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Karen Daniels

@karenedaniels.bsky.social
1.1K followers 273 following 318 posts

she's a purple-loving soft-matter physicist at NC State who dabbles in geophysics and engineering and textiles and food

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Reposted by Karen Daniels
Anders :) 🇧🇻🏳️‍🌈 @annesh.no · 25/11/2025
So this happened in Oslo yesterday. Four articulated buses got stuck in a roundabout.
Four articulated buses blocking each other in a roundabout making them stuck.
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Karen Daniels @karenedaniels.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
These are *not* the same logs we inoculated last May: these oyster mushrooms simply volunteered in some of the remaining logs. This harvest (the 2nd one this month) was 4.5 pounds, which will make for a very nice Thanksgiving feast!
A log with many giant oyster mushrooms sprouting out of it, with a person's hand and leg for scale
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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 21/11/2025
The organisers of the world's biggest planetary science conference are outlawing any DEI-related submissions because their lawyers are afraid they'll lose federal support. They're losing the support of the planetary science community fucking fast. www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
‘This is censorship.’ Conference requires abstracts to comply with Trump anti-DEI order
NASA-funded planetary science institute previously scrubbed hundreds of records from its archive
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Walker Bragman @walkerbragman.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
UPDATE: Summers’ page is now offline.
CAP Staff and Fellows page, which showed Larry Summers’ profile just a few minutes ago, now says “Lawrence H. Summers is no longer with the Center for American Progress.”
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Karen Daniels @karenedaniels.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Got my trusty Acme Thunderer at the ready.
A classic sports whistle, marked "The Acme Thunderer, Made in England"
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David Ambaras @borderlander62.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
CBP reported to be coming to Raleigh tomorrow. Here's the Siembra NC hotline. Please share widely.
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Roland Hatzenpichler @environmicrobio.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
“The prohibited activities would include joint research, co-authorship on papers, and advising a foreign graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. The language is retroactive, meaning any interactions during the previous 5 years could make a scientist ineligible for future federal funding.”
science.org
U.S. Congress considers sweeping ban on Chinese collaborations
Researchers speak out against proposal that would bar funding for U.S. scientists working with Chinese partners or training Chinese students
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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer. He is a computer safety researcher. And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine. In under 1600 words. aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

I Want You to Understand Chicago
Politics Chicago
2025-11-08

I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time.

Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again.

An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next.

Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st.

Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
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APS DSNP @aps-dsnp.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
📸 Image of the month: November 2025!⁣ This month we are delighted to feature “𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐲𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬” by Maher et al. 🔗 doi.org/10.1103/l5hk...
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NC State Physics and Astronomy @ncstatephysics.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Don’t miss out on the colloquium next Monday from 4-5pm in 2010 Biltmore Hall!! Dr. Vashan Wright, from University of California San Diego and Scripps Institute will discuss “Searching for Evidence of Water in the Martian Crust”. | More info: physics.sciences.ncsu.edu/event/physic...
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 01/11/2025
We have progressed from data collection to data analysis.
My 11-year-old sitting with her pile of Halloween candy, sorting it into a bar graph
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Karen Daniels @karenedaniels.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
Happy Halloween!
Person dressed in all black with a safety vest that says "Louvre Personnel" and a person dressed in all white carrying some "jewels" (green Mardi Gras beads decorated with tinfoil filigree) nestled on a pillowed box.
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Dr. Lisa Corrigan @drlisacorrigan.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
In social movement studies, we talk about how marches and protests expand the threshold of acceptable risk so that people take more and bigger social risks IN PUBLIC, EN MASSE. This is extremely important for the bourgeois white folks holding signs and building social rapport.
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Karen Daniels @karenedaniels.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
On the subject of cello-ing ... if you've got kids who'd enjoying hearing Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, @chphilharmonia.bsky.social will be performing it tomorrow at 3pm in Hill Hall @ UNC. Your kids will also have a chance to conduct us playing Strauss's Radetzky March.
Poster with the folllowing text:

The Chapel Hill Philharmonia
A Children's Concert
Donald Oehler, conductor

3pm Sunday October 19, 2025
Hall Hall, Moeser Auditorium, UNC Campus
Free Admission

Featuring The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra by Benjamin Britten and more.
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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Dartmouth is OUT! Thank goodness... a friend at U of A and I have been playing "Who will be the last of the 9 standing?" and it's not gonna be us!
Dear Secretary McMahon, Ms. Mailman, and Mr. Haley,
I appreciated the opportunity to speak with you yesterday.
I welcome further engagement around how we can (a) enhance the long-standing
partnership between the federal government and this country's leading research
universities and (b) ensure that higher education stays focused on academic
excellence. As I shared on the call, I do not believe that the involvement of the
government through a compact--whether it is a Republican- or Democratic-led
White House-
is the right way to focus America's leading colleges and universities
on their teaching and research mission.
Our universities have a responsibility to set our own academic and institutional
policies, guided by our mission and values, our commitment to free expression, and
our obligations under the law. Staying true to this responsibility is what will help
American higher education build bipartisan public trust and continue to uphold its
place as the envy of the world.
We remain open to other ways to work with the federal government to enhance
higher education.
Best,
Sian Leah Beilock
President
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Liz Neeley @lizneeley.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Solidarity!! Last week, Indiana University fired the director of student media & halted print on the Indiana Daily Student newspaper. Yesterday, Purdue’s student paper printed the banned edition & drove two hours to deliver it. Incredible www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/l...
heraldtimesonline.com
Purdue student journalists deliver special 'solidarity' newspaper to IU Bloomington campus
The special edition blasted across town features columns from IDS and Exponent editors, alongside QR codes to support both student papers.
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Karen Daniels @karenedaniels.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Carrboro, NC has a sizeable fraction of its population talking about #NoKings today, high energy that I hope translates to action.
Crowd with signs in front of some roofed town commons structures
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North Carolina Conference of the AAUP @ncaaup.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Here in Carrboro, NC, and across the world, academic freedom requires #NoKings @aaup.org
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David S. Cohen @dsc250.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
TL;DR: Fuck off Trump.
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david jon furbish @davidjonfurbish.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
For those who are new to or already use LAMMPS… with reference to a new GUI arxiv.org/abs/2503.14020
arxiv.org
A Set of Tutorials for the LAMMPS Simulation Package
The availability of open-source molecular simulation software packages allows scientists and engineers to focus on running and analyzing simulations without having to write, parallelize, and validate ...
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 01/10/2025
MW correctly reading the room
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Dr. Dawn Wright @deepseadawn.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
"Trump directives have undermined a 75-year history of independence and threaten the National Science Foundation's vaunted track record for excellence" www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪 🌊 ⚒️
science.org
Under Trump, NSF faces worst crisis in its 75-year history
Political directives have undermined agency's independence and record of supporting the best basic research
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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 26/09/2025
This is a rather unfortunate change that seems to have come as a surprise to just about everyone. FYI for students and PIs who were looking to apply for the NSF GRFP
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itati santamaria de Collins @itativcs.latinsky.app · 26/09/2025
🧪The NSF has made changes to the GRFP solicitation and eligibility TODAY that may change your eligibility! PLEASE read through the solicitation if you were planning to apply and speak to your mentors about the merits of applying: www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
nsf.gov
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
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Jason “Obstacle to Progress” Williams @jasonwilliamsny.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment. The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/
jasonjwilliamsny.github.io
An Open Letter to U.S. STEM Leadership on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program
An Open Letter to U.S. STEM Leadership on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
The white supremacist conceit that everyone in antiquity was living under some kind of global jim crow segregation is just complete bullshit news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...
news.harvard.edu
Pure bloodlines? Ancestral homelands? DNA science says no. — Harvard Gazette
Geneticist explains recent analyses made possible by tech advances show human history to be one of mixing, movement, displacement.
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Physics Magazine @physicsmagazine.aps.org · 24/09/2025
When stressed, amorphous materials undergo plastic transformations aided by low-frequency vibrational modes. Now researchers have found the same association in an entirely separate class of materials: active matter.
physics.aps.org
Active Matter Breaks like an Amorphous Plastic
Shearing a dusty plasma with a laser shows how vibrational modes lead to weak points in an amorphous active system.
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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪 Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students. I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:
sciencenews.org
How a Harvard maverick forever changed our concept of the stars
At just 25, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin applied quantum physics to a treasure trove of astronomical observations to show that stars are mostly hydrogen and helium.
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Matt Shipman (he/him) @shiplives.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
In 2024, a team of science writers at AAAS ran a long-term experiment to see if ChatGPT could cut it writing news items about scientific research. Here's what they learned. Worth a look. 🧪 #scicomm www.science.org/content/blog...
science.org
Can ChatGPT help science writers?
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Alban Sauret @albansauret.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Excited to share our new preprint on the discharge of granular materials from a silo. Led by @ramsudhirsharma.bsky.social , we went after a simple question: What is the flow rate through the opening? The answer turns out to be "simple" and quite general. See more here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.14415 [1/4]
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Of all the stupid things that this regime has done, this is right up near the top. Postdoctoral researchers come to the US on H-1B visas. This will further destroy the US science enterprise. Stupid stupid stupid.
cbsnews.com
Trump administration to add $100,000 fee for H-1B visas
The Trump administration is targeting a visa widely used by tech companies and other employers to hire foreign workers.
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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
NEW: Tonight, this is all that remains of Nepal's seat of government in Kathmandu. Singha Durbar was the largest palace in Asia; home to the Prime Minister & government offices. A 48-hour revolution, led by Gen Z protestors, has toppled the government & left large parts of the capital in flames.
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Casey terHorst @ecoevolab.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
The GRFP lives!! (due end of October) www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
nsf.gov
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
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Assigned Media @assignedmedia.org · 08/09/2025
The constitution is supposed to apply equally to all Americans. The Department of Justice is flirting with removing constitutional protections from anyone with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. The top stories in trans news to start your week: www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...
assignedmedia.org
Department of Justice Considers Throwing Out Constitution for Trans Americans — Assigned
Leading Off: The Department of Justice toys with the idea of banning trans Americans from owning guns. The NRA comes to an unexpected defense of the trans community. Texas successfully passes a bathro...
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 08/09/2025
The US Administration has thus imposed a de-facto ban on most professional and academic interaction with a range of countries around the world. Barring those without a year of planning (or more, at their whim) equates to a ban.
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Karen Daniels @karenedaniels.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
@paperhandpuppet.org's 25th anniversary follows NC (and them, specifically) getting hammered by water from Helene and Chantal over the past year. Yet ... water remains "The Gift" (this year's show) we all depend on, represented in puppetry at the Forest Theater.
internally-illuminated puppet of a humpback, held aloft above the audience who are now now darkness at the end of the showpuppet-characters of real women who fight for clean water, and puppets of various creatures who depend on it, in an outdoor stone theater in the middle of a forest5 human-sized beaver puppets building a dam at the edge of the stage
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N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
Busy yesterday so I missed that Anthropic had settled. Figures. LLMs have violated thousands of copyrights; they *knew* it would kill them if it went to trial. Anyway, the Authors Guild has some useful info here: authorsguild.org/news/what-au...
authorsguild.org
What Authors Need to Know About the $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement  - The Authors Guild
Today, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle claims that it downloaded pirated books to train its AI systems—the largest U.S. copyright settlement in history. The parties in Bartz v Anthropic...
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Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 06/09/2025
Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.
theatlantic.com
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI
Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.
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Karen Hallion Kenney @karenhallionkenney.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Hegseth is now the Secretary of War, which is fitting I guess as RFK jr is basically the Secretary of Pestilence. We just need Famine and Death to round it out.
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AAUP @aaup.org · 04/09/2025
Here’s a 🧵 on key points in Judge Burroughs’ order in the AAUP/Harvard AAUP’s lawsuit against Trump’s DOJ for ideological funding cuts at Harvard: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 03/09/2025
The Everglades Concentration Camp costs 3x one of these trains.
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Karen Daniels @karenedaniels.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
We have a double-header out this week: two papers examining how the stress-force-fabric relation manifests in both annular shear (PRL doi.org/10.1103/gp8t...) and more varied loading conditions (PRE doi.org/10.1103/rv25...). The anisotropies in the contact forces set the response to loading, (1/3)
doi.org
Particle Scale Anisotropy Controls Bulk Properties in Sheared Granular Materials
The bulk dynamics of dense granular materials arise through a combination of particle-scale and mesoscale effects. Theoretical and numerical studies have shown that collective effects are created by p...
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AAUP @aaup.org · 02/09/2025
From Durham, NC to Washington, LA, Chicago, Boston, & dozens of cities in between, higher ed workers stood up today for the freedom & independence of higher education, because the future of our democracy depends on it. #LaborDay #DefendHigherEd #WorkersOverBillionaires @ncaaup.bsky.social
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NPR @npr.org · 30/08/2025
It's one of the most famous rock songs ever — Bohemian Rhapsody — and now, for the first time, it's been translated with Queen's blessing into Zulu.
n.pr
Queen's Classic 'Bohemian Rhapsody' finds a new voice in Zulu
It's one of the most famous rock songs ever — Bohemian Rhapsody — and now, for the first time, it's been translated with Queen's blessing into Zulu.
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Karen Daniels @karenedaniels.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
I'm glad Forbes is covering this important issue. Talented students staying in the US after they complete their degrees have enriched all our lives, but future students won't be about to join a degree program if they won't be able to stay long enough to finish it! www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...
forbes.com
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APS DSOFT @apsdsoft.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
DSOFT invites students and recent graduates to participate in our Students’ Virtual Conference, on November 6th (10 a.m.-4 p.m. ET). The conference aims to discuss the latest advancements in soft matter physics by students. If you wish to present your work, please find details in the post below!
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Andrew D Thaler @drandrewthaler.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Welp, I guess I'm back on my tool time rants. So let me tell you about probably the most consequential tool maker of the last two centuries. A person who completely changed how we cut and process lumber. A Shaker woman named Tabitha Babbitt.
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