Tristan Stevens
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tristanstevens.bsky.social
Tristan Stevens
@tristanstevens.bsky.social
Aussie nerd for games that promise to waste thousands of hours or make me cry. Will fawn over almost any animal. Currently annoying all my friends with a years-long guitar phase.

My rarely-updated vegan icecream recipe site: https://thechurningbush.com/
AUKUS would pay for centuries of CSIRO funding, inflation notwithstanding. People really don't appreciate how trivial the science budget is, and especially how trivial funding for research bodies is.
November 19, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Him and grift were spotted recently at a cozy restaurant, and when the staff were questioned they said they've been going there together for a while. The term 'open secret' has been used.
November 19, 2025 at 12:13 PM
Staggeringly good pun in the name. Does ranking a review as not helpful or funny get it discounted from the ratings?
November 19, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Probably a little closer then adjacent. More like on grift's lap.
November 19, 2025 at 12:00 PM
For a second there I thought you were talking about Drew Pavlou, who is also a white supremacist.

But yeah, thrift store Matt Yglesias about sums it up.
November 19, 2025 at 5:21 AM
Not that I've heard of, though I'd not be shocked! He seems a bit... griftery? Griftesque? In the Griftiverse?
November 19, 2025 at 3:55 AM
And people don't get how little CSIRO even costs the government! AUKUS costs the equivalent of *centuries* of CSIRO funding; we're spending less then a billion a year on it. The NHMRC and the ARC, our primary grant bodies, are also struggling and on similar amounts.
November 19, 2025 at 3:40 AM
It's worse then it looks even, if he's following/quote tweeting Drew Pavlou he's really far gone.
November 19, 2025 at 3:28 AM
I initially glazed over it then came back 30 seconds later all "hold the phone!". It wasn't until I saw the Australian flag that I was like 'wait, is that an Aussie WAIT IS THAT PAVLOU?"
November 19, 2025 at 3:23 AM
My partner has a linguistics degree and has pretty good French, so I always jump at any opportunity to show off her knowledge :)
November 19, 2025 at 3:22 AM
Some further context, Drew Pavlou is an Australian fascist that Noah Smith is outright quote-tweeting there. Mostly known for stirring up sinophobia.
November 19, 2025 at 3:21 AM
Gauche just means left!

(Assuming you weren't being sarcastic and I'm being oblivious).
November 19, 2025 at 3:20 AM
For some more context for the non-Australians here, Drew Pavlou is an Australian fascist that Noah is quote-tweeting there.
November 19, 2025 at 3:16 AM
Oh fucking wait I just realised who he was quote tweeting there. Drew Pavlou is just an outright fascist.
November 19, 2025 at 3:10 AM
I mean "Islamo-leftism" outright is a term from the French far-right yeah? It's not just that it resembles "Judeo-bolshevism" but Noah is just outright repeating fascist phrases.

It's insane either way though.
November 19, 2025 at 3:06 AM
No it's fine! I got the joke! I wasn't bothered, though trying to fit in so much one message did make it sound terse I admit. I will never be good at dealing with character limits.
November 19, 2025 at 2:47 AM
Hey, trying to give an overview of our entire science budget in one chart is hard! One could say that you shouldn't try and display so much data in one graph...

In reality, this graph was made for a presentation where I had about 30 minutes to go through it in detail, a luxury BSky does not afford.
November 19, 2025 at 1:22 AM
To specifically isolate a few key sections, here's a couple with the figures given. Note these are all inflation adjusted.

For the layman, the ARC and NHMRC are the primary grant-funding bodies for non medical and medical research respectively, the RSP is block funding for research institutions.
November 19, 2025 at 12:43 AM
And this doesn't even fully capture how bad it is either, because a significant portion of what science funding the Australian government does do is also just like, corporate tax breaks. This is something I whipped up last year and though it's hard to read it shows what our science budget is doing.
November 19, 2025 at 12:43 AM
Also it feels a bit silly to try and make electorialist arguments against the guy handily won the election especially when compared to the Republican candidate? Like just throw out some islamophobic slurs Bill we all know that's what you're thinking.
November 19, 2025 at 12:22 AM
It really looks like they only pressed it when Maher glared at them huh? Kinda imagining them sitting there, mouth agape thinking 'wait, was... was that meant to be a joke?'
November 19, 2025 at 12:16 AM