I used to see this fake graph all over the place in my New Atheist days. It’s troubling because…well, look at the Y axis. No units? How do you quantify “scientific advancement” to a single dimension, anyway? Also that dashed line extrapolation implies that science naturally rises ‘upwards’. “Christian” Dark Ages implies that there was one single unitary factor to the social, economic, and military changes that occurred after the fall of Rome, and that there was no technological progress between 300CE and 1300CE. It’s a bad graph.

How about this one?

Now that’s a quantitative historical trauma! And we get to live through it (I hope we live through it.)

Trump is going to cut NASA’s budget in half, while making some contradictory plans.

President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to throttle the scientific ambitions of NASA, prematurely ending a host of active missions in orbit studying Earth and other planets, while also ending the agency’s work to develop their successors. The plans, released today, call for a “leaner” agency that will land “the first human ever, an American, on Mars.” But they would effectively end NASA’s long-standing role as the world leader in space science, researchers say—if the U.S. Congress follows through on them.

Putting an American on Mars is the dumbest goal ever. It’s not going to happen without a solid foundation in space science, which he is destroying. This sounds like a Musk plan: stupid, ill-founded, and doomed to failure.

Trump is demolishing biomedical research.

The Trump administration and Congress are eliminating billions of dollars of funding for medical research while also gutting the scientific workforce. Specifically, they are:

• Terminating more than $2.4 billion in active grants and obstructing new awards.
• Radically altering budget structures and reducing future funding.
• Eroding expertise and ending training programs.

Our best working estimates calculate that the NIH alone has cancelled more than 1,500 grants so far, representing a loss of more than $2.4 billion (PDF) in previously-committed medical research funding, with more expected. When delays (an additional $2.3 billion) are factored in, the total value of lost research funding approaches $5 billion.

The changes to grants management have been rapid, large-scale, and chaotic. In the past, grant terminations have typically been associated with misconduct and extraordinarily rare: from 2012 to 2024, there were fewer than five such terminations. Since February, however, hundreds of researchers across the country have received termination letters telling them that their work “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” This specific phrase references an obscure update to the Office of Management and Budget rules from the first Trump administration that allows them to unilaterally sever grants in service of the president’s political agenda. This executive branch maneuver is called “impoundment” and it functionally overrides Congressional authorization and appropriation.

Some of the terminations are blatantly ideological; a result of DOGE-directed screening and searches for flagged keywords like “women,” “trans,” “nonbinary,” “diversity,” or “COVID.” The attack on “woke DEI ideology” targets research focused on HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ+ health, reproductive health, addiction and mental health, health equity and systemic racial disparities, and more. Other terminations have nothing to do with the subject of the research, and instead must be understood as part of the administration’s attempt to strip universities of their independence.

Here’s a tally of many of the scientific budget cuts.

• National Science Foundation (NSF):
o The budget proposes $3.9 billion for NSF, which is $4.9 billion below (55%
decrease) FY 2025 enacted. The budget request proposes cuts for climate, clean
energy, “woke social, behavioral and economic sciences” and “programs in low
priority areas of science.”
• National Institutes of Health (NIH):
o The budget proposes $29.116 billion for the NIH, a $17.97 billion reduction (38%
decrease) from FY 2025 enacted. It also proposes reforms to the NIH, including
consolidating programs into five new focus areas:
▪ National Institute on Body Systems Research;
▪ National Institute on Neuroscience and Brain Research;
▪ National Institute of General Medical Sciences;
▪ National Institute of Disability Related Research; and
▪ National Institute on Behavioral Health.
o NIH research would align with the president’s priorities to address chronic
disease and other epidemics, implementing all executive orders, and eliminating
research on climate change, radical gender ideology and divisive “racialism”.
This new structure retains the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health
(ARPA-H).
o The budget provides $27 billion for NIH research.
• Department of Energy (DOE):
o The budget proposes $7.092 billion for the Office of Science, which is $1.148
billion below (13.9% decrease) FY 2025 enacted.
o The budget proposes $888 million for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
(EERE), which is $2.572 billion below (74% decrease) FY 2025 enacted.
o The budget proposes $200 million for Advanced Research Projects Agency–
Energy (ARPA-E), which is $260 million below (56% decrease) FY 2025 enacted.
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):
o The budget proposes a $1.311 billion decrease for the NOAA Operations,
Research and Grants program. Since the final FY 2025 continuing resolution did
not provide the specific funding level, the base level is unknown. The budget
cites a termination of “a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant
programs, which are not aligned with the Administration’s policy-ending ‘Green
New Deal’ initiatives.”
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA):
o The budget proposes $5.069 billion for NASA Science Mission Directorate, which
is $2.265 billion below (30.8% decrease) FY 2025 enacted.
o The budget proposes $1.034 billion for Earth Science, which is $1.161 billion
below (52.8% decrease) FY 2025 enacted.
o The budget proposes $569 million for the Space Technology Directorate, which
is $531 million below (48.2% decrease) FY 2025 enacted.

Don’t forget: 47% decrease in the budget of the department of agriculture, and a 30% cut to the department of the interior, and eliminating the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Science! On the bright side, the defense department gets a 13% increase. Also keep in mind that these are the quantitative changes — we haven’t even started examining the qualitative changes in where the money that is left is going, thanks to agents of chaos like RFK jr and Bhattacharya.

There’s no hiding the fact that these cuts are ideologically driven.

In February, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research — began an ideological purge of its grants. Without warning, hundreds of research projects — many of which had been underway for years, representing thousands of hours of work and billions of dollars in investment — were abruptly cancelled without a scientifically valid explanation. The NIH cited only vague connections to “gender identity” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), or other now-forbidden topics such as vaccine hesitancy and COVID, as justification, claiming these projects no longer aligned with “agency priorities.”

These funding cuts raise serious ethical concerns for study participants and risk many life-saving findings going unpublished. The NIH has undermined research on life-threatening diseases that affect us all like cancer, HIV, and Alzheimer’s — and dangerously implies that some patients are more worthy of care than others. These actions stifle scientific progress and put lives at risk.

It’s amazing how electing one man can so profoundly change the course of history…and not in a good way. Here’s the real march of progress:

The only BBB I might appreciate is the Better Business Bureau. This new bill the Republicans are foisting off on us is a blatant grift, and we’re just sitting here watching it pass.

What the Big Beautiful Bill contains is a give-away for the rich, while taking away any benefit to the poor and removing any limits on Trump’s power.

It’s going up before the Senate next, the sanctuary for privilege, so I don’t have a lot of hope that it will be shot down. We are so screwed.

Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful” budget squeaked through the US House of Representatives last Thursday – a shiny populist package hiding a brutal class agenda. No taxes on tips! Bigger child tax credits! But look closer and the bill is a sleight of hand. The middle-class perks expire in 2028 – just as Mr Trump’s second term would end – while permanent tax cuts for the rich, and delayed cuts to means-tested welfare, entrench inequality. It’s not a budget. It’s a bait-and-switch. It turns Democrats’ fiscal caution into a liability – one that punishes their own base. Republicans understand what Democrats still don’t: deficits aren’t the danger. It’s what you do with them that matters.

This bill supercharges inequality: a $1.1tn giveaway to Americans earning more than $500,000 a year – funded by pushing poorer families off Medicaid and food assistance. It slashes green energy subsidies. Experts say it could add $3.1tn to the debt – but it’s more than millionaire tax breaks. It raises Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding by 365% for detention, 500% for deportations – fuel for Mr Trump’s crackdown.

It’s breathtaking how quickly the USA flushed itself down the crapper.

One of my responsibilities is academic advising — I help students complete their degree and give them career advice. It’s feeling a bit awkward nowadays.

But that’s OK, I can just focus on the science instead.

Unfortunately, it’s become clear that my job is extremely political.

She looks nice.

That’s Freddie Oversteegen. She was 14 years old and living in the Netherlands when the Nazis invaded. She and her sister got busy.

If the Nazis or Dutch police caught the sisters, they might have killed them. However, the fact that they were both young girls—and Freddie looked even younger when she wore braids—meant that officials were less likely to suspect them of working for the resistance. This might be one of the reasons why, in 1941, a commander with the Haarlem Resistance Group visited their house to ask their mother if he could recruit Freddie and Truus.

Their mother consented and the sisters’ agreed to join. “Only later did he tell us what we’d actually have to do: sabotage bridges and railway lines,” Truus told Jonker. “‘And learn to shoot, to shoot Nazis,’ he added. I remember my sister saying: ‘Well, that’s something I’ve never done before!’”

In at least one instance, Truus seduced an SS officer into the woods so that someone from the resistance could shoot him. As the commander who recruited them had said, Freddie and Truus learned to shoot Nazis too, and the sisters began to go on assassination missions by themselves. Later on, they focused on killing Dutch collaborators who arrested or endangered Jewish refugees and resistance members.

I have to admire the Oversteegen sisters. They were doing good work. We should be more like Freddie and Truus.

On these missions, Freddie was especially good at following a target or keeping a lookout during missions since she looked so young and unsuspecting. Both sisters shot to kill, but they never revealed how many Nazis and Dutch collaborators they assassinated. According to Pliester, Freddie would tell people who asked that she and her sister were soldiers, and soldiers don’t say.

Consequently, we don’t have too many details about how their “liquidations,” as they called them, played out. Benda-Beckmann says that sometimes they would follow a target to his house to kill him or ambush them on their bikes.

Their other duties in the Haarlem Resistance Group included “bringing Jewish [refugees] to a new hiding place, working in the emergency hospital in Enschede… [and] blowing up the railway line between Ijmuiden and Haarlem,” writes Jonker.

I think it’s time to stop merely punching Nazis.

I don’t ever watch any of that biased punditry that infests broadcast television on Sunday mornings, but if I did, I’d probably see Murc’s Law in non-stop action.

“The widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics.” This is famously known as “Murc’s Law,” named after a commenter at the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money who noticed years ago the habitual assumption among the punditry that Republican misbehavior can only be caused by Democrats. Do Republicans reject climate science? Must be because Democrats failed to persuade them! Did Republicans pass unpopular tax cuts for the rich? Must be that Democrats didn’t do enough to guide them to better choices! Do Republicans keep voting for lunatics and fascists? It must be the fault of Democrats for being mean to them! Even Donald Trump’s election was widely blamed on Democrats — who voted against him, to be clear — on the bizarre grounds that Barack Obama should have rolled over and just let Mitt Romney win in 2012.

In order to be a highly paid influential thought-leader in the American news media, you have to apply the filter of Murc’s Law to everything you say. Oh, also: the “news” isn’t news, you have to suppress it until you’ve landed your lucrative book deal.

Awww. Some Trump apparatchiks are feeling uncomfortable.

I have a source inside the Trump regime who feels, in their own words, a little disillusioned. This person says they signed on to the Trump team because of DEI going too far and because woke culture was dividing the country, but is now concerned about the blatant criminal behavior of Donald Trump. Really? His last administration didn’t show you that? Well, OK.

DEI never went too far. If you think it did, that says more about you than it does about the policies, which were all about reasonable recognition of disparities. Everyone complaining about DEI are simply bigots who resent any awareness of their privilege.

Woke culture was not and is not dividing the country. If you want to be concerned about any attitudes, wake up to the culture of greed and so-called rugged individualism. What divides the country is that some people are incapable of sharing the wealth. We’re the richest country in the world with huge numbers of the poor, and a government that likes the idea of starving them to death as a tactic to end poverty.

The problem here, dear reporter, is that your source is a colossal asshole who cannot be trusted. They do not like the corruption, but the instant a trans person or a black person wanders into view they’ll go running into the arms of their orange Daddy. Screw ’em.