Kyle Kabasares

2 Landau and Lifshitz books short of the complete set…

How can universities and STEM trainees collaborate to close funding gaps while unlocking new kinds of research and career growth?

Delighted to work with @kylekabasares.bsky.social
to bring this article to life.

🔗 This article is freely available for anyone to read. Link in the comments.

YouTube video by Kyle Kabasares Once You've Overcome Real Fear, Fake Fear Doesn't Stand a Chance

I made one of my most personal YouTube videos discussing my terrible 2nd half of 2023. It was one of the most difficult but also transformative experiences of my life and overcoming it has given me the belief that if I can survive that, I can get through anything: youtu.be/e0wwd5vZ0Jw?...

A screenshot of p.43 of https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal-Year-2026-Discretionary-Budget-Request.pdf showing $119.3B moved from Defense to Non-Defense.

Briefly wandered over to The Other Place to gauge the response to the NASA budget devastation to encounter a bunch of gleeful 'we spend too much money, so this is great.'

TO BE, ONCE AGAIN, PERFECTLY CLEAR, THE BUDGET REQUEST MOVES ALL THIS MONEY TO DEFENSE. IT SPENDS IT. NO MONEY IS SAVED.

I worry that without an administrator, NASA will be even more of a sitting duck

The Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at NASA Ames Research Center is Hiring! Apply through the links below if you want to help us save California from wildfires!

Research Scientist: lnkd.in/dUhip9ep

Data Scientist: lnkd.in/dq3AcgH5

YouTube video by Kyle Kabasares Why Physics Majors Can’t Get Hired (Easily)

Curious why so many Physics majors end up job hunting for longer than they expected? Or what you can actually do about it? Check out my new video: “Why Physics Majors Can’t Get Hired (Easily)”

youtu.be/H7RArn_W2SQ?...

Measuring the Height of Salesforce Tower (and other sites in San Francisco) with Airborne LiDAR… There’s something exhilarating about being high above the city. Looking out in all directions, appreciating the views, and watching the…

Ever wonder how tall Salesforce Tower really is—or how to measure it without leaving the ground? 🛰️

I used open LiDAR data + QGIS to map the heights of iconic SF sites:
🏛️ Palace of Fine Arts
🌉 Golden Gate Bridge
🌳 Even individual trees!

Read the tutorial here: medium.com/@kylekabasar...

Attending “Supernova” hosted by Cerebras Systems in San Francisco today.

It is not actually about astronomy, but about AI inference instead!

I made a height above ground map of San Francisco as a fun side project this weekend! I used publicly available airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data from the United States Geological Survey collected in 2023 and a program called QGIS to create it.

I’ve done this with my published papers. A lot of the critique and suggestions for improvement are quite valid.

Wow.

This was ALWAYS the final destination of the student loan-fueled maximum-extraction instrumentalist STEM-centric vision of college education: Our student-customers demanding the degree & social experience they paid for, with any *learning* treated as accidental if not downright counterproductive.

Hot take: After a decade around academic science, I’ve noticed a common trap (one I’ve fallen into myself): chasing perfect models at the expense of useful ones. The real world is messy. Sometimes a “good enough” model, paired with an honest discussion of its limitations, is far more impactful.

Me at this workshop hosted by the CCA/Simons Foundation in NYC this week

Excited to read “The Echo Machine” by @davidpakman.bsky.social !!

A Parody sticker in the shape of NASA’s meatball logo that reads “OMG HOUSTON I HAVE SO MANY PROBLEMS. THANKS FOR ASKING”

This sticker is a whole mood

YouTube video by Kyle Kabasares "The Worlds I See" - A Heartfelt Memoir About the Godmother of AI, Fei-Fei Li

Check out my video on it below:

youtu.be/ZqR880M91nk?...

A picture of Kyle holding the book “The Worlds I See” by Fei-Fei Li.

The Worlds I See by Fei-Fei Li was one of my most memorable reads last year. This heartfelt and inspiring memoir chronicles Fei-Fei Li's journey from her roots in China to a transformative move to New Jersey at 15, to her ascension to becoming the "Godmother of AI".

People in academia should read Nassim Nicholas Taleb more but then they probably wouldn’t want to stay in academia 🤣

Killing off our research facilities and talent pipelines is perhaps the biggest, dumbest self-own in American history.

A photo of Sal Khan during a fireside chat he is having at the Computer History Museum, taken from an audience member in the crowd.

Had a great time hearing Sal Khan tonight! Khanacademy started when I was in high school and played an important role in my eventual development of becoming a scientist. It was great to hear the awesome work @khanacademy.org has been involved in with creating AI tools for education!

NASA begins mass firings of scientists ahead of Trump team’s deadline Top advisers in the Office of the Chief Scientist are among the first to go amid downsizing effort.

One of the employees fired from NASA told me how much their career meant to them: "Prior to everything happening today, NASA has been an incredible place to work — to dream big, to innovate, to do things that I never thought I could have done.”

Words by me. 🧪

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

A stellar display of light forming a “supermassive black hole” on the wall of an apartment.

My friend bought me a “Black Hole projector” for my last year and I just set it up last night!

Just met a scientist who does research in both particle physics and Earth Systems science and it makes me feel a little less alone as someone who went from studying black holes to studying the Earth 🥺

A picture showing 4 books: Dynamics of Planetary Systems by Tremaine, Exoplanet Atmospheres by Seager, Exoplanetary Atmospheres by Heng, and the Exoplanet Handbook by Perryman.

If you’re wondering what’s been on my mind lately…

:(

A page from the 1995 IDL user manual for IDL version 4 showing the in-built Voight function.

Found an IDL version 4 user manual from 1995 that was being thrown away at work

Argentine President Javier Milei Faces Impeachment Threat After Backing Crypto Pump and Dump Backers lost billions in just five hours.

Argentine President Javier Milei Faces Impeachment Threat After Backing Crypto Pump and Dump. Backers lost billions in just five hours. gizmodo.com/argentine-pr...

Literally 1984