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gilesh.bsky.social

@gilesh.bsky.social
23 followers 28 following 15 posts
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gilesh.bsky.social @gilesh.bsky.social · 1h
Any society that glorifies executions is sick.
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Robert Komaniecki @komaniecki.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
“Why shouldn’t I custom-generate all of my child’s media?” Because the point of children’s literature, music, art, and movies is not to optimize leisure time, it is to provide your children with cultural, emotional, societal, and epistemic touch points via which they can relate to the wider world.
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026
I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 20/09/2026
“The arrangement would give Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a direct role in determining how NIH distributes its $48 billion in congressionally-appropriated money.” Bypassing the many checks and balances at NIH on grant funding decisions.
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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I don’t like it when outsiders say Florida is stupid but I live here, I can say this is stupid. Save us @davidjolly.bsky.social! www.npr.org/2026/09/15/n...
npr.org
In Florida, textbook publishers are minimizing or removing climate change coverage
The words "climate change" are slowly being removed from textbooks in Florida and from the state's education standards.
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Ben Eltham @beneltham.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
You will be amazed to learn that some of the people who we invite to our country to pay huge fees to cross-subsidise domestic students and prop up our entire university system also have partners and children www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...
abc.net.au
Family visas for foreign students targeted in migration crackdown
International students would effectively be banned from bringing family members to Australia under a long-awaited overhaul of the immigration system.
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gilesh.bsky.social @gilesh.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This is incredibly important. Honest and complete government statistics are what allow us to hold government to account.
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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
In 1937, Stalin's census found the famine killed millions.⁣ ⁣ His government suppressed the report and shot the statisticians who made it.⁣ ⁣ Three weeks ago, that kind of suppression was illegal in America. Now it isn't. newsletter.platypuseconomics.com/p/…
newsletter.platypuseconomics.com
The Sentence That Used to Protect American Statistics
"Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity." That line governed the Census Bureau and then the White House quietly disappeared it.
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Working on a newsletter issue about the costs of hypervigilance in every software-mediated interaction nowadays, but this pretty much sums it up
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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 29/08/2026
Here’s a map I made a few years ago (with R and sf) of every river, stream, and waterway in the CONUS. This is freely available USGS data. I wanted a nice poster for myself and boy it looks great at wall size. Anyone can make this kind of thing. Agencies like the USGS have so much good stuff.
American rivers, streams, and waterways, mapped from USGS data
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 27/08/2026
There is currently a Wikipedia edit war on the Great Lakes Wikipedia pages because everything is so stupid
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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I wrote about the Reflecting Pool fiasco, and why its most important lesson isn't about corruption or weaponization or politicization. Subscribe to my new blog, it's free! michaelgrunwald.substack.com/p/reflecting...
michaelgrunwald.substack.com
Reflecting on the Reflecting Pool, and Whether Our Government Can Manage a Two-Car Funeral
Corruption, weaponization, and politicization are all bad. But don't forget incompetence!
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 12/08/2026
How much income would it take from the richest 10% of people in the world to match that of the poorest 10%? Our colleague Pablo Arriagada calculated the answer using data from the World Bank's Poverty and Inequality Platform.
Pie chart of income shares where a 1.9% slice of post-tax income from the richest 10% equals the entire annual income of the poorest 10%. Source: World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (2025). License: CC BY.
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Deva Woodly @devawo.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This is a very serious problem for libraries, archives, and knowledge-keepers of all kinds. If you don’t control access to your collections, *you do not have collections.* If we do not have permanent access to records, stories, & sources of knowledge then our histories and memories are not our own.
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
At today's UKRI board meeting, the fate of UK particle physics and astronomy will likely be decided. Have we done enough to convince the powers-that-be to halt the proposed funding cuts? 🤞 Read Prof. Hiranya Peiris in Nature today eloquently explaining why these cuts are wrong.🧪🔭⚛️ 📖: rdcu.be/friwM
Restructuring research funding as a choice between discovery and application gets the economics wrong, the evidence wrong and the people wrong.

A premise is gaining traction in science policy on both sides of the Atlantic: that fundamental and applied research are competing claims on the same budget, and that the balance must shift towards application. In the USA, the current administration has proposed cuts of billions of dollars to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. In the UK, the national funding agency UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is restructuring its portfolio around government growth priorities, with curiosity-driven research nominally protected but the grant lines that actually fund investigators under severe pressure. The language varies — ‘doing fewer things better’, ‘aligning research with industrial strategy’ — but the underlying logic is the same. Fundamental science, the argument goes, is a luxury that becomes dispensable when budgets are tight. This premise is wrong, and the consequences of acting on it are already visible.
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CuriousCat @felissapien.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
The work we did with kākāpō is now not possible because the govt has said that our funding should go to science that makes money. Members of our current govt have said that if an endangered species is in the way of a mine or a new road then it’s goodbye #nzpol peterkdearden.substack.com/p/on-kakapo
peterkdearden.substack.com
on Kākāpō
and extinction
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 23/06/2026
This is such a bummer.
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mlongfield.bsky.social @mlongfield.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Reminder that Bill 212 not only sought to rip out bike lanes, but also indemnify the province when people were killed or seriously injured as a result.
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Robin Z @firepile.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Possibly the best way to phish academics would be to just send them email that looks like a request to review an article and embed your malware in the "decline to review" link
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Stacey Ogden 🦔 @labogden.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Make some noise about this 🧪 www.npr.org/2026/06/03/n...
npr.org
President Trump seeks control of science funding
The White House Office of Management and Budget is moving to take more control of billions of dollars in federal grants. Critics say the proposed change would jeopardize the integrity of U.S. science.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 29/05/2026
Of all the harm this administration has done to US science, today's proposed changes to the way federal grants are awarded and administered is the most damaging yet. The text of the federal register document is impenetrably tedious by design, so here's an excellent summary of what it says.
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Michael D. Green, PhD @michaeldgreen.phd · 28/05/2026
President of MIT not mincing words today in @statnews.com www.statnews.com/2026/05/27/s...
So let me say it as clearly as I can: Without basic scientific research, supported by the kind of farsighted public investment that allows large-scale, undirected, curiosity-driven inquiry, the scientific pipeline will run dry.
In daily life, people may not feel the effects right away, or even in 10 years. But we will feel it. And when someone we love needs therapies that could have emerged but didn't or when other countries now
investing in science can launch new science-based industries or run their societies on vast resources of fusion energy or reap the benefits of quantum computing power or advanced medical breakthroughs, America will wish it sustained its leadership in scientific research here and now.
Sally Kornbluth is the president of MIT.
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public health guy @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
quite a headline (and it’s right)
theguardian.com
US is ‘simply choosing not to stop’ Ebola outbreak after massive public health cuts, experts say
Hundreds of cases reported in the DRC after USAID has been dismantled and key scientific research canceled
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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
I made a really really long chart -- longer than a CVS receipt -- but I did it for a reason. substack.com/home/post/p-...
substack.com
How to Lie with a Chart, by the U.S. Government
Charts are a beautiful language. Which is why this kind of cherry-picking is such a betrayal.
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Angus Johnston @angus.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
There is no way to do anything interesting in any sustained way in any field without immersion in that field. That's just a fundamental fact of being human, and there's no getting around it.
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Dr. Adeene Denton @spacewhalerider.com · 29/04/2026
As a Pluto scientist, it's wild to "make Pluto a planet again" while decimating the careers of those of us that study it! The idea of dominance in space and planetary science supersedes the actual practice of planetary science.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 28/04/2026
1) There's no reason an administrator at NASA should care how a Solar System body is categorized. 2) NASA isn't the org that makes classification determinations for Solar System objects. 3) If Isaacman wants Pluto reclassified again, he can lobby the International Astronomical Union on his own time.
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Barbara Pocock @barbarapocock.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Sustained underfunding of CSIRO is degrading Australia’s scientific workforce & sovereign capability. CSIRO workers are highly skilled & essential. Specialised scientific expertise takes years, often decades, to build. Losing their expertise would be a serious blow.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 23/04/2026
When Einstein developed general relativity the closest thing to a practical application that could even be imagined at the time was a slightly more precise description of where to look for the planet Mercury in the sky, and yet now we’d all be literally lost without it. Anyway: fund basic research.
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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
A reminder that the 🌎 is an excellent planet, the only one we've discovered with reliable wi-fi and breathable air; we should really try to stop eating it. Happy 🌎 Day! The book-length version is here: www.simonandschuster.com/books/We-Are...
simonandschuster.com
We Are Eating the Earth
From the author of New York Times bestseller The New New Deal, a groundbreaking piece of reportage from the trenches of the next climate war: the f...
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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Redirecting funding from basic science to applied science isn't just wrong because you need to start with basics - because products are assembled out of *many* ideas. It's like asking farmers to pivot from making tomatoes, cheese, grains, mushrooms, herbs, and focus on making pizzas.
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Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
“The FTC does not have our backs, that much is clear” statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/04/11/t...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
We need your help please. Please share. Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico is a UNESCO World Heritage Site containing over a thousand years of Indigenous history ancient ruins, sacred sites, and cultural landmarks built by the ancestors of today’s Pueblo peoples.
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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Here is the plan to stop it slow it down in court, then win the 2026 midterms and elect a Congress that will block it. But we need pressure and we need it now. These companies built their entire business on these lands. It’s time they said so out loud. Contact them today. Use this message:
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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
The Australian government have decided not to pursue membership of the European Southern Observatory, the world’s largest astronomy organisation and one where membership was the main request of the decadal review. What are we going to do?
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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Trump is paying a foreign company $1B not to produce clean energy. I think this might be the most insane public policy I’ve ever seen. www.eenews.net/articles/int...
eenews.net
Interior, TotalEnergies strike deal ending US offshore wind projects
The agreement marks the latest blow by the Trump administration against the U.S. offshore wind industry.
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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Things are not okay.
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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
On immigration: "I often am asked to speak as an economist. And what we should never lose sight of is that each of us is a moral being. And you, as I, have to decide how we feel about this form of rhetoric."
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Tamar Haspel @tamarhaspel.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Can't say this often enough! An acre of solar produces 50-300 times more energy than an acre of biofuels. Stop using food for fuel.
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Tamar Haspel @tamarhaspel.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
I did not know this and I think it's important. If you see a problem with a paper published in The Lancet, a high-status journal, you have to catch it within 2 weeks of publication of the paper, and your letter must be less than 250 words. WTF @thelancet.com??
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Tamar Haspel @tamarhaspel.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
Roses are red Let's be realistic The key to nutrition Is biostatistic.
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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
I realise I'm just a freak, but living in a multicultural city is the best thing of all time, it's just the best possible human experience and i can not understand why anyone on earth would be like "weve got to destroy this"
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Ruth Spanos @rspanos.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
We absolutely should be competing in renewables. Instead we are stuck wasting tax dollars propping up antiquated industries because they are propping up our antiquated leaders.
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