NSF cutting grants and fellowships left and right just as climate emergency is really threatening our ecosystem and therefore food security. Just as AI datacenters are being powered by illegally installed gas-burning equipment and sucking up water from local water systems, putting farmers out of business and threatening local groves of American chestnut trees...
Let's take a look at what *is* getting funded by NSF:
Before Adolph Hitler, Germany was the world's science center. But his censorship, budget cuts, and anti-intellectualism drove a generation of scientists away.
Something similar is happening in the U.S. thanks to Donald Trump.
Americans will only see the effects of these particular Trump actions in about 10-15 years.
He is stamping on America's crown jewels https://apnews.com/article/trump-science-research-funding-cuts-9f4c34581f4343f316a5e72852a71b51
RE: https://social.ridetrans.it/@Andres4NY/117247974463484857
I remain committed to this promise lie.
Reuters is reporting that the order to limit the SpaceX Starshield system used by Ukraine for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House.
"The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not specify who in the White House made the decision or who was responsible for implementing the order."
It's a travesty that the White House won't own up to such a major decision.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/order-limit-starshield-ukraine-came-inside-white-house-sources-say-2026-10-15/
#UsPol
9/n
@brian_gettler my school is moving toward requiring AI in every program and when I say that many students refuse to use AI for ethical reasons, they really have no response.
"Drivers once hit a wild animal about once a day on a stretch of highway between Colorado’s two most populous cities, Denver and Colorado Springs.
In the roughly 10 months since North America’s largest wildlife overpass opened across Interstate 25 between Larkspur and Monument, drivers have hit two animals, according to state wildlife managers and transportation officials — a 91% drop."
https://coloradosun.com/2026/10/14/i25-wildlife-overpass-collisions-drop/
A lot of people I know shared posts about the Yandex datacenter bombing resulting in a decrease in Russian misinformation/disinformation bot activity, sometimes with charts. Let this be a reminder every one of us could be fooled by a story that we really want to be true.
If you've wondered how so many working-class people were duped into believing that Trump, with his long history of anti-worker, pro-business stances, would somehow magically support their interests, you can see the same dynamic unfolding again, right now, with support for Gavin Newsom by so many libs, unions, & other folks who ought to know better. Latest polls still show him as one of the top 3 contenders for the Dem nominee for POTUS in 2028.
Case in point: Newsom endorsed Prop 42, a ballot measure that would cancel out Prop 40, the billionaire tax, while also banning future attempts to tax wealth. His support for Prop. 42 runs counter to his own Democratic Party, and labor unions, aligning him with the wealthy tech donors who've backed him since his days as mayor of San Francisco.
https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/10/newsom-tax-propositions-november-election/
Yes, but the other side of the coin, moving people away from MAGA, Republicans, Christian nationalism, racism and homophobia, and toward a politics of compassion and solidarity, means offering them what they really crave and need, solutions to their economic despair and disempowerment, not more scapegoats and hatred toward marginalized communities.
Today in Labor History September 27, 1962: Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was published, ushering in the modern environmental movement and the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #rachelcarson #Silentspring #environment #ecology #activism #books #writer #author #nonfiction @bookstadon
RE: https://climatejustice.social/@briefecology/117337605876345514
This was a fascinating issue to put together. Waste is so ever-present in capitalist society that we rarely stop to think about what it actually is, or what it could be instead.
Have you seen the #AAUP's research/report?
https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/artificial-intelligence-and-academic
They also have a session coming up:
https://www.aaup.org/event/strategy-playbook-addressing-ai-work
Have been various amounts disappointed and encouraged by universities' reports on AI and what to do about it. Cornell put out a much longer report addressing the triple crisis of AI impacts, loss of public faith in universities, and federal funding chaos that I think is makes an admirable stand in recognizing universities' role in forming good citizens rather than simply being vocational. They had lots to say about the gamification of admissions and the college experience blocking learning for learning's sake.
I think they do a good job of recognizing the deleterious impacts on education but are light on considering how we should approach a technology that might be good for your short term goals but bad for your long term ones including having an information-literate society.
From MIT:
"In a listening session with instructors, we learned that some were considering using AI agents as research assistants instead of hiring undergraduates as UROPs. One can see the case for speed and efficient use of resources (especially now, when research resources are so constrained). But if those criteria come to dominate our decisions, we all have to ask, 'What is it that we are here together to do?' "
From Cornell:
"Learning, as our committee understands it, is not merely the internalization of correct inputs and/or production of correct outputs. It is the slow cultivation of a person through the discipline of reading carefully, studying deeply, communicating effectively, debating
rigorously, creating constructively, and sitting with uncertainty long enough to both respect it and tackle it. These practices are constitutive of the formation of judgment. A student who uses AI to produce an essay has not learned to write. A researcher who uses AI to synthesize existing literature has not learned to deeply engage it. The shortcut bypasses the process through which
understanding is formed and judgment is developed. In a world where machines can synthesize, generate, and analyze at scale, the university’s most important response is neither to restrict AI nor to embrace it uncritically, but to become far more intentional about what remains
indispensably human in the learning process. The challenge is to build curricula, pedagogy, and assessments around the cultivation of those capacities."
-MIT's AI focused report: https://aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/
-Brown's AI focused report: https://provost.brown.edu/sites/default/files/GAITL_Committee_Report_FNL.pdf
-Cornell's much broader report: https://provost.cornell.edu/_files/initiatives/future-of-the-american-university-full-report.pdf
I once said this to @amywestervelt.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy and I stand by the statement.
“I don't think you can call anything where you're getting more oil out of the ground to burn a climate solution.”
drilled.media/news/ccs
These typewriters have so many radical ideas. 🤔
Oh my God, I agree with WSJ opinion
Oh my God, shoot me in the face
#Wildfires #Firefighters #USFS #CAPol #WAPol #ORPol #USPol
From CBS News.com: Firefighters struggle with staffing, equipment shortages amid record wildfire season: "We're running thin"
FYI @ai6yr @bud_t @uccawx @ingalls @firefly @mappingsupport
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/firefighters-staffing-equipment-shortages-wildfire-season/
to anyone who says that people who don't like being mansplained to, etc. "don't know how social media work", i invite you to read this essay on how public speech and comment "work" to silence women
"My aim here – and I acknowledge the irony of my being given the space to address the subject – is to take a long view, a very long view, on the culturally awkward relationship between the voice of women and the public sphere of speech-making, debate and comment"
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n06/mary-beard/the-public-voice-of-women