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Published this morning: An open letter from free speech and press freedom advocates urging leaders of universities, media organizations, law firms, civic institutions to “stand more resolutely” against “Trump’s multi-front assault on the First Amendment.” knightcolumbia.org/content/an-o...

submitted 7 hours ago • 14 comments

New Mexico has created a website and interactive map tracking disruptions to programs due to federal cuts. nmdoj.gov/get-help/fed...

submitted 5 hours ago • 0 comments

As Elon Musk takes over a chunk of South Texas and dubs it “Starbase,” SpaceX is pushing two bills in the Texas legislature that will “give municipalities with ‘spaceports’ the ability to limit access to public beaches, a move which seemed specifically targeted at Boca Chica.”

submitted 7 hours ago • 2 comments

Northwestern has not received any NIH funds since March. No written communication about why or what can be done. Thank you Ben Singer for raising awareness at #ATS2025

submitted 19 hours ago • 15 comments

This is just a partial glimpse of the destruction of American science by Trump and the GOP.

submitted 22 hours ago • 33 comments

@npr.org please do better. Tldr; all real evidence says that cutting federal funds to universities will stop innovation and advance but also here are two men idly wondering whether a world where things are different may be better. Let's not give equal airtime to data and happy hour musings 🧪

submitted 23 hours ago • 1 comment

Conservative and Liberal Americans flatly reject authoritarian rule.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

In memory of those who lost their lives 45 yrs ago today including USGS scientist David Johnston who “…gave his life in pursuit of scientific research on behalf of the US Geological Survey”. I often walked by this memorial on the USGS Menlo Park campus and thought of his work at Mt St Helens.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

So much this: " Carl Sagan observed, “Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?”

submitted 21 hours ago • 1 comment

Putin will tell Trump whatever he wants to hear and then Trump will say whatever Putin tells him to say. We’ve been through this over and over. It never changes.

submitted 1 day ago • 16 comments

“Project Esther aims to go further, equating actions such as participating in pro-Palestinian campus protests with providing “material support” for terrorism, a broad legal construct that can lead to prison time, deportations, civil penalties” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u...

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

This should remind us all to STAND UP FOR SCIENCE. Warnings by the USGS and evacuations kept the death toll low in 1980. Now the USGS faces reductions in force, thanks to Trump Admin. This WILL come back to haunt us. Promise. Science 🧪can keep everyone safer: theconversation.com/unprecedente...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

It must be a really fucking weird feeling to watch a mountain just... explode. Mount Saint Helens erupted on this day 45 years ago. John "Jack" V. Christianson took these photos from Mt. Adams, 54 km to the east, as his friend reacted to the eruption at 8:32 am on 18 May 1980.

submitted 1 day ago • 9 comments

How refreshing it would be to read something like this in a major newspaper! presswatchers.org/2025/05/the-...

submitted 1 day ago • 11 comments

OTD 1996: Sun Microsystems purchases "Business Systems Division" of Cray after SGI buys Cray. Becomes the wildly successful E10000 server line. Best acquisition ever? https://t.co/k8bDMQRBnI

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities ROI for NIH and NSF for local economies is conservatively 4x, often close to 10x demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

submitted 1 day ago • 68 comments

people need to internalize, very quickly, that federal research grants are a hypercompetitive contracting process not charity, and that what Uncle Sam gets in return for that money is American dominance in the future

submitted 1 day ago • 166 comments

Imagine starting a car that hadn't run in 21 years, that's 15 billion miles away in interstellar space. That's what the NASA team just did with Voyager's thrusters. People are amazing. jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-v...

submitted 2 days ago • 338 comments

The Voyager project arguably remains the pinnacle of human achievement: a perfect joining of the sciences and the humanities possible only when governments fully fund agencies like NASA, NEH, and NSF. Commercial industry could never do this; it cannot imagine wonder removed from raw profit.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

I am an adjunct professor (for a living if you can call it that), and I am more working-class than a hundred fucking car dealership owners because I'll work until I drop dead, I'll probably never own a home, and spend like six of my ten-hour work day on my fucking feet talking to people nonstop.

submitted 2 days ago • 10 comments

"We are not the elites the billionaires claim we are. Most professors don’t have tenure. The humanities professoriate don’t even have full time jobs, have been known to sleep in their cars. How did these inconsequential people become enemies of the state?" www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outl...

submitted 2 days ago • 28 comments

Sometimes people on here will freak out about a legacy media piece and I’ll read it and it will become clear that some of you assume that quoting someone is automatically an endorsement of them and not just… a recognition of what their stance is

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Trump administration is terminating $2.7 billion in research funding to Harvard: Work on breast cancer, impact of nutrition on fertility, antibiotic resistance and hundreds of other topics all dead “It feels like the academic equivalent of nuclear war" www.wbur.org/news/2025/05...

submitted 2 days ago • 68 comments

🎓Higher Education News🎓 Yale researchers are confronting a sharp decline in federal science funding, as grant terminations, stalled disbursements and proposed budget cuts disrupt labs and raise concerns about the future of university-based research. #AcademicSky #ScienceFundingCuts

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

They have now gutted NSF....the beacon for funding basic research. Over 33 years, NSF funded 90% of my research including CAICE. I feel so sad for everyone. Why destroy the heart of basic science? What is their end game? The damage makes no sense unless you truly are trying to destroy the US.

submitted 10 days ago • 18 comments

Well I just lost all my NSF grants

submitted 2 days ago • 26 comments

Great Sand Dunes National Park from 30,000 ft

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

To be clear, if this bill passes, it will end all scientific research & medical training in the US. It will close hospitals. It will be economically devastating. Millions will lose their jobs. Call your representatives & tell them to vote fuck no on 15% IDC rates & the rest of this horror show.

submitted 2 days ago • 19 comments

"I'm still in shock. I know that there have been political issues around Harvard in recent weeks, but antibiotic resistance isn't one of them." My conversation with Harvard microbiologist @baym.lol, one of many researchers there who just lost millions in fed. grants. www.wbur.org/news/2025/05...

submitted 2 days ago • 9 comments

Update on NSF grant terminations: NSF staff expect ~200 more terminations tomorrow. Harvard situation still unclear, but could be all 252 active grants. Currently 1464 on grant-watch.us/nsf-data.html, so total could soon be ~1900.

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

All NIH and NSF grants for my entire team--and for all of Harvard, I guess?--have been terminated. As provocative as that sounds, the practical effect is probably not much. Everything was already frozen. 🤷‍♂️ On the upside, it makes tracking terminated grants easier. No more guesswork at Harvard!

submitted 3 days ago • 27 comments

Breaking: NSF will pause the 15% indirect cost cap until June 13 in order to proceed to a summary judgment, thereby avoiding a preliminary hearing. www.courtlistener.com/docket/70143...

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

Moody’s Ratings downgraded the United States’ credit rating, as the country’s debt soars and interest rates remain high. The downgrade, from the highest rating to one notch below, comes as the president’s budget bill suffered a blow in Congress.

submitted 2 days ago • 231 comments

Proposed cuts to the NASA budget could cancel several major programs, including those searching for extraterrestrial life. We look at how the proposed reductions in federal funds could impact space research on @bipisci.bsky.social 🧪 🔭 🔈 Listen here: bigpicturescience.org/episodes/nas...

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

In May 2023, a Falcon 9 launched the Badr-8 sat to a supersync transfer orbit of 61500 km apogee. The F9 second stage (56758) was left in that orbit. In Mar 2024, US tracking seems to have lost it; they just updated the catalog to say it reentered in Aug 2024. (1/2)

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

The United States loses its last perfect credit rating, a loss that could rattle financial markets and push up interest rates. cnn.it/3HdNJ9l

submitted 2 days ago • 93 comments

I don't know what this means, but I'm the one who wrote a fully updated, 624-page hurricane response plan at FEMA that took over 2 years of work and careful coordination among state and federal agencies. He could start by studying that.

submitted 3 days ago • 325 comments

Speaking as a D-Day historian, I think Miller misunderstands who fought for the allies on the beaches. And as the author of a forthcoming Manhattan Project history, it was literally immigrants who got us the atomic bomb.

submitted 3 days ago • 31 comments

#AcademicSky As an academic, this sure hits home. (and applies to "holidays")

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Heartbroken to hear that the @hhmi.org Hanna Grey fellowship competition is being cancelled this year. I poured so much work and creativity into this app and am very grateful for everyone who helped me revise. It is such a difficult time to be a young scientist.

submitted 3 days ago • 7 comments

The CosmoVerse: The White Paper This is a very comprehensive review article consisting of over 400 pages and having over 400 authors. I expect all of you to read it over the weekend. There will be a test on Monday.

submitted 3 days ago • 5 comments

this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...

submitted 3 days ago • 349 comments

All 4 of my NIH research grants are terminated. These were grants on MDR-TB treatment & strategies for supporting adolescents living w/ HIV. This is a massive waste of resources. I am heartbroken for my Harvard team, my partners in Peru, the next generation of scientists & our country. Shame.

submitted 3 days ago • 26 comments

… and Molly is not alone. More than $2.6B of ongoing research has been canceled (with much more this week, at Harvard). With each cancellation: We are losing so much knowledge. Losing the next generation of scientists. Losing our ability to protect our health, both now & for the future. 🧪🩺😷

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

British officials told the U.S. they are concerned about the safety of SpaceX’s plans to fly its next Starship rocket over British territories in the Caribbean, where debris fell earlier this year after two of the company’s rockets exploded.

submitted 3 days ago • 66 comments

📣 Announcement 📣 The RAS is concerned by the recent threats to academic freedom and international research collaboration in the United States. 🔬🧑‍🔬🇺🇸 We have endorsed a statement by ALLEA highlighting the issue. ✍️ ⤵️

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Turns out NASA will still owe rent on GISS's offices even as it kicks the staff out. “There is no logic behind this,” said Kostas Tsigaridis, a research scientist at the institute and at Columbia.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment