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Britt Lundgren

@brittlundgren.bsky.social
3.1K followers 1.3K following 2K posts

quasar gazer | science & education policy wonk | prof. of physics & astronomy at a public liberal arts college | Illinoisan

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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 7h
A totally normal new ad from Palantir.
Ad for Palantir.com that features a wolf in the dark, growling with reflective eyes.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"Centering the public good means offering to [regional public university] students the same robust intellectual environment their elite private-school peers enjoy. In higher ed’s austerity era, Humanities degrees are poised to be the purview of the wealthy alone."
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Melissa Johnson, PhD @ladyhistorian.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
We should let people dream of something besides labor
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
“like 5s on AP test” - Maya Angelou I’ll say again. @annieabrams.bsky.social was right.
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Helen Kyriakoudes @hkyria.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Did you know Nina Simone and Langston Hughes first met in Asheville? Check out this excerpt from DON'T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD: Nina Simone, Langston Hughes, and the Birth of Black Power by @wjasonmiller.bsky.social (out next week 9/29) in @indyweek.bsky.social 🎶 indyweek.com/news/culture...
indyweek.com
The Day the Priestess and the Poet Met in Asheville
Langston Hughes first met Nina Simone in 1949, when he visited her high school NAACP chapter. Their friendship would go on to make history.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Rockford Peaches in the news 🍑⚾ www.nytimes.com/2026/09/27/b...
nytimes.com
Women Sluggers Are No Longer in a League of Their Own (Gift Article)
As a group of players from an all-women’s baseball league in the 1940s and ’50s gathered at a recent reunion, the future of women’s baseball looks bright again.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Exhibit A: www.wunc.org/politics/202...
wunc.org
Former Trump chief, NC congressman Meadows' voter registration in question
Public records show Meadows is registered to vote in two states, including North Carolina, where he listed a mobile home he did not own — and may never have visited — as his legal residence weeks befo...
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This is fun 😄 I did pretty well just recalling counties I regularly heard named in tornado warnings. 53.2%!
53.2% of Illinoisans live in counties shaded orange
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Stop trying to make Rahm happen.
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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Ultimately what is killing higher Ed in the United States is not just hostile politics at the Federal level, but the greed and ineptitude of university leadership.
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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Russ Vought just sent a rescissions request to Congress, signaling he intends to illegally impound funds. The $810 million highlighted in this “request” (but this is a pretext to just illegally impound the funds) is not the exhaustive list of many billions of dollars he’s impounding this year.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
We could try communicating to the public what a great value education we provide, how nerds & LGBTQ+ students thrive in our kind campus culture, & that our small faculty bring in ~3x the research funding of WCU. But adding MMA & a Chick-fil-A is another option. www.theassemblync.com/news/educati...
theassemblync.com
How UNC Asheville Plans to Attract More Students After Another Enrollment Drop
UNC Asheville continues to struggle with enrollment challenges, but the chancellor says she has a plan to turn things around.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I think about this episode regularly
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Post-ChatGPT, initial graduate "employment shifted away from relatively high-paying sectors such as Information and Professional, Scientifc, and Technical Services and toward lower-paying sectors such as Retail Trade and Accommodation and Food Services." www2.census.gov/library/work...
www2.census.gov
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 21/09/2026
As Alex notes in this thread, AI doesn't "democratize" science. Rather, it compels scientists to rely on anti-egalitarian means of directing their attention.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Two arms, clasping in union; one is labelled Metallica, the other, Educators
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Dr. Jake Turner 📡🧲🪐 @astrojaket.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
SN 2026aaiv in the galaxy NGC 7331 🔭 I took this pic last night
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
“AI allows you to get to a bad idea faster,” one of the sources said.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
“This time capsule of species interactions, I think, is just so cool,” said Scott V. Edwards, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard who was not involved in the new study. “You’ve got this three-species interaction in this one tiny piece of poop.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/s...
nytimes.com
A Feather Found in Dinosaur Poop Might Explain How Birds Beat Extinction (Gift Article)
It’s the only example of a dinosaur-era feather found within rock that wasn’t completely flattened through the centuries.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I always expected a Star Trek future and will never get over the disappointment of having to live through a Star Wars version instead. apnews.com/article/spac...
apnews.com
US troops must prepare to fight around the moon, Trump's top military adviser says
The U.S. military is preparing for combat in space, including areas around the moon. This announcement on Wednesday follows the Air Force's recent revelation that it has deployed space control weapons...
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
This is going around as essential reading and for very good reason. Honestly the most incisive and full summary of the longtermism/x-risk pathology I have seen. Every stanza is a gem, and the closing is genius, but my personal favorite, because I have had this exact conversation almost verbatim:
[nitter.app post excerpt from banteg]

>someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from
> expert judgement
>which expert
>us
>how calibrated
> extremely thoughtfully

›reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative
›still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude
›epistemic robustness achieved
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 18/09/2026
look we are too corrupt and ignorant to regulate so it's up to a collection of foppish, pasty sociopaths in overpriced sneakers to hold themselves accountable for killing everyone with monopolized cloud computing
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I shared this result in class yesterday, and there was immediate consensus that these progenitor galaxy names are too funny. Low-energy Kracken-Hercules & Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus sound like racehorses, or high security passwords. Love it science.nasa.gov/missions/hub...
science.nasa.gov
Hubble Solves Merger Mystery From Milky Way’s Early Years - NASA Science
New Hubble data shows definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way in the earliest phases of its evolution.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Check out this weird guy that sprang up overnight by my front step. I searched for similar images at my peril, and apparently it's a Ravenel's Stinkhorn fungus. The cat has confirmed that it stinks!
Ravenel's stinkhorn fungus dispersing spires in yard mulchZoom on the gross opening at the top of this gross fungus.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
"a decade ago, biologists found gray bats at a bridge outside Asheville, and they’ve since established that the bats use the French Broad River corridor as a sort of bat-highway, stretching from Tennessee to Bent Creek." avlwatchdog.org/endangered-b...
avlwatchdog.org
Endangered bats are using UNCA woods, researchers say • Asheville Watchdog
Humans may prize nature for notions of quietude, for serving as a refuge from highway buzz and construction grind and office chatter and the anxieties that accompany them. “I go among trees and sit st...
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The announcement stems from OpenAI's "new framework for reporting “misalignment”.. when the goals or actions of A.I. systems diverge from human intentions and values." Interesting. Let's hear more about these human intentions and values, just for a baseline. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/t...
nytimes.com
OpenAI Discloses Six New Incidents of ‘Concerning' A.I. Behavior (Gift Article)
The artificial intelligence company also released a framework for reporting when its systems go wrong.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
He described NC cities as “blood-soaked killing fields” while in public, in NC.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
"Harvard allows every Harvard student and faculty member to request a Claude token budget of $2,500 per month" Sorry, what??
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Micah @rincewind.run · 17/09/2026
the worst part about this is that a lot of the damage will be permanent by the time we can turn the research funding back on a lot of folks will have unsurprisingly and not unreasonably decided that they should leave this area of research because it will never be reliable what a huge waste
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
🥳 First-light doughnuts from the very recently launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope! 🔭 Fear not - it will all look a lot prettier when focused!
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Emily Rauscher @astronemly.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
So (annoyingly) true. For any students reading: emailing me doesn’t improve your chances of acceptance at all. Probably the only useful point to an email is just to ask if I’m open to taking on new students in the fall. (I am this year.)
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Unofficial BBCNews (World) Bot @bbcnews-world-rss.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
bbc.co.uk
US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons
The US Air Force Secretary says the weapons are necessary to defend the country against enemy action.
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Jennifer Lynn Bartlett @bartlettastro.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Got plates? Astronomical photographic plates that is? If so, please let us know 2026 Census in Progress harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... Because we can never image the same sky twice #astronomy #photography #archives #histsci #astrophotography @aas.org @aip.bsky.social 🏛️☀️🧪
harvard.az1.qualtrics.com
Census of Astronomical Photographic Plates | Initial Questionnaire
The International Glass Plates Group (IGPG) team, in conjunction with the International Astronomical Union Commission B2 Working Group on the Preservation and Digitization of Photographic Plates (WG-P...
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I'm so completely out of practice at receiving good news.. but I think this is.. good?!?
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Birder K @birderk.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Another high flight night underway, well before sunset has cleared the mainland states. Saw a lot of warblers this evening feeding ravenously before sunset. #birds #fall #migration #LightsOutForBirds
BirdCast map showing 348.5 million birds in flight at 8:50pm EDT on September 14, 2026. The Sun is still setting to the west and migration is concentrated from the east coast to the eastern Ohio Valley.
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 14/09/2026
Our research, commissioned by the National Academies, is summarized here at @piie.com —> www.piie.com/blogs/realti... And the full paper is here —> nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/292...
piie.com
A new US rule to restrict student visas will hurt the US economy
The Trump administration issued a final rule in July that gives it discretion to cut short the course of study of most international students at US universities. It will likely use this new power to b...
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
"NSF will experiment with novel proposal review mechanisms, such as “golden tickets,” which allow one reviewer to advance a proposal that a larger panel may not approve, & distributed review, in which all applicants to a solicitation serve as reviewers." www.aip.org/fyi/the-week...
aip.org
THE WEEK OF SEPT 14, 2026
- NSF confirms new grants approach - Universities review Chinese ties - House Republicans look into biosecurity
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
“There’s a quiz I give people. Do you like photographing or do you like photographs? Choose one. And you learn a lot about yourself by choosing one or the other. Some people like photographs. I like photographing.” - Jay Maisel www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/a...
nytimes.com
Jay Maisel, Photographer of Miles Davis and Much More, Dies at 95 (Gift Article)
His moody portrait became the album cover for “Kind of Blue.” Mr. Maisel lived and worked in an old bank that he bought for $102,000 and sold for $55 million.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Apparently hell isn't hot enough. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/c...
nytimes.com
E.P.A. Will Erase Limits on Climate Pollution From Power Plants (Gift Article)
Generation of electricity is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases in the United States.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
@wbez.org - Is there a working link to this recording? www.wbez.org/eight-forty-...
wbez.org
Richard Steele talks with ...
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
“A lot of what I like about this college is there are different viewpoints everywhere. On that board, up in front, there was not a single different viewpoint.” - math education student Caleb Tisdale
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Quinn Slobodian @quinnslobodian.com · 13/09/2026
Speedrunning consent with one of the weirdest and darkest songs in Bowie’s oeuvre www.wired.com/story/meta-d...
wired.com
Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending
The clip features the David Bowie track “Five Years,” which includes lyrics such as “Earth was really dying (dying).”
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Kate Clancy @kateclancy.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
My colleagues are smart, they are aware, and they have clear, often touching reasons they became professors. They're here to make the world better. Solidarity and collective bargaining - not to mention the legal defense of a union - will make our work easier. Proud of our organizers this week!!!
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Jesse Rothstein @jrothst.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The University of California is in the midst of what looks to be a year-long debate about the use of SAT scores in undergraduate admissions. I wrote a FAQ that attempts to collect the facts that are relevant to this debate, and to dispel some common misconceptions: escholarship.org/uc/item/6kx2...
escholarship.org
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Jesse Rothstein @jrothst.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
www.chronicle.com/article/a-re...
chronicle.com
A Researcher Adds What’s Been Missing From the UC Testing Debate: Nuance
A new brief by a prominent scholar argues that some criticisms of the University of California’s test-free policy are predicated on assertions that simply aren’t true.
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Schools are not a business and a student is not a customer and this is the framing that encapsulates everything wrong with higher education. The “solution” of running universities like businesses rather than a public good was always the problem.
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Universities "have become too faculty-centric... we need good faculty, but they’re delivering a product to our customer. And you could argue our customer is either the student or the hiring companies that are hiring graduates. You could make an argument that they’re really the customer, ultimately"
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Some timeless inspiration from Blake for this Thursday morning: "Fearless tho in pain, I travel on."
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I'm now seeing astronomers who have left academia posting about being able to write multiple publishable papers per week with the aid of LLMs. I guess while they gum up the gears of peer review, I'll just keep trying to train the next generation like an idiot. This is the dumbest time.
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