petschge

Trump to direct Pentagon to buy coal to revive industry, Bloomberg News says U.S. President Donald Trump is set to direct the Pentagon to use government funding and Pentagon contracts to sustain U.S. coal-fired power plants, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing a White House official.

Trump to direct Pentagon to buy coal to revive industry, Bloomberg News says reut.rs/46vkQiO

Google sent personal and financial information of student journalist to ICE | TechCrunch The tech giant handed over the personal information of a journalist and student who attended a pro-Palestinian protest in 2024. This is the latest example of ICE using its controversial subpoena power...

More reports of Gmail turning over email content to ICE are coming out now.
techcrunch.com/2026/02/10/g...

Very similar to the number of COVID deaths in 2020, which is staggering!

Dozens of researchers will move to France from US following high-profile bid to lure talent Large proportion worked at Columbia University, which had its grants cut and frozen by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Dozens of researchers will move to France from US following high-profile bid to lure talent. Large proportion worked at Columbia University, which had its grants cut and frozen by the administration of US President Donald Trump. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

One of every thousand American residents has been taken into custody by ICE in the last year.

Bridge Owner Lobbied Administration Before Trump Blasted Competing Span to Canada

Aaand there you go: Trump’s sudden about-face on the most important Canada-US border crossing came after meeting with the billionaire family that owns the rival bridge. Nice scoop, confirming suspicions of everyone who has followed this file and is familiar with Trump www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/w...

Friends from Minneapolis reporting to me that things are at the point where folks are being hidden in other people's houses and we are in the "again" part of "never again" which the "never" was supposed to preclude

Comic. [Person with ponytail pointing to diagram on wall as she talks to two other people, one with short hair.] PERSON 1: The high carbon content of the skeleton indicates that the individual lived less than 12.6 billion years ago, after the first round of stellar nucleosynthesis. [caption] Cosmologist carbon dating

Carbon Dating

xkcd.com/3205/

Lord Kelvin?

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/. https://www.ft.com/content/a5cf86ec-47cb-448f-b4a3-56ca6390ad8e Elon Musk is betting that AI’s future lies not on Earth, but in orbit — a claim he has put at the centre of his $1.25tn plan to merge SpaceX with his lossmaking start-up xAI. The tech billionaire, who aims to launch an initial public offering for the newly combined company this year, argues that vast fleets of satellites powered by solar energy and cooled by the vacuum of space will become the cheapest way to generate AI computing power. Musk believes this will happen within the next three years.

This would have been a good point for someone to have asked, is that really how things work? Or is vacuum in fact an excellent insulator? www.ft.com/content/a5cf...

"cooled by the vacuum of space" - huh, neat. hey does anyone know how thermoses work

Two bison walking or in this case running traffic in the road. Bison love to stand in front of cars, sometimes walk in front of cars and in this case, run in front of cars. In any case its pacing traffic and here we see two bison galloping along with a very long line of cars behind them.

Good afternoon from @altyellonatpark.org

Traffic Yellowstone style

This is starting to get like universal basic income where every single objective study shows the same result but the people who don't like that result go "uh, well there's just really no way to know"

Did you know that the Works Progress Administration employed mathematicians, physicists, and engineers? One of those projects produced the common (beloved?) reference book "Handbook of Mathematical Functions" by Abramowitz (sort of) and Stegun (primarily)! 🧪 ⚛️ 👩‍🔬 🧮

Hey y'all. I'm hiring. Are you interested in building instruments for astrophysics?

wd5.myworkdaysite.com/recruiting/u...

"It does not matter who votes, but who counts the votes." ---Stalin

UK government proposes 30% budget cut to astronomy and physics research: 'It's pretty disastrous' "You can't have a cut of that scale and not expect to see a massive impact."

"UK government proposes 30% budget cut to astronomy and physics research: 'It's pretty disastrous'" www.space.com/astronomy/uk... 🔭🧪

Bund zahlt in einem Jahr 500 Millionen Euro für Microsoft-Lizenzen Die Ausgaben des Bundes für Microsoft-Lizenzen steigen rasant. Eine Analyse verweist auf die Risiken der digitalen Abhängigkeit.

Digitale Souveränität bleibt bloße Rhetorik. Und mit der „KI“-Integration erleben wir schon den nächsten Pfad in die Abhängigkeit www.heise.de/hintergrund/...

Reform is threatening Bangor University over a student society’s decision. The society isn’t Bangor University—but this is a neat preview of how a Reform government would work: public money for supporters only. Trump-style politics, UK edition.

Authoritarian reflex is already working just fine.👇

Russia's tech regulator Roskomnadzor has begun throttling Telegram, citing the messenger app's "failure to comply with Russian law." The move is the part of an ongoing effort to push Russians away from non-state-controlled apps (incl. WhatsApp) and onto Messenger Max.
www.interfax.ru/digital/1072...

Easterhegg 2026 – Tickets, Merch und mehr TL;DR: Ein neues Jahr – eine neue Easterhegg. Dieses Jahr findet sie an der Universität Koblenz vom 3. bis zum 6. April statt. Das Motto der Easterhegg dieses Jahr ist „The Bunny is a Lie!“. Call for…

Ein neues Jahr – eine neue Easterhegg: Dieses Jahr an der Universität #Koblenz vom 3. bis 6. April. Der Ticketvorverkauf findet an drei Terminen ab 12. Februar statt. Es wird Merch geben! events.ccc.de/2026/02/09/e...

On the Deepest Search for Galactic Center Pulsars and an Examination of an Intriguing Millisecond Pulsar Candidate On the Deepest Search for Galactic Center Pulsars and an Examination of an Intriguing Millisecond Pulsar Candidate, Perez, Karen I., Gajjar, Vishal, Bogdanov, Slavko, Halpern, Jules P., Demorest, Paul B., Croft, Steve, Lebofsky, Matt, MacMahon, David H. E., Siemion, Andrew P. V.

It was detected in X-band (8-12 GHz). Here’s the paper: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Technik Workshop für Jugendliche zwischen 12 und 17 Jahren Technikbegeisterte Jugendliche testen beim Jung-Hacker*innen-Tag in Flensburg 3D-Druck, Elektronik und Robotik – was wird in der Werkstatt möglich?

Technik-Workshop für Jugendliche zwischen 12 und 17 Jahren: Jugendangebot des CCC #Flensburg am 15. Februar ab 13 Uhr www.shz.de/lokales/wir-...

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

When the researchers tested the LLMs without involving users by providing the models with the full text of each clinical scenario, the models correctly identified conditions in 94.9 percent of cases. But when talking to the participants about those same conditions, the LLMs identified relevant conditions in fewer than 34.5 percent of cases. People didn’t know what information the chatbots needed, and in some scenarios, the chatbots provided multiple diagnoses and courses of action. Knowing what questions to ask a patient and what information might be withheld or missing during an examination are nuanced skills that make great human physicians; based on this study, chatbots can’t reliably replicate that kind of care. In some cases, the chatbots also generated information that was just wrong or incomplete, including focusing on elements of the participants’ inputs that were irrelevant, giving a partial US phone number to call, or suggesting they call the Australian emergency number.

people often don't know what's relevant to doctors, and a good doctor's job is to know what follow up questions to ask to get to a correct diagnosis and course of action. chatbots just can't do that www.404media.co/chatbots-hea...

This guy was spotted in northwest Albuquerque
New Mexico

Since the early days of the space program, astronauts have quarantined before missions because any illness could be disastrous. It’s eminently logical — not “extreme” — for athletes who’ve trained their WHOLE LIVES for one event to take similar precautions in order to stay in peak physical condition

You can't say "SpaceX dropped its Mars plans" because SpaceX never had "plans" for Mars. They had a sales pitch.

There was never any indication that anyone inside SpaceX seriously worked on a Mars mission other than on power point slides.

And no, Starship as such does not count.

‘Absolute hell’: Irish man with valid US work permit held by Ice since September Seamus Culleton has been in a detention facility in Texas for nearly five months despite having no criminal record

Kerryman who is married, living and working legally in the United States for >20 years has been incarcerated by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) since September 2025.

Profoundly disturbing report by Karlin Lillington @klillington.bsky.social
www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

*Green card application in process and work permit, married to US citizen
*Lived in US for 20 years, no criminal record
*In detention for five months with no charge, despite judge approving release
*He disputes ICE claim that he signed forms agreeing to deportation