The words “precious bodily fluids” can not be far behind
Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · 3h agoStephen Miller referring to a baby as "this young body" for, presumably, the 500th time this week.
Dr. of Viewpoint Diversity
@dr-g.myatproto.social
Justin Smith Morrill stan account. Professor, in a state with a flawed concept of Academic Freedom. Speaking for no one other than myself.
Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · 3h agoThe funny thing is that the US Government actually took action to, like, change the manmade conditions and farming practices that helped fuel the Dust Bowl because FDR was Presiddnt and progressives had pretty full control of the levers. Could we even do that now?
Dr. Jeff Masters@drjeffmasters.bsky.social · 4h agoIt's not good to be beating Dust Bowl records! We just beat 1936 for hottest month in U.S. history, and also just had the 2nd-worst July drought conditions in the U.S., behind only July 1934. 2026 wildfire acreage burned: 6.3 million+ acres, highest in at least 10 years.
This is what it looks like when a politician actually wants to make life better in his city
Hell Gate *subscribe today!*@hellgatenyc.com · 3h agoCould drilling 600-foot holes under the platform of the J and Z Chambers Street subway stop make it less oppressively hot for commuters? Could those same holes help to heat municipal office buildings in the winter? Mayor Mamdani and the MTA intend to find out.
Ooh my old friend V. vulnificus getting some headlines. I went to a Vibrio conference once with my grad student who did her thesis on VV genomics, and have never eaten raw shellfish since. ☠️
CIDRAP@cidrap.bsky.social · 4h ago5 people in Louisiana have died from a flesh-eating bacterium found in warm coastal waters People can also become sick from Vibrio vulnificus after eating raw or undercooked shellfish. Read more: https://bit.ly/4xviiML 📷: CDC
I aced my coronary calcium test (score=0) and thereby avoided being stuck on a statin. Out of pocket=$125 Result=Priceless Aetna won’t pay for this one time test, but they’d pay to statin me up for eternity without checking to see if it’s even necessary.
The Joker's Maniacal Laughter
ALT: The Joker's Maniacal Laughter
static.klipy.com
It would be insane if this incident is what takes them all out Watergate style and not Russell Vought’s decapitation of federal agencies and squandering of a generation of expertise
Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · 12h agoDems will investigate the decision to indict David Hearn for felony vandalism of Reflecting Pool even as the government *knew* the damage was from bad contracting. It's a blueprint for what Dems would do with subpoena power on this if they win House: newrepublic.com/article/2141...
Important piece by @kedseconomist.com on what the term "working class" is meant to mean and what it should mean. open.substack.com/pub/kedsecon...
Who is America's Working Class
And what economic policy do they need
open.substack.com
Following up with this fascinating article explaining how the trans sports hysteria is a Trojan horse to write the concept of female biological inferiority into law — and eventually use that to strike down anti-discrimination laws. slate.com/news-and-pol...
Conservatives Are Using a Trojan Horse to Try to Kill RBG’s Greatest Legacy. It Might Just Work.
In rejecting the claims of the LGBTQ+ community, the court is beginning to dismantle the sex-discrimination law through which Americans demand equality.
slate.com
We need a list of all of these news sources and a browser plugin that flashes red if you attempt to click one of their links
Bucks County Beacon@buckscountybeacon.com · yesterdayBucks County Courier Times’ Corporate Owner Enlists Palantir to Uncover ‘Actionable Intelligence’ on Readers | USA Today Co will use controversial defense contractor’s AI-powered tools in an attempt to squeeze out more profits & reverse declining readership. This should alarm readers & subscribers.
The 2026 election is now just 87 days away. If you haven't begun yet, it's time to start learning about who's running for the North Carolina state legislature. http://carolinaforwardaction.org/
Dafuq is this fresh horror
Brittany Sutherland@sutherlandbl.bsky.social · 2d agoBy the way, you’re not frightened enough of prion diseases, not by half. Did you know that Chronic Wasting Disease can be taken up by plants where an infected deer died, travel up into leafy tissues, and infect new deer? Or any other herbivorous mammal? www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
Don makes an important point here about the dismantling of the administrative state. The institutional damage is to: 1.) destruction of *expertise,* honed by credentialing, research, experience, and *tenure* in job
Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · yesterdayThe idea that deep institutional damage can be easily rolled back seems like a very odd take for a conservative. The damage to the civil service system is huge, and legislation is needed to reassure future hires they won’t be fired on a whim.
Yesterday I was screwing around as one does on a Saturday and I idly thought “what if I made a playlist with one (to me) great album from each year of my life?” (Yeah it was an ADHD kind of day) sEVerAl HouRs LaTEr 0/58
Even this year Viktor Orban got taken out by massive organizing, not by violence. It's strange the way people overestimate the power of violence and underestimate the power of organized nonviolence when we have so many examples of the latter working (but hardly anyone makes movies about them).
All these little shitbirds should learn what the inside of a jail cell feels like
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 3d agoThe DOGE kids laughed at these entreaties, saying that once Musk had perfected "General AI" we wouldn't need cancer research, because their tame AI god would cure cancer. 28/
When I was a kid I read so many books that involved human heroes steering an unpredictable, amoral, and (crucially) inhuman power through their hands, making it do the right things only through application of careful discipline and (crucially) human will. I think that colors how I use LLMs.
Dr Abeba Birhane@abeba.blacksky.app · 2d ago"But there is no honour for the humanities in regaining their standing through the attention of AI companies, if they engage only on the technology industry’s terms. In that case, they will have become important in exactly the wrong way." www.ft.com/content/bdb3...
NIH has lost more than 20% of its staff. NIH has lost 1 in every 5 workers. This undermines the NIH mission. @27unihted.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/27unihte...
Lost critical expertise is hindering the NIH mission
Concern 5 of the Bethesda Declaration: One Year Later
open.substack.com
I don’t know, Talarico doesn’t sound very “vegan” to me. He kinda sounds like he wants to know what billionaires taste like.
Team Talarico@teamtalaricohq.bsky.social · 5d agoJames Talarico: 50 years ago, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell circulated a memo around DC — a blueprint for how corporations could amass political power, reverse the gains of the Great Society and the New Deal, and rig the system for themselves. And it worked.
"... the bat viruses that the grant paid the lab to study are so genetically distant from SARS-CoV-2 that they could not have produced it, a point that independent virologists have made repeatedly. " @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Why MAGA Is So Obsessed With Fauci
In the aftermath of pandemics, people either try to forget them or find others to blame for them.
theatlantic.com
What I previously said about the Heritage Foundation still holds (salt the earth/strip legal status/permanent dark mark on the resume/shunning/public stocks/Vought in an orange jumpsuit)
Solomon@solomonrmissouri.com · 2d agoHeritage Foundation government relations director arrested for bringing guns and drugs into senate building share.google/VtyoauQypYAS...
I think about moving back to the protective aura of Chicago quite frequently
Governor JB Pritzker@govpritzker.illinois.gov · 2d agoIllinois will fight like hell to keep protecting your reproductive freedom.
Accepting that the changes to the science world I grew up in may be permanent is hard to accept, but I remain optimistic that there is a future for science and I want to be part of figuring out what comes next - thinking about what we preserve, how we reinvent, and what we build out of this mess.
“…the latest crop of progressive candidates are campaigning like organizers. In doing so, they’re revealing weaknesses in the Democratic machine that have existed since Barack Obama ran for president—the first time.” - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social
Opinion | Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Organizers? (Gift Article)
Democrats are going to have to organize voters — not just fund-raise off them.
nytimes.com
Melissa Gira Grant@melissagiragrant.com · 4d agoI never had much time for the business of debating what combination of vibes and takes will and won’t get someone elected (the answer is usually boring to the electability crowd: people, money, organization) but this year I’ve got absolutely none
Climate denial is getting louder. Reality is getting harder to ignore. When parks are brown, rivers are shrinking and firefighters are battling blazes across the globe, governments must accelerate climate action, not slow it down.
This burning summer is the proof: the voices of climate denial aren’t just delusional, they’re deadly | Sadiq Khan
Look at our blazing forests and parched cities. Green policies aren’t a ‘luxury’, and we can’t burn more oil and gas. People need the truth, says London mayor Sadiq Khan
theguardian.com
I went into spring semester 2025 already in shock, worried that the data resources we use in my class might be gone before we got to them. I discovered my STEM students know little about how the science ecosystem was built in the US over generations.
Nicole Rust@nicolecrust.bsky.social · 3d agoI'm curious to hear what others are thinking. We talk a lot about the need to fight for science (yes!) and trainees (yes!) and supporting one another (yes!) and the fear that labs will shut down (tragic and horrible!). But less around the question: How does this change your next-few-years-plans? /5
I think we have clarity now and it’s pretty depressing. And no one’s coming to save it.
Nicole Rust@nicolecrust.bsky.social · 3d agoUS scientists: Going into fall 26, how are you thinking about things? Following Fall 24 events and a tumultuous spring 25, I remember a convo with a colleague in which we agreed we just needed to wait things out until fall 25 and we'd have some clarity about the landscape (eg for funding). /1
I want the world, but especially Americans to understand the absolute enormity of the sin against humanity that this administration has wrought through their cuts to NIH, NSF, CDC, FDA, and USAID.