gammarator

> But 50% of NASA's science funding is gone.

The proposed cuts to science are catastrophic, but there’s still time to call your Congressperson.

https://aas.org/posts/news/2025/05/week-of-action

> The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas — hardly a partisan institution — finds that nondefense government R&D yields long-run economic returns of 150% to 300% and accounts for roughly a quarter of American productivity growth since World War II. The authors, economists Andrew Fieldhouse and Karel Mertens, conclude bluntly: “Our findings therefore point to a misallocation of public capital, and substantial underinvestment in nondefense R&D.”

This is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong. Here is the chapter and verse for what can count as "Broader Impacts" for NSF grants:

> Such outcomes include, but are not limited to: full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); improved STEM education and educator development at any level; increased public scientific literacy and public engagement with science and technology; improved well-being of individuals in society; development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce; increased partnerships between academia, industry, and others; improved national security; increased economic competitiveness of the U.S.; use of science and technology to inform public policy; and enhanced infrastructure for research and education. These examples of societally relevant outcomes should not be considered either comprehensive or prescriptive. Proposers may include appropriate outcomes not covered by these examples.

https://www.nsf.gov/policies/pappg/24-1/ch-2-proposal-prepar...

Only the first is "DEI" in any form, and you can (and I have) successfully get funded using any of them.

The vast majority of homeless people in the Bay Area are from the Bay Area. https://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2017-10-2...

There is lots of homelessness because housing is expensive. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

Whatever the term “vibe coding” is taken to mean, it assuredly doesn’t apply to a large scale migration undertaken by a professional software organization.

> A college degree (especially from good old State U) serves first and foremost as a white-collar job permit.

It’s worth pointing out that this is a perception that has been cultivated. Position the degree as first and foremost a job credential, cut state support, and force students and their parents to directly bear the cost for this supposedly individualized benefit through higher tuition. “The customer is always right” and no learning need occur.

“Starving the Beast” is a documentary on this topic: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5444928/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_p...

The NYT sent me a free Google Cardboard once!

So you’re not _interviewing_ them, you’re having them complete expensive work-sample tests. And your evaluation metric is “completes lots of steps in a small time box.”

The “large pyramids” are largely funded by federal grants. If the grants aren’t there, the grad students won’t be either.

Most colleges don’t have billion dollar endowments.

Serious question: is there anything other than their own scruples keeping these guys from siphoning off a few billion dollars for themselves?

Not an expert myself, but I don’t believe $200k/year counts as a “FAANG salary” for anyone with founder-level responsibility.

Do you, Patrick, believe that “Chicago’s African American community is impoverished in part because of extractive practices of vice entrepreneurs?” Phrasing it this way winks that you don’t think so, but perhaps I am misreading you.

However, the conclusion of your article seems to be that Bally’s (a vice entrepreneur) is about to further impoverish them, this time under the guise of ownership but as usual with the support of the local political elites. So for consistency I think your answer should be “yes.”

You’d make a bigger difference in your hometown by conveying this message directly to the folks being targeted, rather than the HN crowd.

… Bluesky offers a clean, strictly chronological following feed as well as your choice of algorithmic feeds.

These aren’t “forests” like in other parts of the West so much as cliffs covered in dry, scrubby brush. I’m pessimistic that they could be systematically cleared or burned in a controlled way.

Here’s an extended comment by another astrophysicst: https://telescoper.blog/2025/01/02/timescape-versus-dark-ene...

The most important bit:

> The new papers under discussion focus entirely on supernovae measurements. It must be recognized that these provide just one of the pillars supporting the standard cosmology. Over the years, many alternative models have been suggested that claim to “fix” some alleged problem with cosmology only to find that it makes other issues worse. That’s not a reason to ignore departures from the standard framework, but it is an indication that we have a huge amount of data and we’re not allowed to cherry-pick what we want.

The wide range of preferences expressed here makes me think that the best apple is one grown near you—and different varieties are better suited for different climate regions.

Keep a look out for https://www.collinsfamilyorchards.com/ at your market, or try their CSA!

The SweeTango I had was cloyingly, almost artificially sweet. Can’t tell if it was an unlucky pick or I just have different preferences—I like an Ambrosia.

It also rarely applies to farms. https://www.cbpp.org/blog/the-myth-that-the-estate-tax-threa...

It’s part of their life cycle https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21

Compare Google’s cost per query to ChatGPT’s.

The unit economics appear to be substantially different.

I ate at the Monastery many times during my postdoc a decade ago. With all but the 200” telescope fully robotic, it was already a pared down experience from the glory days reminisced about in the article. Still, it was and is a beautiful site, and the hospitality and proximity to history always made it a memorable experience.

> can anyone actually name a feature from DarkSky that isn’t present in the current Weather app?

Easy. As the screenshots show, the DarkSky main page would _dynamically adjust_ the information it shows you: adding radar, precip level, combined precip/temperature forcecast, etc. The fact that those elements can be found individually by poking through three or four screens in the Weather app doesn't make them equivalent.

I’d recommend the documentary BLAST! (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1190065/) for a look at the scientific side of stratospheric ballooning, which personally would put me off wanting to ride in one.

AllTrails appears to have replaced the ai-generated description with (likely custom, human-written) text that emphasizes the hazards: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/wyoming/teewinot-mountain...

It cracks me up how much he looks like “Dad” in the strip in those 80s photos.

You can’t really trust that the LLM gets it right either, though.

Strongly seconding this recommendation. Dr. Gawanda distills down how to be led by the dying person’s priorities.