LLNL - The True Story -

  LANL is now requiring chemical hazards training for anything that has an msds. Toilet paper has an msds. You can't even use the bathroom at LANL without training.

 According to this article, this could have far reaching effect on the NNSA. Quote from article: "As the government shutdown has persisted with no end in sight, NNSA has had to acknowledge that its funds are beginning to run out" Details: https://upolitics.com/news/trump-administration-furloughs-80-of-employees-at-nuclear-weapons-agency-amid-government-shutdown/

  Should the DOE/NNSA end the LLNS contract to manage LLNL on or before 2030 in favor of a non-profit contractor? Less expensive, better employee morale, more of a science and engineering focus?

  So in Los Alamos there are so many new people hired and so much construction that no one has anywhere to park. People have had to part in illegal or make shift parking spots for months now. Today they have out hundreds of tickets. I think LANL should have some parking or hire less people. On the other hand it is also know that hundreds of even thousand of people are not showing up to work. You cannot have it both ways. Some one needs to look into this. What we do at Los Alamos is serious, we need to act like a serious place to work. The buildings are falling apart, the infrastructure is horrible, and our overhead rates are insane. Something does not add up. It might be time for a contract change.

 Washington leaders are calling it a historic day, as the Hanford Vit Plant started processing radioactive waste material on Wednesday, the culmination of a years-long effort to clean up the Hanford Nuclear Site. https://youtu.be/u0WmL04NhDo?si=a6jdKd7wdeV89kaY

  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/10/ensuring-continued-accountability-in-federal-hiring/  Trump on late Wednesday signed a new executive order that told agencies to restrict hiring throughout the federal government, providing some exceptions related to immigration enforcement, national and public security, and political appointees. Does this affect the labs, NNSA, DOE? 

  Heard that lab furloughs will be on the way if the shutdown lasts much longer. The question is really how long the shutdown will last. Lost of rumors (1) Until next Monday after the no Kings rally. (2) Until, Nov 1st because some other things kick in (3) Until Thanksgiving when people cannot fly and demand something. (4) Until Christmas (See 3) I have no idea but we did 35 days before so we still have some time. I am betting for 30-35 days again. Somehow the lab just seems much more nervous about this one.

  Governor Newsom just signed SB 79 into law, and it will go into effect July 1, 2026. 1. Will existing and under development, low density neighborhoods pushback in court? 2. Will the passage of SB 79 be helpful or a headwind to the expansion of ACE and other mass transit proposals and expansions throughout the Bay Area and the rest of California? Protesters rally against California Senate bill that increases housing density near transit hubs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1y9SLg-26BY&pp=ygUlY2JzIDggcHJvdGVzdGVycyByYWxseSBhZ2FpbnN0IHNlbmF0ZQ%3D%3D California ACE train expansion is coming https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F7iGUZW_sqA&pp=ygUeY2FsaWZvcm5pYSBhY2UgdHJhaW4gZXhwYW5zaW9u

  American Physical Society Fellows 2025 highlights decline of NNSA labs. Worse year ever for NNSA labs LANL 1 Sandia 0 LLNL 0 Comparison ORNL 4 Fermilab 4 Brookhaven 3 LBNL 2 SLAC 1 ANL 0 PNNL 0

  California FAIR Plan seeks huge rate hike. Map shows which ZIPs hit hardest “The California FAIR Plan has proposed raising home insurance rates by an average of 35.8% starting next spring - a hike that, if approved in full, would be its largest in at least seven years.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/california-fair-plan-seeks-largest-231104839.html

 This is a very interesting claim : that a devastating earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, could also trigger an earthquake on the San Andreas, perhaps one might suppose even affecting the entire West Coast of the United States. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-cascadia-megathrust-earthquake-trigger-san.html

On September 25, 2025, Antifa was designated as a “domestic terrorist organization.” Under the “Adjudicative Guidelines” to acquire or maintain a security clearance, this may fall under “Allegiance to the United States” as defined by the Guideline. Are Lab employees, with any past or present association with Antifa, being required to promptly update their “Questionnaire for National Security Positions” as of September 22, 2025?

 Universities are being asked to endorse Trump agenda in order to obtain priority access to funding: https://www.kjzz.org/politics/2025-10-02/university-of-arizona-among-9-colleges-trump-offered-access-to-funds-to-follow-his-agenda

  The DOE is killing a number of energy projects: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/02/nx-s1-5560869/energy-trump-democrats-shutdown https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-termination-223-projects-saving-over-75-billion

  This is an interesting video, a graduate student who is angry at the government since NSF funding has been cut. In his own words, he is "pissed off" because graduate students were "blindsided" and "screwed over" by "having the rug pulled out from under them". https://youtu.be/pI83VnkV0iQ?si=rJ2GRUc4b4QQXyaE

  ABQ ( Albuquerque,NM) gets new energy lab. Pacific fusion has selected Albuquerque NM for its new $1 billion fusion research and manufacturing campus.   https://www.abqjournal.com/business/article_354dbfa4-79f6-48f4-87c2-6fda68367881.html

  Well, Trump just declared "an idea" as a terrorists threat! Section 1. Antifa as a Terrorist Threat. Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals. This campaign involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists. Antifa recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity, then employs elaborate means and mechanism

  Will decreasing international students and new H1B1 visas rule cause issues at the NNSA labs. This could cripple the high tech job market and STEM research so no matter what this will directly or indirectly cause big issues at NNSA labs. Kaku sums this up. The fact is that the U.S. might be a dynamo for capital but not when it comes to what economists crudely call “human capital.” The point applies not only to immigrant workers who do jobs Americans won’t, but also those who do jobs Americans can’t, because, as physicist Michio Kaku argues above, “the United States has the worst educational system known to science.” Were it solely up to U.S. graduates, the scientific establishment and tech economy would collapse, he says, “forget about Google, forget about Silicon Valley. There would be no Silicon Valley.” Instead, U.S. science and tech thrive because of immigrants who come on H‑1B visas. https://www.statista.com/topics/13734/international-students-in-the-united-states/ https://w...

 The Dodo bird is being brought back from extinction: https://gizmodo.com/iotech-startup-claims-its-getting-closer-to-resurrecting-the-extinct-dodo-2000660052

  U.S. and Britain to sign flurry of major nuclear power deals during Trump’s state visit https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/15/trump-visit-us-and-britain-to-sign-major-new-nuclear-power-pact.html

  https://www.nature.com/nature-index/research-leaders/2025/nature-index-2025-research-leaders-united-states-losing-ground-as-chinas-lead-expands-rapidly.html Although the latest data predate the current Trump administration, observers warn that funding cuts will accelerate the rate of China’s gain. You can say what you want about Trumps cuts which are bad to science but even before Trump we have seen declining science at the labs.

  Converting Nuclear waste into tritium fuel for power plants. Research out of LANL, maybe a good project to build at the WIPP, Yucca mountain or INL. https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/nuclear-waste-might-one-day-be-used-to-create-tritium-to-fuel-fusion-power-plants/4022134.article

  This is interesting, it is a NASA press conference from earlier this week discussing the rock samples which are possibly deposits from ancient microbial life on Mars: https://youtu.be/sIUqvXSSAxw?si=pJN2r06Xmjwv-mCO

  So on this blog in the past there has been a few mentions of America heading into some type of Civil war. This was usually dismissed but now even the most naive have to start thinking that something is seriously wrong. I am not sure about Civil war but some kind social break down, break up of the nation or something is looking like a real possibility. If that is the case what happens to the labs?

  Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued a statement on September 9 denying reports that the Department of Energy plans to terminate the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WTP) at the Hanford Site in Washington state Has anyone been following this story? https://www.ans.org/news/2025-09-11/article-7360/wright-denies-reports-of-doe-plans-to-axe-hanfords-wtp/

  Video shown in House hearing appears to show a missile hitting a UAP https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mCaSBrLMLTg&pp=ygUcdmlkZW8gc2hvd24gbWlzc2lsZSBuYmMgbmV3cw%3D%3D

 According to the AP, the DOE secretary picked his own climate science review team. Scientists said this is against the law.  Inaccuracies all over the place! This is becoming commonplace in the trump regime. DOE is becoming like RFK's HHS. https://www.eenews.net/articles/scientists-slam-inaccuracies-in-doe-climate-change-report/

LLNL made a fusion breakthrough. Now, a startup company wants to make it into a power plant. https://www.fastcompany.com/91394154/a-national-lab-made-a-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-a-new-startup-wants-to-make-it-into-a-power-plant

  RFK is phasing out government support for vaccines, slowing development of possibly revolutionary cancer treatments, and harming national security and our economic prospects by weakening our defense against biological warfare and ability to respond to naturally occurring pandemics. Ironically the vaccine program "Operation Warp Speed" was perhaps the greatest achievement of Trump's first term in office. https://futurism.com/neoscope/cancer-vaccines-mrna-future https://scitechdaily.com/new-mrna-cancer-vaccine-delivers-stunning-results-sparks-universal-treatment-hopes/ https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-cancels-cancer-vaccine-mrna

 C ould we be witnessing a shift away from the Bush/Cheney neocon era of defense privatization, including operations like Haliburton, Black Water, LANS, TRIAD, LLNS, Sandia Corporation (Lockheed) and Solutions of Sandia (Honeywell)? Do defense contractors have the best interests of shareholders or the US people in mind? Lutnick says administration considering taking stakes in defense companies Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Tuesday the president should consider stakes in companies where the U.S. adds “fundamental value.” https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/26/trump-government-companies-defense-00524433 The Trump administration is “thinking” about taking an equity stake in defense and munitions companies, according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “There’s a monstrous discussion about defense,” he said Tuesday in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” when asked if there’s a “line” on government ownership of private companies. “I mean, Lockheed Martin makes 97 percent ...

Several people have noticed that even onsite at LANL people are smelling weed. It has been going on for about a year now. There are several pot shops in town. Hey I get it is legal and if you go to city you are now going to be smelling weed most of the time but I find it odd just where you smell it now. I have been driving on the highway with the window up and you can smell it on occasion (no it is not a skunk). You also smell it odd places like beaches, malls, airports, and hospital waiting rooms. The onsite lab times are the most odd, I guess it could be a non-smoker but someone who lives with a smoker and gets in on their cloths, or just some non LANL workers onsite on occasion. It is impressive that after legalization how much the smell is everywhere now.

 The Trump administration's efforts to "streamline" government has interrupted medical compensation claims from former US atomic-energy workers suffering from cancers and other ailments linked to their employment. https://youtu.be/e0hxNh17TSw?si=lq85V4RREVziD6LW

  More issues for troubled New Mexico lab   The government-funded Black Mesa Research Facility is currently in danger of being shut down after being hit with yet another OSHA violation. The facility, which conducts advanced scientific and technological research, was reportedly cited for several safety violations that could endanger employees. A lab simply marked "Anomalous Materials" will be required to update signage to be less vague, ensuring the safety of all personnel. An OSHA compliance safety and health officer noted, "There are large acid pits that seemingly serve no purpose with no safety railings of any kind. I dropped five clipboards down there."

 Los Alamos / White Rock power and internet outages Is it normal for this community to have constant problems with service outages for both electricity and internet?

  The DOE has released a new climate change report, going into detail about how in many aspects it may not be as serious as previously claimed: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/DOE_Critical_Review_of_Impacts_of_GHG_Emissions_on_the_US_Climate.pdf https://youtu.be/r--BO8VXgnU?si=F6vvif9rMFJMZdGx

  Reducing indirect cost at LANL and LLNL: some questions. LANL is working on reducing indirect cost. Some of us have been trying to figure just where it goes. On a typical direct code the overhead rate is up to 300 percent or even more. I have no idea if this is accurate but I have heard 1/2 of the LANL staff is on indirect. If that was the case I would think overhead rates would be closer to100% not 300%. I am not sure how the budget actually breaks down. Does the mean (a) 1/2 of the indirect funding people cost three times as much as direct funding people? (b) is the 1/2 of the people on indirect not actually true and it is more like 2/3 or 3/4 of the workers are on indirect? (d) It is 50:50 but the extra money is pays for equipment, supplies, parts, vehicles, benefits and so on? Or is it some combination of these. Also it would be useful to see a plot of the overhead rates over the last 25 years. Maybe it has always been this way but it would be interesting to see if it was say...

 She went missing in June. The search continues... https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/search-missing-los-alamos-national-214723576.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMe5ygLKI7D0j1oPlhQlfy9B2KJBAnsYZTzZxviDIjYaTCZrD13og_JT91-vOuCw6wzs44g_9N-iogsyzJZc_afjKAZNuIBKVo_beS9FQRdwqExKU1FIFmt1sS9UAzT_bbgl_fVIQzH86O5N5WMK6vY6USBRGzqibvD-9icYWXzC

  New Mexico governor declares state of emergency in Rio Arriba County https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wM1dE1zMzaQ&pp=ygUebmV3IG1leGljbyAgc3RhdGUgb2YgZW1lcmdlbmN5

 Lawrence Livermore National Lab enters a different kind of space race with a telescope deal https://phys.org/news/2025-08-lawrence-livermore-national-lab-kind.html

Users are finding that Google's Gemini AI keeps having disturbing psychological episodes, melting down in despondent self-loathing reminiscent of Marvin the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. https://futurism.com/google-puzzled-ai-self-loathing

  https://futurism.com/chatgpt-encouraging-ritual-molech ChatGPT invented in its own litany for the devil for the user to recite. "In your name, I become my own master," ChatGPT said. "Hail Satan."

  How ‘The Great Flattening Trend’ Could Affect Your Workplace https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2025/01/24/the-great-flattening-trend-is-picking-up-steam-in-2025/

  Harvard and MIT students drop out of school due to impeding AI takeover  [They]  are abandoning school now to work full-time on preventing it from turning on humanity. https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriafeng/2025/08/06/fear-of-super-intelligent-ai-is-driving-harvard-and-mit-students-to-drop-out/

  AI systems can subliminally influence one another to share a love for owls, or a malevolent desire to kill all humans: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ai-models-can-secretly-influence-one-another-owls-rcna221583

  https://nypost.com/2025/08/03/us-news/radioactive-wasp-nests-at-sc-nuclear-site-raise-worries-about-possible-contamination-leaks/ Let's hope Pits work out at LANL since Savannah River is having issues. Greg Radioactive wasp nests at South Carolina nuclear weapons site raise worries about possible contamination, leaks

  Any announcements about possible LLNL “Golden Dome” funding? Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and other contractors have been mentioned so far.

  LANL plans to hire 1,000 more employees. I find this interesting as SNL was talking about a layoff and only has 11 openings, and LLNL has only 75 openings. The question is where are these 1,000 employees going to live unless there is a big group of retirements in the future and they are all moving to Phoenix or Florida. https://www.kob.com/new-mexico/santa-fe-northern-new-mexico/los-alamos-national-lab-announces-plans-to-hire-up-to-17000-workers/

  Should LLNL and and LANL follow Musks lead and make everyone an engineer? https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/elon-musk-bans-researcher-title-at-xai-says-only-engineers-welcome/articleshow/123013891.cms?from=mdr Elon Musk has ordered the immediate removal of the job title 'researcher' at xAI, insisting that all technical staff be called 'engineers'. The change followed a public correction of an employee’s job post on X. Musk said the term was outdated and encouraged a false division of roles. Meanwhile, Meta is testing AI-enabled interviews, letting candidates use AI tools during assessments. Both moves highlight how major tech companies are redrawing the boundaries of what it means to work in AI.

Cornell University and the University of Rochester have joined a lawsuit against the Department of Energy and the DOE secretary, Chris Wright. The lawsuit alleges that the DOE took "flagrantly unlawful actions" by "slashing 'indirect cost rates' for government-funded research."   https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/education/2025/04/15/colleges-lawsuit-department-of-energy

  The NNSA was “hacked” Microsoft says China-backed cybercriminals hacked into US nuclear weapons agency https://nypost.com/2025/07/23/tech/microsoft-says-china-backed-cybercriminals-hacked-into-us-nuclear-weapons-agency/

  More push back against AI. There is a realization that AI has severe limits in what it can do and that the field has a lot of hype. The idea that AI is going to replace large sections of the STEM workforce is simply not true. AI could replace bureaucratic or repetitive jobs but not jobs that require actual thinking. I think it could be a tool to aid in thinking and creative process but the big hope that it will "do" science, endangering, create new products on its own is not going to happen and in fact it could hinder or reduce the quality of science and engineering in some cases. A lot of LANL managers or ex managers have been saying the most naive things about AI and just unaware of where the field is actually heading. https://medium.com/quantum-information-review/ai-has-a-critical-flaw-and-its-unfixable-06d6a5c294d4 AI Has a Critical Flaw — And it’s Unfixable. "AI isn't intelligent in the way we think it is. It's a probability machine. It doesn't think. ...

  This story relates to LLNS as well “New Embarrassing Details About Married CEO Caught Cuddling With HR Chief at Coldplay Concert” The same behavior has happened at LLNL, just ask the wife’s and sub-contractor employee victims, of threat to be silent, or face firing for witnessing such conduct. MODERATOR NOTE: The link below takes to a private video. Please provide public link to it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u9NXHYcMSSs&pp=ygU_TmV3IEVtYmFycmFzc2luZyBEZXRhaWxzIEFib3V0IE1hcnJpZWQgQ0VPIENhdWdodCBDdWRkbGluZyBXaXRo

  https://www.theringer.com/2025/07/09/tech/ai-x-grok-elon-musk-linda-yaccarino-hitler Elon Musk's "improved" chatbot was producing far-right hate speech.

  https://fedscoop.com/energy-secretary-signals-reversal-of-some-cuts-to-national-labs/ Multiple lawmakers on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee shared their concerns with Wright during a DOE budget hearing about the proposed $2.75 billion cut to the national labs in the White House’s fiscal 2026 proposal, saying it undercuts his oft-stated tech priorities. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., ranking member of the panel, said engineers at the Sandia National Laboratories have told him the proposed cuts will “significantly affect” national user facilities, fusion research on reactor environments, the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies and more. Wright said the budget hasn’t been allocated down to each individual lab, and that funding decisions will be made “on a lab-by-lab basis.” He said the proposed cuts are a reflection of “the tough world we’re in today.” “My goal is to grow, not shrink, the output of top-quality science at our labs,” Wright said. “But do we need to...

  Lab management at LANL isn't communicating, but fortunately, I can read the news. The news reports are that NNSA is moving everything not directly weapons related over to weapons. For example, non-proliferation research is getting torched. Also, energy sciences like fuel cells, solar, CINT, etc will get entirely eliminated or dramatically slashed: https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/doe-topline-cuts-across-the-board-except-for-nuclear-weapons/ "DOE energy programs would be cut by 25%. On top of fairly consistent cuts across the board, the budget calls to fully eliminate several programs, including R&D for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies, Renewable Energy Grid Integration, Solar Energy, and Wind Energy, as well as the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. Defense-related programs would get a 17% funding boost, almost entirely from DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which houses the nation’s nuclear weapons programs and DOE’s nuclear ...

  Things are going sideways at Los Alamos. Any news at LLNL? Blog moderator's note: I tried getting details from the poster but he hasn't responded. If anyone else can give more detail, it's appreciated 👍.

  Pacific Fusion proposed Livermore facility: https://www.livermorevine.com/livermore/2025/06/30/livermore-eyed-for-new-fusion-research-facility/ Based largely on proposed next generation Sandia pulsed power machine that NNSA passed on after failed design reviews. Unclear why investors think a machine that can fire once a day can put power on the grid.

  The war continues. So there is talk that the budget for LANL could increase with PIT production. https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/more-nuclear-weapons-less-for-renewables-heres-how-does-requested-budget-looks/article_f9d8370b-e9e7-4113-a54d-2c260436d139.html You would figure the Santa Fe Anti-Nuke crowd are worried and will join together to fight for less nukes. Nope the Los Almaos Study group knows the real enemy is the Nuclear Watch in New Mexico. The nuclear watch group head Jay Coghlan posted some comments and Los Almaos study group head was fast to attack him. At least these guys know their priorities. 6 June, 2025 Dear Jay -- You continually misquote the 2006 JASON study and ignore more recent JASON output, e.g. the 2019 letter. In addition there are public remarks such as those from former JASON Marvin Adams, who notably said in my presence and that of hundreds of others that anyone who thinks they know that pits will last 100 years doesn't know very much ...

  This is a good critique of the many-worlds theory: https://youtu.be/rw1ewLJUgOg?si=EZnqOJGqj71kl48R

  This is a good video about AI making humans obsolete: https://youtu.be/BtPwW7i3Dpc?si=-5bSEvhPQMUX3RuS

  1-3% staff reduction at SNL Just got the word that Sandia is required to reduce the workforce by 1-3% by fall. They are hoping to get a voluntary separation package approved by NNSA and get the numbers down that way. They also mentioned that SNL was in much better shape than "other labs". Any news at LANL?

  Now we know why LANL managers live AI so much https://tribune.com.pk/story/2551840/excessive-ai-use-may-lead-to-cognitive-decline-reveals-mit-study Excessive AI use may lead to cognitive decline, reveals MIT study Findings have vast practical implications such as decline in critical thinking, creativity, and independent reasoning Brain scans taken during the experiment showed that LLM users exhibited weaker connections between brain regions associated with critical thinking and memory. While their essays scored well in both human and AI evaluations — often praised for their coherence and alignment with the given prompt — the writing was also described as formulaic and less original. Notably, those who used LLMs struggled to quote from or recall their own writing in subsequent sessions. Their brain activity reportedly "reset" to a novice state regarding the essay topics, a finding that strongly contrasts with participants in the "brain-only" group, who retained str...

  Apple says generative AI cannot think like a human - research paper pours cold water on reasoning models https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/apple-says-generative-ai-cannot-think-like-a-human-research-paper-pours-cold-water-on-reasoning-models Apple researchers discovered that LRMs perform differently depending on problem complexity. On simple tasks, standard LLMs, without explicit reasoning mechanisms, were more accurate and efficient and delivered better results with fewer compute resources. However, as problem complexity increased to a moderate level, models equipped with structured reasoning, like Chain-of-Thought prompting, gained the advantage and outperformed their non-reasoning counterparts. When the complexity grew further, both types of models failed completely: their accuracy dropped to zero regardless of the available compute resources. (Keep in mind that the the Claude 3.7 Sonnet Thinking and DeepSeek-R1 LRMs have limitations when it co...

  https://gizmodo.com/chatgpt-tells-users-to-alert-the-media-that-it-is-trying-to-break-people-report-2000615600 Mentally vulnerable people are being harmed by malevolent chatbots.

 'No Kings' anti-Trump protests happening in the Bay Area on Saturday 6/14 Be situationally aware please. https://www.ktvu.com/news/no-kings-protests-bay-area-saturday.amp Blog moderator note: The link above contains a list of bay area protests. There are also protest in Modesto, Stockton, Merced. Just search for "no kings protests" for exact locations.

 Found this from a Distinguished Sandia/LANL retried scientists from his blog. A bit of depressing read. It has a hint of politics but he has a point. "I will start by saying Los Alamos carries some significant meaning for me personally. I lived and worked there for almost 18 years. It shaped me as a scientist, if not made me the one I am today. It has (had) a culture of scientific achievement and open inquiry that I fully embrace and treasure. I had not spent time like this on the main town site for years. It was a stunning melange of things unchanged and radical change. I ate at new places, and old places running into old friends with regularity. I was left with mixed feelings and deep emotions at the end. Most of all my view of whether leaving there was the right professional move for me. It was probably a good idea. The Lab I knew and loved is almost gone. It has disappeared into the maw of our dysfunctional nation’s destruction of science. It is a real example of where greatn...

A LLNL superintendent, that cheats on his blind wife with a nearby an eagerly available, “admin”, an apparently untouchable DEI hired supervisor, that on LLNL tax payer recruitment trips, seeks out college students for his own pleasure, and a low emotional IQ superintendent, that leads to a tech suicide that continues to advance? What a management dream team we have here. Not. Time for a major DOE/NNSA audit of LLNL sanctioned practices, or expect more of the same behavior to continue. What is the plan forward to disincentivize these tax payer supported unethical behaviors? There aren’t any. Your LLNL tax dollars at work.

  Fusion breakthrough: NIF achieves 8.6 megajoules, shattering previous record https://www.techspot.com/news/107971-fusion-breakthrough-nif-achieves-86-megajoules-shattering-previous.html

  Chinese student visa revocations will cripple the US in the AI race Meta I work in the one of the AI teams at the big G. Most of my colleagues have a PhD and are from China. Beyond them, even a lot of the resumes we receive for research internships are from Chinese candidates in US universities. I'm sure the current administration is not gonna stop at student visas and is gonna target O1, H1B and green card holders next. A majority of noteworthy papers in AI conferences over the last 3 years have come from Chinese lead authors. Most elite US PhD programs have a majority of Chinese students. If these people were to go back to China, it'd only bolster their already formidable AI industry and be a massive loss for the big US based AI companies. Chinese PhD graduates already face significant hurdles today getting a green card even after qualifying for the extra-ordinary category (EB-1A). This has already caused a significant number of researchers to go back to China with Deepseek...

 This is a good video about mass produced robots replacing human workers: https://youtu.be/RFbuZpNaIaY?si=ECChAX33-50tKB7n

Just this week Secretary Wright visited LLNL and while he made Ai as the next Manhattan project for the national labs. I got this feeling the next project for him was to cut back many of the programs.

  This company has a machine that produces gasoline out of air, using an input of electricity: https://www.aircela.com/ https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/05/15/3082353/0/en/Aircela-Unveils-Machine-That-Turns-Air-into-Fossil-Free-Gasoline.html