Notices by Paul Knightly (paulknightly@mstdn.social)

NASA was forced to vacate a building at Columbia University where it has operated since 1966. The result?

Textbooks, journals, and other materials being thrown into a dumpster. Not donated - literally thrown away. Some materials were later recovered from the dumpster and made available for passersby.

This is the state of science in America.

https://www.westsiderag.com/2025/06/04/following-nasas-removal-from-uws-building-textbooks-and-journals-thrown-in-dumpster

Seeing the news today of AccuWeather boasting (without evidence) of being the best at hurricane forecasting at the same time that the future of the NWS and NOAA is under threat.

Companies like AccuWeather have been lobbying for a long time to push for the full privatization of weather forecasting services in the U.S. (weakening NOAA), so the timing and nature of this announcement is zero percent surprising to me. The warning signs have been there since at least the first T. administration.

For context, we had a local dealership do an oil change and servicing a year ago and I received somewhere around a dozen text messages, each from a different number, asking me to leave a review on their Google Maps profile. Each time I received a text message, I requested to be removed from their list, to which they circumvented by using a different number. Eventually left a 1 star review.

New level of surveillance capitalism hostility achieved.

Tried a different location for an oil change today. Attendant indicated a customer account is required for service. Got to the point of needing to provide my phone number and email, to which I declined. They informed me that without an email they wouldn't be able to provide an itemized receipt. Assumed that meant an emailed copy, but that also meant they would not provide a printed copy either.

How did we get here?

Apropos of the NOAA and NWS cuts and me being very late to the game on the latest wx community drama - I found a preview of the forecasting hellscape to come if the NWS is rendered ineffective.

AccuWeather is apparently offering a premium subscription that paywalls severe weather alerts, including tornado warnings. Completely throwing aside that our tax dollars pay a bargain price of $3-4 per taxpayer per YEAR for all that the NWS provides, including warning data.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tornado/comments/1ims007/its_wild_that_a_lifesaving_warning_is_being_out/

OSHA has a growing target on its back, including the purging of 18 documents about a week ago, most of which have absolutely nothing to do with DEI but contained keywords that were flagged by DOGE.

Several documents relate to hazardous material work activities, such as the "Occupational safety and health guidance manual for hazardous waste site activities." Published in 1985, it notably predates DEI initiatives by several decades.

Edit: grammar - not enough coffee.

https://popular.info/p/in-botched-dei-purge-osha-trashes

Knew it was coming, but seeing the breadth of the probationary firings today is hitting the sciences hard. Particularly early career.

Beyond the brain drain this will cause, massive layoffs in already short-staffed agencies like the National Weather Service will, unfortunately, endanger public safety.

Spring severe weather season starts in two weeks and hurricane season is around the corner.

NASA issued a "drop everything" request to scrub webpages of specific terms before the end of today.

https://www.404media.co/nasa-dei-drop-everything-executive-order/

In case you're wondering about why elected officials and citizens aren't mounting the same widespread opposition as in 2017.

A bill introduced in Tennessee would make it a Class E felony for local officials to vote in favor of immigration policies that run afoul of the new administration's views. Proposed penalties include 1 to 6 years in prison, and/or a $3,000 fine.

I think there's a name for a system of govt that imprisons their opposition, and it's not a democracy.

https://www.newsweek.com/tennessee-bill-would-prohibit-voting-against-trump-immigration-policies-2023749

Can we stop pretending that phone numbers are required for online transactions? I've never once received a follow-up phone call with questions about my order.

Payment confirmation is usually automatic, and my address is typically required for the payment information and/or shipping if there are questions.

Hard not to believe that my phone number isn't being used as a unique customer identifier and thus collected entirely for the sake of collecting data.

I'm finally following through on the advice of my dentist to get an electric toothbrush. I haven't owned one in probably 15+ years, in part because models at the time weren't particularly sustainable and I found myself replacing the entire toothbrush every year or two.

Digging around now I'm finding conflicting reviews and testimonials of rechargeable toothbrushes needing to be entirely replaced either at 9 months or 3 years for the same model. Any recommendations from my feed?

Whelp. A firefighting aircraft struck a civilian drone, punching a hole in the wing and grounding the craft.

The law and penalties are clear - do not fly drones in the vicinity of wildfire fighting operations. Hopefully the drone pilot is found and faces the full penalties under the law.

Unfortunately bound to happen at some point, and I've seen way too many drone images and video coming out of areas with active fires this week. Time to make examples.

https://abc7.com/post/los-angeles-fires-super-scooper-firefighting-aircraft-hit-drone-flying-palisades-fire-faa-investigating/15785774/

This is a really good interactive article on how North America is a "fire continent" and that wildfire behavior prior to European colonization was very different than it is today due to changes in land management practices.

It's a blessing and a curse in that many regions have experienced a relatively quiet century or so of limited fire activity. But the absence of fire combined with climate change means these regions will see more fire over the decades to come.

https://apps.npr.org/us-wildfires-impact-environment-climate-change/

Just learned second hand via Bsky that a certain storm chaser has 'partnered' with an online gambling service, and promoting it on X as a means of betting on weather events. The screenshots of him trying to defend it are really sad to see, but unfortunately seems to be the direction the weather world has been moving in recent years (sponsorships, blockchain shilling, etc). I've already taken several steps back to distance myself from that community and starting off 2025 by taking several more.

Cancelled my WaPo subscription. I've had recurring concerns about the editorial control of the paper over the years, but clearly their owner would rather lick boot than stand up for a free press or democracy.

One of my wife's coworkers used her lunch break yesterday to panic buy toilet paper at the Sam's Club next door. If anything, there may be a glut of toilet paper as most is produced domestically or exported.

Perishable foods, like bananas and pineapples, are most likely to disappear from store shelves in the coming weeks if the strike drags on. Impacted consumer goods are probably a mix-match depending on port of origin.

https://www.koco.com/article/toilet-paper-panic-buying-longshoremen-strike/62488730

Tech companies: Let's build a utopian society where people don't have to worry about driving cars and can get to their destinations safely.

The dystopian reality that's delivered:

Self-driving cars honking in response to each other's presence throughout the night, building to a crescendo around 4 AM.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/08/self-driving-waymo-cars-keep-sf-residents-awake-all-night-by-honking-at-each-other/

Finding out that Gov. Tim Walz is enough of a geography nerd that he gave a keynote address to the Esri User Conference two weeks ago just sent my approval of him into the stratosphere. Watching this right now but man, I'm excited for this ticket.

https://youtu.be/Ni8BrT0-6gM

I'm excited to be collaborating with this year's crew to the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) as they tend to a data logging station I shipped for last year's crew to deploy.

This work builds off research I did at FMARS during the Mars 160 mission in 2017. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we had good data collection through the arctic winter!

https://www.marssociety.org/news/2024/06/19/arctic-flashline-mission-is-happening-again/

FMARS is located on the rim of the Haughton Impact Structure on Tallurutit (Devon Island) in the Canadian high arctic. It's Mars-like qualities range from it's isolation down to its location at an impact crater in an ice-rich, periglacial environment.

It was really a tremendous place to do some of my PhD research and it would be great to go back again in person someday, but I feel fortunate that I'm able to continue with this work remotely.

Some of my favorite photos from 2017.