iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Ryan Comes

Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

As someone in a STEM discipline, I really abhor the kind of messaging that Mark describes. The messengers aren’t people who actually care about STEM. It’s really a shorthand for “do something practical, focus on your relation to the labor market”.

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It's almost as if...universities have no plan at all for 1/4-1/6 of their funding suddenly disappearing (👇) due to federal budget cuts & foreign student restrictions, & perhaps chancellors & presidents should have done loud, public collective action on this 1.5 years ago bsky.app/profile/mcop...

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I wish I could say I was surprised at my former administration and the board, but I'm not at all surprised. If you're thinking about a faculty job in a deep red state you have to take this kind of threat seriously.

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Absolutely devastating for US research and for the thousands of students who will be harmed by this policy. ⚛️🧪

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Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

A must read--an infuriating read--from @Timodc. "Eissa is in an ICE processing center...The Kafkaesque nightmare we are putting this family through is hard to wrap your arms around. They are stranded there with no way out, no charges, no trial, no jury." www.thebulwark.com/p/marco-rubi...

thebulwark.com

Marco Rubio Is Punishing a Teenage Boy for His Grandmother’s Sins

America gave Rubio’s family a second chance. He gave this family a cage.

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I'm a firm believer that university boards do far more harm than good. This is why.

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Douglas Natelson @nanoscaleviews.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

🧪⚛️ NSF, NIH - when agencies spend (or do not spend) money in ways that seemingly defy congressional appropriations. Article I only means something if the majority in Congress wants it to mean something. nanoscale.blogspot.com/2026/09/nsf-...

nanoscale.blogspot.com

NSF, spending, and the end of the fiscal year

We are less than one month away from the end of the federal fiscal year, and traditionally there are internal deadlines for agencies to allo...

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Our government is run by racist, repugnant trolls.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Very good point here: A lot of university leaders will think, "the Trump administration just wants us to make some vague statements - we can live with that." They are not counting on the DOJ using those statements as the basis for legal investigations. Which this DOJ will be willing to do.

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Ryan Enos @ryanenos.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Shame on the Yale administration. Campus leaders attacking free speech are on the wrong side of history.

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Douglas Natelson @nanoscaleviews.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

🧪⚛️ 1/7 We are one month away from the end of the federal fiscal year. Right now, the NSF is on track to issue about 4000 fewer (!!) awards in FY26 than it did back in FY21-FY24, and 2000 fewer than it did in the tumultuous FY25 (with its government shutdowns and mass cutbacks in agency personnel).

Graphs from grantwitness.com of NSF award and obligations vs time during the last several fiscal years, showing drastic shortfalls in FY26 relative to prior responses.

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Tom Nichols @radiofreetom.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Pete Hegseth has failed in every mission except one: keeping his job. But firing or forcing out everyone else in the Pentagon will not make Pete Hegseth into the secretary of defense America and its men and women in uniform need. Me on Driscoll's resignation: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

theatlantic.com

Hegseth’s Pentagon Lurches Off the Rails

The resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is the latest sign of severe dysfunction in the Defense Department.

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Douglas Natelson @nanoscaleviews.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

🧪⚛️ 1/3 If you needed any more evidence that OSTP and OMB are out of step, here you go. Kratsios' "Golden Age" report talks about funding individuals not ideas, loves the GRFP. The report says:

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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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Jeffrey Mervis @policyhound.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

NSF is touting a dozen new solicitations announced this week as evidence that basic research still rules. But that's not what's really going on. www.science.org/content/arti...

science.org

Is NSF’s new call for research proposals good news? Scientists and staffers have doubts

The long-delayed 12 solicitations only cover some disciplines—and promise to give them much less money

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Nigel Goldenfeld @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Thanks for posting about this. My institution also. The list includes most of the top research universities in the US.

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

So my institution and 29 others have wound up on the DOD 💩 list for the alleged transgression of collaborating with China. Considering I have AFOSR money, I'm sure this will be a hassle. The feds have a great history on their China probes. 🧪⚛️ 1/2 defensescoop.com/2026/08/17/p...

defensescoop.com

Pentagon probes 30 U.S. academic institutions for potential ties to adversaries

A U.S. official shared the Defense Department’s full list of notified schools with DefenseScoop on Monday.

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

faculty! Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas faculty! please answer this anonymous AAUP survey docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

docs.google.com

2026 AAUP Faculty in the South Survey

The Georgia conference of the American Association of University Professors [AAUP] and its partners in states across the South have been at the forefront of fighting attacks on higher education. To as...

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 09/08/2026

Trump 2.0 has blown up US scientific research in a way that will take decades to roll back. Labs that took years to build have closed, young people have left science. NYT Mag published a long report on Dismantling Cancer Research. Why does Ross Douthat lie like this?

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

In case you're looking for schools to avoid. I'm not surprised by WashU, ASU or KU, but Daniels has a lot to answer for by contributing to this. JHU's the single school most heavily reliant on federal research $, but that's a lousy excuse considering how the Trump administration has targeted them.

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

This would completely destroy international graduate education in the US. That's obviously the point, because they want fewer legal immigrants period.

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

⚛️🧪 NSF announced the new Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) today. This program has been the heart of fundamental materials research for decades but was drastically cut as the Trump admin moved money (illegally) into other programs. 1/n www.nsf.gov/news/buildin...

nsf.gov

Building the future, atom by atom — NSF deploys $108M for materials science at 6 research centers

The U.S. National Science Foundation is pushing materials science beyond the state-of-the-art with an investment of $108 million in six advanced research centers. The centers will explore a broad…

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I may be the only person who would say this, but Dulles is ... fine? I've never really understood the hate. Plus it's got Metro now. The people movers even have a certain stupid charm.

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 24/07/2026

Also: We keep hearing that a number of Congressmembers think that everything at NIH has gone back to normal, and the Trump appointees are in fact on the side of saving NIH. That is false. Things at NIH are WORSE than last year. Please reach out to your senators and reps and tell them that.

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 24/07/2026

I co-sign this great summary from @dereklowe.bsky.social . The goal is to destroy academic science, and these are the reasons. And all the “gold standard” and “needs reform” and “not high risk” stuff is transparent bullshit to hide the ball on what they are doing.

=
Science
science. But let me make something clear right up front. When I talk to people about this subject (and that includes some journalists as well) and say what I'm about to at the end of this paragaph I am sometimes met with disbelief. But I mean what I say and I am trying my best to say what I mean: The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies who can help them get elected and to steer yet more money and more power back into their hands.
That's it. That's the story. They are naturally not putting it in those words, but instead talking about "gold standard science" and the
"reproducibility crisis" and funding "bold inquiry" for "transformational
breakthroughs". This is all bullshit, and it's important to realize that. Shameless hand-waving bullshit, delivered in a how-dare-vou-

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

My LinkedIn feed is like nothing but DOE Genesis announcements right now. Meanwhile NSF is getting gutted. I really don't have anything against AI/ML research given that I have money in that area, but Genesis was the worst funding call I've ever seen and it's getting huge press. ⚛️🧪 🤬🤬🤬🤬

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Time is a flat circle. We've normalized Trump, so of course Nixon's crimes look mild by comparison.

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Richard M. Nixon @dicknixon.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

"There is no such thing as final victory or defeat. There is only a new phase of the battle." I should think everyone needs reminding of it, youth especially.

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

I'm still waiting to see what happens once we reach the August time frame for Vought's so-called "pocket rescissions" scheme. All of this lines up with their planning for a lot of such actions.

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Pet peeve of mine: "a party stops" takes away all agency from individual voters. Everyday people want and vote for this. A plurality of GOP voters think this is good for America. The remainder think these guys are better than any Democrat. That's a huge problem with no clear solution!

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

One common thread at the conference I'm currently attending: If a presentation is coming from a company, you get very little detail and AI slop figures. We want to hear what these companies are doing, but we don't want to hear the sales pitch! You're at a science conference, share the results! 🧪⚛️

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Kim Weeden @weedenkim.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

This skeet, from a year ago, is getting likes and reposts again. Much has changed: instead of indirectly clawing back Congressionally allocated research money via fines and non-reimbursement, Trump is directly skimming off Congressionally allocated research money for "White House projects."

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Douglas Natelson @nanoscaleviews.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

🧪⚛️ This is very bad, delaying (!) or cutting (!!) funding to recommended proposals and introducing enormous uncertainty into an already chaotic situation. How does Congress feel about $B-scale diversions from planned appropriations? Apparently not bad enough to do anything.

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

It's been a thing forever, but I would love to strangle whoever the first person was that suggested, "We should take a picture of everyone at this conference!"

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I agree with this post, the thread, and the post he is quoting. I think it's worth noting that you can sum up nearly all of the (very real) problems in higher ed as "the university wants their money." The current federal admin, politically-motivated trustees and donors, disinterested students, etc.

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Ryan Comes @rbcomes.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

As a newly crowned departmental grad studies director, this is accurate. We had to decline admission to so many good students this cycle. It would take a pretty dramatic reversal of fortune in federal funding for next year to be better.

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

You might think that the chancellors & presidents of the country’s leading R1 research universities, faced with such an existential crisis, would speak up, loudly & collectively against the authoritarian assault on their institutions. Alas, you would (still) be sadly wrong. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Mancur Olson, author of “The Logic of Collective Action,” with laser eyes

George Akerlof, author of “The Market for Lemons,” with laser eyes

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Douglas Natelson @nanoscaleviews.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

🧪⚛️ This trend is exceedingly bad. I know that program officers within NSF still are aiming to make all their awards before end of the fiscal year, but I worry very much whether OMB et al. will allow that. grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0...

grant-witness.us

The NSF is on Track for its Worst Year in Generations – Grant Witness

Throttling of science funding is utterly unprecedented and radical when compared to the past 50 years.

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Douglas Natelson @nanoscaleviews.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

🧪⚛️ OMB is not being shy, at all, about wanting to cancel or deny grants based on political preferences. This is very very bad. www.politico.com/live-updates...

politico.com

OMB nominee touts plan to give Trump appointees power to kill grants

The administration is expected to finalize the proposed changes as soon as this summer.

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