Nigel Goldenfeld
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nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social
Nigel Goldenfeld
@nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social
Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Physics, UCSD. Interested in everything.

Theoretical physicist researching condensed & living matter, fluid mechanics, statistical mechanics. Bad at staying in my lane.

https://guava.physics.ucsd.edu/~nigel/
blockclubchicago.org/2025/11/12/p...

Many reports of Illinois State Police arresting protestors exercising 1st Amendment rights at Broadview, despite @jbpritzker.bsky.social saying that ISP are there to protect protestors.

@jbpritzker.bsky.social or @annecaprara.bsky.social please comment. Thx
Protesters Keep Getting Arrested At Broadview By State Police Despite Promise To Protect Free Speech
About 80 protesters have been arrested at the ICE facility since barricades went up. Protesters and legal observers say the arrests run counter to the state’s stated goals of ensuring public safety an...
blockclubchicago.org
November 17, 2025 at 4:56 AM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
BREAKING: In AAUP et al v. Trump (wall-to-wall union lawsuit challenging the administration’s unlawful use of TItle VI to reshape the University of California system), the faculty and staff of the UC system WON!!!

We were granted our preliminary injunction! @aaup.org
November 14, 2025 at 11:55 PM
🧪⚛️

Get ready for Thanksgiving and the curmudgeonly uncle who's going to try and convince you that #climatechange is a hoax.

Here's an easy read by one of my colleagues, which also provides a political context for the current administration bias on the issue.

thebulletin.org/2025/11/the-...
The comforting but dangerous fantasy of ‘normal’ climatic and political aberrations
Our current political climate is just as unusual and concerning as the current state of our planetary climate.
thebulletin.org
November 13, 2025 at 4:14 PM
It's time for Chuck Schumer to go. Tried to call my Senators, but no answer & voicemail boxes are all full. But you can still send email. Here's the easiest way.

If your Senators were not in the 8 who voted with GOP, don't forget to thank them!

act.indivisible.org/sign/dem-sen...
Tell Your Democratic Senator It's Time for Chuck Schumer to Step Aside
On November 9, Chuck Schumer surrendered in the fight for affordable healthcare, supplying Republicans the votes necessary to advance a budget that will cause premiums to double and triple for million...
act.indivisible.org
November 10, 2025 at 8:53 PM
"Trump’s primary power is the power we give him when he asserts he is in control of everything, and we believe him.”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Trump’s assault on voting intensifies as midterms loom:‘a wholesale attack on free and fair elections’
White House is manipulating voting system, from redistricting to rule changes, to affect midterms
www.theguardian.com
November 9, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
The closed captioning is devastating
November 8, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
Very Well Said, Adelita….

Adelita Grijalva: "THANK YOU Mike Johnson! By obstructing my swearing-in, you highlighted how corrupt this administration is. People all over the nation wouldn’t have even known about me otherwise."
November 6, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
BREAKING: Our team @democracyforward.org and co-counsel just WON another court order to secure #SNAP. Judge finds Trump admin didn’t comply with prior order. FULL PAYMENTS must be paid across nation by tomorrow.
November 6, 2025 at 9:16 PM
🧪 "Because we need a war on cancer not a war against our cities"

@standupforscience.bsky.social hilariously and joyfully delivers 150,000 signatures to HHS, petitioning for the removal of RFK Jr

www.youtube.com/live/3Hi18Fv...
March for Health and Science
YouTube video by Stand Up for Science!
www.youtube.com
November 6, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
Allahu Akbar

Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Raheem

Thank you for Mamdani and the great American New York City. Keep the people safe as they celebrate. Protect Zohran and his family and give them wisdom.

*meditates*

Ameen.

(Did I do it right, Greg?)
November 5, 2025 at 5:37 AM
re: GOP/media clutching their pearls about Mamdani being a socialist.

👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇
November 5, 2025 at 3:39 PM
"But" --> and

"a party" --> the Republican party

"rebuilding" -->building

"brand" --> fascist brand

There. Fixed it for you @nytimes.com

WTAF??
November 5, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
Mamdani: "We can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him."
November 5, 2025 at 4:38 AM
Chien-Shiung Wu was fantastic and it is egregious that she did not share the Nobel Prize with Lee and Yang for the breaking of parity. Without her brilliant experiment, the theory would have been worthless.

🧪⚛️
In honor of the upcoming #WomenInPhysics Day, let's create a thread of amazing women physicists. I'll start with one my favorites, Chien-Shiung Wu, who is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which proved that parity is not conserved. ⚛️ 🧪 👩‍🔬 🎢
November 5, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
serious note: they're gonna try 5x harder to sabotage the midterms after tonight and we're gonna have to organize on a literally historic scale to stop them
really obvious now why trump and the republican party have been working so hard to prevent fair elections lol they know
November 5, 2025 at 4:41 AM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
“There is just a general acknowledgement that a lot of what is happening is illegal…"

Common threads of this administration: an effort to destroy science, and a willingness to break the law to do so. That’s possible because the Roberts Court is letting them break the law.
NASA is sinking its flagship science center during the government shutdown — and may be breaking the law in the process, critics say
"There is just a general acknowledgement that a lot of what is happening is illegal…"
www.space.com
November 3, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
On Friday night, Donald Trump held a Great Gatsby-inspired Halloween party themed "A little party never killed nobody.”

On Monday morning, the Trump administration told a judge it will only PARTIALLY fund SNAP and 40 million Americans should expect delays for food benefits.
November 3, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
In Chicago, a woman was driving to get coffee when a DHS vehicle fleeing an angry crowd crashed into her car. Armed agents jumped out of the vehicle, yanked her door open, pulled her by the legs out of her car at gunpoint, held her incommunicado for hours, then released her with no charges.
November 3, 2025 at 6:34 PM
🧪 #evolution

OTD 1977 Carl Woese appeared on the front page of the NYT in a story about the discovery of a "form of life that predates higher organisms" a 3rd domain of life.

Here is a perspective on this groundbreaking discovery of the Archaea, made with George Fox.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
November 3, 2025 at 7:21 AM
"We must recognize that there are thresholds beyond which we will simply exceed the adaptive capacity that human civilization affords us. This is the real lesson your readers should take away from the unprecedented summer we’re currently experiencing."

@michaelemann.bsky.social nails it again.
"Mann Replies on Wildfires and Climate Change" | My debunking of Bjorn Lomborg as it appears in today's print edition of the Wall Street Journal:
October 31, 2025 at 5:55 PM
This message and the thread below.
👇👇👇👇👇

But it's not too late to help. A number of organizations trying to assist. Here's one for example that I want to mention.

www.rescue.org/article/cris...
October 31, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
so @matteowong.bsky.social & I wrote on data centers: arguably the most important buildings in the world & are, in a way, holding the economy hostage. Byzantine financial instruments, private equity, depreciating tech, hype, $trillion valuations. it’s all there. an ai crash prob starts here.
Here’s How the AI Crash Happens
The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state.
www.theatlantic.com
October 30, 2025 at 10:25 PM
Reposted by Nigel Goldenfeld
This is typical of the kid gloves treatment of Bill Gates pivot toward Bjorn Lomborg-style climate downplaying that we're seeing from legacy media. The beltway reporters are entirely complicit in what some are rightly terming an ecocidal plutocratic agenda.
www.axios.com/2025/10/28/g...
Bill Gates has an urgent ask for the UN climate summit
Gates' comments reflect how society's current zeitgeist has pushed climate change off the front burner.
www.axios.com
October 30, 2025 at 12:56 PM
🧪"Instead of doing some genetics & biochemistry to solve structures, we ... started with AI & used its structural predictions to design genetic & biochemical experiments. Thus, AI has helped to speed up initial discovery ... establishing testable hypotheses."

www.news-medical.net/news/2025103...
Scientists capture a near-continuous molecular movie of ribosome formation
Ribosomes are the cell's protein factories, which read the genetic code and assemble the proteins that every organism needs to live. But as far as how ribosomes themselves were formed, tantalizingly l...
www.news-medical.net
October 31, 2025 at 2:39 AM