Glad you are reading this, dear friend of Science,
Kul att du läser detta, kära vetenskapsvän,
The Bay Area boasts the Swedish American Hall, the Swedish Women’s Educational Association of San Francisco, The Scandinavian School and Cultural Center, the Swedish Society of San Francisco, and more. [I love it that Swedish for “Glad” sounds like “Cool.” ¿Bohemian worldliness?]

The picture above was compiled from over 200 photos taken from satellites. In reality, it’s not all dark. Half of Earth is always in sunlight. But the title of this week’s SciSchmooze also refers to the perspective that regardless of current wars, injustices, natural disasters, authoritarian regimes, and too many instances of man’s inhumanity to man, most of us enjoy the brightness that c…

Hello again, supporter of science,
Üdvözlet ismét, tudománypárti!
[Over 5,000 people in the Bay Area speak Hungarian at home.]

Show your support for science this Thursday (July 17) by joining one of the hundreds of “Good Trouble Lives On” protests. Thursday is the 5th anniversary of the passing of civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis. He coined the term “Good Trouble” as the action of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice and create meaningful change. Find the location of a nearby protest at GoodTroubleLivesOn

I asked an AI about recent cuts to research in medicine and other sciences. Here is a summary:

• The National Institutes of Health budget faces a proposed 40% cut, po…

Dave Almandsmith
7 July 2025

Unwilling to stay silent, 139 employees of the Environmental Protection Agency signed a letter listing 5 criticisms of Administrator Lee Zeldin’s actions:

• Undermining public trust
• Ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters
• Reversing EPA’s progress in America’s most vulnerable communities
• Dismantling the Office of Research and Development
• Promoting a culture of fear; forcing staff to choose between their livelihood and their well-being

The EPA’s response was to suspend the signers and falsely denigrate them as “career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November.”

You and i must continue standing up for science, integrity…

Hello again, follower of science and reason,

Over 50,000 people in the Bay Area speak Persian at home. The Persian holiday of Eid al-Ghadir is the time for being kind to people in need, making donations, and giving gifts to one another. (Sorta like Christmas) It fell on June 14th this year during the bombings.

Simply standing on a sidewalk holding a sign with hundreds of others lifted all of our spirits. I had to laugh when a smiling teenage girl rode by showing thumbs-up while her grim-faced mother driving the car gave us a thumbs-down. Returning home, we felt a collective failure: our inability to reverse cuts to research [medicine, climate, physics, chemistry, etc.] and cuts to services [food stamps, HIV/AIDS treatments, suicide prevention, special &am…

Hello again, science fans. Glad to have you along with us today.
Hallo nomal, Wüsseschaftsfans. Schön, dass si hüt bi ois sind.
[Schwyzerdütsch is a Swiss-German dialect]

CLIMATE

A large portion of the Birch Glacier in Switzerland broke free on Wednesday. Nine million tonnes of ice and granite plunged into the Lötschental valley destroying most of Blatten, a village of 300. The residents and their animals had been evacuated 9 days earlier. Current global warming loosened the permafrost and ice that held the Kleines Nesthorn peak and the Birch Glacier in place likely for more than 60,000 years. Similar rockslides are happening around the world at an increasing pace.

Melting permafrost is affe…

Hello again, science fans. Glad to have you along with us today.
Знову вітаю, шанувальники науки. Раді, що ви сьогодні з нами.
[Ukrainian]

May is here and the hills and fields are abloom in Scotch Broom, California Poppies, Lupines, Mustard, Wild Peas, Fiddlenecks, Tidy Tips, and more. When i suggest you “take a hike,” i mean it in the best possible way.

SPACE

A space probe launched 72 years ago is expected to crash to Earth this week. Kosmos 482 was launched by the Soviet Union in 1972. It is speculated that the probe was intended to land on Venus but a glitch kept it in Earth orbit. If it is a landing module, it likely has a heat shield and might not burn up on its way through our atmosphere. Instead it would sl…

Hello again, science fans. Glad to have you along with us today.

Hola tu ka’atéen, aficionados ti’ le ciencia. ki’imak in wóol in yantal ta wéetel bejla’e’.
[Yucatec Maya]

The Trump Administration shut down over 1,400 scientific medical research projects and public health programs administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. They are listed here. The Administration has ordered mass layoffs of NOAA scientists. They are closing 164 offices of the Department of the Interior. They announced that 50% to 75% of EPA scientists “will not be retained.”

A Department of Justice attorney accused several scientific journals of bias:

• “It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals …

Hello again science fans,

Lumelang hape barati ba mahlale,
[Sesotho is the language of Basotho who live in Lesotho, “which nobody has ever heard of” and whose imports now have a 50% tariff, the highest of any country.]

SCIENCE

More than a million people participated in over 1400 “Hands Off” protests Saturday. I joined the protesters at the intersection of San Pablo Dam Road and Appian Way in El Sobrante. We numbered over 800, not counting the streams of honking cars with their waving occupants. The MAGA folk passing by were obvious by their grim expressions, rolled-up windows, and refusal to glance at the hundreds of people and signs.

I recommend reading this one-page letter “To The American People” signed by 1,900 scientists and publis…

Hello again, science fans,

Di nuovo ciao a tutti, appassionati di scienza,
[About 85,000 Bay Area residents speak Italian at home.]

SPACE

“Fram2” is a 4-person space mission scheduled for this week. It is funded by one of the crew, a Chinese billionaire, Chun Wang (王春). He will be flying as a citizen of Malta and accompanied by Jannike Mikkelson (Norway), Rabea Rogge (Deutschland), and Eric Phillips (Australia). They will be the first persons to orbit over the Earth’s Poles. (Pole to Pole in 46 minutes!) They plan to launch Monday evening (Pacific Time) from Florida. The launch time & live video can be found at RocketLaunch.Live.

Why Fram2? ‘Fram’ is Norwegian for ‘Forward’ and that was the name of the ship that took Roald Amundsen’s party t…

Hello again, fans of science,
“nuqneH, QeD parmaq,” (I found no data on how many Klingons are in the Bay Area.)

A “Stand Up for Science” gathering will be this Friday in the San Francisco Civic Center Plaza from 1 to 3PM. Come with or without a sign. Come with or without a costume. Come with or without your family and friends. But come.

Now is an especially important time to communicate with the President, the Vice President, and your three Congressional members: two Senators and a Member of the House of Representative. Here is a site for looking them up. The address for the President and Vice President is:

White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500

Hmmmm. I wonder what would happen if we all mailed letters to the White Hous…