Cedar Riener

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

-Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate of STEM Education.

8/10

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.

7/10

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

1/10

UNC-CH Will ‘Scrap’ New Recording Policy, Chancellor Says The move comes less than three weeks after the controversial rules were enacted.

Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings.

This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.

OpenAI strikes deal with Pentagon after Trump orders government to stop using Anthropic On X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he had moved to label Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" and cancel Defense business with the company.

One way to read the AI/Pentagon news from last night (I covered it but didn't skeet) is that the Department of Defense wants AI to automate weapons and/or spy on Americans and that Anthropic would have the best AI to do that, but OpenAI is at least the second-best so they'll just use that instead.

Let's say I'm a researcher in a politically controversial topic: flu and hepatitis vaccines for children. I study interventions to increase vaccine uptake.

Would I be doing "activist science" given the anti-vaxx political movement & anti-vaxx govt actions here in the US?

(Inspired by #SPSP2026)

The passage reads: One of the people I interviewed for the story was Rev. Robert Seymour, who had been Smith's pastor at the Binkley Baptist Church since 1958, when he first arrived in Chapel Hill. Seymour told me a story about how upset Smith was to learn that Chapel Hill's restaurants were still segregated. He and Seymour came up with an idea: Smith would walk into a restaurant with a black member of the church. "You have to remember," Reverend Seymour said. "Back then, he wasn't Dean Smith. He was an assistant coach. Nothing more." Smith agreed and went to a restaurant where management knew him. He and his companion sat down and were served. That was the beginning of desegregation in Chapel Hill.

The passage reads: When I circled back to Smith and asked him to tell me more about that night, he shot me an angry look. "Who told you about that?" he asked. "Reverend Seymour," I said. "I wish he hadn't done that." "Why? You should be proud of doing something like that." He leaned forward in his chair and in a very quiet voice said something I've never forgotten: "You should never be proud of doing what's right. You should just do what's right."

“You should never be proud of doing what’s right. You should just do what’s right.”

When Dean Smith comes up, this story is always the first thing I think of.

www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colle...

> Another of al-Jazari’s fantastical contraptions is of special interest to historians of science as it is regarded by many to be the first programmable “robot” in history.

www.nationalgeographic.com/history/hist...

I love bcc it's so great that email has a secret "can you believe this bullshit" feature

ICYMI | Headlines from this week:

🚫 Virginia State Terminates 6 Professors Without Due Process
👛 U.S. Plans to Stop Funding Low-Earning Degrees. Indiana May Just End Them.
🤖 Agentic AI Can Complete Whole Courses for Students. Now What?

Read the full weekly news update ➡️ https://bit.ly/4baSDAB

The obsession with hypocrisy gets in the way of understanding.

The angle of "the Iran strikes are bad bc they didn't ask Congress for permission" reminds me of the Norm Macdonald bit about people saying "the hypocrisy" of Bill Cosby's actions was "the worst part." Macdonald:"I disagree. I think all the raping was the worst part."

In answer to some queries: this is not a joke, Melania Trump actually is presiding over a UN Security Council meeting Monday, and apparently they scheduled that knowing they were going to launch an illegal war on Saturday morning

Real bad day for people who can’t conceive of being upset with different people to different degrees

Remember when OpenAI was a non-profit like basically 5 minutes ago

“the Department of *War* displayed a deep respect for safety” according to the guy who is being sued eleventy times because his product tells children to kill themselves

War is fundamentally unsafe and so is your piece of shit chatbot but COOL STORY BRO

a progressive income tax? sorry kiddo, that betrays a "utopian" desire that can only ever end in tragedy. but a relentless program of constant wars, occupations, and genocides fast and slow, for oil, land, and fulfilling the commands of a blood-hungry god? thats just Adults in the Room doing Policy

it's also revealing that we're attacking a country to "liberate" it while we're abducting refugees to put into concentration camps

I mean, it's this, or we just send chatbot-written e-mails back and forth to each other forever

please, for fucks sake, if you're disabled / chronically ill, please don't get your analysis from fucking 'influencers' who care more about doing numbers on social media than telling the truth about whether there's a moratorium on all DME

i've lived on ssi, snap, medicaid - there's no paywall

this is what you sound like. you're ridiculous.

i absolutely refuse to take these AI guys and their boosters seriously when the 2 choices are "end of all suffering" and "human extinction"

these people are not serious people

That Won't Work, Bro Announcing my new ed tech consultancy.

Maybe I shouldn't be, but I'm surprised people take this Alpha School thing at all seriously. Does no one remember Rocketship or AltSchool or the other attempts at this digitally automated schooling? Time to re-up this from the AltSchool days. www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-v...

Tough year for APS proposals, from what I can tell. After last year in DC was definitely a bit sparse. I guess I'm glad for APS bouncing back.

My guess is that it was Hebrew University in Jerusalem (which Einstein helped found) that forced this. They have the rights to Einstein's name and likeness and protect that quite forcefully apparently.

All that means though is an eventual rebranding and this terrible idea will be back.

Generic white dude who programs @westbynoreaster Why then did you take down the “Einstein” chatbot? 1:22 AM · Feb 26, 2026 · 67 Views Advait Paliwal @advaitpaliwal · 16h Cease and desist Generic white dude who programs @westbynoreaster · 15h Really? Presumably from Canvas/Instructure, right? Advait Paliwal @advaitpaliwal · 7h Due to the name Einstein

In utterly DELIGHTFUL news, Adwait Paliwal, the desi techbro behind the cheatbot Einstein AI which claimed it could log into Canvas and do/turn in your assignments for you has been forced to take down his website.
He'll likely be back, and there are others like him in abundance, sadly.

NSF officials break silence on how AI and quantum now drive agency grantmaking Leaders acknowledge White House role in controversial moves

The National Science Foundation is systematically being converted to the National AI and Quantum Research Foundation.

“I see it as the administration exerting political control over what has traditionally been NSF’s ability to fund the best science.”