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Nicholas Weller

@nichweller.bsky.social
235 followers 476 following 244 posts

I can't escape the pull of learning new things from people I don't know online. (Not a very good) Research Asst Professor interested in science and politics

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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
more proof the best renditions of the national anthem involve a trumpet. see also, Arturo Sandoval www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISMy...
youtube.com
Arturo Sandoval, Trumpet, National Anthem 1/1/09 Orange Bowl
YouTube video by Heb1228
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Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Now that LLMs are good at math, we can solve other long-standing verifiable problems like the law, institution building, community, and management
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 21/09/2026
one thing that is worth remember apropos this useful piece is that novel technologies do not necessarily require novel political solutions. americans have had to deal with fast-moving, disruptive technological change in the past, and they did so through collective, democratic action.
nytimes.com
Opinion | Bernie Sanders, Steve Case and Others on What Washington Should Do Now on A.I.
How can the government reel in the technology? Here are six ideas.
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Jack Stilgoe @jackstilgoe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
NTSB reports aren't evidence for legal liability. They are about social learning. In this paper, I discuss how NTSB ended up investigating the first self-driving car death. Their recommendations have been systematically ignored since. A failure of social learning.
papers.ssrn.com
Machine Learning, Social Learning and the Governance of Self-Driving Cars
Self-driving cars, a quintessentially ‘smart’ technology, are not born smart. The algorithms that control their movements are learning as the technology emerges
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Rest of the letter details other changes (some of which have already been announced): -an Office of Metascience -consolidating NOFOs -use of different funding mechanisms & longer time horizons -participation in the Genesis Mission -" some scientific goals require new forms of institutions"
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Under pressure, the DOD just released the text of its secret 10-year agreement with the NIH. Here are the biggest revelations from the document 🧵
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Nice commentary about social sciences in NSF in this. My hunch is that since the debate about NSF's funding, social science has always been seen--in some way--as connected to programs to address social challenges. (1/n) www.macroscience.org/p/what-weve-...
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
"The NBA’s cap did defend itself, publicly, and at no little expense. The other cap, the one putatively propping up so many planted trees, turns out never to have existed at all. And no one, but no one, has yet been made to buy the missing tonnes back."
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Zachary Gallagher Pirtle, Ph.D. @zpirtle.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
How the U.S. organizes and funds Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences matters for getting good science policy outcomes. The recent President’s Budget proposed eliminating NSF’s SBE directorate/budget See a new memo by me on implications and key design goals: cspo.org/research/sbe...
cspo.org
Design Choices for the Future of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation and Beyond - CSPO
Memorandum: Design Choices for the Future of Social and Behavioral Sciences at NSF and Beyond On July 13th 2026, CSPO brought together participants from a variety of policy, scientific, and institutio...
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Eligibility: PIs in the "natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, engineering, and related fields." No love for social sciences??
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Asked Claude to estimate NSF funding per state if Sen. Kilgore's plan for geographic distribution was in place today (10% of funding split evenly among states, 15% split by population; assumed rest was just merit based) Disclaimer: Didn't double check this closely yet.
Chart showing projected losses and gains for Harry Kilgore's plan for distribution of NSF funds. Why it choose red for gains, green for losses... I'm not sure
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Anyone know of a good resource on this issue in the US?
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D. Hicks @danhicks.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
btw can't recommend highly enough this way of walking through the syllabus on the first day of class
Screenshot of a slide with the title "Syllabus: Distributed reading" and the following text: 
- 10 tables = 10 teams
- 5* sections → Each team gets 1 section → Each section has 2 teams


- 10 minutes to prepare a 3-minute summary of your section
- Find your slide: tinyurl.com/2yjgs6jz
- 1-2 key points about your section
- 1-2 questions about your section


- For each section, I’ll randomly choose a team to share their summary
- And then the other team can add whatever points or questions they’d like
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Great analysis from Vincent (as usual): The DOE's plan for lifecycle innovation campuses may constructively deal with important challenges for managing nuclear waste. But it's undercut by regulatory changes and the outright gutting of regulatory staff.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Nice thread. I haven't had time to read through all the Boston Review articles yet. As referenced later in the thread, there are other mechanisms for thinking about democratic accountability within science that might be more effective than citizen juries for research agendas
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Finally, this has gone a bit under the radar, so I want to highlight it: The social, behavioral and economic sciences directorate (SBE) has simply ceased to deliver grants to many of its subareas. Any topic not specifically OK'd by the Trump administration is receiving zero new awards.
All of the NSF’s directorates are awarding fewer new grants, but the hardest hit is the social, behavioural and economic sciences (SBE) directorate, which the White House proposed eliminating in its 2027 budget request to Congress. SBE has so far awarded 84 new grants this year, about 11% of its average, mainly in areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience and decision-making. Much of its portfolio, such as sociology, archaeology, political science, economics and geography, has received zero new awards. “I don’t think they’ve realized yet that there’s no awards,” one NSF staff member says of researchers in those fields. “That’s going to be clear soon.”
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
NSF releases some NOFOs for some directorates. Staff say they've been held up at OSTP for a while.
nsf.gov
August 2026 Notices of Funding Opportunity for Foundational Research
Learn about new NSF funding opportunities prioritizing foundational research across the sciences and engineering.
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The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 14/08/2026
Exclusive: World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s flagship crypto venture, says its trust company has received preliminary approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become a bank. on.wsj.com/4wyvwat
on.wsj.com
Exclusive | Trump Family’s World Liberty Financial Gets Preliminary Approval to Launch a Bank
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency gives the flagship crypto venture a conditional approval to be a trust bank.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Nice thread and interesting analysis here. Someone on Bluesky (I can't find it yet) wrote how AI might make the failings of academic grants and publishing more obvious. Pushing grant applications closer to recently funded work certainly suggests AI use might make merit review more conservative.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Alright I know ChatGPT hallucinates and flatters, but there are way worse things Tuberville could be listening to. Maybe OpenAI can do us a solid and slowly tweak the model towards a less insane Tuberville
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
This is cool!! I really like the paper discussion threads. Such a nice way to look at all the discussion around specific publications.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I find this reflection about NIH reform and Bhattacharya insightful in the ways actors focused on 'improving science' miss the political milieu in which they're operating (perhaps could be extended to the author as well). www.thenewatlantis.com/publications...
thenewatlantis.com
Does MAGA Actually Want American Science to Win?
Reflections on the revolution in Bethesda
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Great read. Dispute isn't 'pro' or 'anti' in many ways. It's about what counts as science, for whom, etc. Also relevant to thinking about Bhattacharya at NIH or indiv researchers talking about COVID origins. Lots of actors failing to recognize they are in a larger political dispute.
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Paul Cohen @paulecohen.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
a political struggle over science at play -- over defining what science is, what it is for, who should "do" it, within which kinds of institutions it should be conducted, the kinds of relationships that those who do science should enjoy with political authority, and how we should understand science
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Good thread on proprietary AI's incompatibility with the tenets of transparency in social science research.
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Robert Borden Stan Account @bordenstan.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
If the academy gets pulled into coming out swinging against the biggest adaptation of Homer in probably a couple generations off the back of one prominent scholar deciding to be Reviewer 2 to Nolan's work, it will say, IMO, pretty damning things about academia's ability to foster public engagement.
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Simon Allison @simonallison.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
BREAKING NEWS: There's been a major development this month in the war between darkness and light. 1/
Illustration from The Atlas newspaper, showing an astronomical observatory perched on a mountaintop. It's night, and the sky is full of stars, except for a beam of bright light shining down on the observatory itself.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
This is a genuinely interesting article about integrating AI into scientific workflows (climate assessment). I suspect that such integration will come easier to fields with lots of computational expertise or via organizations that provide such expertise. arxiv.org/abs/2602.09723
arxiv.org
AI-Assisted Scientific Assessment: A Case Study on Climate Change
The emerging paradigm of AI co-scientists focuses on tasks characterized by repeatable verification, where agents explore search spaces in 'guess and check' loops. This paradigm does not extend to pro...
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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 31/07/2026
jesus. www.dw.com/en/germanys-...
dw.com
Germany's heat death toll nears 10,000
Germany's heat-related death toll for 2026 has already surpassed every full-year total since 2016 — and is expected to climb as another spell of extreme temperatures takes hold.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
NIH/Bhattachrya recently prohibited gain-of-function research that is meant to be government wide. But the politics of lab-leak theory are soooo far beyond the actual risk question at play here.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Love hearing people talk about their craft. My barber today was talking shit about whoever cut my hair last (had to get it cut during a work trip), pointing out all the shortcuts they took and how that was changing how she was cutting my hair today.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
yeah this feels about right.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Turning back to this Kratsios report. Illuminating that the "Making Progress Available to All" section solely focuses on work and building industry.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
TikTok has incredible moderation team. Our InfoWars video about Multiple Horse Theory — the idea that there are many horses in the world and not just one — has been fully deemed misinformation and lost the formal appeals process. Confirmed by Larry Ellison: There is only one horse on Earth.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Enjoying the weird art used by the National Reconnaissance Office on their mission patches. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of... Who gets to make these??
Green cartoon lizard (mission mascot named Spike) riding an Atlas V rocket into space. Patch is surrounded by a green circle. Patch mostly in blue. Along the border, it reads "Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference - NROL-85". The center image is a cartoon/illustrated gray cat looking into a pool of water that shows a tiger. There are 6 stars on the patch.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
NSF released a new "Broad Agency Announcement," about water and energy security. Interesting to see NSF specifically encouraging firm-fixed price contracts for this. Not something NSF does a lot to my knowledge. sam.gov/workspace/co...
sam.gov
Sam Acquisition 360
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
But the Supreme Court has also handed the admin the ability to do what it wants with agencies--so the opportunity for the VC king to come in and direct stuff really fits the moment (and the Kratsios report points that way too).
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Lots could be said of the Kratsios Science Golden Era report. As someone persuaded that the S&T system could benefit from changes, I keep thinking about how any good ideas in the report could get stuck/hitched to toxicity of the trump admin.
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
NSF released a new "Broad Agency Announcement," about water and energy security. Interesting to see NSF specifically encouraging firm-fixed price contracts for this. Not something NSF does a lot to my knowledge. sam.gov/workspace/co...
sam.gov
Sam Acquisition 360
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
From a DOE Lawyer: “...the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”
nytimes.com
Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him
Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.
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azcentral @azcentral.com · 23/07/2026
Arizona Rep. Abe Hamadeh said the U.S. should protect Andrew Tate, self-described misogynist accused of strangling women unconscious and raping them.
bit.ly
Abe Hamadeh defends Andrew and Tristan Tate against sex crime charges
Arizona Rep. Abe Hamadeh said the U.S. should protect Andrew Tate, self-described misogynist accused of strangling women unconscious and raping them.
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Katie Drummond @katie-drummond.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
We can blame DOGE for many things. Diarrhea now included. "The CDC lab that responds to outbreaks of the parasite cyclospora was downsized from 11 people to just three."
wired.com
The CDC Has a Cyclospora Lab. DOGE Downsized It Last Year
“Based on simple math, these outbreak responses—which require rapid, timely responses—are going to be greatly diminished,” the former CDC lab director tells WIRED.
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Matt Browner Hamlin @mattbh.com · 11/07/2026
Death (Trump) knocking on doors meme with blood out of the open doors for “Knicks in 4” and “USMNT”. He’s knocking on the door that says England
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Calliope @calliope5431.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Sign tapped:
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James Dator @jamesdator.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
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Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
When policy is set by Dril tweets.
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Damon Beres @damonberes.com · 06/07/2026
You're laughing... I can't withdraw my Bonk from Kraken and you're laughing?
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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
I hope these fucks get heatstroke
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Nicholas Weller @nichweller.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
I’m sympathetic to legislative supremacy as pathway towards a better democracy. But do Americans broadly see congress as an expression of the public will? Do they see their congress critters that way? I doub it. So is it possible to generate mass politics around Congress at the moment?
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