Ryan Comes

For the most part, those awards run for multiple years after the money is awarded. So having the quote ready at the university is less of an issue than just getting the award from the agency. I think we're going to see that a lot of the appropriated money is unspent on awards this cycle.

The issue is that they have choked off the awards process with political middle managers. Those program officers aren't buying instruments, they're allocating funds to universities and national labs. That takes time even under ideal circumstances.

I doubt it. I think they just want to choke off the flow of money to academic research.

I'm convinced that's their plan. OMB did a test run on pocket rescissions late in FY25 on the stuff that conservatives most wanted to kill. Any NSF, etc $ that doesn't get spent by August is in the crosshairs. Given where program calls and awards stand right now, I think we are heading for disaster.

🧪⚛️ From the Nature article by @dangaristo.bsky.social et al., we know that NSF only got its OMB authorization last week. Still, this is very worrying. If awards fall far behind last year despite a budget down ”only” 4%, it will be a basic defiance of congressional appropriations.

This year I went to DC for @apsphysics.bsky.social Congressional Visit Day. APS did an amazing job & I met my Rep. @mcbride.house.gov and staff for Sen. @coons.senate.gov. All were great and emphasized bipartisan support for science funding.

Rescissions jeopardize that. OMB is setting the stage.
🧪⚛️

This is a critical story, because it ties in to the pocket rescissions approach that Russ Vought used last year at a small scale. This may be a bigger run at it after Congress passed a roughly normal science budget this cycle. 🧪⚛️

I'm curious where the funding comes from. You need either a massive non-profit campaign that dwarfs ProPublica or you need Reid Hoffman or someone like him to invest 10 figures.

Honestly, this is true for the vast majority of people the vast majority of the time. That's actually what is so great about old-school Twitter and BlueSky: you get easy access to those experts in real-time. The downside is getting access to the other 90% and trying to tell the what from the chaff.

All great points. LLM lit reviews can be really useful, but we still need to be able to find the primary sources and trace back through the literature. It shouldn't be hard for LLMs to do that, but they haven't been coded that way thus far.

The bomb was thrown way too quickly. 😢

If you're curious how this has affected science, I devoted about 9 months to learning about tariff law so that I could avoid a $150k fee when I import an XPS/ARPES system next month, but still haven't gotten a waiver. Now we'll try to speed up delivery to avoid the next bomb that Trump throws.

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It's like Hillbert space. Every page is orthogonal to the one before it and all new documents are projected onto the original.

It will take decades for the US to recover from the institutional damage that the Trump administration has done to science agencies. Which of course is the point.

🧪⚛️

I mean Clark was a recruiting steal, but also way more limited by his size than Mallory. Chance won't play in the NBA, but he's going to be a 1st team all-ACC player.

Can we stop pretending Musk is good at physics now?

This is painful to watch after years of Bennett ball.

As I thought about it a little more, my answer was this as well, depending on who's guarding him. If he gets into post position then you position White so he's available for a kick out 3 if his man helps off. We've run that play at least once I believe.

I think if we're in that position we hope for something good to happen on a set play and accept that we are a good but not elite team if it doesn't go our way.

The first time I heard this I thought it was a joke. The number of ways that it fails basic physics and the lack of serviceability make it an insane idea. Then add in the cost to launch it and amortize over the life of a high-end GPU (a few years?). I can't imagine the economics make sense either.

That was hideous.

How did he get so open?

I was a 21 year old Republican from Northern Virginia when John McCain's campaign used the term "real Virginia" to separate NoVa from the rest of the state. Honestly, I think that was the beginning of my conversion.

Any idea what the range is for commercial readers? Most readers for doors and credit cards are just a few inches, but obviously there are toll readers on the highway that work over 20-30 feet.

They've already had the QR codes for the vendor show. I assume it will be used the same way, but I'm not sure. Maybe also swiping in as people enter the meeting? They should definitely state that in their documents for the conference.

When my students ask how we got here I say the laws are not self-executing. Our contract with our government only works when we elect people of good faith into office

People have been losing hours of work when going in parallel. I've never experienced that with Overleaf or Google, but I haven't pushed them as hard as this to be fair.

First world faculty problems... When Overleaf and Google Docs are available, why the heck would you write a collaborative proposal in SharePoint? Wasn't my call, but I'm on a team attempting this right now and it's been awful.

Knowing a bit about financial models, I'm assuming they keep the lion's share of the MBA money coming in. So their connection to the overall university budget is pretty low.

The contract says his research and teaching load should match his Darden predecessor post-dean. The previous dean looks to have taught one class per year based on Lou's List. Beardsley might go for that if he can't get a President gig elsewhere.