Fun fact: The 1998 paper that introduced Google and PageRank to the world ends with this acknowledgment:
"Supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement IRI-9411306. Funding also provided by DARPA and NASA."
Sergey Brin was on an NSF Graduate Fellowship. Larry Page was a PhD student on the grant.
Google—now worth $2 trillion—exists because American taxpayers funded "the Stanford Integrated Digital Library Project."
Not a startup garage myth. A government grant.
Every time someone says public research funding "picks winners and losers" or "crowds out private innovation," remember: the most dominant technology company of the 21st century was incubated entirely with public money, inside a public university, by researchers on federal fellowships and grants.
The private sector didn't see it coming. VCs passed. The government funded it anyway—not because it would become Google, but because fundamental research into information retrieval seemed worth understanding.
That's the point. You can't predict which grants will change the world. You fund the science and let researchers explore.
The internet (DARPA). GPS (DoD). Touchscreens (CIA/NSF). mRNA vaccines (NIH). Google (NSF/DARPA/NASA).
Public investment in basic research isn't wasteful spending. It's the seed corn of the entire modern economy.
On The Climate Brink, I cross posted a post from Andy Revkin's Sustain What substack, written by one of the giants of Atmospheric Sciences, Mike Wallace. In it, he describes his evolution about climate change from initial doubt to grave concern.
Why does a warmer climate result in more extreme precipitation?
The physics is actually pretty simple, as I wrote about here (in response to a different storm)
https://t.co/vYQG7rOFT5
Hi all. Breaking my Twitter silence to make a statement on behalf of myself here. NOAA, the parent agency of the @NWS indiscriminately fired a number of employees yesterday. A thread of comments & advice for those fired. 1/18
Ten days before the election, take the time to listen to the five part podcast I made with @peterpomeranzev, Autocracy in America. It describes the autocratic behaviors already visible in America - which we still have the power to stop.
https://t.co/36TW5jwc3i
Fun to be interviewed by the America Adapts podcast (check out the show if you're into climate adaptation🤓). First time waxing on about how wild the western part of the @ThwaitesGlacier tongue is to see up close...
https://t.co/XGMQumetR0
Excellent 2-part Minitutorial during SIAM MPE24 on Differentiable Programming for Earth System Models
https://t.co/pIEwGUOgAv
with @vchuravy@wsmoses Cheng Gong (Dartmouth), S. Williamson, J. Kump @OdenInstitute@crios_utaustin S H K Narayanan, M Schanen, J Hückelheim @argonne
Pleased to announce that a GM-based version of #GEOMETRIC (work w/ @DMarshallOcean) for #MITgcm is part of the trunk! (https://t.co/E1GkvqTlFj)
A few things on the agenda (possibly w/ @PatrickHeimbach, @YoheiTakano3), but feel free to get in touch to ask about using it :)