pritchardjr.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

It’s pretty devoid of detail, but UCU’s new “research staff manifesto” is interesting to think about for a scenario of reducing the number of PhDs that do a postdoc in favour of making postdocs closer to an open ended job. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1391...

submitted 19 hours ago • 2 comments

Strolling besides the Thames

submitted 20 hours ago • 0 comments

Penn now also cutting grad admissions, joining many other great universities like Pitt & BU. My heart goes out to all those senior undergrads & other applicants who had hoped to go to grad school next year. Oof. #PhDSky

submitted 23 hours ago • 3 comments

NASA and SpaceX are now targeting NET Feb. 28 for the launch of SPHEREx and PUNCH missions. | via #NASA blogs.nasa.gov/spherex/2025...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Today's extract from Serving the Reich. What makes it worse is that I don't even need to add any explanatory comment, do I?

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

NASA's SPHEREx mission will provide new clues about the explosive, inflationary phase of our universe. Read here to learn what hundreds of millions of galaxies can teach us about the big bang here: www.caltech.edu/about/news/w...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

It’s funny how uneven a research career can be. Highs of leading the field, lows when at least there’s teaching to feel useful. Feast and famine on the funding front. “This too will pass” applies well.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

The Planetary Society strongly opposes the sudden, indiscriminate dismissal of more than 1,000 scientists, engineers, and explorers at NASA — the largest involuntary workforce reduction since the end of the Apollo program. Read more on our stance. ⬇️

submitted 4 days ago • 19 comments

Sympathy for all those at NASA, NSF, and elsewhere losing their jobs. It’s all so very destructive to the foundations that make the US and its citizens healthy, wealthy, and wise.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Apparently the gutting of the National Science Foundation is underway at the moment. "More to come." One can debate whether cuts are warranted, but the mindless, know-nothing fashion in which they are being carried out is inexcusable. This will damage US science for generations.

submitted 4 days ago • 19 comments

HISTORY OF PHYSICS What's wrong with this Lagrangean? by David Mermin. [This is so funny that I'll post it in full]

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Hearing that the NASA DOGE firings started last night. I don’t really have any words.

submitted 5 days ago • 8 comments

Honestly, I rather thought part of the point of the @royalsociety.org was that it was vocal and opinionated on topics where bad politics or misconduct got in the way of good science. Someone ought to be.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

It’s maddening that Trump and Putin seem to be angling for a 21st century version of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact over Ukraine, except that both say the quiet bit out loud.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

RIP Alicia. Such a tragedy. Our careers basically ran in parallel for a decade across Msci/PhD/postdoc at the same places. We were never super close, but so sad she’s not in the world any longer. www.chapmanfuneral.com/obituaries/A...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

All the best to @planet4589.bsky.social with his retirement. Will gladly welcome him back to the UK! www.newscientist.com/article/2468...

submitted 8 days ago • 3 comments

Lots of bad news for Ukraine, Europe, NATO, and security more generally today. Trump setting up for his usual “give in completely and claim he’s a great peacemaker” handling of world affairs.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Honestly “Andor” is a stunning piece of television and one that also hits home at the moment.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Reading a lot of German history at the moment. Even though I’m looking more for the long view and the recent view, all books run through the Nazi period and that time of the very deliberate narrowing of who counts as human is a lot to keep revisiting.

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

Broken crayons still colour.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Now almost 550 signatures - please keep signing and sharing.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

UK University funding follows a sawtooth - a big injection of funding that’s then eaten away by inflation for a decade & repeat. But we’re so long overdue a correction that everything is starting to fall apart. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Come work with me at Macquarie University in Sydney! Job ad is live on AAS: aas.org/jobregister/...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

I strongly endorse this. It makes a mockery of the Royal Society that someone hellbent on spreading misinformation and active destruction to US science infrastructure can call themself an FRS without being called out.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

“It has taken more than two centuries to build this world-renowned university, but just over a year for these decisions to harm it deeply.” Well done, CAQ. Quite the legacy. 👏 McGill University to cut budget by $45 million, may eliminate up to 500 jobs t.co/Hkq3EN0dbg

submitted 12 days ago • 5 comments

It’s really disconcerting that the UK government is fumbling the ball with research funding. The lack of clarity and delays over UKRI funding is pretty problematic.

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

I have a piece half-done on the entire world of indirect costs. It's too big an endeavor to finish now, in the middle of the night, when this problem that was always a live grenade with a half-pulled pin is suddenly a topic du jour. Shit of a thing. Here are some highlights.

submitted 15 days ago • 12 comments

Well that was a cracking game of rugby to see live! #EngVFra

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Any enterprise needs a route to recover the basic costs of doing business. Research grants do it with explicit overhead; company contracts do it by padding cost/salary/etc asks. This NIH slashing of overheads is bonkers. arstechnica.com/science/2025...

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%. I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

submitted 15 days ago • 271 comments

The steady erosion of money to fund research in the UK really should be a bigger priority for governments worried about long term growth.

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

It’s always hard to believe it when people from your cohort die. We were PhDs and Hubble fellows together, I always had total respect for Alicia. What a huge sadness.

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

It’s depressing to hear stories from the US of how proactively some have gone out of their way to throw LGBT colleagues under the bus. If you have 90 days to respond carefully then dialling your response to 11 on day one is rather despicable.

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments