Uninformed question: beyond the NREL-->NLR rebranding, are there standout changes in the chart itself?

Doctors say that measles is one of the deadliest and most contagious infectious diseases in the world. A guy who snorts cocaine off toilet seats and cuts penises off raccons says you'll be fine if you drink raw milk and bathe in raw sewage. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.

Reading this, I have to say, wtaf?

Apparently OMB is fine with asking to increase DOD by ~50x (!) the NSF annual budget, while wanting NSF itself to be cut by more than half. It's also still unclear (to me anyway) who *exactly* is holding up NSF's spending plan for this year. Where is Congress to defend their appropriation??

Closely related, the second part for sure. You can define an angular frequency S/I (S=total spin angular momentum, I = moment of inertia) called the Einstein-de Haas frequency.

Floating magnets to sense magnetic fields We've all seen a traditional compass.  A ferromagnetic, magnetized needle is mounted on a rotating bearing (or floated on the surface of a l...

🧪⚛️ How sensitive is a compass needle at detecting magnetic fields? Can the total spin angular momentum lead to mechanical precession of a hunk of ferromagnet? Read on.... nanoscale.blogspot.com/2026/04/floa...

Amendment 000002 is issued on April 17, 2026 with the following changes: Changed the type of application from strongly encourage collaborative applications to very strongly encourage a single application from a lead institution with proposed subawardee(s).

🧪⚛️ DOE amended the Genesis Mission phase I call 7 business days before the deadline. If you listen closely, you can hear hundreds of grant specialists at universities and national labs crying out....

That is 100% what I think Vought wants to do. I'm tired of hearing from people that Congress is "concerned" and "looking into this" while also working on the FY27 budget. Maybe serious pushback is happening behind the scenes, but from the groundlings' view, it's hard to see urgency.

If you limit to just the Mathematical and Physical Sciences directorate, you get around 12%: $199M out of an expected ~ $1.7B.

This is based on the data on this site. According to this, they've obligated about $540M this fiscal year, out of an expected total of around $8.1B. grant-witness.us/funding_curv...

I'm sure the awards will jump up at some point, but I worry that it simply may not be possible to process awards at the needed pace to avoid unspent $ by the end of the FY.

For people of a certain age: Ever want to listen to a 3 hour radio music block with records spun by Dr. Johnny Fever? www.awphooey.com/wkrp Or Venus Flytrap? www.awphooey.com/venus

⚡ In 1965, a biophysicist put platinum electrodes into E. coli and turned on the current. Bacteria stopped dividing. He spent 2 years thinking electricity caused it. Wrong. It was the platinum. That accident became cisplatin, one of the most important cancer drugs ever made.

🧪⚛️ The FY26 budget was signed in the first week of February. NSF still has not had its spending approved all the way. Is Congress going to push back on this, or are they ceding a pocket recision? Halfway through FY26, and NSF has only obligated 7% of its supposedly authorized funds.

Little known fact that both are run on a TRS-80 Model III via a 300 baud modem.

You misspelled "associate dean". (I say this as an associate dean.)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announces it has found a buyer to keep the newspaper open Owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said they have found a buyer who had agreed to keep the newspaper open, less than a month before it was due to shut down.

The nonprofit that runs the successful, Pulitzer-winning Baltimore Banner is going to take over the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Of all the possible outcomes here, this is likely the best we could have hoped for.

apnews.com/article/pitt...

President, Extremely Normal Brain-Wise: Pope Weak On Crime, Also I'm Dr. Jesus Christ | Defector The President of the United States, Donald Trump, is a deranged old pervert whose brain, long since sodden and pitted from a lifetime of indulgence and Diet Coke, is foaming out of his ears. Over the ...

Counterpoint re Baker's writing: defector.com/president-ex...

Where is the traditional media's discussion of the president's mental health in the wake of <waves hands>all this? @jaketapper.bsky.social? Anyone?

Disorder and illumination No, this is not another grim post about the chaotic US research funding environment.  Instead I wanted to write a bit about a good example o...

🧪⚛️ Disorder and illumination - how shining light on 2D systems at low temperatures can sometimes dramatically improve electrical properties, including a preprint from this week. nanoscale.blogspot.com/2026/04/diso...

Presidential pardon power is supposed to be unlimited, and scotus says that anything connected with an official duty carries presumed immunity from prosecution. Seems like the president could literally auction off pardons in exchange for bribes, and that would be allowed. This is f-ed up.

Seems likely that results will come out this week, since the deadline for grad school decisions is next week. I have no actual info, though.

Dr. Strangelove still. Capt. Lionel Mandrake looks freaked out as hell. The insane general Jack D Ripper has his arm around him.

The vibes RN

Do you think anyone in the military or government has gamed out what happens if he orders, say, a single nuclear warhead to be detonated over Teheran? Or is that so far outside the realm of "norms" that no one is taking it seriously? It's terrifying that the odds of such an order are not zero.

Apologies for feeding this confusion, but the topline number got me (and the AIP as well, it seems).

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER

“President respectfully references Islam on Easter Sunday”

Hey now. I’m gen-x!

🧪⚛️ A recap of the 2027 presidential budget request in terms of science funding. It's bad, and if you favor publicly supported science and engineering research, it's time again to start telling Congress to push back (as was relatively successful last year). nanoscale.blogspot.com/2026/04/fy27...

Take a look at NIST. Looks to me like they are proposing an 84% cut (!!!!) that would basically end the agency.