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Minas Karamanis

@minaskar.bsky.social
1K followers 596 following 72 posts

Astrophysicist and proud cat dad. He/him Views are my own.

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Reposted by Minas Karamanis
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 09/09/2026
AI companies: This technology we’re developing is dangerous and might destroy humanity and we don’t know how to stop it Other people: So we should strictly regulate it, create legislative guard rails, and monitor its development? AI companies: lol no the opposite of all that & give us more money
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Minas Karamanis @minaskar.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Unsurprisingly there's a significant overlap with that war on science book-slop author list
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Daphne Keller @daphnek.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
This data on self-censorship among U.S. academic scientists and engineers -- not even humanities people, this is STEM -- is so disturbing. theconversation.com/self-censors...
How are scientists adjusting the way they work during the Trump administration?
The survey asked a representative sample of university based scientists: "Since January 2025, have you intentionally done any of the following due to concerns about possible negative consequences for you, your work environment, or your career?" [then data]
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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 31/07/2026
“Some people think we can wait and, when it gets too bad, then we reduce emissions and things will get better again. People don’t realise that we can’t make it get better again. We can only prevent it from getting much worse.”
theguardian.com
‘We can’t make it better again’: what Europe’s wildfires tell us about the climate crisis
In this week’s newsletter: As France and Spain battle huge fires in this summer of relentless heat, will it be enough to spur us to take action?
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Minas Karamanis @minaskar.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Familiar from the other end of Europe. My undergrad physics department was overwhelmingly applied, and you could watch a professor's face fall when a student said they wanted astronomy for their thesis
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Reposted by Minas Karamanis
Lee Billings @leebillings.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Now on @sciam.bsky.social: Has NASA already found life on Mars? A controversial new assessment of half-century-old data suggests the space agency’s life-hunting Mars lander Viking 1 found exactly what it was looking for. By @nadiadrake.bsky.social. www.scientificamerican.com/article/has-...
scientificamerican.com
Has NASA already found life on Mars?
In searches for past and present Martian life, some scientists say we’ve been too cautious to see what’s right in front of us
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Think of all the awesome science-ing we could do with an extra £20M......🧪
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
I'm absolutely devastated for colleagues at Jodrell Bank who found out this morning that funding for the UK's e-MERLIN radio telescope array will be terminated. This is a short-sighted move, to save a tiny fraction of the overall UK science budget. #SaveJodrellBank 🔭🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands
Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.
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Minas Karamanis @minaskar.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
turns out the reason he only does podcasts is that podcasters don't ask follow-ups
gizmodo.com
Elon Musk Melts Down Over Perfectly Normal Questions in Wild New Interview
"Maybe some people do loathe me. And that's probably true. I don't care," said Musk.
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Minas Karamanis @minaskar.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Love how the right-wing trolls who spent months crying that Nolan’s Odyssey would be "too woke" instantly pivoted to crying that he committed an "even bigger atrocity" by making it an apocalyptic nightmare instead. The whiplash is crazy.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Ty Cobb, a former White House attorney under Trump 1, believes Trump’s speech is intended to justify declaring a national emergency around the midterm elections. Cobb suggests Trump aims to intimidate voters, seize voting machines, and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
pbs.org
Trump setting stage to declare emergency around midterms, former White House attorney says
For perspective on what President Trump is trying to achieve with Thursday night's speech, the limits of his authority and the potential consequences for future elections, Geoff Bennett spoke with Ty ...
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 14/07/2026
This morning in Biddeford, Maine, a 26-year-old man said goodbye to his wife and daughter and left for work. Moments later he was dead, shot in the head by ICE agents, the second man ICE has killed in six days. ICE is killing our neighbors. ICE cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 05/07/2026
My upcoming book is absolutely packed to the brim with em dashes—more em dashes than any well-adjusted human being could possibly need or want—and if any of you tries to claim they are the result of some soulless LLM rather than my own unhinged compulsion I will fight you.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
ICE is engaged in a very large escalation nationwide, with the agency claiming to be hitting record arrest numbers amid the return of quotas. This has gotten very little attention from the media because ICE learned lessons from the chaotic disasters of Kristi Noem’s tenure. Keep a watch.
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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
If you read just a few comments on any article about Graham Platner it should become crystal clear why victims don’t come forward earlier. The level of cruelty people direct at victims is gutting
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Kat Abughazaleh @katmabu.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
I actually don’t care what the founding fathers would say about the present and I don’t think you should either
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
A delightful thread for those of you at Universities that prize Nature articles above all other... #cosmology 🔭
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Minas Karamanis @minaskar.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
dammit.
pbs.org
White House picks Harvard professor with polarizing alien theories to lead new UFO council
A polarizing Harvard astronomer known for splashy theories about alien visits has been tapped by the White House to lead a team of outside scientists to study the national security risks posed by UFOs...
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Minas Karamanis @minaskar.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
After Nottingham, now Sussex: ~35% cuts proposed to Particle Physics & Astronomy. A world-class department, built over decades, gutted to patch a temporary budget gap. Reputation and talent like this don't come back. Add your name to the open letter: sussexphysics.github.io/Open_Letter/
sussexphysics.github.io
Save Sussex Physics
Save Sussex Physics - Open Letter
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
The publisher Springer claims it can only discuss why it retracted Planck's paper with... Planck! But until they hold a seance, they are happy to sell you a completely redacted version: a blank page for $39.95.
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Jonathan Pritchard @pritchardjr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Horrified to learn that the Particle Physics and Astronomy groups at Sussex University are facing a proposed 35% cut in staff numbers! That would be devastating to a high quality department.
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Emily Hunt @emily.space · 25/06/2026
oh? you think we can cope??? Let me introduce you to Venus. Thanks to the greenhouse effect, it is an inhospitable hell-hole, with temperatures over 400°C (750°F). The probes we've sent usually lasted mere minutes on the surface due to the heat. Venus is why fucking with our climate is a bad idea
Radar imagery of venus. looks like a nice place for a holiday in the sunthe surface of venus, from the venera probes. the probes lasted less than an hour because it was so hot. the yellow atmosphere is because its a shithole
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Jonathan Pritchard @pritchardjr.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Feels like endless bad news for basic science research funding in the US and UK these days. All to throw money at AI and other sectors that were nurtured by basic science in their infancy. www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Exclusive: NSF slashes research programs to support new tech initiative, insiders say
Unexpected shift in funds has meant sharp drop in grants this fiscal year
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Minas Karamanis @minaskar.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The policy treats foreign STEM graduates as a drain. A sustained one-third drop in their numbers cuts US GDP by up to $481B a year, PIIE finds. Another of this administration's self-inflicted wounds
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
An associate editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience has resigned. He asked the editorial office to turn off the AI assistant, and was told it was "not possible". 😵 Read the whole thread!
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 23/06/2026
This is such a bummer.
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Mathew Buck @filmbrainbmb.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
A24 announces that they want to put storyboard artists out of work. That's what the headline should be written as. Becuase we should be honest about what these AI "tools" are trying to do, and who it is trying to circumvent. variety.com/2026/film/ne...
variety.com
Google Invests $75 Million in A24 to Develop AI-Powered Filmmaking Tools
A24 and Google have struck an AI research partnership that will see the independent studio work to develop new AI-powered technologies for filmmakers.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Know what TV show actually wouldn’t get made today? The Twilight Zone. Half of these fuckin’ episodes are about fascism.
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Annette Yancey Allgood @ayallgood.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
english.elpais.com/usa/2026-06-...
english.elpais.com
Trump administration tasks ICE with tracking ‘false’ voters ahead of the midterms
In an election year that could reshape the political balance, Homeland Security Investigations directly asked election officials in Texas and North Carolina for information on at least nine voters
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Emily Hunt @emily.space · 17/06/2026
In spot tests I've done, I see this happen *all of the time*, such as with my own papers. The LLM would often rather hallucinate a male scientist than get my name right. 🤷‍♀️ It's kind of unsurprising that models trained unscrupulously on the entire internet are misogynistic
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It's ME(Jaime) @exceedhergrasp1.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Demon-Haunted World reference ftw
Yell in a War (user @jelenawoehr) says: "It's wild to me how everyone has roughly the same "worth is ending" feeling right now but some people feel that way because of fascism and climate change while others feel that way, with equal intensity, because of drag queens at libraries and singular they/them pronouns."

User quasi-normalcy replies:

"Everyone knows that things aren't working anymore, it's just that if you have a scientific materialist understanding of the world you can actually know *why* it's not working, whereas if you have a demon-haunted view of the world, your impulse is going to be to try to sacrifice someone to appease the gods."
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Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
They came here fleeing persecution; rather than give them refuge, Marco Rubio’s state department will send them to die in countries they’ve never been to. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/11/w...
nytimes.com
Women Who Fled Iran Are to Be Deported to Central African Republic, Lawyers Say
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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Elon Musk incited pogroms in Belfast.
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dub273 @dub273.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Mon Mothma said what needed to be said in opposition to an evil, authoritarian regime.
Fictional Star Wars character Senator Mon Mothma addresses the Imperial Senate from her pod. Text reads: 

"The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest."
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
In general relativity, a point mass just sitting there is inevitably a black hole. But that's when you're living in 3d space (and one dimension of time). In 2d space, a point mass creates a less drastic singularity: a 'cone point'. I've been studying these cone points lately, just for fun. (1/n)
A disc with a slice cut out of it, and then the cone formed when you glue together the two edges of the slice.
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Abdul El-Sayed @abdulelsayed.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
If you tax a billionaire 8%, you know what they still are? Still a billionaire. Their kids' kids' kids' kids are gonna be rich. Maybe they could pay a little bit more so that all of our kids can go to good schools and travel functional roads and get good healthcare.
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Hagen Blix @hagenblix.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
AI-based AI detectors do not work
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
IMO, senior faculty at top R1 institutions rushing to use AI to flood journals with papers before future students or early career researchers can have an opportunity is not just greedy, it's salting the earth of the discipline.
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Emily Hunt @emily.space · 05/06/2026
I've had so many conversations with non-technical friends & family who are completely duped by headlines like this. I also think it's sad to not tell the public about the huge range of AI/ML research. It would be so cool if the public knew how many cool new methods exist, LLMs are just the surface
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Amazon will spend $200B this year on AI infrastructure — including data centers — while forging ahead with over 30,000 layoffs. And don't forget: the company paid nearly $8B less in taxes last year thanks to Trump's big ugly bill. This is what corporate greed looks like.
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Lola_Clare @lolaclare.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Great piece especially last paragraph "The objective is a world in which we are seamlessly shuttled from one managed (and, ideally, exploitable) activity to the next – with no break or chance to look around us – from cradle to grave. The death of the university will bring that world a step closer"
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Maaike @maaikeverbruggen.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
The smarmy comments from Americans about how Europe is too stupid to take advantage of all the US fired scientists are falling really really really badly here at a time of mass layoffs at my university cause of budget cuts fueled by the same type of fascism But they don't bother reading about us
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MadScientist @mads100tist.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Senior PIs when Postdocs discuss the job market
Marge telling Lisa and Bart "Kids, could you lighten up a little?"
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Dr Pamela L Gay @starstryder.space · 02/06/2026
After seeing the headline "SpaceX IPO: How to Buy and Why You Shouldn't" on @barrons.com, I decided it was time to read the prospectus. I'm only a few pages in and folks... the implications of this document ... Do you want to go on a journey with me? Because I'm about to enter the rabbit hole.
static.klipy.com
White Bunny Mascot Walking in Woods
Alt: White Bunny Mascot or Furry Walking in Woods. It's vaguely ominous in an uncanny valley sort of way.
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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
crashing out over a woke Odyssey is just premature. save it for the Aeneid when 1/4 is about a refugee from Tyre and 1/2 what it means for refugees to found a settler colony. solid interlude in the underworld and an ekphrasis on a shield both ambiguous about the Roman Empire. disk horse singularity
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
Reposting for the Sunday morning reading crowd with a free-to-read link that isn't behind the Nature paywall! 🔭⚛️🧪👩‍🔬 📖: rdcu.be/floXQ
All the evidence points to a healthy, world-class research community underpin-ning a key innovation pipeline from which future transformative technology and break-through science will emerge.Yet, despite all this success, 30% funding cuts have been proposed for UK astrophysics research
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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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Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
"new rule threatens to exile hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants — including physicians at understaffed rural hospitals, gifted technologists at Silicon Valley firms, the spouses of US citizens, and parents of American children. " www.vox.com/politics/490...
vox.com
MAGA’s civil war over immigration is over. Silicon Valley lost.
Trump is threatening to exile hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants.
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