NSF GRFP #'s cut in half year-on-year 2022: 2193 awards, 1,377 Honorable Mentions 2023: 2555 awards, 801 Honorable Mentions 2024: 2026 awards, 1718 Honorable Mentions 2025: 1000 awards, 3008 Honorable Mentions The gutting continues apace. research.gov/grfp/AwardeeLi…

Mat Makel 2nd-order meta-analysis journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.31…

Congrats to Yi-Kai Liu on receiving the Excellence in Research Award from the Washington Academy of Sciences (Washington Academy of Sciences) for his impactful work in quantum info, including algorithms, complexity theory, cryptography & measurement theory. Read more: go.umd.edu/1yg8

Standards at work

I've written the Trump reckoning you've been waiting for. I used to think Dems would turn us into Western Europe. That looks good now when the other side is offering third world levels of incompetence, corruption, and authoritarianism. This is MAGA now. richardhanania.com/p/what-i-got-w…

There is surely a possible world where LLMs are used to increase human knowledge and curiosity. But the far more likely outcome in the world we actually live in is shoddy AI being used to replace human-based pedagogy under the guise of efficiency, accessibility, and cost-cutting.

Source: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/…

The first step to restoring trust in America’s scientific establishment, and rebuilding a strong foundation for breakthrough discoveries, is a return to Gold Standard Science.  Today we shared the Trump Administration’s science agenda. whitehouse.gov/briefings-stat…

One thing I'm especially excited about with these new models is how far we've driven down reward hacking - ensuring the best coding models in the world continue to execute meaningfully - WITHOUT cheating

RIP Ray Laflamme, gone too soon. Ray was a stellar scientist, the founding director of ⁦Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC)⁩ and ⁦CIFAR's⁩ Quantum Information program, but more importantly a warm & generous human who built community and helped many. May his memory be a blessing.