Figure showing number of competitive grants mentioning women from 2015-2025. The number was rising until recently, with a precipitous drop in the last year.

At the end of 2024, the National Academies put out a report concluding the NIH has woefully underfunded women’s health research, and they suggested $15 B should be invested over the next 5 years.

Here’s what’s happened instead. Hard to study women’s health if you can’t say “women.”

wapo.st/4euUt1c

IF YOU BUILD A BIKE LANE THAT DOESN'T CONNECT TO ANOTHER BIKE LANE THEN YOU DIDN'T BUILD A BIKE LANE

Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want Did the tech industry get high on its own supply?

from the annals of getting high on your own supply (gift link) www.theverge.com/tldr/915176/...

The American experiment has been infected by oligarchs How our supposedly progressive tax system guarantees extreme wealth concentration.

Your taxes are due tomorrow. These guys? Not so much. I helped @boblord.bsky.social hone this fine piece, with a h/t to @gabrielzucman.bsky.social et al for oligarchic data.

FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database The case was the first time authorities charged people for alleged “Antifa” activities after President Trump designated the umbrella term a terrorist organization.

NEW: The FBI was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device’s push notification database, multiple people present for FBI testimony in a trial told 404 Media.

Alice Wong, an Asian-American woman in her early 50s, wears a black t-shirt that says “keep masks in health care”. She rocks a rich plum lipstick and cool multicolor sunglasses. She has a tracheostomy attached to a ventilator. The text reads, “The Sick Times. Alice Wong showed us Disability Justice makes our advocacy stronger. By Charlie McCone.”

Alice showed me I can lead a meaningful life — and be cool doing it — while sitting with my pain and limitations. And while we, sick and disabled, channel our rage back at those trying to ignore and erase us.

In the wake of her passing and her recent celebration of life, @loscharlos.bsky.social shares how Alice Wong taught him the power of Disability Justice and how she wielded it to bridge the hesitancy between disability, Long Covid, and COVID-cautious communities. bit.ly/4mohc12

I miss Alice. She was so fucking funny and unbelievably chill. She was so warm and fun, and always ready to take something on. I wish we had more time to be friends. I also miss having someone we can all rely on to fight back and help us work together — and now that's up to us. /10

How Cold War Maj. Harold Hering Asked a Forbidden Question That Cost Him His Career It was a risk. Dedicating a book to someone I'd had had a five-minute phone conversation with three decades ago. Someone who, last I'd heard, had...

This has been an issue the military avoided confronting for decades. It was asked in the 70s. "What if I believe the person issuing a command to use nuclear weapons is not sane?" The answer was to drum the questioner from the service.
slate.com/human-intere...

"Five years from now," why is Bob using "the 2029 version"? Was this written in the past? 🤔

This is so, so well-articulated.

Yes, I am tired of wearing a respirator mask every single I I leave the house.

No, I will not stop wearing one.

I am adult enough to be able to be tired, honest, and responsible all at the same time.

It is not that hard, really.

Not a single thing we were told about #COVID turned out to be correct. A long thread 🧵

You would get so many more amazing books if you had Universal Basic Income. Not even the most dream-scenario AI could compete with the creativity of a world of authors no longer afraid of affording rent.

World Athletics’ mandatory genetic test for women athletes is misguided. I should know – I discovered the relevant gene in 1990 - Murdoch Children's Research Institute MCRI's Professor Andrew Sinclair SRY gene identifier critiques World Athletics’ new gene testing rule. Read more.

"World Athletics’ mandatory genetic test for women athletes is misguided. I should know – I discovered the relevant gene in 1990".
www.mcri.edu.au/news/insight...

One thing that's been frustrating me INTENSELY this last few years is a pattern of brilliant Autistic autism researchers, doing important & fascinating work, struggling to get jobs in academia, or being pushed out of jobs they had before.

Most universities seem unable to see how valuable they are.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd recently began calling for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have committed no crimes and have strong community ties. A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office wrote in the statement to ProPublica that deputies do not make any decisions on who to detain — they report suspects to ICE, and ICE makes the decision. But she noted they now make an effort to determine citizenship status. “Nothing has changed in how we deliver day-to-day law enforcement services in our community,” she wrote, “other than asking everyone with whom we interact their place of birth.”

I recommend reading the ProPublica article about ICE's practice of detaining children. This little section plus some data I've been working with recently has me thinking about how accountability looks given immigration enforcement devolution. www.propublica.org/article/trum...

I think this is a symptom of the white people thing where the collective delusion that is engrained in us by society is that all white people are inherently good and so if you can try and understand why they are bigots then you can talk them out of it.

You can’t. And trying to honestly does harm.

March 18, 2026 Today, civil rights leader Dolores Huerta issued the following statement:

Dolores Huerta's statement on Cesar Chavez: “I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for... I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences"

ICE agents reveal daily arrest quotas and surveillance app in rare court testimony Under oath, officers said they were told to make eight arrests a day and given special tech to help choose ‘targets’

When a federal judge (finally) put ICE officers under oath, they admitted that they are given daily detention quotas and rely heavily on a Palantir-supplied AI tool to select targets, without warrants and without enough evidence to obtain one. They simply go into neighborhoods and round people up.

Long COVID can affect anyone — regardless of age, health status, or how mild their initial infection seemed.

Preventing infection and reinfection of COVID-19 is the best way to avoid Long COVID.

The Danger of Silence When Academic Freedom Is Under Threat Inaction from rank-and-file workers enabled government censorship during the Red Scares.

Spot on, from @bakerdphd.bsky.social. Higher ed did NOT defend academic freedom in the McCarthy era, and most faculty were silent or indifferent.

And now?

What's scary about this story is the surveillance it hints at. This trans woman had changed her name, legally, but chose not to change her gender marker. She was apparently flagged in the DMV system as trans and her license was invalidated under a law that supposedly only concerned gender markers.

This is eugenics. Genocide. An attack on science, medical ethics, bodily autonomy, and human rights.

Where is the outcry from the biomedical community? Trans people aren't just abstract patients and research participants: We're your friends, family, and co-workers.

Speak up before it's too late

Three-panel meme showing a woman speaking and a man listening from behind a wall. In the first panel, she says “Masks don’t work,” and the man replies “Be honest.” In the second, she says “I don’t want to wear one,” and he again says “Be honest.” In the final panel, she says “I just don’t wanna be reminded of the scary pandemic,” and the man responds, “Thank you.”

This is what it really comes down to.

Masks are a reminder the pandemic isn’t over.

🔹COVID is airborne
🔹Each infection carries cumulative risk
🔹Long COVID has no cure
🔹The pandemic isn’t over
🔹Wearing a mask is still one of the best ways to protect yourself and others

Stay informed. Stay safe.

I was born in an Iranian prison. My parents were held in their jails. My uncles lie in their mass graves. Nothing you can tell me about the crimes of the Iranian regime that I haven't lived in blood and bone. That doesn't mean I want my people bombed, maimed, killed, their homes in ruins. If your vision of liberation comes only through the destruction of innocent lives, then it's not freedom you're after. Sahar Delijani, Iranian author

I am pro Iranian people. I stand with them against their own government’s repression AND against the imperial violence in the form of bombs dropped from the sky from Israel & the US who have already killed hundreds.

I support neither imperialism or dictatorship.

Sahar Delijani said it best:

“The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”

To do this, anti-trans lawmakers in Kansas moved fast to change the law, overrode the governor’s veto, and pushed for the legal changes to go into effect nearly immediately. That kind of power—to void gender on official documents, to compel gender conformity—is terrifying and it will not stop here.

I'm always conflicted when I want to support a post's message, but its in an image with no alt text! So I figured I would try to contribute to the community

I quote posted with context description, and alt text added to image, hoping that helps

Text excerpt of H.R.7661 on Congress.gov, ending its definition of "sexually oriented material" with:

“(ii) involves gender dysphoria or transgenderism.”.

Legislation can be seen in full, including a link to contact your member of congress at:
www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...

(Alt text added)