Every grandkid wants a turbo pump under the tree and a scroll pump in their stocking!

I'm thinking a Bluesky holiday t-shirt contest is in order for best troll of Sean Duffy.

Agreed. We ran one when I was at Auburn and it was a blast.

I'd wager it's related to universities feeling heat on DEI from DOJ/DOE. This takes the organizing and hosting duties off the schools, but there's no way APS can pull off regional events without using school facilities and staffing.

I have a few theories on why and they're all because of politics.

Deny time waivers and keep fighting this week. There are more cloture votes to come.

To really make this count, you should oppose time waivers. Draw this out and keep the pressure on your colleagues. Get amendment votes.

He got the retiring ones to do the dirty work instead.

To be clear, @coons.senate.gov @bluntrochester.senate.gov , the shutdown hurts me professionally through my work at UD. It hurts friends who work for the government. But it's the only tool available to rein in Trump's lawlessness. Capitulating now is not the answer.

I actually think there's something to be said for just voting for the clean House CR and nothing else right now since it expires on the 21st. Open the government long enough for them to get a paycheck, fix ATC and SNAP for November, and make the House vote again on a new CR right away.

While I agree that's the best outcome for competitiveness, I think the viable route to legislate this federally is compactness as the metric with districts drawn by computer. Compactness plays well with voters. You'll get some D+60 seats, but Dems would narrowly control the House now with this rule.

That wasn't my strategy, but it sort of worked out that way with my fall 2024 move. My startup gives me more flexibility than my colleagues and even I'm pinching pennies and anxious about money now.

I have more followers and generate more engagement when I tag the science feeds. But I can also attest that many of the people in my field I used to interact with on Twitter either haven't moved or use Bluesky a lot less. It's less useful for me as a result even if I get more likes.

Agreed. There was a healthy Twitter group for our generation (roughly grad students and postdocs when Twitter was taking off) who moved, but we're not drawing many current students or postdocs here on Bluesky. Very few of the senior folks made the move over here either.

I deleted Twitter earlier this year after leaving a goodbye post pinned for a few months in case anyone wanted to find me. Do like that idea for LinkedIn though.

I'm certainly guilty of being pretty political, while some of the others who moved here but aren't as active stay out of that arena. The algorithm does seem to be a common complaint. I don't find that sharing our papers here has any value because nobody notices.

LinkedIn can be pretty cringey. I share our papers there to get them noticed, but don't like the influencer side of things at all. Plus, there's nothing worse than a post about your own citation metrics.

I was also considering whether a hyper-specific condensed matter feed might be useful to curate our little community.

Not a full solution, but have you checked out the science and physics feeds and gotten approved to post? I get a good amount of engagement when I tag my posts with those emojis. A lot of it is from anonymous accounts though.