Andrea

Transitioning NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center operations The U.S. National Science Foundation has informed the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) that management and operations of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center are expected to…

NSF is following through with their plans to transfer the lifeblood of NCAR's work (the supercomputing center) to a "third party": www.nsf.gov/news/transit...
Not sure what that'll mean for our access to it, but it shows they are serious about following through with their dismantling plans.

doctor doctor
gimme the news
ive got an
unworn pair of baby shoes

Tomorrow-- the University of Arizona Main Library
@douglassday.bsky.social celebration! We're in B252/254, can't wait to meet everyone. Flyer + details attached: lib.arizona.edu/about/events...

yesssss we made the list (library science teachers, postsecondary)

Graduate Students’ NSF Fellowship Applications Are Being “Returned Without Review” - Eos Graduate students applying for NSF funding have had their applications returned without review—even though their proposed research appears to fall squarely within the fields of study outlined in the p...

Students applying for NSF funding are having their applications “returned without review” for being “ineligible,” despite their proposed research falling squarely within the application guidelines. eos.org/research-and...

He Built a Server to Protect Indigenous Health Data

Native Bio has made the @nytimes.com for the second time. The #IDsov movement is a tidal wave....and a solution for these difficult times. “We are at a fork in the road. Do not choose hate & do not choose unsustainability.” ~ 21st Century Maxim, Author Unknown www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/s...

Grant Guidelines for Libraries and Museums Take “Chilling” Political Turn Under Trump Former Institute of Museum and Library Services leaders from both political parties expressed concern that the new funding guidelines could encourage a more constrained or distorted view of American h...

NEW: The Institute of Museum and Library Services is now accepting applications for its 2026 grant cycle.

But this time, it has unusually specific criteria: It “particularly welcomes” projects that align with President Donald Trump’s vision for America.

The update here left me weepy with how full of love it is. If you can help with end of life expenses, here's where and how.

DOGE Lives On Through Russell Vought Trump’s White House OMB director has quietly institutionalized the government demolition agenda set in motion by Elon Musk’s wrecking crew.

DOGE isn't really gone, it's just become the way that the Office of Management and Budget operates, writes our friends at @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social.

prospect.org/2026/02/05/d...

Slide from a talk showing a photo of Dr. Phinazee, a middle aged Black woman in a suit jacket. Text alongside her reads "Though a good policy in the long run, one negative result [of library associations merging] was that the Black library associations in each of the southern states was dissolved, depriving Black librarians of a useful anti-segregation tool and depriving most of them of library association leadership roles."

Annette Lewis Phinazee was the first woman and the first Black American woman to earn a library science PhD from Columbia University, in 1961. She was the first Black president of the NC Library Association in 1975.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette...

#BlackHistoryMonth

the next line of this quote: "It is important enough that a federal cowboy kept one hand on his phone even as his other hand reached for his gun."

Opinion | Democracy Dies by Database

“You need only know this: Whatever is happening with your data, it is important enough to the most egregiously lawless administration in American history that it be collected and consolidated.” Always read @tressiemcphd.bsky.social (gift link)

Of course the Institute of Museum and Library Services' $14M Freedom Truck mobile exhibitions feature "unbelievable content" designed by PragerU and Hillsdale!

Unbelievable indeed!

The IMLS Propaganda Machine Is In Full Swing The agency overseeing U.S. libraries and museums is now full-on regime propaganda.

"The propaganda is going to get a lot worse and more pervasive before it gets better... our tax money was given to a private business actively destroying our public education systems, [and] none of the grant money allocated for libraries and museums will go to actual libraries and museums."

a former PhD student called them "sleeping kittens," which is now what i call them too.

With the deluge of LLM science, it's sooner or later that we have to move to a model of evaluating scientists for promotion and funding on a finite number of papers per year.

CS ArXiv recently banned “review and position” papers, but what are those? Do they include more generated content? Who is most affected by this change? @yanai.bsky.social and I dug into the data to find out!

Nearly 50% of Computers & Society papers might be censored, vs 3% of Computer Vision ‼️

it's boring as hell but data governance and regulation needs to be a central plank of Reconstruction 2

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

yeah well could claude do this *writes a terrible recursive function that consumes all the memory and crashes my laptop*

It finally happened @cowtoolsdaily.bsky.social

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

thank you for sharing this!

I've put together a list of the most helpful activities/visualizations/tools I've found for introducing students to the mechanics of LLMs (which I do every year). miriamposner.com/blog/introdu...

Funding deal rejects Trump’s push for major science cuts Congressional appropriators released a “minibus” of three bipartisan spending bills today that would pare back the budgets of some science agencies but largely reject Trump’s request for steep cuts. The minibus consists of the Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy and Water Development, and Interior-Environment bills, which cover a substantial portion of federal research funding for fiscal year 2026. The package includes: $24.4 billion for NASA, a 1.6% cut (including $7.25 billion for NASA Science, a 1.1% cut); $8.75 billion for the National Science Foundation, a 3.4% cut; $8.4 billion for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, a 1.9% increase; $6.17 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, roughly flat funding; $1.42 billion for the U.S. Geological Survey, a 2.0% cut; and $1.18 billion to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a 2.3% increase

I'll take it 😎

i teach grad level digital preservation classes and would love to incorporate a new version into that

This story reminds us that:
a) Not everything has been digitized
b) Not everything digitized is accessible to the public

Also: What's happening at NASA is part of a broader trend of library closures in government & industry. (Even university libraries are moving away from physical books & journals)

I've been talking about both doctoral study (with academic jobs as the goal) AND tenure for YEARS in terms of RISK MANAGEMENT. It is a very calculated, and increasingly speculative, risk. You have to treat it that way.

Faculty hate it when I do this. Especially about tenure.

Lots of discourse about TT jobs. Yes, the Ivy people like hiring Ivy people. Yes, certain fields are trendy. I have absolutely seen candidates—always white ones—receive allowances that others do not get. And by the campus visit the single most important criterion is “is this person an asshole?”

Scientist at #AGU25 are speaking out to #SaveNCAR. Join more than 2000 of your colleagues to call or email your members of Congress to ask them to support NCAR today: agu.quorum.us/campaign/151...