hi all, i'm hoping to crowdfund my facial feminization surgery, i have my consult on the 27th of this month (Feb 2026). all money will go toward it. if you can't donate that's valid and please don't donate if you can't afford to, please boost and share where you can. ❤️
"Holdings from the library at the Goddard Space Flight Center, which includes unique documents from the early 20th century to the Soviet space race, will be warehoused or thrown out."
Occasionally I see people complain that "well we can't support open-source projects as a company because our purchasing department has no process for donations/Patreon/whatever" and like
Yeah I believe you, but also donation-based FOSS has been around and deeply integrated into companies for how long? Companies have had well over a decade to implement such processes, and if your company hasn't done so, but miraculously has found a way to use the FOSS stuff, then I am 100% going to consider that a failure of the company to take their responsibility, and you don't get to demand "alternative funding methods" actually.
The social contract for FOSS is that you contribute back to the stuff you use, if you have the means. If your processes don't fit that, that's your problem to solve, not that of the people already doing voluntary work for you.
The Trump Administration's “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education" is a bust. Seven of the nine universities approached have wholly rejected the pact that would tie funding to adopting policies around race and gender and abolishing "institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas." Vanderbilt University expressed reservations. Only the University of Texas said it would be open to signing the proposal. Here's more from UPI.
"Science journalism has been fragile for many years now: Outlets like National Geographic and Wired have undergone layoffs. Others, like Sapiens, have shuttered. The environmental publication Hakai Magazine shut down last year when its funder, the Tula Foundation, withdrew its support to focus on research efforts, for example (the magazine has since joined forces with bioGraphic). A few years earlier, the U.K.’s Wellcome Trust pulled the plug on its long-form digital science magazine Mosaic."
We are delighted to announce that we have received a grant from
@NGIZero
@nlnet to federate Mirlo! We're also honoured to be included alongside so many other amazing projects that we look up to and are inspired by. 💪🐦⬛
If federal funding for blue states is withheld, are they justified in withholding a commensurate amount of tax revenue? That would hurt. Blue states are by and large the bread winners, and cutting them off from federal aid and other programs simply won't cut it. The giver states will find and use the leverage, and remind the oppressors just who pays the bills.
"The White House on Wednesday sent letters to nine of the nation’s top public and private universities, urging campus leaders to pledge support for President Trump’s political agenda to help ensure access to federal research funds."
"Asked for reactions to MIT’s announcement, spokespeople for Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt University had no new information to share. The other recipients — the Universities of Arizona and Pennsylvania — didn’t respond."
"The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact — initially rejected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — that would grant preferential federal funding in return for commitments to specific policy changes like DEI bans, according to a person familiar with the matter…Trump has said that colleges who reject the deal will face investigations into compliance with federal laws, but the extent to which federal research grants or student aid eligibility will be predicated on acceptance of the accord remains murky."
Update. If you're a high-level administrator at a US college or university and your institution didn't receive the Trump "offer" to join his compact, you're not alone. Trump didn't use letters. He used this Truth Social post: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115362973187528235
"Brown’s existing agreement with the federal government expressly affirms the government’s lack of authority to dictate our curriculum or the content of academic speech -- a principle that is not reflected in the Compact."