Agree with Jon, here. Without the shield of the courts in international relations to throw processes into a tailspin and out-attrition folks, the tendency is to try to extract oneself from the difficult situation as quickly as possible. That either means giving in, or more bombs in this case.

Keep in mind that this is about the appearance of non-compliance, fraud, and doubt, as opposed to actual fraud.

In fact, being thwarted plays into their conspiratorial model kind of perfectly (a reflexive argument: “oh my god they got you too.”)

The only antidote is calling it out.

Vegan McRibs are especially science

Chinese trucks could go 100% electric, halving road transport oil use: industry China’s industrial supply chains and engineering expertise provide a distinct competitive advantage, CiDi CEO Albert Hu says.

Heading into Earth Day, thinking about how much ground we’ll have lost before 2029, and how much China will be in a position of strength relative to the United States in climate negotiations

The next team is going to need to completely ditch the old playbook.

Hi @cdelawalla.bsky.social

“‘The negative sentiment around AI has been growing steadily, and what’s changed is that the public has developed both the vocabulary and the lived experience to name what’s bothering them,’ @alondra.bsky.social says.”🧪

Let’s pretend this isn’t total bullshit for a moment.

Possibilities:

A) The FBI detector thinks that there are more planned terrorist attacks now than there were over the prior Administration

B) The FBI’s willingness to categorize benign behavior as terrorism has increased

Both not great!

Kennedy memorandum. "The memoranda from the Conference have been very helpful. In my view a stay would be granted in four to six months in any event, and fairness to the parties counsels tha we should grant it now. Therefore, I agree with the recommendation of the Chief that the stay applications be granted."

It's probably not good for a democracy if this is what passes for judicial review. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

SEEMS BAD.

Also, I don’t think this is Gold Standard Science ™️

There was a time when I’d trust the government to ensure that appropriate measures are followed.

Experience as a former security policymaker has shown me otherwise, even under “good” administrations.

Agencies always interpret their authorities for maximum flexibility and benefit.

Let FISA expire.

When your goal is to do the political interference.

Oh good our MSPB class certification finally happened. Probationary employees at Commerce only took more than a year to get it.

🙃

Here’s to hoping folks can get made whole.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck

How Silicon Valley Is Turning Scientists Into Exploited Gig Workers Tech elites are enriching themselves by plundering STEM institutions—and offering researchers scraps.

Reason number 6,826,772 you should Stand Up for Science: the people who benefit from privatization and destruction of science are the Thiels of the world. And they are the only ones who benefit.

@standupforscience.net

www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Sustaining Scientific Collections in the Age of AI Good information sources, like collections, must be available and maintained if companies are going to successfully implement the vision of AI for science expressed by their marketing and executives.

TLDR: When I ask AI for an anatomically correct image of a whale skeleton, I should get a real image and not a hallucination

Maybe these companies that are trying to profit off of AI for science, which they call their most exciting work, should also act as responsible stewards of data sources?

That’s also when I discovered I was required by law to promote their work, as opposed to advocating for sensible commercial space regulatory frameworks, including “seeking the removal of legal, policy, and institutional impediments to space commerce.”

space.commerce.gov/law/office-o...

Oh yeah and in our quest to monetize everything, this was literally the only thing that seemed to have an actual business plan attached, which was even weirder.

I somehow ended up on a panel with these folks at the small sat rideshare meeting a few years ago and it was weird as heck.

Last time I don’t look up my co-panelists’s companies before a meeting.

Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social • 21m Magyar's speech is powered. From a contact in the audience: "He's basically just asked all the puppets, all the supreme justices, all the heads of media, all the heads of the ministries to leave their jobs tomorrow and not wait to be fired." 14 208 573 Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social • 20m He's announced that Hungary will join the European Prosecution Office so anyone in the country can be charged. 2 108 413 Mark Chadbourn O @chadbourn.bsky.social + Follow Magyar: "No mercy, they will need to take responsibility for all their actions." 5:17 PM • Apr 12, 2026 92 reposts 34 quotes 499 likes 1 save

We live in the stupidest timeline.

And as was pointed out in the other thread, this is clearly a subject area where a particular set of actors have a set of goals that the Academies would do well to acknowledge and account for in their event design—namely undermining universities as a legitimate source of knowledge production.

If the goal of the event is to provide a platform where views can be challenged and debated, a fireside chat between a controversial figure and a closely aligned speaker isn’t ideal. Even if the goal is to reveal new information or perspectives, then structure the conversation toward that outcome.

That is to say that this isn’t an uncommon problem faced by staff, but it is absolutely a problem.

That didn’t happen all that often, and the overall orientation of the roundtable led to a crowding of viewpoints toward a particular perspective that didn’t reflect the diversity of views sought by Congress.

I ran the National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable (one of the more politically sensitive roundtables). I admittedly ran into challenges with my volunteers in trying to bring new voices to the table —from the Natsec community— in a way that could reflect other viewpoints.

Again, as a former National Academies program director familiar with the rules for these as well as how things should go, the issue isn’t whether the NIH director is an appropriate invitee or not to an event. The issue is whether the event’s design is one where disagreements result in dialogue.

If I absolutely had to torture the logic to come up with an even unlikely explanation for this, it would be that the secondary blockade and interdiction is targeting allies and partners who were reducing their exposure to the blockade’s harms and Iran was peeling away.

It’s still the worst idea.

“One World or None” and “Every Man Must Try” strategically positioned

I'd bet money that, if these guys admit anything at all about this, it's going to include the phrase "gold standard science." Which will provide yet another indication that this is just a tool they deploy selectively to make themselves feel like they're being noble when they do something awful.