You know that extremely firm deadline about accessibility compliance for universities? Guess they were kidding about that. Four days to go and then they gave us another year.
The extra time is nice, the timing is horrible.
www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
Washington Post article on STEM cuts at federal agencies. NSF tops it at -42%!
“Between January 2025 and February 2026, STEM and health employees at science-focused agencies saw nearly 15,000 jobs cut. The rate outpaced cuts among other federal workers.”
OPM data - Figure from Wash Post article 19 April. (Where US science has been hit hardest.)
NSF at -42%!
All new to me! We spent a bunch of time playing with the route planning software and a friend was really helpful.
I just drove from LA to Ashland-ish in a (rented) EV and charging along the way was absolutely no problem at all.
indeed. I'm usually catching absurdly early flights to the extent that I beat morning traffic, so that hardship makes LAX simpler. But if I'm leaving mid-afternoon? Burbank for sure.
(FWIW I’ve landed on using LAX almost always simply because when interruptions happen, alternative flights are so much more possible. Each trip is more annoying but cumulatively there is less disaster)
yeah I have a really vague recollection of that too? If so that's really wild because these car alarms haven't been doing their thing for decades and the song is still the song.
I remember noticing that mockingbird songs were the same as car alarms back then, when I was in high school and college. But I don't know what mockingbird song was like before those car alarms were everywhere.
(And those car alarms were everywhere. They'd go off all the time, those were the days.)
Remember that car alarm (from the 80s-90s?) that modulated among several sounds? That's exactly what our local mockingbirds sing now.
I don't know if the mockingbirds picked it up back then and it's being culturally transmitted, or if the car alarm designers were simply copying the birds?
Communal births in sperm whales, fostering perseverance as a mentor, hairdresser scicomm, every scientist in the Epstein files, and more.
Also I am writing myself. But as Colin mentioned, if it entirely hinges on issues that the bad guys have issues with, a reframe is worthwhile if possible.
Scheduling a call with your PO is always going to be helpful.
I think it's entirely worth it. They are running panels and making funding recommendations. Also, at this moment more than ever it's important for NSF to demonstrate high demand for funding (as there is!). But it's not just an exercise of futility to support NSF, funding is a real possibility.
Communal births in sperm whales, fostering perseverance as a mentor, hairdresser scicomm, every scientist in the Epstein files, and more.
I’m so excited about this. I hope people keep starting newsrooms. There’s appetite for the truth.
!!!
initially thought they were an oribatid beetle mite... then freaked out upon taking a few photos - realizing they were BAEUS - a *tiny* (~600µm) parasitic wasp!
Lost them after trying to stop lens down for a bit more depth of field! Underneath a log, NE Oklahoma
congrats!
Can you even say this in your head in a voice that isn't Sean Connery?
Sean Connery explaining the Chicago way.
"He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send him Matthew 5:9. That's the Chicago Pope way."
It popped up in my outlook. I took the bait because it wanted to 'summarize' a 4-sentence email. The summary was longer than the email itself and was impossible to follow. What the hell. Turned off, thanks!
congrats! and welcome to Ghost!
its good to see this happening somewhere and it needs to be happening everywhere
something like that. Individualism being cool. (It was paywalled for me too but at least on my browser, clicking on the 'reader view' let me see the whole thing? I thought most outfits were stopping that?
That's funny, this morning I was watching our mockingbirds who have been singing night and day nonstop. Some crows showed up, and the mockingbirds started taunting them with crow squawking.
snippet from Schutte and Stuben 2015, citing the collective wisdom of the editors of "the SNUDEBILLER Journal of the CURCULIO Institute" (presumably distinct from the journal Curculio)
in unrelated news, I just learned the Danish word for weevil and it's extremely good
Christina Koch being greeted by her dog after returning from space is the dose of Monday hopium we all needed 💕
I've pushed the latest #NSF GRFP data to the rnsf page.
Raw data for all years at github.com/bomeara/rnsf... or just get saved #rstats data.frame at github.com/bomeara/rnsf...
You can also git clone and install pkg, then do
library(rnsf)
data(grfp)
to get info for all years.
graph of % of Total GRFP Awards by Year and Field of Study - life sciences is between 21-25% for the 2021-2024 period shown
For Life Sciences more broadly: per this preprint, ~20-25% of awards tended to be Life Sci pre-2025. 486/2599 were this year, around 18.7%. (Last year had 214 in the first round of 1000, but no additional awardees when it was bumped to 1500 - a 21% to 14% drop.)
osf.io/preprints/ps...
