection, but.. what exactly is the AI game plan?
Govts are rushing to prop up a technology that will (whether or not it works as advertised): cause mass unemployment while making all information less reliable, and consume vastly more power and water than we have to spare?
Sorry I can't give a proper attribution.. but someone on this app recently said that being a thinking American right now is like being "awake during a surgery". Hard agree.
The cover of the 75th anniversary edition of “Science the Endless Frontier” by Vannevar Bush shows him reclining in his office chair, resting his head in his hand, and looking at the camera. He wears a medium gray suit with tie, has his hair cut short on the sides, and wears thin rimmed glasses.
The report argued that the US needed to address security, economic, and social issues with a concentrated scientific effort like Bush had overseen throughout the war.
A call for dedicated support of science to advance the public good. (7/n)
Read it here: nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/2023-04/Endl...
Anyway, a call for dedicated support of science to advance the public good.
The US committed to that once, and maybe it can do so again, but it will be the work of a generation to get back there after the last few years. (11/11)
Shocked to overhear a 50-something woman at a coffee shop this morning making excuses for the men implicated in the Epstein files: "I mean, some of these 13 year olds look like they're 30."
Uh, no, they don't.
Information accompanying the Beatriz Gonzalez exhibit at the Barbican Center, London - 2026: 'I wanted to make art that denounced showing the harshness of power' - Beatriz Gonzalez. In 1985, a guerilla group known as the M-19 (Movimiento 19 de Abril) besieged Bogota's Palace of Justice and held the people within hostage; President Belisario Betancur ordered his military to respond. A fire broke out, burning the building down and killing around a hundred people, including civilians and judges. Reflecting on this event, Gonzalez noted: "At that moment the curtain opened and all was revealed. All of a sudden, the country turned into pure tragedy.' Stating that she 'could no longer laugh', her work shifted from satirical critique to a practice of bearing witness to violence. Her work took on an explicitly political tone. Senior Presidente, que honor estar con usted en este momento historico (Mr President, What an Honor to Be with You at This Historic Moment) and Los papagayos (The Parrots) depict the military, the president and his cabinet using an uncanny colour palette. Repetition became an important strategy across Gonzalez's practice. Her use of repeated motifs now became a way of addressing the country's seemingly endless violence, and of countering the rapid news cycles in which images of victims are quickly forgotten. After the tragedy, Gonzalez's mode of working with source images also shifted. She started to collage multiple images in composite tableaux, conveying a complexity of narrative, temporarity and emotion during one of the most violent periods of Colombia's history.
Los papagayos (The Parrots) - Beatriz Gonzalez; a painting of Colombian generals in repetition, with red faces, yellow sunglasses, and blue-green uniforms
Beatriz González Interior Decoration 1981 A curtain printed with a repeating image of a Colombian president and his guests, singing at a formal party
I had the opportunity yesterday to visit the exhibit of Beatriz Gonzalez's work at Barbican Center, London: 'Art says things that history cannot.’ Highly recommend
Some of the frivolous September purchases made under Secretary Pete Hegseth’s stewardship include a $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, $5.3 million for Apple devices such as the new iPad, and an astronomical amount of …
newrepublic.com/post/207555/...
The most impt change at #NIH and to US science this year is bigger than grant cancellations— it’s how the agency is governed.
For 75 years NIH has been largely independent of presidential control. That’s changed this year. New piece from me and @nataliebaviles.bsky.social in @nature.com
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Yep
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.
I'm trying to choose a textbook about galaxies & cosmology for 2nd year astronomy majors.. any recommendations?
This is the natural extension of the Brooks Brothers Riot. Fail-up bros who never did the reading inflicting vengeance on our country's top scholars for some perceived harm.
Family says Evanston-born U.S. citizen detained for hours after returning to O’Hare: "her phone turned back on and pinged from an ICE facility in Wisconsin... she had been released and walked from the ICE facility to a nearby gas station around 5 a.m." wgntv.com/news/chicago...
This game was my first introduction to coding. I remember sitting at a family friend's computer, copying the source code, line by line, out of a magazine.
I used to think Orwell was a dork to imagine someone like Winston, employed to minutely manipulate centuries-old history to decontextualize the state's current crimes. I assumed authoritarianism would just roll onward without being preoccupied by history. I was wrong.
SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? - Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26
NO - 41%
YES - 38%
UNSURE - 21%
For an hour, Jon, Simon and I explained how devastating the proposed cuts will be, not just to the science that we can do, but also the scientists who are the lifeline of the UK economy. Simon made the excellent analogy that cutting funding for ECRs is like chopping the roots off your tree.
I guess my point is that my grandfather saw that kind of horror up close and wouldn't have considered an 80 year pause in the use of torpedos to be a bad thing.
This is deeply disturbing.
My grandfather served in the Navy during WWII escorting Liberty ships across the Atlantic. I have his hand written letter describing a harrowing day when he saw many ships in his convoy destroyed by Uboats. I wouldn't be here if he'd been on the next boat over.
Starting a war is an outrageous hail mary to distract the public from Epstein.. and somehow the administration has done such a bad job of it that they've ended up murdering schoolgirls and bragging about weapons that include the word "pedo". These are the absolute worst and least capable people.
I'm not sure I've ever seen someone sick with the measles in my lifetime, but I went to get a coffee in Mill Hill this morning and saw a very sick one year old with a bad face rash sitting in the cafe's public outdoor patio. 👀
Quoting the Borg is a pretty big tell that you're on the wrong side of this debate.
This is my district. Worth pointing out Rodney Sadler isn't just a rhetorical activist; he's actually been arrested at protests. Contrast with Cunningham, whose vote was "decisive" because it gave the GOP the final vote they needed to *override the governor's veto* of the ICE compliance bill.
Made it so this now works much better on mobile. A pretty bleak map!
More voters cast early ballots in North Carolina’s 2026 midterm primaries than in the 2024 presidential primary, a stark display of voter interest — and a result driven by a huge surge in Democratic voter participation even as Republican turnout fell slightly. By @kingdollar.bsky.social #ncpol
NYTimes headline, reading: "Trump predicts weeks of war as military strikes widen "
Brought to you but the guy who said COVID would be over "by Easter":
