MaggieBeth 🪐🔭

Wonderful! I’ll try to come to your talk!

If you’re looking for a graduate student in exoplanet atmospheres or an employee across astronomy and data science, come find me during #AAS246! I’d love to chat about any potential opportunities.

View from the plane arriving into Anchorage. The white wing of an Alaska Airlines plane covers the bottom third of the photo. Beyond the wing is a lush green permafrost field with the ocean and tall, snow capped mountains in the distance. The sky is bright blue with puffy clouds.

Made it to Anchorage for #AAS246! I’ll be giving my very first AAS oral presentation on Wednesday AM in the exoplanet atmospheres (habitability) session! 🔭🧪

If you are zeroing out graduate education funding and cutting undergraduate education funding by 71%, this isn’t about subject matter or “woke” or whatever other excuse is being used - this is a systematic attack on science education in the US. This should not be a partisan issue.

Revoking admissions for a group that makes up 30% of the student body.

All because you dont want Black people to attend or Black history to be taught.

My God.

Fire chief said "the whole NW part of the city" is probably smoky as hell rn. Close your windows and run air purifiers

My mom’s coming to visit this weekend 🥹

Bar graph titled "Top 20 Countries by Research and Development Spending." The United States leads significantly in spending, followed by China, Japan, and Germany. Other countries include the United Kingdom, South Korea, France, and Australia, among others.

To see why destroying the US science enterprise is so detrimental to the world, we have to realize that the US spends more on research and development than any other country in the world (by far), and if we remove China and Japan, the US spends almost as much as ALL other countries combined.

"All Americans who benefit from publicly funded science—GPS, touch screens, Google, the Internet, weather data, MRI, CRISPR, 3D printing, tiny hearing aids, bluetooth, broadband, electric cars, suspension bridges, PCR tests, AI tools, Doppler radar, barcodes... should be alarmed & taking action."

Proposed NASA cuts in context, courtesy of the Planetary Society #astronomy #science

Donald Trump spent $23M on golf (up to mid march).

Over 56 days, he spent $410k of our tax dollars each day at his own clubs.

That is one 3-year NSF grant per day.

Waste and abuse, my ass.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

@verambergen.bsky.social

Mohsen was just released by the federal judge in VT!!

Finally pulled the plug and submitted my first job app 😭 hopefully one of my postbac/bridge apps pulls through so it’ll be the only one 🤞🏻

In 100 days in office, US President Donald Trump has destabilized eight decades of government support for science.

This has included terminating more than 1,000 grants in areas such as climate change, cancer, and HIV prevention.

Will US science survive Trump 2.0?

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My takeaway from this (after the absolute disgust and horror that these garbage raids are happening) - I'm hearing actually that crime rates of any kind must be QUITE LOW if whatever this is (garbage) is their priority, and so probably we should DEFUND THE POLICE and ABOLISH BORDERS.

Bar chart titled “NASA Cut Proposals” set against a starry background. Four bars show proposed budget cut percentages for different NASA programs: 68% for Astrophysics, 43% for Heliophysics, 30% for Planetary Science, and 53% for Earth Science. The chart highlights significant funding reductions across scientific fields.

NASA’s science programs are facing what experts are calling an “extinction-level event” under Trump’s proposed budget.
From climate monitoring to planetary research, entire fields of discovery are on the chopping block.

eos.org/research-and...

I’m pretty sure all the astronomers already heard this bad news, but idk how many other folks know about this proposal—NASA science would be absolutely GUTTED if this passed. US astronomy & astrophysics would be dead. We can’t let this happen—tell your reps, & your friends!

🔭

Science and R&D has traditionally received strong bipartisan support in the US Congress. But the White House is supposedly pushing cuts of 55% (NSF), 44%(NIH), 27% (NOAA), 50% (NASA), 100% (USGS ecosystems). Meanwhile China INCREASED their R&D spending by 8.3%

The Pell Grant enabled me to go to college. They’re trying to prevent poor people from accessing higher education.

This, from a woman in Oklahoma talking to her local news station, is better than the vast majority of political speeches you'll hear today.

I got Savannah Bananas tickets!! Feels like I won the lottery!

This meeting could have been a walk in the sunshine

Rev. Barber, surrounded by police, praying in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

Rev. Barber, surrounded by police, praying in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

BREAKING: Police just surrounded Rev. William Barber, prominent activist and pastor, as he and others prayed in the U.S. Capitol Rontunda.

Police then expelled everyone (including press!) from the Rotunda to (presumably) arrest them.

I've covered protests here a lot. Never seen anything like it.

It's that time of year again where @mountsthelens1980.bsky.social is recounting the events as they unfolded in real-time leading up to the catastrophe. This is a fun account to follow if you are not already doing so.