Lauren Kuehne

Happening today at 5 pm PT/8 pm ET!

The Edge of Space-Time by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: 9780593701683 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books A fresh, charming, socially conscious tour of the mysteries of space-time, from the award-winning author of The Disordered Cosmos In her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle...

Hello! One month from today I’m releasing my new book about our majestic universe, which thinks with poetry, quantum physics, relativity, Zhou kingdom philosophy, galaxies, particles, Akan aphorisms, Black feminism, Star Trek, Alice in Wonderland. AND it’s for all readers. 📚💙

Please preorder it! 🧵

Bellingcat’s New Tool to Explore Historical and Spatial Flight Data Turnstone can visualise historical trends in flight data or filter them by geography, aircraft type and other parameters.

Trying to make sense of an aircraft’s movements during a conflict? Context is everything. That’s why we built Turnstone, an open source tool that searches historical flight data to allow researchers to explore flight patterns over time and in specific locations. www.bellingcat.com/resources/20...

No, I don't mind, that would be great! Our Zoom room doesn't have a huge capacity (50 people), but I doubt we'll exceed that. And, I'm going to record it, so that there is at least the potential to share it after.

It's complex research, I'm so proud of how they've dug in!

Timely!
bsky.app/profile/omfi...

Next week, capstone students in the ENVS class I'm teaching will present "Environmental Impacts of Large Data Centers"

Most data centers don't get an EIA, so we have to DIY it - come hear their research on 3 proposed centers!

@carlbergstrom.com @wolvendamien.bsky.social @meadekrosby.bsky.social

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

I know there is a lot, but this really does break a part of me. It is so lawless on so many levels — and each individual boat strike is a choice.

Dem AGs plot to thwart Trump election interference They’re running war-games as they brace for what Trump could do.

“Trump and his allies’ [voting] rhetoric is the type of “red-alarm fire that people need to take very seriously,” said Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, who leads the Democratic Attorneys General Association’s election protection working group.”

Read more at www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

Supreme Court strikes down most of Trump's tariffs in a major blow to the president The decision does not affect all of Trump's tariffs but invalidates those implemented using an emergency law.

Finally, SCOTUS reaffirms what we've known all along, Trump's tariffs are an unconstitutional tax on the American people.

Over the last year, working people paid an average of $1,000 more because of these tariffs. And Trump has no plan to put that money back in your wallet.

A quote from Thomas Paine: If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

Thinking through what my #NoKings protest sign will look like for 3/28 and it might be this Thomas Paine quote. Because my sons will be better than the men who came before them. #No👑

"signs that NSF may be retreating from its initial position that the rejected proposals “will not be considered further.” One student who received an RWR email tells Science that NSF rejected their first appeal but their second resulted in being told that the proposal “is being actively reviewed.”

About NSF GRFP's being rejected without peer review:
[from submitted info to Grant Witness]
"12 RWRs as involving ecology, six in cell biology, five in psychology, four in neuroscience, and 14 in other subfields of biology"
www.science.org/content/arti...

Trump administration drops appeal of court order blocking $1.2-billion UCLA settlement The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a major higher education case in which a federal judge blocked its $1.2-billion settlement proposal to UCLA over alleged civil rights violations. It will...

This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence.

The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:

No crypto in Canton: Town blocks data centers and crypto mining operations Canton’s makeshift town hall in a tiny trailer was bursting at the seams Wednesday night with citizens united against data centers and cryptocurrency mining.

For my money, the way thousands of regular people are self-organizing to resist data centers is one of the most cautiously hopeful stories going right now.

www.themountaineer.com/news/no-cryp...

Flyer describing a senior capstone presentation event on the impacts of data centers, at Western Washington University on March 9th. Contact Lauren Kuehne at kuehnel@wwu.edu for information

I set the theme of my Environmental Impact Assessment capstone course to data centers - it's been eye-opening for all of us!

Excited to see their presentations next month, they are *really* digging in.

I don’t really know what I expect in posting this, but maybe some people see it and can learn from it.

I’ll call it “lessons from an unwilling immigration attorney.”

1/

And more reporting on a historic program that is increasingly unsettled, with late-breaking changes to criteria, fewer awards, applications returned without review, and more:

via @jonathanwosen.bsky.social for @statnews.com

www.statnews.com/2026/02/11/n...

That PRFB was a whole gestalt moment - not just AI, but even more narrow, AI in the service of Biotech.

Commercialized life, all the way down.

Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB)

And Biology now = AI and Biotech.

www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

The disappearing art gallery in your post office The U.S. Postal Service is home to thousands of historic works of art in post offices nationwide. Hundreds have been lost, sold or destroyed.

👀 What if I told you there was a hidden art gallery scattered across the country?

What if I told you some of its treasures had vanished?

What if I told you that I found them?

A project three years in the making (🎁 gift link):

Devyn is an African pygmy hedgehog, residing in Washington State.

African pygmy hedgehog being held in a hand and looking at the camera

Devyn the hedgehog is my son's pet, but I fell equally in ❤️ so now I can't remember how we lived without him.

The central arguments in this new Opinion are premised on what appears to be a reasonable opening and title

"A tale of many twos"

In this case the "twos" represent a division of who Thorp believes (or would like his reader to believe) are involved in confronting cuts to science.

Leave it, to fuel our collective rage.

I felt reflexive interest (its a solicitation, after all), then dystopian despair of our AI overlords, then a strange conflation in "well, at least its only 75 awards" 🫨

For real, tho, this is such 🤬💩

Checking to see if @kenwhite.bsky.social has changed to Big Bold Email Hat yet...

I'm so sorry 💔😠 - we put together guidance!

bsky.app/profile/noam...

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics?
1) Write NSF
2) Write your Congressperson
3) CC us at grfp@grant-witness.us so we can compile + follow up

Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

It's hardly perfect, but I try to only be a "parasite" on FB, where I have to use it. Unfortunately, they are still the go-to tool for Groups, including for community & political organizing and mutual aid. But I no longer use it for info-sharing, outreach, or networking.

And the way that they equate being a good scientist with advancing your own ego (vs. mentoring and boosting others, actually advancing the science) makes me sick, b/c it's such a part of research culture...one that I think was *starting* to crack, with DEI.

Still makes me sick to read it, in words.