I'm an editor/correspondent for NPR. Mostly smart on the radio. Mostly stupid on everywhere else. ChatGPT describes me as: "Aerospace Sleuth, Nuclear Nerd, and NPR Superfan — with a Side of Surreal Humor." Signal: https://signal.me/#eu/PoRoBSPUsb1fVLiml
14,345 followers 705 following 1,091 posts
view profile on Bluesky
A few months ago, I noticed a huge increase in the amount of AI-generated religious content in my feed. Here's why one company is generating AI Bible content at speed. Fantasy or faith? One company's AI-generated Bible content stirs controversy www.npr.org/2025/09/07/n...
Surprisingly effective and easy social engineering intelligence gathering method.
Best pickleball conspiracy yet.
NEW: US Space Command will be located in Huntsville Alabama, according to President Trump, "forever to be known, from this point forward, as 'Rocket City'."
Here you go.
Running into the room to share this with my wife like Mac Bundy did to JFK
This is incredible pickleball OSINT work from the NYT's @ethansinger.bsky.social. I love everything about it--the concept, the use of databases, aerial imagery, and ML to crack the case. This should win an OSINT blue ribbon. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Saw carbines down in DuPont circle metro today!
Oh no I appreciate you pointing it out.
Yes sorry I should have said in DC!
*long guns in DC.
Huh. I wonder what they were up to? There’s only been a handful of guard deployments I’ve seen (Sept 11, BLM, Jan 6) but I could well have missed one.
Guardsmen on the mall with their M4s this morning. To my memory this is the first time I’ve seen the guard with long guns. Even during the days after Sept 11 they only carried sidearms.
And this is as good a time as any to announce that I've moved over to a team at NPR that covers the intersection of tech and government. I'll still be following Nuke-ey stuff, but I'm also doing this kind of thing now. So if you know stuff about keywords like "Cyber" and "Interweb," hit me up.
And this is as good a time as any to announce that I've moved over to a team at NPR that covers the intersection of tech and government. I'll still be following Nuke-ey stuff, but I'm also doing this kind of thing now. So if you know stuff about keywords like "Cyber" and "Interweb," hit me up.
NEW: A whistleblower complaint alleges that Trump officials at the Social Security Administration copied the SSA's primary database of Americans' Social Security Numbers into a private server, sparking security concerns. www.npr.org/2025/08/26/n...
Surprise guest on tonight's starship webcast by SpaceX.
For reference... bsky.app/profile/gbru...
Way less headache-inducing than the "infographics" in the runup to the strike...
For those interested in a slightly more accurate depiction of what went down in Fordo (and what we don't know), James Glanz and the NYT team have done a very nice infographic laying it all out, along with some good reporting: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
As if this week were not bizarre enough: Mount Pleasant residents tell me a group of federal agents gathered for a photo-op near a pro-immigrant banner, pictured below, then tore it down. In its place, they left a dildo. A neighbor's Ring camera captured the whole thing...
Cockfosters was the best part of living in London.
Worst incident in a while.
Spent the morning walking around central DC. Where the national guard at?
New Grok imagine is really going for it with other people's IP...
Just watching the GPT5 preview and it generated code for a Bernoulli simulator... Impressive... but I gotta say that wing shape...
That is exactly what the press release says! Without specifying the medical conditions involved.
The Royal New Zealand Air Force carried out a rare mid-winter medivac from McMurdo station in Antarctica. Three American staff are now in NZ receiving medical attention. As an AvGeek, I would love to know the details of how you land at McMurdo in midwinter. Source: www.nzdf.mil.nz/media-centre...
all your favorite stuff together at last!
Source: www.life.com/history/hiro...
All I can think of is that water vapor coming out of the top is LIQUID GOLD! (And it wouldn’t disperse like that).
Did not have AI-generated nuclear moon slop on my bingo card for today….
Seriously, every one of these headlines is a national treasure: theonion.com/politics/our...
Our Dumb Century was one of the greatest works of literature in the 20th century.
This eruption is an interesting … coincidence?? Seismically triggered eruptions are not really my specialty, but I answered the phone on Sunday morning when @npr.org’s @gbrumfiel.bsky.social called, so here you go: Russian volcano erupts days after monster quake shakes www.npr.org/2025/08/03/n...
Biggest news in RWM since they used organic kitty litter and nearly blew up WIPP. www.npr.org/sections/the...
Beta-Bees! 🐝☢️🐝☢️🐝☢️🐝☢️🐝☢️
Savannah River workers found FOUR radioactive wasps nests, not just one... Statement below.
Trump says he has ordered two nuclear submarines to position themselves "in the appropriate regions" in response to statements by former president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev.
Now do DC.
Early videos from Kamchatka show some damage from the magnitude 8.0 earthquake that struck off the coast but so far it appears fairly modest. Source: t.me/zvezdanews/1...
Seriously, share you thoughts on these questions below!
I've got so many questions about how this will go without Massey's: ⁉️ Will their jury-rigged fueling/testing system work? ⁉️ Can they static fire long enough to really have confidence? ⁉️ Do they risk damaging the pad ahead of the next launch?
News: @GlennKesslerWP, better known as The Fact Checker for The Washington Post, is joining the ranks of journalists taking the buyout
"Newsweek is the global media organization that has earned audience time and trust for more than 90 years." job-boards.greenhouse.io/newsweek/job...
😂
"Cosmologists are the conspiracy theorists of astronomy..." COME AT ME BRO!
Yes, multiple failures at multiple levels.
The idea that somebody with training on these things would try to "pull him free" while the magnet was still running is absurd and infuriating.
🚩 Why was the husband allowed in the room at all? 🚩 Why wasn't the machine operator checking him for metal? 🚩 Why on earth didn't the operator quench the magnet immediately?
As someone who spent a brief period of his career working around superconducting solenoid magnets there are SO MANY RED FLAGS in this story 🚩🚩🚩 apnews.com/article/mri-...
Incredible work from @wgbh.org here.
Congress has decided to claw back previously approved funding for public media. This decision hurts people in communities across the country, but it has only strengthened our resolve to keep Americans informed and connected. (1/2)
Officially the IAEA has pulled out of Iran. All those breakout calculations and details about the Iranian program depended on data from these inspectors. Unless the inspectors go back in there will be very little insight into what the Iranians are up to.
New @Maxar images of continued activity at Iran’s Fordo fuel enrichment site. It appears that the Iranians are continuing to investigate the holes created by the massive ordnance penetrators. Also the some of the holes now appear to be possibly backfilled?
Indeed. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it but still busy news day! I’m on vacation so watching more as a spectator….
And Maxar has imagery showing equipment at Fordo enrichment site hit last week by bunker busters.
NYT with the story that Grossi now says Iran could resume enriching in “months.” www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/u...
What a Sunday evening for Iran news… WaPo with the exclusive that signals intel indicates damage not so bad at its nuclear sites…. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
NEW: imagery for Maxar shows an excavator and vehicles near Iran’s Fordo nuclear site. The site was bombed a week ago by US bunker busters.
Iran's nuclear program has been dealt a blow, here's an overview of the current state of its facilities. From @gbrumfiel.bsky.social, Brent Jones and @alykat.bsky.social
Feeling confused about the state of Iran's nuclear facilities? Here's a rundown of what we know at each facility (with thoughts from @armscontrolwonk.bsky.social and @coreyah.bsky.social among others). www.npr.org/2025/06/26/n...
Write to me to complain! Just reach out you two.... I'm here!
OK, if you're one of the two DTRA officer who spent the past 15 years of your career planning for the strike on Iran's Fordo nuclear site you must be SO MAD AT ME FOR THIS ARTICLE! You know what you should do.... www.npr.org/2025/06/25/n...
We don't know, but I will say that in a sign of the skill of the aircrew and planners, it DOES appear that each bomb may have been followed down the hole by a second bomb. That requires incredible precision.
Fascinating! And even if it doesn't perfectly divert it, it could easily break up the shock front.
Cheryl's got a great post here that brings up the question of subsidence! Even if it's not visible to the eye, SAR should be able to detect it I think! BTW, in Top Gun Maverick there WAS subsidence after the strike. One of my favorite parts.
Was Fordo destroyed? I don't know. I'm not sure anyone knows right now (maybe not even the Iranians). But what is clear to me is that there are some serious technical challenges to trying to blow it up from the air. TIME WILL TELL IF IT WORKED! How's that for a journalistic ending?
And this brings me to my final thought. When Jeanloz and the National Academies looked at this problem and 2005, they came to a fairly simple conclusion: "It's cheaper and easier to dig deeper than it is for someone to penetrate to that depth."
... The Iranians also sealed the tunnels at Fordo and Esfahan with soil just days before the American strikes. All this makes the point that they had a plan too. They had thought about bunker busters and were prepared.
Third, a little detail that I think is very telling: David Albright mentioned to me that when the Iranians built their underground hall at Natanz, they covered it in alternating layers of concrete and soil. Jeanloz says is EXACTLY the way to create voids that can deflect shock waves...
Second, I had a great conversation with Raymond Jeanloz, who was part of the 2005 NAS study on earth-penetrating weapons. He pointed out that natural fractures and voids in the rock can also easily deflect and disperse shock waves (and even the bomb itself as it moves through the rock).
ANYWAY, a few more interesting details have slipped out since that first thread that I'll now share: First, today President Trump said that the U.S. believed Fordo is covered with "granite, concrete, and steel." Granite is pretty hard, probably making penetration even more difficult.
What really drew me into this was the narrative that the bomb could go 60m underground every time, and that it WOULD destroy Fordo. It is my job to question those kinds of assumptions. (Oh wait, so maybe I am just professional "man on the Internet." Nevermind.)
POTUS asked to do this strike, and it looks like they executed the plan to a T. That's what the military is supposed to do. But that doesn't mean the math I did was incorrect either. As a back-of-the-envelop calculation, it probably is accurate to at least an order of magnitude....
The Pentagon knows way more than I do. About the rock, about the bomb, about the right equations and the bunkers and everything. And from everything we can see, I think it appears that they executed this strike flawlessly. The hits are clustered. The strike points chosen carefully. (Maxar/NPR)
First, a question I must ask myself (and that you should ask too) is have I become "man on the Internet" who thinks he knows more than the Pentagon.... I am somewhat fearful that doing my own math makes it look like I do, but I assure you I do not. bsky.app/profile/gbru...
OK, after reporting this out, I've got a few final thoughts on the B-2 strike on Fordo and whether the MOPs got through. I think there's some really interesting details that have emerged and clarified my thinking... 🧵 www.npr.org/2025/06/25/n...
The White House has distributed this statement from the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission that say Fordo is "inoperable." The Americans are believed to have hit Fordo's ventilation system and power supply, and that would render it inoperable. But inoperable is not the same as destroyed.
“Geology, it turns out, may have foiled one of the most audacious American air operations in recent memory.”
I knew you'd love that line!
NEW: Amid reports that America's bunker-busters may not have destroyed the deeply-buried site at Fordo, here's a look at the science of earth-penetrating weapons. It turns out geology matters a lot. www.npr.org/2025/06/25/n...
A better graphics person would have chosen colors differently!
*Drops Mic* bsky.app/profile/gbru...
NEW: DIA assessment concludes that massive bunker-busters did NOT in fact bust the bunkers. "Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.”" www.cnn.com/2025/06/24/p...
Yes, sorry, didn't mean to imply you were a proliferator! Just that there are a bunch of technologies (AVLIS, mass spec, accelerators) and the world only talks about centrifuges.
Literally made in a google doc. LoL. BTW I tried to get ChatGPT and Grok to make some better ones. Total failure.
Of course this is not to say Iran will sprint to a bomb. There are other steps, and its not even clear if they were trying before. But the existing stock of 60% enriched uranium is of great consequence. Anyway, I know a lot of experts follow me, let me know if I've got it right!
Fascinating. And yes, there are other (scary) ways to enrich uranium and I worry some times we don't spend enough time worrying about those. Anyway, let me know if I've got it right!
So hopefully it’s clear now why these stocks matter. 60% enriched uranium is just a hair away from weapons grade. Iran has enough for probably 9 or 10 weapons if its able to remove those last few unwanted u-238 atoms. Of course to do that it would need more centrifuges, but not too many.
Now an added benefit of enriching is that by taking out all that u-238, your uranium takes up less space. It’s believed that Iran’s entire stock of 60% uranium is stored in a few canisters around the size of a beer keg or scuba tank. That means its easy to hide. (pictured: beer kegs, not uranium)
To get to weapons grade, which is 90% u-235, we need to remove just THREE more atoms. That’s NOTHING compared to the work that’s already been done. In fact, just getting to reactor fuel-grade uranium is over 80% of the work.
OK, step it up to where Iran is today– 60% enriched uranium. Again, we’re taking away atoms of u-238 through the enrichment process. And now we have (roughly) just 12 atoms left in our mix! Through enrichment, we’ve removed 988 of our natural uranium atoms.
Reactor grade uranium is 5% enriched, meaning 5% of the atoms are u-235. But look at how you get there – You don’t ADD u-235 atoms, you REMOVE u-238 atoms! Below the line are ALL the atoms removed to create 5% enriched uranium.
So now that you understand that u-238 is being removed, you can begin to understand why Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched u-235 is so consequential. Enter my low-rent graphics! Let’s start with natural uranium– It contains 0.7 percent u-235. For every 1000 atoms, just 7 are u-235
OK, so here’s the thing I think everyone misunderstands. This process is called uranium ENRICHMENT, which implies something is being added to the mix. But what’s actually happening is that u-238 is being REMOVED. A better name for the process would probably be uranium-235 CONCENTRATION.
Now the effect isn’t that great, so you need many centrifuges in series to enrich uranium. The gaseous uranium moves from one to the next, and with each pass through each centrifuge, a little more u-238 is removed, leaving more u-235 in the feed. These lines of centrifuges are called CASCADES.
