Got a good job down at the Data Center. I work on the line, and it's hard work but it's honest and the wage is fair; my family and I are grateful for it. I rivet the word "absolutely" onto the little apologies that chatbots do when they misunderstand a prompt.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5d ago

Hassett: "Data centers are very good for towns bc they create so many jobs & bring people in with high incomes that can buy houses & stuff like that. So if you take a sleepy town that hasn't seen much in the last 30 years & put a data center there, there are gonna be a bunch of happy residents."

🔭 New paper day! 🪐 This time from Merle Schrader, a PhD student in the brown dwarf group at Trinity College Dublin. Today, they're publishing a fresh look at SIMP-0136, using principal component analysis, identifying the mechanisms driving its atmospheric variability. arxiv.org/abs/2607.26182

The JWST weather report: Unravelling the atmospheric variability of isolated worlds using principal component analysis

Brown dwarf variability directly probes atmospheric dynamics beyond the Solar System, and recent JWST time-resolved spectroscopy has opened a new window into these processes. Principal component analy...

arxiv.org

Modest Mouse

Rob Chapman@scribblerrob.bsky.social · 3w ago

What band or artist do all your music tastes suggests that you probably should like and yet you don't. Me Plastic People of The Universe. Chet Baker.

Holy COW. Text analysis of comments on the OMB rule: overwhelming opposition, overwhelmingly not form letters. (But 9 in 10 comments supporting the rule ARE form responses, LOL) Whatever happens next, folks have stepped up.

Karen R. Lips@karenrlips.bsky.social · 3w ago

techpolicy.press/the-public-r...

The Federal OMB has proposed a sweeping set of rule changes for research grants: *changes that would be harmful to scientific research* If you'd like to speak out, they are still accepting comments on the proposed changes until July 13: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposes to revise the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance to improve government- wide policies and requirements related to the management of grants, co...

federalregister.gov

This is exactly it. The work is the point.

Will Bunch@willbunch.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The biggest story of our time that we're not talking about nearly enough www.chronicle.com/article/my-s...

I don’t have strong feelings about it but personally prefer a geophysical definition of a planet, which would include Pluto But I do think that if a reporter asks about Pluto, you should immediately mention how NASA funding & our ability to study interesting objects like Pluto is under dire threat

A model of the early Solar System that cools too quickly to reach chemical equilibrium generates mineral regimes resembling important classes of meteorites go.nature.com/4sPuG7t

Rapid cooling shaped the formation of the first meteorites in the Solar System

A model of the early Solar System that cools too quickly to reach chemical equilibrium generates mineral regimes resembling important classes of meteorites.

go.nature.com

If you’ve been moved & inspired by Artemis, NASA needs your help. Literally during A2, the president proposed cutting NASA science 47%, canceling 54 missions, including many already in-flight. To help stop these cuts, check out @planetarysociety.bsky.social www.planetary.org/save-nasa-sc...

The FY 2027 NASA budget request hides its science cuts by omitting mission names instead of explicitly zeroing them out. We did the work and found 54 missions cancelled in this proposal. This is another extinction-level event for NASA science. Full list: planetary.org/save-nasa-science

This is possibly the most incredible tracking video of a rocket launch that I have ever seen, and Shuttle had some really incredible videos too! Just look at those gorgeous flame dynamics and then the booster separation... 🔭🧪 #Artemis

Awesome view of @NASAArtemis II, as viewed from NOAA weather satellite. Note the dark (warmer) dot launching off from Cape Canaveral and off to the northeast! #flwx #artemis

Genuinely just bonkers to watch the USA do this to one of the most successful and innovative hubs of scientific research the world has ever seen. All those years of Free Speech On Campus debates and it turns out they actually wanted less cancer research. Absurd.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 5mo ago

NSF Update through March 13, 2026 1/2

This is the entire budget of NASA's Planetary Science Division for *four years*

Seung Min Kim@seungminkim1.bsky.social · 5mo ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pentagon tells Congress the first week of the Iran war cost the US $11.3 billion, an AP source says.

Americans: we live in a fallen state—embroiled by sin, cheating, lying, and evil. You cannot trust anyone, not even those who claim to know you best Canadians: I love my neighbors and my friends!

Publication day for our paper on the T2.5 brown dwarf/exoplanet analog SIMP0136! We find cloud formation appears to drive upper atmospheric temperature and chemical structure. We also debut a new, novel method for vertical mapping extrasolar atmospheric dynamics. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Mapping the Cloud-driven Atmospheric Dynamics and Chemistry of an Isolated Exoplanet Analog with Harmonic Signatures

Mapping the Cloud-driven Atmospheric Dynamics and Chemistry of an Isolated Exoplanet Analog with Harmonic Signatures, Plummer, Michael K., Cocchini, Francis P., Kearns, Peter A., McCarthy, Allison M., Artigau, Étienne, Cowan, Nicolas B., Akhmetshyn, Roman, Vos, Johanna M., Nasedkin, Evert, Visscher, Channon, Benneke, Björn, Doyon, René, Metchev, Stanimir A., Rowe, Jason F., Suárez, Genaro

iopscience.iop.org

I present the most interesting graph ever made. HUMAN ON BICYCLE beats every other living thing. www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-hu...

The US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government every year from 1994 to 2023. The Cato study provides the first-ever 30-year analysis of the fiscal effects of immigration on government budgets. https://ow.ly/jy8a50Y8kM3

Great article on the cosmic shoreline. I was fortunate to have an office near Kevin’s for my 20 years at NASA Ames. He is the most creative planetary scientist I know.

Quanta Magazine@quantamagazine.org · 7mo ago

How do planetary atmospheres form, and how are they lost? These two questions are carving out a new map of habitable alien realms.

They're going to *throw out* one-of-a-kind NASA archives?! Not even a year since the Inauguration & we're already at the 2nd-time-as-farce version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

Joe@twitskeptic.sirvin.com · 7mo ago

I’ve been wondering for the last year when we’d get to the library destruction phase and here we are. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/c...

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

we had spent much of the (chilly) evening in the countryside away from any lights, but my favorite image of the night ended up being the aurora just casually, majestically, filling the sky above our homes

Teaching some comparative planetology, it turns out that lighting half-buried firecrackers in a bed of sand does a pretty nice job of simulating the formation of impact craters ; ) 🧪🔭

nist.gov and its associated subdomains: incredibly useful and important data, at risk of being lost...

National Institute of Standards and Technology

NIST promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life

nist.gov

Internet Archive@archive.org · 10mo ago

What's Your Wayback? We've archived 1 trillion pages. Now we need your help! Share the top 5 web pages or sites you want to preserve for future generations. We'll start: 1️⃣ The first ever web page at CERN 2️⃣ Wikipedia 3️⃣ GeoCities 4️⃣ WebArchive 96 5️⃣ Wayback Machine 🔗 ⬇️ #Wayback1T #WhatsYourWayback

I think about this plot all the time, and especially with respect to things like autism. If you’d lived in 1940 and had access to this data, would it feel like an “epidemic” of left-handedness?

The Summer I Misplaced the Moon... #TSITP 🔭 Watching the finale last night I happened to notice a few oddities regarding the placement of the Moon, so I wrote a quick set of review slides to work through with my intro astro class ; ) (other than times/locations, this should be spoiler free)

The two kinds of overleaf authors 🧪

Our (Faherty et al) newly published JWST detection of silane (SiH4) in the brown dwarf W1534 (aka "The Accident")! This molecule isn't seen on Jupiter because it's removed by deep silicate clouds, but unusual chemical properties of W1534 allow SiH4 to be mixed up into the visible atmosphere 🔭 🧪

NASA Study: Celestial ‘Accident’ Sheds Light on Jupiter, Saturn Riddle

An unusual cosmic object is helping scientists better understand the chemistry hidden deep in Jupiter and Saturn’s atmospheres — and potentially those of exoplanets.

jpl.nasa.gov

I wrote about how Earth's wobble causes our view of the skies to shift over time. Here's a paywall-free gift link. With @fparis.bsky.social and @iamrumz.bsky.social

Your Zodiac Sign Is 2,000 Years Out of Date (Gift Article)

Over millennia, our view of the stars has shifted, because of Earth’s wobble. It may be time to rethink your sign.

nytimes.com