I don't think anyone has any idea of how thin the margins are in science. To have funding agencies or private foundations come back on a proposal and ask you to cut 10-20%, or more from a project simply means the work cannot be done. Modular grants have not been adjusted for inflation in >20yrs.

🧵 Are you following what could be this year's most consequential East Coast ocean story? Odyssey Marine Exploration is asking the Dept. of the Interior for a lease to mine ~2,500 sq. miles of seafloor off Virginia's coast. Here is why this raises major red flags: 1/7

Coltan is an ore that contains the minerals columbite (a niobium ore) and tantalite (a tantalum ore). Cobalt comes from minerals like cobaltite, smaltite, erythite, and carollite. While niobium, tantalum, and cobalt are all considered “critical minerals” they are not “rare earth minerals”.

"hiring more conservative faculty"... oh so DEI but for fascists

Liam Knox@liamknox.bsky.social · 2d ago

Scoop: The Trump administration is sending a letter to college presidents asking them to pledge a series of policy changes by the end of the year. Unlike last year's Compact, this effort was devised with input from higher ed leaders. Free link to my exclusive: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I do appreciate that learning the history of the role of the AAU during the Red Scares (that's what the link at the top of this thread comes from) prepared me for the day they would offer higher ed up for political repression on a silver platter

Time to add another formerly respected institution to the garbage pile, this time @aau.edu, which just worked with the Trump admin to endorse resegregation in high education, embedding MAGA fraudsters as faculty, and banning student expression. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I just keeping thinking about this:

This is still an active fight! Postponing implementation until after December is harm reduction, not victory — the ongoing uncertainty is obviously horrifically bad for the scientific enterprise in the United States. And there's no guarantee we'll win a permanent block of this Vought rule

Senate Reaches CR Deal — The text would temporarily block the rule proposed by the Trump Regime's OMB Director, Russell Vought to give the White House direct, North Korean-style control over grant funded scientific research shouldntneedtobealawyer.com/posts/senate...

Senate Reaches CR Deal, Would Temporarily Block OMB Rule On Grants | Shouldn't Need to Be a Lawyer by Matthew Cortland

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) is the Chair of U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Appropriations Rankin

shouldntneedtobealawyer.com

In sum, everyone who cares abt US science should also care about free speech, billionaires’ money, the academic and DC thinktank world, the conservative legal world, and the Supreme Court. All of these are linked. If interested in this, see @thelisagraves.bsky.social @courtacctability.bsky.social

Okay Merriam Webster you fuckin psychic: - BLACK SMOKER (srsly wtf 🤯) - five-hole - macchiato - stressed-out - text messaging Also what do you MEAN "telepresence" was coined in my birth year???? Gotta be a sign there...

Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com · 5d ago

Find the 5 words from your birth year that perfectly describe YOUR vibe ⬇️ www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/

This reminds me that I still really want to do "what they got right/wrong" for the geology in Pacific Rim....bc some of it was quite good!!

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist.bsky.social · 5d ago

Then this guide is for identifying kaiju traces, as featured in the documentary film 'Pacific Rim,' that once identified would justify building jaegers for remedying such pesky interlopers intent on urban renewal: www.georgialifetraces.com/2013/07/26/t... 2/2

In all seriousness, AAUP hasn’t become political. It has reacted to political overreach by one political party into higher education.

Ryan Quinn@ryanequinn.bsky.social · 6d ago

National AAUP Starts Endorsing Political Candidates The group says the move is a first in its over-100-year existence, and part of countering government threats. Critics say AAUP has lost its neutrality. www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

🌊 The ultimate Canadian tool for deep-sea science? A hockey puck. 🏒 ONC uses modified hockey pucks as grip pads for ROV arms to grab heavy underwater gear. Very Canadian, eh? 🇨🇦 🔗 Follow along on our live dives: ow.ly/Z7xf50Zv7uT #KnowTheOcean #ONCabyss @uvic.ca ic @innovation.ca ion.ca

The National Science Foundation funding trend continues. Not much time left in the federal fiscal year. grant-witness.us/funding_curv...

it’s never a great sign for your society when all the competent people who believe in doing a good job for the sake of it conclude that they’re actively being punished for these qualities, while malignantly stupid criminals are making bank

This is the wall mural in my PhD dept's conference room (handy for comps and classes bc it's the only semipublic room in the dept, so everything happens in there).

Robert McNees@mcnees.bsky.social · 6d ago

Here is the World Ocean Floor Panorama that Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen produced in 1977. Only one printer in the US could handle such a large job. It was painted by Heinrich Berann, who was famous for his landscapes. (5/n) Image: Marie Tharp Maps LLC, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

yeah i'm a gamer

We already do this and companies who want them are happy to pay for PhD student interns. Why do precious and limited NSF funds need to be deployed for this? Most PhD student pursue industry jobs anyways - that has always been true. Use NSF funds to support basic science that industry wont support!

Jonathan Wosen@jonathanwosen.bsky.social · 7d ago

With academic jobs few and far between, the NSF is testing a new approach to graduate education: Giving Ph.D. students industry experience — and dollars — as part of their training. For more, see my latest for @statnews.com. www.statnews.com/2026/07/29/h...

Remember when I used to do stuff like this? 😭😭😭 💀💀

Ocean Networks Canada@oceannetworks.ca · 7d ago

Costco hands out hot samples—we collect ours at 300°C on the seafloor. 🔥 No typo! 2,200m below the surface, ROV Mantis is surveying hydrothermal vents. Follow the #ONCabyss action here: bit.ly/4hoq8CT @uvic.ca @innovation.ca

The right-wing attacks on scientists are part of a larger story about the right-wing efforts to undermine trust in science and public health, which is part of a larger story about the right-wing alliance with major business interests.

This whole exercise isn't about COVID-19 or Gain of Function research...this is about Congress putting a retired public servant through the wringer because they want to spook scientists. This is all a part of a plan to chill scientists from taking evidence-based and principled stands against govt.

“Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.”

Social Media Lab@socialmedialab.ca · last wk.

This aught to be illegal ... "AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books" www.news.com.au/technology/o...

Perhaps it’s not fair to draw a straight line from Discovery’s “megalodon is still alive and scientists and the government are lying to you about it, don’t trust them” to all of this… but a supposed non-fictional educational channel sure didn’t help matters.

Somewhere a university academic is being told to "do more with less" by someone whose job title didn't exist two reorgs ago.

🚨DIVE ALERT 🚨 ONC is aboard the M/V Canpac Valour stationed at Endeavour! ROV Mantis is diving more than 2100 metres below sea surface! 🌊Watch the live dives 👉bit.ly/4hoq8CT  #KnowTheOcean #ONCabyss @uvic.ca @innovation.ca

That's not what's happening. We have plenty of data centers for those things. The new ones are purely a land rush for AI and running roughshod over local populations to enrich very few people.

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒@eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · last wk.

To defend data centers directly, they are used for: (1) weather modeling (2) content moderation (3) research on robotics (4) pharmaceutical research (5) basic science research (6) task automation Allowing them to be built lets us do more of these things by making the price of such things cheaper.

This is part of why the loss of the only US scientific ocean drilling vessel is a HUGE issue. We have finite physical samples in the existing core repositories. If we deplete those samples, that means no more analyses of that section. So if we were to develop a new technique, we couldn't apply it. 💀

Le Cagle@lecagle.bsky.social · 2w ago

I cannot emphasize enough of the importance of this point: the physical archive is not a digital file. And crucially, it CANNOT be a digital file. Doing research with physical samples from ecological collections requires physically analyzing them. You can't just take photos and call it a day.

When a federal administration strips support for long-term data collection, they not only interrupt key longitudinal data sets but also put at risk any physical collections associated with them. That is a destruction of scientific resources that we have already paid for and belong to us all.

Rocks are like time capsules. They reveal ancient life and climates. They’ll help us fight climate change. They record the birth, life, and death of continents. They give us a framework for understanding lithosphere-biosphere dynamics at a global-scale. They’re ace, frankly [2/2]