There was always enough virtue in this Republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency. -Abraham Lincoln

My quote of the day Atifete Jahjaga

A response from MIT rejecting "The Compact"... orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

100% All Achievements xkcd.com/3148/

It is obvious that this absolute power becomes despotic once it has lost its connection with a higher power than itself. -Hannah Arendt, On Revolution

Ideas cannot digest reality. -Jean-Paul Sartre

Officials of the modern state ar, by necessity, at least one step removed from the society they are charged with governing. They assess the life of their society by a series of typifications that are always some distance from the full reality these abstractions are meant to capture.

Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children

Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children

The state’s elimination of vaccine mandates is a courageous first step toward decluttering itself of any excess kids.

theatlantic.com

The fact that I'm not allowed to step on this painting feels antithetical to Yoko's intentions

I'm not a fan of their art

This 'pursuit of happiness'... holds that men are entitled to 'the ghastly privilege of pursuing a phantom and embracing a delusion'. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution Quoting Howard Mumford Jones

NIH scientists say that mRNA vaccines have saved untold thousands of lives. A heroin addled nepo baby whose brain was partially eaten by a worm says mRNA vaccines are worthless and even dangerous. For busy medical patients, it can be hard to know who to trust.

I think all the time that this is the "science reform" we need to be having. Discrimination in science probably costs us more in scientific insight and scientists' well-being than anything else. AND these toxic patterns are not independent of fraud because toxic cultures create fraud pressures

Alexandra Witze@alexwitze.bsky.social · 12mo ago

We've been waiting for this report from NSF for many months — results of a survey on sexual harassment at US Antarctic stations. The numbers aren't good, but at least this problem is out in the open & starting to be tackled. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Apparently Ulysses Grant's bullies called him "Useless Grant" boy howdy children haven't changed in their capacity for evil

iNaturalist Animals and Plants xkcd.com/3118/

'They took shrapnel from my heart' – the magnets saving lives in Ukraine. The pen-sized magnetic extractors are powerful enough to lift a sledgehammer. 🧪💣🧲🇺🇦 www.bbc.com/news/article...

"They took shrapnel out of my heart" - a life saved by Ukrainian ingenuity

A magnetic extractor is changing the face of front-line medicine in Ukraine.

bbc.com

But one thing SCOTUS did make clear is that its ruling doesn’t have to be final. Congress has a say in the scope of the courts’ equitable powers - i.e., a judge’s authority to craft remedies in a case. It should step in to reestablish the constitutional balance. /fin

Between the centuries of misery and disorder there are others when societies come to rest when the human race seems to draw breath. In actual fact, such times are more apparent than real...

AI, peer review and the human activity of science

AI, peer review and the human activity of science

When researchers cede their scientific judgement to machines, we lose something important.

nature.com

Kuldorff is now going to present on the MMRV vaccine. The slides have not been posted. CDC has a briefing doc: www.cdc.gov/acip/downloa... MMRV was shown to have a slightly increased risk of febrile seizures compared to separate MMR + varicella vaccines in a VSD rapid cycle analysis.

They needed no facts, no information; they had a "theory", and all data that did not fit were denied or ignored. -Hannah Arendt, On Lying and Politics, 1971

*crab-walked

Governmental centralization acquires immense power when joined to administrative centralization. In this way, it accustoms men completely and continuously to disregard their own wishes and to obey, not only for once and upon one point but in every respect and at all times.

It's a raging cicada party out there. They waited 17 years for this!

One way of lessening the action of authority lies not in stripping society of some of its rights or in paralyzing its efforts but in distributing the exercise of power in several hands, in multiplying the number of civil servants to whom just enough power is granted to perform what is asked of them.

From the article: Some groups that see nuclear power as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels also offered praise. The call to reconsider the LNT model and other safety standards is a positive step toward reforming NRC’s “overly risk-averse culture, structure, and regulations” 1/3

Javi Ibarrondo@jibarrondo.bsky.social · last yr.

To boost nuclear power, Trump orders controversial rewrite of radiation safety rules | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

The further a scientist moves away from the topic of their previous work, the fewer citations their new work will receive, an analysis of millions of scientific papers and patents reveals. The findings are published in @nature.com: http://spklr.io/63325hiCV #SocialScience 🧪

The pivot penalty in research - Nature

An analysis of millions of scientific papers and patents reveals a ‘pivot penalty’ when researchers shift direction, with the impact of studies decreasing rapidly the further they move from their previous work.

spklr.io

This is cool to see, though the irony of having an article about a nonprofit being behind a paywall is not lost on me. #openscience

Prof Sam Illingworth@samillingworth.com · last yr.

💊 Nonprofit drug supplier cuts costs CivicaScript, a nonprofit founded by payers, cut costs of a prostate cancer drug by 64% for patients and 92% for payers. Is this a new model for affordable generics? 🔗 doi.org/10.1056/CAT.... #SciComm #DrugPricing 🧪

1/7) Thoughtful article from @neuralreckoning.bsky.social here, very well worth a read! I am sympathetic to the argument, but not entirely in agreement (no surprise there, I suppose). Specifically, I take a different lesson from other large-scale science projects' successes and failures. 🧠📈 🧪

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · last yr.

Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration, writes @neuralreckoning.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/funding/neur...

Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration, writes @neuralreckoning.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/funding/neur...

Neuroscience needs to empower early-career researchers, not fund moon shots

Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration.

thetransmitter.org