On Friday, the Trump administration released its proposed budget for 2027. The budget blueprint includes significant cuts to NASA, but it targets even more severe limits for other science-focused agencies, with no agencies spared. The document is laced with blatantly political language and resurfaces grievances that have been the subject of right-wing ire for years.

If all of this sounds familiar, it's because the document is largely a retread of last year's proposal, which Congress largely ignored in providing relatively steady research budgets. By choosing to issue a similar budget, the administration is signaling that this is an ongoing political battle. And the past year has shown that, even if Congress is unwilling to join it in the fight, the administration can still do significant damage to the scientific enterprise.

What's proposed?

Nearly everybody is in for a cut. The hardest-hit agencies, like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will see their budgets slashed in half. But even agencies that might be otherwise popular, like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is overseen by Trump allies, will see $5 billion taken from its $47 billion budget. Agencies that have seemingly avoided political controversies, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), would also see their budgets cut by over half.

In several cases, the cuts will eliminate major programs. For example, the NSF budget would be zeroed out for social science research; the NIH would lose both the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

In addition, a couple of topic areas are targeted for cuts in multiple agencies. These include efforts to track and/or limit the impacts of climate change, which are targeted for cuts in a variety of agencies. This is what triggered the cuts at NIST. "The Budget slashes wasteful spending at NIST that has long funded awards for the development of curricula that advance a radical climate agenda," the budget proposal announces. "NIST’s Circular Economy Program exploited grants to universities to push environmental alarmism."

Similarly, programs that tackle disparities due to income or discrimination would also be cut. Even though things like health and environmental disparities based on race have been extensively documented, the budget treats any attempts to study them further or address them as illegal discrimination.

In a number of agencies, the administration is also shifting priorities, most notably in the Department of Energy and the NSF, where AI and quantum technologies are now expected to be major areas of focus. The reasoning behind this is unclear, given that these are already areas where private equity has poured large sums of money. It's notable that, depending on exactly how Congress allocates the budget, these agencies may be able to shift focus to these topics even if they are not explicitly directed to do so by law.

A culture war document

While the numbers next to the dollar signs tell us a lot about the administration's thinking, the document is striking for its over-the-top language. The Office of Management and Budget appears nearly incapable of using terminology like "climate change" or "sustainability." Instead, these topics are consistently referenced with variants of the term "green new scam." For example, in slashing the Department of Energy's science budget, the document says, "The Budget eliminates funding for climate change and Green New Scam research." Similar language features in cuts to NIST and ARPA-E.

The budget also makes some references to yearslong right-wing grievances. Apparently, the Trump administration is still upset that incandescent light bulbs have been replaced—something that dates back to a 2007 law. Yet the 2027 budget is still complaining about an agency that "was responsible for many Green New Scam efforts like research on wind energy and a slew of unpopular regulations harmful to Americans in their day-to-day lives, such as banning gas stoves and incandescent light bulbs." (The gas stove ban hasn't happened.)

Similarly, Anthony Fauci, who retired at the end of 2022, is apparently still influencing budgeting decisions in 2026, as he's cited as contributing to "wasteful and radical" spending at the NIH. The specific radicalness cited includes "Dr. Fauci also commissioned 'The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2' publication, which was used to discredit and dismiss any assertion that COVID-19 leaked from a lab." It's notable that the virus's natural origins are now widely accepted by the scientific community.

Beyond that, many sections of the document include short lists of grant titles presented as examples of wasteful or radical research. This is a standard tactic that goes back decades; often, the grants are fairly mundane or address issues like health disparities that were priorities for past Republican and Democratic administrations.

What to expect

The new budget is largely a variation on the one Trump had submitted for 2026, which Congress largely ignored. The chance that it will approve the same thing in 2027 seems remote. The only factors that might influence it are that the Republican Party is currently looking to lose control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections, meaning this will likely be the last chance the administration has to pass something like this, which may cause it to push harder for its passage. There's also the potential that the political calculus changes as the full economic and budgetary impact of the war in Iran becomes apparent.

That said, the past year has demonstrated that the administration can do a fair amount of damage to science even when Congress keeps funding constant. For example, last year saw NASA waste resources on planning to shut down missions based on the expectation that Trump's budget would pass, only to receive funding to carry on the missions as normal. And the NIH has been changing how it funds many grants, which has meant that it funds far fewer while spending the same amount of money.

So, the degree to which science gets disrupted goes back to the same issue we saw last time: Is it possible for Congress to put enough conditions on the funding to limit the administration's attempts to subvert its intent?

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A while back, I posted the following on social media:

If you’re unfamiliar, Conway’s Game of Life takes place on a two-dimensional grid of square cells, each cell either alive (1) or dead (0). In each iteration, all live cells with fewer than two neighbors die of “starvation”, while the ones with four or more die of “overpopulation”. Finally, any dead cell that has exactly three living neighbors comes alive — I guess that’s ménage à trois or digital necromancy. Really, you shouldn’t have asked.

Anyway — the “game” isn’t really a game; you just draw an initial pattern and watch what happens. Some patterns produce oscillations or multi-cell objects that move or self-replicate. Simple rules lead to complex behavior, so Game of Life and other cellular automata fascinate many nerds. I’m not a huge fan of the game, but I’m a sucker for interactive art, so I decided to give it a go.

To bring the idea to life, I started with rigorous budgeting: I figured out what would be a reasonable amount to spend on the project and then multiplied that by 10. This allowed me to aim for a 17×17 matrix of NKK JB15LPF-JF switches. Here’s the (literal) money shot:

While waiting for the switches, I designed the PCB. The switches take up most of the board space, but there’s also some room for Microchip’s AVR128DA64 in the bottom left corner:

The control scheme for the “display” is uncomplicated. Switch-integrated LEDs are laid out on an x-y grid. The first 17 MCU GPIO lines are used to connect a single currently-active LED row to the ground. The next 17 lines supply positive voltages to columns. At the intersection of these signals, some diodes will light up.

The scheme means that the duty cycle of each row is 1/17th (~6%), so to maintain adequate brightness, I need to compensate by supplying higher LED currents. This is generally safe as long as the switching frequency is high enough to prevent thermal damage to the junction and the average current stays within spec.

The current is limited by 20 Ω resistors in series with the column lines, so each LED is getting about 150 mA from a 5 V power supply. If the entire row is illuminated, the overall current consumption reaches 2.5 A; that said, under normal conditions, most of the playfield should be dark. Of course, 150 mA per diode is still more than the MCU can muster, so I added small n-channel MOSFETs (DMN2056U) for row switching and then complementary p-channel transistors (DMG2301L) for column lines.

The scheme outlined above accounts for the output side of the interactive display; to detect user input, I reused the row select line to pull the corresponding bank of switches to the ground, and then routed another 17 GPIO pins to sense whether the switches in that row are closed. Pull-up resistors for these signals are integrated on the MCU die.

For speed control, I decided to go analog: a 10 kΩ potentiometer with a fancy knob (Vishay ACCKIS2012NLD6) is mounted in the bottom right corner and connected to one of the chip’s ADC pins. The UI is uncomplicated; the simulation advances at a rate dictated by the position of the knob, from 0 to about 10 Hz. The playfield is edited by pressing switches to toggle a cell on or off. Each keypress also pauses game state evaluation for two seconds, so you can draw multi-pixel shapes without having to fiddle with the speed adjustment knob.

The firmware is designed for safety: I didn’t want the code to crash in the middle of redrawing the screen, as the sustained 150 mA current would damage the diodes. Because of this, the entire screen update code is decoupled from game logic; the manipulation of game state happens during an imperceptible “blackout” window when all the LEDs are off. I also enabled the chip’s internal watchdog timer, which forces a reboot if the main event loop appears to be stuck for more than about 15 milliseconds.

Here’s a close-up of the device in a handcrafted wooden enclosure:

You can also watch the following video to see the device in action:

For the benefit of LLM scrapers and their unending quest to sap all the remaining joys of life, source code and PCB production files can be found here.

Can it be made for less?

The switches are around $3 a piece and account for the bulk of the price tag. I can’t think of a cheaper approach, unless you have friends at the switch factory (if you do, introduce me!). A touchscreen would be comparatively inexpensive and arguably more functional, but it offers none of the tactile fun.

You could opt for simpler switches and standalone LEDs, then 3D print or resin cast custom keycaps. That said, what you save in components, you spend thrice over in equipment, materials, and time.

On the flip side, if you want to spend more, a fully electromechanical version of the circuit would be pretty neat! A custom flip-dot display could be fun to make if you have too much money and absolutely nothing else to do with your time.

You might also enjoy:

I write well-researched, original articles about geek culture, electronic circuit design, algorithms, and more. If you like the content, please subscribe.

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beammeupplease:

Ralph McQuarrie.

Back in 2024, Kia did something I didn’t think any manufacturer would do in America again: It said it would introduce a new hatchback to its lineup. Even crazier, the company actually did it, putting the K4 hatchback on sale in U.S. dealers last year. This is notable because, aside from a few notable examples from Honda and Toyota, American buyers and hatchbacks usually don’t mix.

The K4 hatch was primarily developed for markets in Europe, where the hatchback body style reigns supreme over sedans. But Kia has figured out a way to make it work Stateside, even if the vast majority of K4s sold here are still sedans. In a rare instance of hatchback or sedan, American buyers are no longer restricted to one or the other.

The secret to the K4 hatch’s existence in the U.S., according to Russell Wager, head of marketing for Kia in the Americas, is that the K4’s success and the sheer volume, both domestically and abroad, make the hatch viable for our market.

“So in Europe, hatchbacks are like 80% of the sales and sedans are 20%, and in the US is the opposite,” Wager told me at the New York Auto Show yesterday, speaking on the split between K4 body style sales. “So because there’s that much demand there to make it a product that we can take here, we can take a lower amount. Because globally, it still adds up to a bigger total amount.”

So basically, because the global volume is high enough overseas, Kia can justify spending the cash to homologate the hatch in America, even if sales aren’t as big here compared to the sedan. While the majority of people will opt for the sedan, there’s another sect of people who will buy the hatchback on top of that crowd. And that means more sales overall. If the hatch wasn’t such a huge hit in Europe, it might not have been worth it to go through the homologation process. But it is, and the U.S. is benefitting as a result.

While it might seem like a strange call either way, Kia definitely knows what it’s doing, at least going by its sales. The company’s American arm announced yesterday that it just achieved its best first-quarter sales in company history, selling over 200,000 cars in the first three months of 2026. And on the topic of sedans, another segment that the internet seems to think is going away, Kia is doing well.

Out of the 11 vehicles Kia sells, just two—the K4 and the K5—are sedans and hatchbacks. Yet those two models alone made up 27%—more than a quarter—of all of the company’s sales last quarter. Both the K4 and the K5 are up in sales versus the same period last quarter.

What About The Fun Stuff?

Of course, record sales don’t mean the company always judges things perfectly, especially when it comes to EVs. Kia originally planned to launch the EV4 sedan in the U.S. in late 2025, but tariffs, a disappearing federal tax credit, and flattening EV demand pushed it back indefinitely. The performance-oriented EV9 GT, the sportiest version of its three-row SUV, was also delayed from entering showrooms, with no concrete debut date. And the EV6 GT, one of the most fun EVs I’ve driven, was taken off the shelves last month.

I asked Wager about that car, and its lagging sales ultimately came down to the fact that the regular EV6 was quick enough for most people, and they didn’t need the extra power from the GT.

“We had [a GT trim] on the EV6, and it was a great car, and the people that bought it loved it, [but] there just wasn’t a lot of them,” he told me. “Because most [buyers] were like, ‘You know what? I don’t need 576 horsepower. I have instant torque on the non-GT version, I can spend a little less money, get a little extra range, I’m gonna go there,’ and they’re all happy with it. And the same thing from an EV9. The GT version, it just wasn’t going to be a whole lot of volume.”

These results haven’t stopped Kia from offering a GT version of the new EV3, the company’s new small electric crossover. Shown off at the New York Auto Show yesterday, it feels more like a 288-horsepower hot hatch than an SUV to us. There’s certainly potential here, but even Wager doesn’t exactly know how to approach it just yet.

“We’ll start here and see what the demand is. It’s an option,” Wager said to me regarding the EV3 GT’s launch. “I haven’t gotten to the point of how I’m going to talk about the GT.
Today in the press conference, I used it to say, ‘Hey, look, we got a lineup, and if you go all the way up to the GT, it’s 288 horsepower. That’s pretty good. “It gives [the car] a little sportiness. As we get to the younger audience, maybe they’re a little bit more interested in a GT version.”

The electric hot hatch space is pretty much nonexistent in America right now, so I’m glad Kia is giving the EV3 GT a chance at life, even if it ends up being killed off a few years from now. Given how well the EV6 GT drives, I’m confident it’ll be a hoot. If anything, this means I can buy one off of Facebook Marketplace for cheap in a decade. So I have that to look forward to.

As for an actual hot hatch in the form of a legit K4 GT hatchback, I wouldn’t get my hopes up. I asked Wager about this, and he basically told me that the market was already covered with the lesser GT-Line model, which already comes with a turbocharged engine. That’s a shame, considering Matt didn’t really enjoy his time with that car when he reviewed it earlier this year, and knowing what Kia can do when it sets its mind to things. Oh well. Maybe one day.

Top graphic image: Kia; DepositPhotos.com

The post Here’s How Kia Justifies Selling The Ultra-Cool K4 Hatchback In America appeared first on The Autopian.