In August, Jay Bhattacharya said “Training future biomedical scientists” was the 1st priority for his version of NIH.
But talk is cheap. Let’s see how JB’s doing. 🤔
NIH supports trainees mostly via fellowship (F), training (T), and career development (K) awards.
Here are funding curves for each.🧵
In case you missed the 2026 curve for e.g., F awards because it's completely flatlined, here's a big fat arrow showing where we are. Curves for T and K awards are just as bad.
PS Take Shelter remains an excellent film
How I feel every day nowadays... youtu.be/oOqmxeN1fS4?...
It will be interesting to see who applies for the Flat Earth Professorship in Earth and Planetary Science
www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
-FDR, 1937
on this day in 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. writes his powerful “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
It’s true: AI will make you lose your butt. Thank you @colsonwhitehead.com for saving our asses: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...
Hey, so ICE is still kidnapping and disappearing people in the United States.
Just because they got quieter about it doesn't make it okay.
Abolish ICE. Chinga la Migra.
Pope Leo XIV:
I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the Church is here to do.
There it is: A full year of days spent playing golf in just over five years as president. www.pbump.net/outofoffice
Amidst everything else, the Trump regime has quietly killed off the U.S. Forest Service 🌲
“One hundred and ninety-three million acres of your national forests… just handed, on a silver platter, to the people who’ve spent their entire careers trying to destroy it.”
www.hatchmag.com/articles/tru...
I had the experience of being cited in a publication, and the paper credited to me was a hallucination. I told the author, they blamed their co-author and then ghosted me, and no response at all from the journal. Some people don't care as long as they get published...
Celebrate bodily autonomy April 18th!!
Googling typical volume of laundry detergent bottle...
At some point pretty soon it's gonna get to be like "if you upgrade from economy to economy plus we won't tell everyone about that thing you did"... Airlines amiright
Better yet, I bet you can sell that bottle somewhere
this is a declaration that all compliments on things are assumed to have the caveat "if this isn't ai, if it is never mind you're dead to me"
Universities and academia are under attack by autocrats worldwide because they are pillars of civil society and democracy.
Education and the pursuit of knowledge and diversity—ideas over blood and soil; these are kryptonite to autocracy, oligarchy, and theocracy.
Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist
Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.
It is very easy to become accustomed to Trump’s ravings, and laugh them off. That’s a dangerous thing to do.
When Trump states: “A whole civilization will die tonight,” he is threatening to commit genocide.
We can’t allow that to happen. Congress must end this war NOW.
Given Trump’s Easter threats to carry out new war crimes in Iran, we should think one or two steps ahead about a coup attempt connected to the war. And then deter it. (1/17)
A longer version of this argument with more historical detail is on my substack under the title “The Next Coup Attempt.” (17/17)
snyder.substack.com/p/the-next-c...
📉 FY2026 is worse.
NIH has made 10,195 awards so far. NSF has made 613.
Six hundred thirteen.
Congress appropriated the money. The agencies are not spending it.
Grant freezes. NOFO collapse. Staff RIFs. Review cancellations. You can win the budget fight and still lose the funding war.
🚨 Congress held NIH and NSF budgets roughly flat. Scientists celebrated.
Here is what actually happened.
NIH awarded 4,641 fewer grants in FY2025 than the 4-year avg. New awards dropped 14%. Over $1.3B never reached investigators.
NSF awards fell 22%.
The money was there.
The biggest story in the world right now is that the president of the United States is a demented old man who takes pleasure in torturing and killing people and is committing crimes with impunity. And yet most legacy media outlets are too cowardly to tell it like it is.
You know it really causes my heart extreme anguish to know that the ten richest mother fuckers in America could literally end the hunger and lack of shelter I see in the city but don’t and the nations they extracted and stole their wealth from don’t force them to make society better via taxation
The U.S. National Science Foundation's Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request reflects a strategic alignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment while eliminating woke and weaponized grant programs that previously funded radical DEI projects. NSF is prioritizing investments that have the greatest potential to address the most critical, high-priority challenges and opportunities identified by the Administration, Congress, and the science and technology community. Full FY27 budget request (PDF, 3.27 MB)
I should be used to it by now, but it's still a gut punch to go to the website of the funding agency that helped launch your career and read that they're "eliminating woke and weaponized grant programs that previously funded radical DEI projects" Fuck that 🤬
www.nsf.gov/about/budget...
