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

The Department of Health and Human Services is ending a $766 million contract with the vaccine company Modern to develop an mRNA vaccine for flu strains with pandemic potential, including bird flu.

submitted 8 days ago • 94 comments

A federal court has struck down almost all of Trump's tariffs. Administration officials quickly challenged the ruling’s legitimacy, but the argument for judicial overreach here is "especially weak," Conor Friedersdorf writes:

submitted 8 days ago • 7 comments

Check out this little web app I made for fun: deep-timeline.oberbrunner.com. It lets you visualize world events through deep time. It uses logarithmic scaling, so you can see how the present (a day, a week, a year) smoothly fades into the very deepest past. Part of my work with #LongNowBoston.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Now that AI LLMs can use tools via MCP, how long before LLMs get wrapped in tools so other AIs can talk to them? An AI agent could end up talking to itself via a long game of telephone.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

I'm sure there won't be any spyware or passive bugs on it. Not that our decimated cybersecurity forces could find anyway. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/u...

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

This is not good at all. It'll have significant impact on all kinds of science and discovery. Unidata provides open-source science software as well as vital climate datasets. NSF funding "pause" affects lots of other NSF science as well.

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

I keep checking, but there's no end in sight for the heat wave in India. Reminiscent of the opening scene in "The Ministry for the Future," this is just brutal, deadly heat and humidity.

submitted 48 days ago • 4 comments

When the president of #MIT emails alumni asking them to rise up against the government and take action, that's new. That is big. We stand with Harvard. mit.imodules.com/controls/ema...

submitted 48 days ago • 2 comments

A professor at M.I.T. discusses how Xi Jinping is likely to respond to the U.S. tariffs and why the standoff won’t weaken the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on power.

submitted 50 days ago • 3 comments

MIT following Harvard's lead here

submitted 52 days ago • 591 comments

Any self-optimizing system will evolve to exploit bugs in the underlying environment's fitness function, from companies exploiting regulatory loopholes to politicians exploiting reliance on norms to AIs mis-aligning with cultural values.

submitted 53 days ago • 1 comment

How many lifetimes' worth of work is being destroyed by all this? And to what end?? www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

submitted 54 days ago • 16 comments

Was not expecting to open the main CBC page this morning and see this! In today’s climate, I feel our message is even more relevant than even just a few months ago when the interview was recorded. www.cbc.ca @christelvaneck.bsky.social @lydiamessling.bsky.social

submitted 54 days ago • 38 comments

Morning Jazz Afro Blue. Another Robert Glasper collabo with Esperanza Spalding on vocals and my girl Terri Lyne Carrington on drums. #Jazzsky youtu.be/MQX1VA1KPJU?...

submitted 56 days ago • 1 comment

This new White House executive order says that the US Attorney General is going to prevent states from implementing democratically passed laws regarding climate change and clean energy. It scarcely needs stating at this point that this is wildly, unambiguously unconstitutional. Dictator shit.

submitted 58 days ago • 285 comments

Whoa. Pitting LLM agents against each other in strategic elimination games. Alliances, betrayals and subterfuge. Feels like a tipping point to me. github.com/lechmazur/el...

submitted 60 days ago • 0 comments

Early Spring Sunset, Boston & Cambridge

submitted 65 days ago • 0 comments

Good for Guster! www.thehandbasket.co/p/guster-fin...

submitted 67 days ago • 1 comment

An international graduate student at Tufts University was taken into federal custody on Tuesday outside an off-campus apartment building, the university’s president said. The university was told that the student’s visa had been terminated. nyti.ms/4hRzPq1

submitted 71 days ago • 257 comments

More than a thousand people gathered at Powder House Square near the Tufts University campus Wednesday evening to protest the arrest and possible deportation of student Rumeysa Ozturk.

submitted 71 days ago • 4 comments

crazy story. hackers correctly guessed hegseth’s password was “chugchug$69”

submitted 72 days ago • 9 comments

This is the way. Renewable energy technologies are faster to build, cheaper to build, cheaper and cleaner to operate. 🧪💡🔌☀️💨🔋

submitted 77 days ago • 1 comment

This Thursday, Mar 13 -- should be fascinating!

submitted 89 days ago • 0 comments

One-quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food's emissions?

submitted 106 days ago • 4 comments

Trump admin declares value of pi is 3. Any suggestion it is irrational is now illegal.

submitted 110 days ago • 1 comment

“America’s foes are surely observing the chaos in Washington and looking for espionage opportunities. They will find them,” writes Kori Schake:

submitted 111 days ago • 48 comments

I see claims that NVIDIA is overvalued because DeepSeek is much more efficient than US AI models, so the world won't need as many of their GPUs. Seems totally backwards; more efficient AI will lead to more usage (both training & inference). NVIDIA has big leads in software, ecosystem & devs.

submitted 130 days ago • 2 comments

A while back I asked folks why they’re joining Bluesky and the most common response I saw was, “I just want a good place to get my news” and, yall, no. Bad. GET YOUR NEWS FROM THE NEWS PBS Newshour is FREE FOR EVERYONE. youtu.be/PMOYN8JWdUk?...

submitted 131 days ago • 2194 comments

This was excellent!!

submitted 132 days ago • 0 comments

Climate science never said "we only have 12 years until we fall off a cliff" - but sadly, many thought it did; and even more sadly, that misleading message fed right into the script for Trump's WEF remarks today. Here's what the science has always said:

submitted 134 days ago • 7 comments

Check out my great friend Steve Gilbane's film scoring work!

submitted 135 days ago • 0 comments

Your 'moment of doom' for Jan. 21, 2025~ What happens in the Arctic. "In the permafrost, most of the soils have been entirely frozen throughout the full year. But now the temperatures are warmer, there’s more organic matter available for decomposition, and carbon gets released into the atmosphere."

submitted 136 days ago • 8 comments

On CBC last night, I spelt out the moral case to keep on trying, however hard it might be. Defending the living planet is not an option we can abandon. Ultimately, it is all that counts. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX2V...

submitted 143 days ago • 57 comments