DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
deechiebaby.bsky.social
DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
@deechiebaby.bsky.social
Assistant Professor at Colorado College, Orange Lover, Astronomer, Tamil Speaker, Human
Pinned
Amongst your doomscrolling, here’s a fun thing - a paper I’m on was featured on Jeopardy last night!
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
Great. Impeach or STFU.
A handful of Republican senators have joined their Democratic colleagues in expressing alarm over the Trump administration’s foreign aid freeze and gutting of USAID, writing to Marco Rubio that they believe the State Department is not operating in accordance with the law.
Behind the scenes, GOP senators challenge legality of Trump’s aid cuts
A handful of Republican senators, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, joined Democrats to quietly express alarm about how President Donald Trump is freezing foreign aid.
www.washingtonpost.com
February 27, 2025 at 11:09 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
Excited to be giving a public planetarium talk at Embry Riddle University tonight! Love showing off the @sdssurveys.bsky.social data :) Sold out show!!
February 20, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Amongst your doomscrolling, here’s a fun thing - a paper I’m on was featured on Jeopardy last night!
February 13, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
Masters scholarships for Palestinian students at Sussex. Please disseminate?

www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/re...
University announces new scholarships for Palestinian students
These scholarships will provide fully-funded support for two Palestinian students, with a particular focus on those impacted by the conflict in Gaza
www.sussex.ac.uk
February 13, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
Unbelievable.
It’s not to go home on the weekend.

Senate Dems did a deal on RFK and Gabbard so they can go to a luxury hotel in Munich and drink beer this weekend.
February 13, 2025 at 5:33 AM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
CNN shared a story about Taylor Swift at the Superbowl and Steven showed up and dropped the single greatest comment of all time
February 10, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
Y’all they cancelled the NSF MPS Ascend Program after encouraging underrepresented folks to only apply to it and not both the Ascend and the MSPRF. This is astronomically fucked up for many grad students and postdocs of color in math. #MathSky
February 8, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
The NSF MPS Ascend Postdoctoral Fellowship has been archived: new.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
All folks who applied to this opportunity have had their application package deleted.
Mathematical and Physical Sciences Ascending Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (MPS-Ascend)
new.nsf.gov
February 9, 2025 at 6:04 AM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
To be clear, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are instituting death panels for rural America. That’s what closing federally qualified health centers means, since they are often the only health providers available. bsky.app/profile/chan...
Donald Trump and Elon Musk have cut off funding for half of the health centers that serve 400,000 Virginians, forcing some to close, which could mean up to 200,000 Virginians are suddenly without healthcare

www.vpm.org/news/2025-02...
Virginia community health centers close over federal funding access
Despite pause on federal funding freeze, centers unable to access grants
www.vpm.org
February 5, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
“In this week’s episode of ‘AOC Talks America Off The Ledge,’” the opposition leader would “like to remind us that Elon Musk is actually kind of fucking stupid.”

“One of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met.”

“This dude is not smart.”

www.wonkette.com/p/opposition...
Opposition Leader AOC: 'You Can Take The Boy Out Of Apartheid, But You Can't Take The Apartheid Out Of The Boy'
And that's why we call her Opposition Leader AOC.
www.wonkette.com
February 5, 2025 at 4:45 AM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
This NYT sleight-of-hand is part of why Trump’s insane racism flourishes. The implication is that it’s possible to “attack diversity” WITHOUT a “racist undercurrent.”

And it “surfaces” - as though Trump hasn’t been a rabid and explicit racist for years, and this is some new tone.
February 3, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
Hey, I know there are lots of things to be angry, activated, and/or scared about right now. But I am noticing that coverage of the executive orders that are specifically harmful to trans children and adults are barely being discussed by anyone except trans journalists.

Stop this shit.
January 31, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
Fixed it.
January 31, 2025 at 4:07 AM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
I am one of these NSF postdocs. NSF has frozen everyone’s access to their salaries and research stipends (that were already awarded) with no information about when they might be expected to be unfrozen. It still appears like we are expected to continue doing our work though.
Apparently all the PhD researchers holding prestigious NSF-funded research fellowships are having their salaries withheld until some unspecified time when the leadership figures out how to eliminate any grant funding that doesn’t align with the president’s political ideology.
It’s official: all funding requests made on Tuesday by postdocs for their salaries have been unilaterally rejected by NSF.
January 31, 2025 at 12:43 AM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
National Science Foundation suspends salary payments, leaving researchers unable to pay their bills www.statnews.com/2025/01/30/t...
Story by @ericboodman.bsky.social
National Science Foundation suspends salary payments, leaving researchers unable to pay their bills
An NSF online payment system remained down after the federal funding freeze was lifted, leaving early-career scientists scrambling to pay bills
www.statnews.com
January 30, 2025 at 10:53 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
can’t believe we forgot to add constitutional crisis classes to physics grad school curriculum
January 31, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
Turns out the 2010 America COMPETES Act contains language I recognize because I've cribbed it from NSF's Grant Proposal Guide for every proposal I've sent to NSF

www.congress.gov/111/plaws/pu...

It's encoded in 42 USC 1826p-14

uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?r...

R: the 2010 Act, L: the GPG
January 31, 2025 at 12:12 AM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
And it’s not just a requirement that NSF dreamed up and can discard, broader impacts review criteria are written law, enacted by Congress:
uscode.house.gov
January 29, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
It is hard to know where to begin with this. I am not directly affected (yet? thanks, bureaucracy?) — instead, it is largely more junior student and postdoctoral researchers. The NSF is just out here canceling paychecks despite the grants in question already being awarded.
Exclusive: NSF this week began to search through billions of dollars of grants the agency has already awarded for anything touching on topics that President Donald Trump has criticized. And NSF has blocked grantees and trainees from accessing funds while the review is underway. scim.ag/3El0NZh
EXCLUSIVE: NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with Trump’s orders
Grantee accounts remain frozen, while union accuses NSF of ignoring rules governing peer review
scim.ag
January 31, 2025 at 12:07 AM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
No one is telling us what to do, and we’ve received a lot of conflicting information. Many people were advised to pull funds on Jan 28th. This will be devastating for many folks. Check in on your fellows and see if your university can offer them emergency funds.
It’s official: all funding requests made on Tuesday by postdocs for their salaries have been unilaterally rejected by NSF.
January 30, 2025 at 11:08 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
Apparently all the PhD researchers holding prestigious NSF-funded research fellowships are having their salaries withheld until some unspecified time when the leadership figures out how to eliminate any grant funding that doesn’t align with the president’s political ideology.
It’s official: all funding requests made on Tuesday by postdocs for their salaries have been unilaterally rejected by NSF.
January 30, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
I was an NSF postdoc fellow. Their stipends (aka paycheck) come directly from the NSF into their bank accounts.

I really hope the universities employing all of these amazing early career folks are very quickly figuring out how to help them cover their bills.
It’s official: all funding requests made on Tuesday by postdocs for their salaries have been unilaterally rejected by NSF.
January 30, 2025 at 10:34 PM
Reposted by DK (Dhanesh Krishnarao)
BREAKING — I'm told OPM just sent out this memo with guidance for implementing Trump's "Defending Women" anti-trans executive order.

"Take down all outward facing media that inculcate or promote gender ideology. Review email systems and turn off features that prompt users for their pronouns."
January 29, 2025 at 11:45 PM