Are we meant to forgive SpaceX's destruction of LEO, astronomy, and the night sky for this?

Ma Yuan's studies of the properties of water, southern Song Dynasty China, ca. 1190 - 1225 CE
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I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating - NASA Science On April 17, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California sent commands to shut down an instrument aboard Voyager 1 called the

NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

The Low-energy Charged Particles experiment has been operating almost without interruption since Voyager 1 launched in 1977 - almost 49 years. 🧪🔭 #Voyager

science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyage...

Waking up to discover that evidence has been released proving something we all knew. The Supreme Court's efforts to stop the Obama clean power plant rules were rooted in explicit, corrupt efforts to protect the fossil fuel industry.

The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court

There’s so much to say about the remarkable reporting from Jodi Kantor & Adam Liptak—and I’ll say a lot of it in Monday’s newsletter.

But the most striking thing about all of it is the role & behavior of Chief Justice Roberts. “Calling balls and strikes” this ain’t:

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

After 45 years, the 5-billion-year legacy of the Voyager 2 interstellar probe is just beginning In the void of interstellar space, the most distant emissary of humankind carries a message that will last for billions of years.

This is my most popular article for The Conversation, about Voyager 2.
@aunz.theconversation.com 🧪

Survey question "In the past 12 months, about how many books did you read either all or part of the way through? (Please include any print, electronic, or audiobooks you may have read or listened to.)" 25% said none, 14% said more than 20 books.

25% of American adults said they did not read or listen to any book in the last year—not even part of one.
www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

we have got to get it together, in like twenty-four hours the astronauts are back

This is very very big. Like a big deal and massive cuts. These can’t even be seen as budgetary since you don’t get much savings in the context of trillions budget. They want the US out of R&D out of science research.

Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request to Congress

I am shocked to see this language from the NSF.

“The U.S. National Science Foundation's Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request reflects a strategic alignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment while eliminating woke and weaponized grant programs that previously funded radical DEI projects.”

This (at bottom) is from a really important series of interviews the NYT is doing. Here's an index of previous pieces: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...

Americans Have Never Been All That Excited About Going to the Moon

Terrific piece.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/s...

tl;dr: NIH is running at about 60% of pre-Trump levels and NSF is running at about 20% of pre-Trump levels of funding-outlays (some directorates far below even that). Utterly catastrophic. An unforced disaster for U.S. society, and the world

Helen Sharp. White Berries. 1994

Rethinking Thoreau: We’ve Been Mispronouncing His Name for Centuries

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/b...

A supervolcano eruption would just be the icing on the cake right now

beautiful piece, john. A huge loss . . . and a hero to me, too.

Alright y’all this is a small thing but an easy one

Stop buying books from Amazon

Instead buy them from Bookshop.com which supports your local bookstores

Here’s a 20% discount on your first order

refer.bookshop.org/jen52349

$2.45 billion NIH grant cuts and ~2300 terminated active research grants were DOGE'd in early 2025
Who were most affected?
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
Early career and women researchers

I have been attending the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. This is the largest planetary science conference in the world. Attendance is down 50% this year due to several reasons. The conference feels a bit tired. Scientists are shellshocked. NASA is still just holding on.

Screenshot showing the Climate Shift Index from Climate Central for March 19, 2026. There is a change in likelihood of CSI 5 across nearly the entire Western USA.

Even in a world of extremes, some events still stand out to me. This is one. All-time monthly records are being shattered.

The size of this ridge across the western U.S. is truly striking for March, and we see a very clear climate change connection.

Explore: csi.climatecentral.org/climate-shif...

How Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Vaccine Agenda Risks a Resurgence of Deadly Childhood Plagues ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up...

The current spread of measles in the U.S. warns of future rubella outbreaks, since the vaccines are given together.

“It will come back with a vengeance," an ex-CDC doctor says. "We will see babies being born who are blind, deaf and have heart disease.”

talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-rob...

Danmark forberedte sig på muligt angreb fra USA: Fløj poser med blod til Grønland og gjorde klar til at sprænge landingsbaner i luften Nøglekilder i Danmark og Europa fortæller nu for første gang, hvad der skete i de mest kritiske dage, hvor Donald Trump truede med at tage Grønland "på den hårde måde".

Remarkable story from Denmark's nat'l broadcaster. "When Danish soldiers were flown to Greenland in January...they brought explosives so they could destroy, among other things, the runways in Nuuk & Kangerlussuaq [to] prevent US mil aircraft from landing" www.dr.dk/nyheder/indl...

The Weather Is Getting Wilder, and Some See a Dire Signal in the Data

“Taken together, we see the first signs of a planet that is losing resilience, or losing strength to buffer heat stress,” said Johan Rockström.

The Weather Is Getting Wilder, and Some See a Dire Signal in the Data www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/c...

How a Melting Glacier in Antarctica Could Affect Tens of Millions Around the Globe A collapse of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica would sharply accelerate sea-level rise in coastal cities.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Things are apocalyptic for science in the US. It might not seem that way to everyone because many academic scientists have tenure and get to keep their jobs (for now), and most grants last three years, so many scientists still have funding. But it's going to get way worse.

Not sure I’ve ever seen someone so confident speaking with such total ignorance.

Odds Rise That El Niño Will Soon Bring Weather Extremes The climate pattern known for intense heat, floods and drought is likely to develop this summer, raising questions about disaster preparedness.

An El Niño climate pattern that is likely to develop this summer may be severe, federal scientists warned Thursday in a forecast that raised threats of record heat, floods and other weather extremes around the planet this year and next. Here's what to know.

Figurines of Brady Bunch and Partridge Family fighting each other

I have created a diorama of the Partridge family attacking the Brady Bunch family. My life is very boring.