neildegrassetyson.com - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Evidence You Might Be In A Cult You follow one charismatic Leader. In your Leader’s mind, your Leader can do no wrong. In your mind, your Leader can do no wrong. Your Leader demonizes dissidents & outsiders. Loyalty's the ultimate measure of your devotion. You don't know you're in a Cult

submitted 2 days ago • 199 comments

My life’s wisdom. Inspired by & dedicated to the memory of my father, Cyril DeGrasse Tyson - Civil Rights era sociologist. It's what conflicts & disagreements among us look like when you’re scientifically literate — sprinkled with a dose of Cosmic Perspective. neildegrassetyson.com/books/2022-0...

submitted 4 days ago • 82 comments

Memorial Day 2025 Freedom isn’t free.

submitted 7 days ago • 48 comments

Since 1975 (the past fifty years) global vaccination efforts have saved the lives of 154 million people, especially reducing infant deaths — by 40%. That’s greater than the total population of France + Germany. #ScienceMatters

submitted 10 days ago • 34 comments

When a Government is scientifically illiterate, but doesn’t know it, then its actions (or inactions) can be a recipe for the dismantling of an informed and enlightened Democracy. #ScienceMatters

submitted 11 days ago • 209 comments

Unfamiliar with the role of science in America’s national defense, or the history of science innovation in the defense of sovereign nations? I invite you to start with, Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics & the Military. neildegrassetyson.com/books/2018-09-accessory-to-war/

submitted 12 days ago • 86 comments

Not that anyone asked, but during my tenure on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board, under part of Obama-2 and all of Trump-1, we visited Military Bases domestically & abroad. At no time did any member of the Armed Forces I met say to me: “America needs less science funding.”

submitted 13 days ago • 33 comments

If a foreign adversary snuck into our Federal budget and cut science research and education the way we’re cutting it ourselves — strategically undermining America’s long-term health, wealth, and security — we would likely consider it an act of war.

submitted 13 days ago • 1231 comments

Dear Republicans, Cutting science budgets has not historically been a Republican thing. For example, Lincoln created the National Academy of Sciences. Eisenhower's term increased the science budget 366%. Gerald Ford, +15%; George H. W. Bush, +30%; George W. Bush, +54%. Just sayin’.

submitted 14 days ago • 100 comments

The 80-year recipe stoking America’s Prosperity: 1) Free-market capital investments in brilliant ideas… 2) enabled by Engineering Innovations… 3) based on Science Research in Universities… 4) funded by Grants from the US Government. It’s time more people understood this.

submitted 16 days ago • 388 comments

If Rational Arguments no longer work in US governance, it’s evidence of a deeper problem in our educational system, which favors what to know over how to think — how to critically analyze, process, & verify information. Seems like a bad time to reduce funding for Public Education.

submitted 17 days ago • 93 comments

John Mulaney on @Netflix “There’s a Horse in the Hospital” My sister, who owns horses, peed her pants when she saw this. [Video: 4 minutes] www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhkZ...

submitted 19 days ago • 41 comments

When Students cheat on Exams — using AI or by any other means — they do so because School Systems value Grades more than Students value Learning.

submitted 21 days ago • 77 comments

If curious — from the StarTalk Archives. A 2020 Mother’s day conversation with — my Mother (1928 - 2023) www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3Kk...

submitted 21 days ago • 18 comments

Happy Mother’s Day to all Moms out there. And Happy Mother‘s Day to all those who care for others as though you are their Mother.

submitted 22 days ago • 10 comments

Don’t actually own a NASA Mars prototype ATV, but if I did, that's where I would park it on Broadway. And that’s how I would lean on it.

submitted 23 days ago • 84 comments

Been thinking a lot lately about the morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Wondering what his rifle of choice would be if he moved to America. An AR-15 or an AK-47?

submitted 24 days ago • 188 comments

Not that anybody asked, but my wife, growing up in Alaska, was on her school’s rifle team, and a student member of the NRA. Though she hadn’t fired a gun in 47 years, she didn’t lose her touch recently at a Las Vegas shooting range. [ CZ Shadow 2 “Black & Blue” at 21 ft ]

submitted 25 days ago • 70 comments

At NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Manhattan, they specialize in planetary climates — especially Earth's. The White House decided not to renew their building lease — where they’ve been for 64 years. NASA’s total funding is 0.3% of the Federal Budget. Just saying.

submitted 26 days ago • 85 comments

Climate Change archives… In 2005, I served on Pres. Bush's NSF panel to recommend who he'd award the National Medal of Science. One winner was Lonnie Thompson. Studied ice cores from tropical mountain glaciers, revealing forces of climate variability on Earth, past & present.

submitted 26 days ago • 11 comments

Weather and climate research funds are being “chainsawed” from NOAA's budget. Last I checked, Louisiana & Florida, which are maximally susceptible to Hurricanes, voted Red in the last General Election. Wondering if residents there knew in advance this would happen.

submitted 27 days ago • 1733 comments

In space, Venus flanks Earth on the left, with a hellfire greenhouse effect. Mars on the right, which long ago had running water. Today, it's bone dry. Something bad happened on each planet. Seems like the wrong time to limit the Nation’s capacity to conduct climate research.

submitted 27 days ago • 582 comments

The plots of disaster movies that portray the end of civilization often begin with high-level Government Officials ignoring the warnings of Scientists. One of several lesson learned from the 2.5 hour @Netflix Documentary — Don’t Look Up (2021).

submitted 29 days ago • 489 comments

submitted 30 days ago • 50 comments

While visiting Meteor Crater, I couldn’t resist the occasion — 20 miles away as the Eagle flies — to take it easy, and to be a-standin’ on the corner in Winslow, Arizona.

submitted 31 days ago • 77 comments

Visited Meteor Crater a few years ago. Best preserved in the world. Crafted some 50,000 years ago by a 50-yard meteor moving 10 miles/sec. Can sink a 60-story building. Reminder that Earth orbits the Sun in a shooting gallery. Luckily, the crater rim juuuuust missed the visitor's center!

submitted 31 days ago • 83 comments

Votes are in, from a 48-hour “X” poll. While we can surely agree we want to Make America Great Again. To achieve that goal, looks like we need to Make America Smart. But first, we need to Make Lying Wrong Again.

submitted 32 days ago • 101 comments

Decisions, Decisions. Which hat to wear today?

submitted 35 days ago • 619 comments

Current US unemployment (4.2%) is as low as, or lower than 13 of the 16 years spanning 1950-1965. Also lower than every year of Reagan's Presidency. And rivals the lowest levels of the past 20 years. What exactly are the glory days of working in factories that people long for?

submitted 35 days ago • 81 comments

Speaking of Ostriches, of my dozen or so pairs of boots, these are my only Ostrich Skin. Yet to wear them, though they fit me perfectly. I mostly just admire them in my office. But they’re available for an emergency. [Gifted by Michael Dell after a private event in Austin, Texas.]

submitted 36 days ago • 41 comments

Once Dremeled open an Ostrich Egg -- nearly five inches across. Poured out its contents: the equivalent of 21 large chicken eggs, which checks out, if you do the math on their relative volumes. Made fluffy Omelettes for everybody. Two Quiches. And baked the best Pound Cake ever.

submitted 36 days ago • 30 comments

A desire both Elon Musk and I have in common.

submitted 36 days ago • 285 comments

In 2004 I would be appointed (once again) by President Bush to serve on a Commission to advise the Congress & White House on the future of NASA, which led to this report: neildegrassetyson.com/media/pdf/MoonToMarsFinalReport.pdf At no time was basic science seen as a luxury in need of a chainsaw.

submitted 37 days ago • 32 comments

Rush Limbaugh, awarded a 2020 Presidential Medal of Freedom during Trump-1, had gone deaf in 2002. Would receive a cochlear implant, developed & patented by a @NASA engineer, restoring his ability to hear. He was grateful 'til the end for science's role in his later life.

submitted 38 days ago • 122 comments

Since 1945, American Universities have been envied worldwide for their Government-funded research. Hard to justify via corporate R&D, frontier science is vital to our long-term health, wealth, & security. To withhold University funding is to amputate the engines that Make America Great.

submitted 38 days ago • 31 comments

Appointed in 2001 by President Bush to serve on a Commission to advise him & Congress on the Future of the US Aerospace Industry, leading to this report: neildegrassetyson.com/media/pdf/AeroCommissionFinalReport.pdf At no time was basic science viewed as an expensive luxury in need of a chainsaw.

submitted 39 days ago • 24 comments

When I served on the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board (under part of Obama-2 and all of Trump-1), what impressed me most about the commitment of Military Officers was their sworn allegiance — not to a leader or commander or a king, but to the US Constitution.

submitted 39 days ago • 52 comments

New evidence for the possibility of alien life thriving in a nearby exoplanet's biosphere. Seems like a bad time to eviscerate science funding to NASA. Or we just cede leadership to countries that value science more than we do. www.fox26houston.com/news/k2-18b-exoplanet-alien-cambridge-study-2025

submitted 40 days ago • 72 comments

On the creation of NOAA and the EPA under his signature: “Congress, the Administration and the public all share a profound commitment to the rescue of our natural environment, and the preservation of the Earth as a place both habitable by and hospitable to man.” —Richard Nixon 1970

submitted 40 days ago • 30 comments

Just as the intensity of weather events is increasing, seems like the wrong time to cut funding to NOAA, organized 55 years ago by a Republican President, "...for better protection of life and property from natural hazards...and for… intelligent use of our marine resources."

submitted 40 days ago • 34 comments

Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts Commemorating the battles of Lexington & Concord. Patriots fought a tyrannical Despot & his Loyalists and were especially outraged by rampant import taxes on goods crucial to the economic health of the Colonies (Many moons ago I attended Jr High School in Lexington.)

submitted 42 days ago • 27 comments

Our secular Democracy implicitly grants religious freedoms to all. A good thing. But if you're Christian and want to vote into law tenets of Christianity, you open the possibility of a different religious majority in the future out-voting you, instituting their laws instead.

submitted 42 days ago • 73 comments

Been thinking a lot lately about the morals of Jesus of Nazareth. As a tan man from the Middle East, if Jesus were an undocumented American immigrant, I wonder if angry mobs would get ICE to deport him — especially for speaking out against greed and advocating for the poor.

submitted 43 days ago • 253 comments

Tried hard, but didn't manage to look as mean and crazed as Joe Rogan did for this photo.

submitted 44 days ago • 226 comments

After a Joe Rogan podcast we bonded over our martial arts training. I outweigh him by 70+ lbs, but as an MMA enthusiast he could probably kick my ass. He’s trained to do physical harm. Whereas I, a former NCAA wrestler, am trained to briefly put my opponent’s back on a mat.

submitted 44 days ago • 220 comments

One of my dozen brimmed hats. All acquired after living in Texas for six years. Most are outback style. One or two are cowboy-adjacent. Got a fat head. So my hats come from special suppliers — Size 8 (3XL) FYI: Your hat size is your head's circumference in inches, divided by Pi.

submitted 45 days ago • 52 comments

With new, specialized, ground-based telescopes coming on line, our knowledge of hazardous asteroids and comets will grow exponentially in the coming years. Seems like a bad time to reduce science funding to NASA. Just sayin'.

submitted 46 days ago • 52 comments

"People shouldn’t be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people" -V, (Alan Moore, 1989)

submitted 46 days ago • 120 comments

As a Columbia alumnus (MA, MPhil, PhD), it’s hard right now to recommend the school to immigrants, with ambitions of academic freedoms and Nobel Prizes — graduates and faculty have won 88 of them — given it cares more about appeasing the Government than about academic integrity.

submitted 46 days ago • 65 comments

The President’s wife is a European immigrant. Both parents of the Secretary of State are Caribbean immigrants. Both parents of the FBI Director and the richest person on the World are African immigrants. And 1/3 of the 320 American Nobel Prizes in science have gone to immigrants.

submitted 47 days ago • 89 comments