Michael Greshko
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michaelgreshko.bsky.social
Michael Greshko
@michaelgreshko.bsky.social
1.5K followers 850 following 310 posts
Associate online news editor @Science. Freelance contributor to NYT, SciAm, WaPo, etc., and author of the Deviations newsletter. Former staff writer at National Geographic. Signal: mgreshko.01 https://linktr.ee/michaelgreshko
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michaelgreshko.bsky.social
Terrific reporting here from @sarareardon.bsky.social that very clearly lays out the stakes. A lot of these grants focus on HIV/AIDS—about 13% of South Africans live w/ HIV, more than anywhere else in the world—and tuberculosis (of interest to @johngreensbluesky.bsky.social?).
Gandhi says cutting clinical trials for HIV and tuberculosis would have ripple effects outside of Africa. She is most concerned that abruptly stopping treatment will allow HIV and the mycobacteria that causes tuberculosis to develop resistance to existing medicines. Even if funding is eventually restored, she says, “I don’t know if we can ever get back to where we are.”
March 14, 2025 at 10:06 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
If I've got the orientation right, I don't think that #IM2 will be able to deploy either its rover or its hopper. This is my very rough working model of IM2's orientation on the lunar surface, looking from what should be the top of IM2 down toward its legs.
Simplified digram of IM2's possible orientation on the lunar surface. IM2 has a hexagonal cross-section, so the six sides of IM2 are represented here by a simple hexagon. The PRIME-1 instrument appears to be on top of the sideways lander.
March 7, 2025 at 3:56 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
Intuitive Machines has released a high-resolution picture from its #IM2 lander. And this does not look good for PRIME-1...which is the instrument that's on top of the sideways lander. Very hard to drill into lunar regolith when the drill lies parallel to the moon's surface.
Image from the IM2 robotic lunar lander, taken toward the lunar horizon. Foreground is a lunar lander tipped onto its side, with two legs visibly pointing upward. The sunlit lunar landscape is in the background, with a half-Earth visible in the darkness of space beyond. Detail from the first image from the IM2 robotic lunar lander, with a yellow outline around the PRIME-1 instrument.
March 7, 2025 at 3:35 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
It's my understanding that as Society leadership saw things, the Fox deal was a unique opportunity to shore up the Society's long-term financial health. And they had a point: "Membership dues" (magazine subscriptions) and associated ad revenue had been in decline for 25 years by that point.
Chart showing historical subscriptions to National Geographic from 1900 to 2024. Subscriptions slowly grew from 1900 and reached 1 million in the mid-1920s. They then stayed more or less flat until the mid-1940s and quickly grew to 2 million by the early 1950s. From the early 1960s to the early 1980s, subscriptions grew at a roughly constant, meteoric rate, from 2.2 million in 1957 to more than 10 million by the early 1980s. Print subscriptions then start to decline from approximately 10 million in 1990 to fewer than 1 million today. From 1990 to today, newsstand sales and estimated digital subscriptions also grow, but not enough to offset long-term print declines. Total circulation (newsstand sales, print subscriptions, and digital subscriptions) is less than 2 million.
February 22, 2025 at 2:43 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
Like, if you actually break down NASA's spending, the bulk of the agency's budget is paid out to contractors, not to staff.
www.usaspending.gov/explorer/age...
Chart showing breakdown of NASA's spending. 76% is "contractual services and supplies," 14.2% is "personnel compensation and benefits," 5% is "grants and fixed charges," and 4.8% is "acquisition of assets."
February 18, 2025 at 6:08 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
As it turns out, Otte Ventures is a shareholder of NextVision Media UG, along with a Munich resident named Matthias Binder and an Augsburg resident named Marcel Kuhn.
Table readout from German government document describing Otte Ventures GmbH's 33.33% stake in NextVision Media UG.
February 5, 2025 at 7:24 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
The CEO and cofounder of Animals Around the Globe is a German fellow named Jan Otte, who seems keen to invest in a variety of online publishing and media firms through his company Otte Ventures GmbH.
www.linkedin.com/in/janotte21...
LinkedIn profile page for Jan Otte, the CEO and co-founder of Animals Around the Globe (AATG) and Otte Ventures. Five years ago, I founded Animals Around The Globe™ with Chris Weber to build the worlds largest animal focused media company. Bootstrapped to over 100M pageviews & 1billion seconds watchtime per year. Investing in tech, media and publishing businesses via Otte Ventures GmbH. Previously at Google, Axel Springer, BMW and VC-backed Startup in New York City, Johannesburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Dublin and Berlin while completing studies in Germany, China and Italy.
February 5, 2025 at 7:24 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
The website's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/climatecosmos) says that it is controlled by an outfit called Animals Around the Globe GmBh, which is a publication all its own: www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com
Screenshot of Facebook page for a publication called Climate Cosmos, with 51,000 likes and 50,000 followers. "Animals Around the Globe GmbH" is the entity responsible for the page.
February 5, 2025 at 7:24 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
CDC’s data subdomain, data.cdc.gov, is now fully “temporarily offline,” as the CDC assesses CDC data products’ alignment with Trump executive orders.
February 1, 2025 at 12:28 AM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
It's loading for me at the moment.
Functional homepage of stacks.cdc.gov, the CDC's publication repository
January 31, 2025 at 6:14 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
🧪 NEW: Minutes ago, the National Science Foundation (NSF) sent out an email update on its hold on funding, as the NSF conducts a compliance review with Trump's anti-DEI executive orders. Funds are still held up, and the ACM$ web portal is still down: www.research.gov/acms-web/
Email from NSF, the beginning of which reads: Our top priority is resuming our funding actions and services to the research community and our stakeholders. We are working expeditiously to conduct a comprehensive review of our projects, programs and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders.
January 30, 2025 at 8:16 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
🧪 The situation is particularly acute for postdoctoral research fellows who are directly funded by NSF, as they depend on funds for their literal living expenses. The web portal used to access NSF funds is still shut down: www.research.gov/acms-web/
Web page of the National Science Foundation’s Award Cash Management Service that reads: Our top priority is resuming our funding actions and services to the research community and our stakeholders. We are working expeditiously to conduct a comprehensive review of our projects, programs and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders. NSF has created an Executive Order Implementation webpage to ensure the widest dissemination of information and updates.We will continue to communicate with you as we receive additional guidance.
January 30, 2025 at 2:39 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
If we zoom out to terriers, Wofford College puts in a respectable performance
College sports mascot depicting the head and neck of a growling black and white terrier dog, with a brownish (or gold) collar studded with six black spikes
December 14, 2024 at 11:46 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
I’m at NASA headquarters today for @sciam.bsky.social to cover a major NASA update on the Artemis program. I won’t be live-skeeting but will provide updates as I can.
NASA officials sitting at a table for a press conference, with “Artemis” behind them on a projection
December 5, 2024 at 6:06 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
1980s television cartoon of a white seal looking hopefully up to the right
November 23, 2024 at 5:19 AM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
Roger that. Here's a sketch I drew today of my dog Luna.
Pencil sketch of a pitbull lounging.
November 20, 2024 at 3:21 AM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
These days especially, I’m trying to find moments of joy. Here’s a sketch of my dog Luna I made from observation this afternoon.
Pencil sketch of lounging pitbull
November 20, 2024 at 12:45 AM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
Thanks for the follows!

To reintroduce myself: I’m a science journalist and ex-Nat Geo staff writer who covers paleontology, space, physics, archaeology, and much more for Science, Nature, SciAm, NYT, WaPo, etc.

Sign up for my newsletter: deviations.ghost.io
Man wearing blue shirt, backpack and head scarf standing in the Moroccan desert holding a dinosaur tooth Man standing in front of a large rocket launch pad with the Space Launch System rocket atop it Man in waders and a sweatshirt standing in front of a 19th-century statue of a dinosaur that resembles an iguana. Foreground is mossy. Man and woman wearing event lanyards standing in front of a sign that reads “FISM Quebec 2022”
November 18, 2024 at 5:56 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
One of the fun things about Deviations (deviations.ghost.io), my personal newsletter, is that I set myself a goal of writing a complex anagram for the kicker of every edition.

Here's the closing anagram for today's send:
"Rolling three dice does an impressively good job at illustrating how global warming skews the chances of heat extremes over land." is an anagram of "At the climate casino, bad-luck rolls mean the world is overwhelmingly hot. Express grief, rage; the goal—job—is to save ending wonders."
November 13, 2024 at 6:03 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
Dice rolls approximate normal distributions; adding extra numbers to those sums has the effect of shifting the distribution to the right. Which is exactly what climate change is doing to temperatures over land. (The chart at the right: www.giss.nasa.gov/research/bri...)
Chart showing bell curve of the probabilities of rolling different three-dice sums. Chart showing shifting decade-by-decade distributions of Northern Hemisphere land temperatures during summer months.
November 13, 2024 at 5:37 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
These simple rules do a remarkably good job of replicating the IPCC's estimates of how much more frequent these two kinds of heat extremes will get under 1-4°C of global warming.
Chart showing correspondence between the probabilities of 10-year heat events under different amounts of warming and the probabilities of rolling a three-dice sum of at least 15 when adding extra numbers. Chart showing correspondence between the probabilities of 50-year heat events under different amounts of warming and the probabilities of rolling a three-dice sum of at least 17 when adding extra numbers.
November 13, 2024 at 5:37 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
In 2021-2023, the IPCC published its Sixth Assessment Report, an enormous global summary of what we know about climate change. www.ipcc.ch/assessment-r...

A summary of the science of climate change, published in 2021, included this fascinating look at heat extremes over land:
Chart showing how under different amounts of climate change, once-in-a-decade and once-every-50-year heat extremes become much more common as global warming increases.
November 13, 2024 at 5:37 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
All these companies appear to be closely linked. Link.Builders is a "Golden Mile Ltd Company." Golden Mile Ltd, a Maltese company, is partially owned by Red Earth Ltd (see screenshot). Some of the Digital Superstars Ltd players, such as Noremo, appear to have ties to Red Earth.
March 20, 2024 at 2:41 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
I am suspicious of GamblingTimes.com's staff. Andrew Brown, the publication's reputed editor-in-chief, has practically no online footprint, his headshot looks AI-generated, and his clips are... well: www.gamblingtimes.com/blog/author/...
March 20, 2024 at 2:27 PM
michaelgreshko.bsky.social
Building on @ernie.tedium.co's work, I've made a break in the case of who bought Deadspin.

An XML file buried deep in the code of lineup-publishing.com reveals a Wordpress author named "maxnoremo." lineup-publishing.com/wp-json/oemb...
Portion of XML file from lineup-publishing.com Contains an author URL with a username "maxnoremo."
March 20, 2024 at 2:12 PM