Patrick Emami

In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.

This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.

An Elegy for NREL and the Passing of America’s Renewable Compass - CleanTechnica NREL’s name is gone, yet its solar, wind, and grid innovations define today’s energy world. This elegy reflects on its enduring impact.

An Elegy for NREL and the Passing of America’s Renewable Compass cleantechnica.com/2025/12/01/a...

Guess this was inevitable:
An administration that doesn't believe in renewable energy has renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), its moniker for +50 years, the National Laboratory of the Rockies www.nrel.gov/news/detail/...

Public Science Call for Papers Special Issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social ScienceThe Public's Science–A New Social Contract for American Research Policy

Call for Papers! 🧵

The Public's Science–A New Social Contract for American Research Policy a Special Issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Editors: Alondra Nelson (IAS) and Jenny Reardon (UC, Santa Cruz)

Abstract Deadline: Sept 19

www.ias.edu/stsv-lab/pub...

Donald Trump is *literally* Patrick Bateman’s hero in the novel American Psycho

The Jacksonville Jaguars, imo

The U.S. government has fueled decades of world-leading scientific and technical innovation by funding research efforts through grants programs & universities where researchers controlled decisions.

In the USSR, no decisions were made by scientists alone. Every decision required political approval.

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal

1. Federal funding for research promotes tech, biomedical, and scientific discovery in the US, and provides training for the sci/tech workforce that has brought immeasurable wealth to the US over the past 75 years.

Today's executive order includes a provision that will obliterate both functions.

6. This makes it impossible to engage in anything other than the shortest-term, most incremental research.

Far-reaching, innovative, creative, world-changing research will no longer take place in the United States.

Proposed Rule: Reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards | US EPA The proposed rule on the reconsideration of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding and motor vehicle rule

💬 Comments count.

Submit yours by 15 Sept. to oppose the EPA’s rollback of its greenhouse gas endangerment finding.

Submit:https://buff.ly/gPQyo15

#AGUAdvocacy #SciencePolicy

Scientists Say New Government Climate Report Twists Their Work A new Department of Energy report “fundamentally misrepresents” climate research and leaves out key context, multiple scientists cited in the report tell WIRED.

NEW: i spoke to nine (!) scientists across several disciplines whose work was cited in the new Department of Energy report that downplays the severity of climate change. all of them say their work was misrepresented, cherry picked, and/or lacked context —

PSA: NeurIPS position track has no rebuttal period so reviews won’t be released until August. Don’t bother emailing the PCs!

(Multiple people have asked me why their reviews aren’t visible. PCs should send a mass email and change the CFP.)

A personal update.

#ICML2025 test of time award

This is an insane time in the tech industry. Superintelligence is fictional! This is so much an egregious waste of money, Meta's Chief AI scientist said generative AI won't lead to it either! AhhhhhHhhhh

When AI is allowed, developers spend less time actively coding and searching for information, and instead spend time prompting AI, waiting on/reviewing AI outputs, and idle. We find no single reason for the slowdown—it’s driven by a combination of factors.

One thing that's stood out to me at NREL under Trump 2.0: the contrast between the institution's instinct for self-preservation reflected in deep changes to the way the lab stories itself vs. how rural coalitions I work with have remained steadfast in their commitment to building new energy futures.

we are cooked

legendary social media post from the florida state football team featuring MARTIN LUTHER KING in a vapormax glove with the words “DO SOMETHING” behind him equally funny and offensive. perfect postmanship. bluesky needs more of this.

happy juneteenth everyone ✊🏾

Practical Guidance and Considerations for Large Load Interconnections - GridLab This report provides an outline of the current state of Large Load interconnections including data centers. It includes recommended questions for regulators and utilities to develop more robust interc...

Great report = comprehensive coverage of all aspects related to the integration of DC/AI loads.
gridlab.org/portfolio-it...

How a discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR - Richmond Scientific A discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR, the gold-standard COVID-19 tests used to fight the global pandemic.

Reminder: Nobel-prize winning PCR (1983), used in basically all genetic tech today, was only possible because of extremophile bacterium discovered in 1964 in Yellowstone funded by a small ~$80k NSF grant with no obvious application at the time. #science 🧪
www.richmondscientific.com/how-a-discov...

incredible that, looking back to 2019, every large firm working on LLMs had the attitude that this was an enormously disruptive technology and that the rollout needed to be careful and stage-managed in order to avoid catastrophic legal and consumer backlash and then in 2022 went "lol nevermind"

the U.S. Capitol building on an overcast day, looking ominous

URGENT! Contact your senators today to advocate to fund science agencies and programs!

The Senate Appropriations Committee & its subcommittees are writing appropriation bills for the federal FY26 budget now.

Here's how you can help: esa.org/esablog/2025...

DOE budget is out -- the summary table at least. Here are a few energy research lowlights:

EERE -74.3%
Science -13.9%
Nuclear -20.7%
Fossil -31.2%
Electricity -31.1%
Cybersecurity -25%
Technology Commercialization -50% (moved to admin)

www.energy.gov/sites/defaul...

Recommended reading: Scientific Babel

history.princeton.edu/about/public...

What will be the next dominant language? 🥲

The war on science in the US is already having an effect on private sector research like AlphaFold. Bears repeating but the private sector builds on top of things created by academic research for the public good. This hurts everyone.

The Trump Administration Is Trying to Kill American Higher Education I don't care about the "why" -- I care about the "what."

I wish this was hyperbole but the facts speak for themselves. danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-trump-...

🚨 Brand new postdoctoral researcher position in my group at Princeton! Please apply or share with anyone interested in computational materials science and being an electron whisperer! puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app....

International students deserve to pursue their education without harassment from the government.