iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Michael Ian Black @michaelianblack.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Great. Impeach or STFU.

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Emily Griffith @emilyjogriffith.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Excited to be giving a public planetarium talk at Embry Riddle University tonight! Love showing off the @sdssurveys.bsky.social data :) Sold out show!!

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DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao) @deechiebaby.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Amongst your doomscrolling, here’s a fun thing - a paper I’m on was featured on Jeopardy last night!

Jeopardy answer stating “A 2024 study found that the Milky Way acted like a giant hair dryer blowing gas off the nearby dwarf galaxy LMC, the “Large” this

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Bonky @shesbonky.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

CNN shared a story about Taylor Swift at the Superbowl and Steven showed up and dropped the single greatest comment of all time

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Dr. Marissa Kawehi Loving @marissakawehi.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Y’all they cancelled the NSF MPS Ascend Program after encouraging underrepresented folks to only apply to it and not both the Ascend and the MSPRF. This is astronomically fucked up for many grad students and postdocs of color in math. #MathSky

23-501: Federal Grant
Opportunity Package(s)
Deleted

The following grant opportunity package(s) were deleted:
Funding Opportunity Number: 23-501
Funding Opportunity Title: Mathematical and Physical Sciences Ascending Postdoctoral
Research Fellowships
Opportunity Package ID: PKG00277218
Agency Code: NSF
Agency: National Science Foundation
Deleted Date: Feb 08, 2025
Deletion Comments: Opportunity deleted

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Becka Phillipson @beckastrosaurus.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

The NSF MPS Ascend Postdoctoral Fellowship has been archived: new.nsf.gov/funding/oppo... All folks who applied to this opportunity have had their application package deleted.

new.nsf.gov

Mathematical and Physical Sciences Ascending Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (MPS-Ascend)

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 05/02/2025

To be clear, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are instituting death panels for rural America. That’s what closing federally qualified health centers means, since they are often the only health providers available. bsky.app/profile/chan...

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Gabe Ortíz @tusk81.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

“In this week’s episode of ‘AOC Talks America Off The Ledge,’” the opposition leader would “like to remind us that Elon Musk is actually kind of fucking stupid.” “One of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met.” “This dude is not smart.” www.wonkette.com/p/opposition...

wonkette.com

Opposition Leader AOC: 'You Can Take The Boy Out Of Apartheid, But You Can't Take The Apartheid Out Of The Boy'

And that's why we call her Opposition Leader AOC.

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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

This NYT sleight-of-hand is part of why Trump’s insane racism flourishes. The implication is that it’s possible to “attack diversity” WITHOUT a “racist undercurrent.” And it “surfaces” - as though Trump hasn’t been a rabid and explicit racist for years, and this is some new tone.

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Kate Clancy @kateclancy.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Hey, I know there are lots of things to be angry, activated, and/or scared about right now. But I am noticing that coverage of the executive orders that are specifically harmful to trans children and adults are barely being discussed by anyone except trans journalists. Stop this shit.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 31/01/2025

Fixed it.

Fact Check: Lying motherfucker tells racist lies about plane crash.

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Maddy Jalbert @maddyjalbert.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

I am one of these NSF postdocs. NSF has frozen everyone’s access to their salaries and research stipends (that were already awarded) with no information about when they might be expected to be unfrozen. It still appears like we are expected to continue doing our work though.

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sanjana! @sanjanacurtis.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

can’t believe we forgot to add constitutional crisis classes to physics grad school curriculum

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Jeremy Yoder says no war @jbyoder.org · 31/01/2025

Turns out the 2010 America COMPETES Act contains language I recognize because I've cribbed it from NSF's Grant Proposal Guide for every proposal I've sent to NSF www.congress.gov/111/plaws/pu... It's encoded in 42 USC 1826p-14 uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?r... R: the 2010 Act, L: the GPG

Screenshot text of sect 526 of the AMERICA COMPETES reauthorization act of 2010, now encoded in 42 USC 1826p-14:

SEC. 526. BROADER IMPACTS REVIEW CRITERION.
(a) GOALS.—The Foundation shall apply a Broader Impacts Review Criterion to achieve the following goals:
(1) Increased economic competitiveness of the United States.
(2) Development of a globally competitive STEM workforce.
(3) Increased participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM.
(4) Increased partnerships between academia and industry.
(5) Improved pre-K–12 STEM education and teacher development.
(6) Improved undergraduate STEM education. (7) Increased public scientific literacy.
(8) Increased national security.

Screenshot text defining Broader Impacts in NSF's 2024 Grant Proposal Guide: The Project Description also must contain, as a separate section within the narrative, a section labeled “Broader Impacts”, and “Broader Impacts” must appear as a heading on its own line. This section should provide a discussion of the broader impacts of the proposed activities. Broader impacts may be accomplished through the research itself, through the activities that are directly related to specific research projects, or through activities that are supported by, but are complementary to the project. NSF values the advancement of scientific knowledge and activities that contribute to the achievement of societally relevant outcomes. Such outcomes include, but are not limited to: full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); improved STEM education and educator development at any level; increased public scientific literacy and public engagement with science and technology; improved well-being of individuals in society; development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce; increased partnerships between academia, industry, and others; improved national security; increased economic competitiveness of the U.S.; use of science and technology to inform public policy; and enhanced infrastructure for research and education. These examples of societally relevant outcomes should not be considered either comprehensive or prescriptive. Proposers may include appropriate outcomes not covered by these examples.

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Rita Parai @ritaparai.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

And it’s not just a requirement that NSF dreamed up and can discard, broader impacts review criteria are written law, enacted by Congress:

uscode.house.gov

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Meredith Rawls @merrdiff.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

It is hard to know where to begin with this. I am not directly affected (yet? thanks, bureaucracy?) — instead, it is largely more junior student and postdoctoral researchers. The NSF is just out here canceling paychecks despite the grants in question already being awarded.

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Emily Griffith @emilyjogriffith.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

No one is telling us what to do, and we’ve received a lot of conflicting information. Many people were advised to pull funds on Jan 28th. This will be devastating for many folks. Check in on your fellows and see if your university can offer them emergency funds.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 30/01/2025

Apparently all the PhD researchers holding prestigious NSF-funded research fellowships are having their salaries withheld until some unspecified time when the leadership figures out how to eliminate any grant funding that doesn’t align with the president’s political ideology.

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Sarah Hörst @planetdr.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

I was an NSF postdoc fellow. Their stipends (aka paycheck) come directly from the NSF into their bank accounts. I really hope the universities employing all of these amazing early career folks are very quickly figuring out how to help them cover their bills.

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

BREAKING — I'm told OPM just sent out this memo with guidance for implementing Trump's "Defending Women" anti-trans executive order. "Take down all outward facing media that inculcate or promote gender ideology. Review email systems and turn off features that prompt users for their pronouns."

Pursuant to its authority under 5 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(1) and (a)(5), the U.S. Office of
Personnel Management (OPM) is providing the following initial guidance to agencies regarding
the President’s Executive Order entitled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and
Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Defending Women).
Steps to End Federal Funding of Gender Ideology: In light of Defending Women, each
agency should take prompt actions to end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote
or reflect gender ideology as defined in Section 2(f) of Defending Women. Specifically, agency
heads should take the following steps:
1. No later than 5:00 p.m. EST on Friday, January 31, 2025
a. Send an email to all agency employees announcing that the agency will be
complying with Defending Women and this guidance.
b. Review all agency programs, contracts, and grants, and terminate any that
promote or inculcate gender ideology.
c. Review all agency position descriptions and send a notification to all employees
whose position description involves inculcating or promoting gender ideology
that they are being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately as
the agency takes steps to close/end all initiatives, offices, and programs that
inculcate or promote gender ideology.
d. Take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that
inculcate or promote gender ideology.
e. Review agency email systems such as Outlook and turn off features that prompt
users for their pronouns.

f. Withdraw any final or pending documents, directives, orders, regulations,
materials, forms, communications, statements, and plans that inculcate or promote
gender ideology.
g. Cancel any trainings that inculcate or promote gender ideology or have done so in
the past.
h. Disband or cancel any employee resource groups or special emphasis programs
that inculcate or promote gender ideology or have done so in the past.
i. Review all agency forms that require entry of an individual’s sex and ensure that
all list male or female only, and not gender identity. Remove requests for
“gender” and substitute requests for “sex.”
j. Ensure that all applicable agency policies and documents, including forms, use
the term “sex” and not “gender.”
k. Ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men,
boys, or males) are designated by biological sex and not gender identity.
2. No later than 12:00 p.m. EST on Friday, February 7, 2025, report to OPM on all steps
taken to implement this guidance, including:
a. a complete list of actions taken in response to this guidance and Defending Women;
and
b. any agency plans to fully comply with this guidance and Defending Women.
Please contact OPM at defendingwomen@opm.gov if you have any questions regarding
this guidance. Please send any reports requested by this guidance to defendingwomen@opm.gov.
cc: Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs), Deputy CHCOs, Human Resources Directors,

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 29/01/2025

Diversity was a conservative compromise that liberals decided to accept and now we are here

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Laura Lopez @ohdearz.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Revoking approved grants for including work that was part of the evaluation criteria previously is like changing football rules now so the team with less points win because points are bad, and then saying as a consequence, Notre Dame is the current national champion. 🔭🧪⚛️

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Jo Wolfe, PhD @jopabinia.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

This isn't mine at all, but the Magic School Bus TV cartoon, which inspired untold millennials including myself, originated as an NSF grant 🧪 www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...

nsf.gov

NSF Award Search: Award # 9153967 - THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS: A CHILDREN'S TELEVISION SCIENCE SERIES Lock

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

The new general counsel for OPM—the office issuing all those deranged memos—is Andrew Kloster, a self-described “raging misogynist” with a public history of racist comments and a temporary restraining order for domestic violence who most recently worked for Matt Gaetz. www.pogo.org/investigatio...

Kloster is a fierce partisan. While he was working as deputy general counsel at OPM in 2020, the Associated Press reported that “Kloster worked as an observer for the Wisconsin Republican Party on election night and was accused of yelling at election workers and police in Green Bay, a claim he disputes.” He was directly involved in efforts to legally challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election by working for a controversial, taxpayer-funded effort in Wisconsin that ultimately found no widespread fraud. Days after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, he responded to a tweet raising a scenario that could spark a “civil war” with hand clap emojis between the words “Do it.”

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DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao) @deechiebaby.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

An NSF prize postdoc let me fund and help develop an audio course aligned with national standards for 3rd-5th grade science classrooms to use for free. Now current fellows can’t even get their next paychecks… www.sciencepodcastforkids.com/universe

sciencepodcastforkids.com

UNIVERSE AUDIO COURSE | Tumble Podcast

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 29/01/2025

lol @ shutting down the government to replace it with a computer program that randomly makes shit up

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Jeremy Yoder says no war @jbyoder.org · 29/01/2025

Deleted, reposting to clarify: the NSF statement does not define "DEIA", I haven't used that term in the proposal for my current NSF project. I could guess what it means, but that's not my job. I would need to know what specific activities I'm not allowed to do before I change any plans.

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Kristen Gardner-Fasanya, PhD @kristenelise20.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

I am an NSF ASCEND fellow and my February paycheck that I scheduled this morning was cancelled, and we don't have access to our accounts with the freeze. Will I get paid or will my fellowship just disappear? lovely.... Not what I expected to be my first post to #chemksy

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 28/01/2025

If you’re in the US and you’d like to know what projects and vital services federal grants currently fund in your state, you can search here: www.usaspending.gov And you can find the contact information for your elected representatives here: www.usa.gov/elected-offi... They need to hear from you.

usaspending.gov

USAspending.gov

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Sarah Tuttle @niais.cryptoanarchy.network · 28/01/2025

I will send a knit gift to the first University president to send an email that says "yes, this is fascism, and yes, we will fight it by your side."

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

I am begging the national media to start taking this seriously. Stop buying the claims that the framing of "temporary" or "pause." They are altering the review processes of federally funded scientific research from merit-based peer review processes to political screening by ideologues.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 28/01/2025

Federal grants are your tax dollars, put into projects that improve and enrich your community and your life. It is not okay for all those projects and the livelihoods of all the people who work to make them happen to be held hostage over some ideological gripe. www.usa.gov/elected-offi...

usa.gov

Find and contact elected officials | USAGov

Use USAGov’s Contact Your Elected Officials tool to get contact information for your members of Congress, the president, and state and local officials.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 28/01/2025

Universities rely enough on grants that they might eliminate positions — perhaps tenured faculty — if the financial situation becomes dire enough. But in the meantime, grad students, postdocs, and “soft money” researchers typically are paid ENTIRELY on federal grant funding. No grant = no salary.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 28/01/2025

I think some people hear “grants” and think that without them, scientists and government workers just have less stuff to play with at work. But grants fund salaries for students, academics, researchers, and people who work in all areas of public service. “Pausing” grants means people don’t eat.

washingtonpost.com

White House pauses all federal grants, sparking confusion

The Trump administration has put a hold on all federal financial grants and loans, affecting tens of billions of dollars in payments.

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

NEW — OMB temporarily pauses all agency grants and loans programs. Per copy of memo: "The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve."

SUBJECT:
Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs
'The American people elected Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States and gave him a mandate to increase the impact of every federal taxpayer dollar. In Fiscal Year 2024. of the nearly $10 trillion that the Federal Government spent, more than $3 trillion was Federal financial assistance, such as grants and loans. Career and political appointees in the Executive Branch have a duty to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities. Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending wokeness" and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again. The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.
This memorandum requires Federal agencies to identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President's policies and requirements. For example, during the initial days of his Administration, President Donald J Trump issued a series of executive orders to protect the American people and safeguard valuable taxpayer resources, including Protecting the American People Against Invasion (Jan. 20, 2025).
Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid (Jan 20, 2025), Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements (Jan. 20, 2025). Unleashing American Energy (Jan. 20.
2025). Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing (Jan. 20.

ent these orders, each agency must complete a comprehensive analysis of all jal assistance programs to identify programs, projects, and activities that any of the President's executive orders. In the interian, to the extent applicable law, Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency nay be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial
surice tot foreign nongovernmental organizations, DEL woke gender ideology, and the
pause will provide the Administration time to review agency programs of the funding for those programs consistent with the law and the he temporary pause will become effective on January 28, 2025, at 5:00
rehensive analysis. Federal agencies must immediately deadlines for assistance programs arising while the les must report this information to OMB along with an directs Federal agencies to pause all activities associated
conducting merit review panels
No later than Febrar
- 10. 2025, agencies shail submit to OMB detailed information on
any programs projects or activities subject to this pause. Each agency must pause. (i) issuance of disbursement of Federal funds under all open awards, and (il) other relevant
has reviewed provided guidance to your agency with respect to the information
act
recordin
grant and ptions allowing Federal agencies to issue new awards or take other case basis.
To the extent required by law, Federal agencies may continue nistrative actions. such as closeout of Federal awards (2 CFR 200.344), or expressly required by law

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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

...the document says programs affected are “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

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jeremy kaplowitz @jeremykaplowitz.com · 26/01/2025

i can see how you would come to this conclusion if your job didn't require you to ever be correct

Nate Silver: "Thinking ChatGPT is useless is midwit. It's a magic box that answers any question you ask it from levels ranging from modestly coherent to extremely proficient. If you haven't bothered to figure it out to derive some utility out of it then you're just being lazy tbh."

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 25/01/2025

Imagine if that was the military’s entire job, that defending people meant making sure that every day life was taken care of, rather than going out and doing all the terrible things the US military asks its young and disproportionately low income recruits to do

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DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao) @deechiebaby.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Hi Friends! Please consider reading and signing this open letter that @emilyjogriffith.bsky.social and I are sending to AAS in two days time! And share with your friends and their friends and all the friends!

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Emily Griffith @emilyjogriffith.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Hi all! @deechiebaby.bsky.social and I will be formally submitting this letter to AAS leadership on Tuesday, so please sign on if you haven't already! 🔭 Link to letter: tinyurl.com/AAS245-Letter

tinyurl.com

OpenLetterToAAS

An open letter by attendees of American Astronomical Society Meetings The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has a stated mission to “enhance and share humanity’s scientific understanding of the un...

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