iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Adrian Fraser

Yvette Cendes @whereisyvette.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

My name (and research) is in today’s edition of the @nytimes.com! 🤩 🔭🧪🎢

Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Nobel prize couldn’t have gone to a nicer person, based on what his students told me when we were in grad school. They said he was an immaculately kind and supportive advisor

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Reposted by Adrian Fraser

Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

"The paper doesn't explain what parts are important. What parts are routine?” …this episode is a reminder that mathematics is about more than just finding a solution, said Maynard. "It wasn't about only answering this problem, it was about the human understanding behind it," he said.”

npr.org

AI solved one of math's hardest problems. Humanity learned nothing (so far)

OpenAI beat humans to solving the Navier-Stokes problem, but mathematicians say the AI's solution isn't telling them much.

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Thank you for coming to my rant/TED talk. Please hire me

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

There’s a lot to like about this book but not this part. IMO one should first introduce vectors as things that have magnitude and direction and can be added together and rescaled, and then you say that any “function” that takes in and spits out vectors that is also linear can be written as a matrix

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The linear algebra chapter of the book I’m teaching out of starts with matrices as arrays of numbers that can be added, multiplied, transposed, etc before introducing vectors. This seems criminal. Wtf is the point of a matrix to someone who hasn’t yet been told what a vector is?

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Reposted by Adrian Fraser

Cara Giovanetti @idontevencara.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Heard a suggestion today to ask only for a researcher's top ~five most important publications as part of postdoc/faculty applications, to disincentivize cranking out as many LLM-assisted papers as possible. Apparently this strategy is gaining traction in Europe, US has yet to catch on. ⚛️🧪

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I guess what I'd like but do not expect is some memory of this event. For next time the right wing press or politicians act horrified at some perceived leftist slight against The Troops they're just reminded that, no, we've seen their revealed actual values, they don't actually care; and we move on.

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Really thoughtful thread. It’s like how the point of homework problems isn’t to write down the correct answer, but to struggle and figure out why some answers can’t be right before finding the correct one Main point I disagree with is I don’t think this is unique to (pure) math

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

By their own admission, their (very elegant and simple) analysis predicts helical flows should be driven by salt fingers relatively ubiquitously, but NOT in the regime where my simulations found them. So the mystery continues, at least partly

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Reposted by Adrian Fraser

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The culprit? Like last year, NSF is spending more up front, discontinuing multi-year awards and paying off the mortgage on existing awards. But FY26 and FY25 have similar budgets. What accounts for the difference is that NSF has withheld $1 billion—$1,016,862,632, to be precise.

Chart showing total grants much are much lower in FY26 and FY25

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Reposted by Adrian Fraser

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Scoop: For nearly a year, NSF has struggled to make new grants. Now we know that it will not catch up. In fact, NSF will award just 6,100 new grants—a 30% y/o/y decline, itself down from a previous avg. of 11,000+. In fact, the last time NSF awarded so few grants was in the early '80s.

nature.com

Exclusive: NSF set to issue lowest number of new grants in four decades

The US science-funding agency is withholding $1 billion of its budget so that the money can go to a special White House project.

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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

A vulture goes to check in for his flight carrying a dead armadillo under each wing. The desk attendant asks “Are you going to check those?” The vulture responds “no, they’re carrion.”

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Dan of the Year @downwithdan.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Dang they really got a category for everything

THR
The Hollywood Reporter *
@THR
Louis C.K. Wins Grammy for First Special Since Sexual Misconduct Allegations

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

If there’s one thing Trump and I agree on, it’s that more stellar astrophysicists should…

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Just gonna copy and paste this transcript right into my annual progress report

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

I am SO ready to explain why my NSF-funded research on MHD turbulence aligns with WH priorities bsky.app/profile/atru...

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

I don’t understand bsky.app/profile/tito...

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Rep. Mike Levin @levin.house.gov · 22/06/2026

Disabled students in this country are about to get bounced between three different federal agencies just to get the education they’re legally entitled to.

nytimes.com

Trump Breaks Up Education Dept., Prompting Worries Over Civil Rights

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Reposted by Adrian Fraser

Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 09/06/2026

Planetary Science xkcd.com/3255/

Comic. [Article titled “Evidence for liquid water on the surface of a terrestrial planet in the habitable zone,” with unreadable text but including pictures of a beach and of people playing on a beach.] [caption] Planetary science journals have asked astronomers to please stop submitting their vacation photos.

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Reposted by Adrian Fraser

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 29/05/2026

It’s truly astonishing to see how comprehensively the US government is tearing down every part of the system that has made it up until now a world-leading power in science, research, and technological development. The entire world will suffer from this wanton destruction.

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anil oza @aniloza.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖

Twitter thread from Thomas Dietterich, reading "Attention
@arxiv
authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. 1/
3:03 PM · May 14, 2026
·
66.7K
Views
Relevant
View quotes

Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s). 2/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
We have recently clarified our penalties for this. If a submission contains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation, this means we can't trust anything in the paper. 3/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue. 4/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
Examples of incontrovertible evidence: hallucinated references, meta-comments from the LLM ("here is a 200 word summary; would you like me to make any changes?"; "the data in this table is illustrative, fill it in with the real numbers from your experiments") end/"

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Reposted by Adrian Fraser

sanjana! @sanjanacurtis.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Reading a fellowship announcement that’s just like Harvard Harvard Princeton Princeton Stanford Stanford. Like congrats for sure to the awardees but maybe they should just tell people at other schools to not bother trying lol

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Unfortunately, if an ultimate regime does exist, then it seems to be beyond the reach of what one can access with small-/moderate-scale CPU resources! I tried to find it in hopes of supporting this paper, but I didn't see it. Maybe I just needed to throw more CPU hours at the problem, who knows.

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

This question matters to astrophysicists because it determines how much of the inferred mixing in the deep interiors of RGB stars can be attributed to hydrodynamic thermohaline convection, and how much of the mixing must instead come from MHD effects, rotation, or other mixing mechanisms altogether

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

My recent paper took nu -> 0 along one path in parameter space, and supported the Brown model (which does depend on nu / non-ultimate). Here, Valentin makes a convincing case that there might exist other relevant paths in parameter space where one could see nu-independent (ultimate regime) scalings

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

It basically asks the following sorta-equivalent questions: - Should the global properties / overall mixing efficiency of thermohaline convection (salt fingers) depend on viscosity in the nu -> 0 limit? - Is there an ultimate regime here? - Should MESA users use Kippenhahn or Brown prescriptions?

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

If you liked/understood the quoted post (looking at you @chowlandgfd.bsky.social), or otherwise care about salt fingers, ultimate regimes, or the different thermohaline models in MESA, then you should check out this neat paper on the arXiv today from Valentin Skoutnev: arxiv.org/abs/2605.038...

arxiv.org

Unifying Transport Models of Thermohaline Convection in Stars

Thermohaline convection is a standard chemical mixing process in stellar interiors, yet its mixing efficiency is not fully settled. Competing theories predict turbulent diffusion coefficients, $D_μ$, ...

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Reposted by Adrian Fraser

James Davenport @jradavenport.com · 28/04/2026

I feel like we’re willing to make Pluto a planet again, at least provisionally, if they’re willing to fund astrophysics. I’d say $100 billion/year is reasonable But if you keep cutting our budgets, I swear we’ll keep eliminating them. Hope you like a three planet solar system!

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

I’m tired so I first read this as “stardew valley” and was ready to fight about it

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Reposted by Adrian Fraser

Adrian Price-Whelan @adrian.pw · 20/04/2026

Reminder: we are hiring a Research Software Engineer @flatironinstitute.org !

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

The entire NASA budget, which includes a lot of science that helps us fix earth, is still just 0.35% of the entire US federal budget. We can fix earth while also supporting research in the basic sciences.

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

It’s not an either/or choice! We can eliminate poverty and also fund research in astronomy/space science!

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 11/04/2026

i firmly believe that kennedy wants preventable diseases to rip through american communities since, in his warped mind, those who survive without vaccines will have proven themselves “healthy.”

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my entire life,” Rep Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) said, fighting back tears. The Tucson Democrat described the way people were laying down inside as “like sardines.” “It is frightening in there,” Grijalva said. “It is disgusting.”

azmirror.com

Surprise inspection finds ICE stuffing migrants 'like sardines' into a facility with no bed, showers

Three lawmakers visited a Mesa ICE facility unannounced and found overcrowding, with 250 detainees packed into rooms "like sardines"

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Yvette Cendes @whereisyvette.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Exciting good news- I’m delighted to share that the new astronomy minor at the University of Oregon has been APPROVED and sent to the registrar! Starting this Fall 2026 we will be offering the FIRST EVER astronomy program in the entire state of Oregon!!! 🥳🤩🔭🧪🎢

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

You can read more about Keith here: www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2... The world is certainly made less without him. I think we'll keep seeing far-reaching impacts of his work for many years to come.

colorado.edu

Keith Julien, world-renowned CU applied mathematician, passes away at 58

Longtime leader in his department and university made significant contributions to his discipline and also helped engineer the reorganization of the College of

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

This makes simulations difficult. In 2025, we (incl. Keith) did the asymptotic case of infinite diffusion and stratification. Here, I show how the same ideas Keith developed in rotating convection enable 3D simulations of thermohaline mixing in astrophysically relevant regimes.

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

My paper above is heavily inspired by Keith's work, and extends the idea to what stellar astrophysicists call thermohaline mixing (salt fingers, to oceanographers), a form of turbulence that drives chemical mixing in a wide range of stars. But stars are very thermally diffusive and stratified!

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Keith finally answered that question a couple years ago, right around the time that he passed away. The papers were published posthumously, and an excellent, accessible summary can be found here: doi.org/10.1017/jfm....

doi.org

A new spin on rotating convection | Journal of Fluid Mechanics | Cambridge Core

A new spin on rotating convection - Volume 1014

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

20ish years ago, Keith showed how to simulate convection in the asymptotic limit of infinitely rapid rotation (QG, basically). But if you can do the infinitely rapid case and the moderate case, what does it take to do the extreme-but-finite case directly relevant to astro-/geophysical problems?

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Adrian Fraser @fraserlaser.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

A similar problem has long plagued geophysical fluid dynamicists studying rotating convection (e.g., in planetary cores). People were able to simulate convection with moderate rotation, but never the rapid rotation relevant to real objects. Then, Keith Julien came around and revolutionized the field

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