😳

Just finished a chapter on flagella. Such a clear example of the beauty of biological complexity.

Angry goose meme. Close-up in the top panel has a squinting goose asking "Which sins of science" In the bottom panel, it's angrily chasing a person yelling "WHICH SINS???" in satisfyingly large font.

The more I hear our leaders agreeing that science should atone for its sins & needs to be reformed, the more I find myself asking "which sins, exactly?"

I wholeheartedly agree that systemic biases in academia & medicine harm a whole lot of people! ...but that's not what they mean, now is it?

No one told me that staying in shape in your 40s was a Faustian bargain. Sure, you might live a healthier and hopefully longer life, but you will ALWAYS be in some sort of pain.

We just had a vendor jack up the price of a set of disk arrays by 27% between when we got a quote and when the PO was submitted two weeks later. The original quote doesn’t expire until later this week.

A) I didn’t think that was how quotes worked.
B) Compute costs are getting out of hand!

Opinion | Measles Took My Daughter. This Is What I Want Everyone to Know.

“What I didn’t know was that measles can cause long-term complications. A child can seem fine while the virus slowly replicates in her brain… Because both Britain and the United States are confronting outbreaks, I am sharing my story. Parents should know just how dangerous this disease is.”

RFK Jr. just said that immigration is to blame for the outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in the U.S., not him.

This hasn’t been true this century nor do the trends indicate that it is remotely likely to happen within the years that Mr. Wright have left.

Also, I know it’s petty, but if you watch Hegseth’s video statement on this, it is very clear that he is using AI filters to make himself look good. The man is the definition of frail vanity.

Only those who failed basic high school history would think that no military has ever lost a war because its ranks were decimated by communicable diseases.

The article's existence negates its own argument. The fact that the easiest way for an academic to land an opinion piece in The Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed is by offering contrarian takes about how awful academia is suggests a strong desire to look in the mirror.

Southern Poverty Law Center says it faces a criminal investigation by the Justice Department The Southern Poverty Law Center says it’s the subject of a Justice Department criminal investigation and faces possible charges over its use of paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

BREAKING: The Southern Poverty Law Center says it faces investigation by Justice Department over past use of paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

our transit is being shifted entirely towards shuttling folks to & from draft stuff, with regular riders getting screwed by a shift to weekend hours on most routes. any and every local who depends on any public service here is being thrown over in order to cater to wealthy outsiders. ofc we hate it

I've seen several posts questioning why pittsburgh locals are so down on the draft being here. idk what to tell you, our kids are being forced into online learning, the community college night class that I'm taking is cancelled dt road closures, see my last RT about law enforcementb targeting kids

Again: young people might not realize that this kind of repugnant racism was unacceptable to express publicly, *not that long ago*.

Welcome to Pittsburgh ya jags!

For tools and technologies that impact society and individual lives, govts historically implemented policy as guardrails to prevent excess harm.

We’ve done this for machines, automobiles, firearms, aerospace, agriculture, etc…

Why not AI? The AI corps themselves say that AI will change everything.

Did I just argue with a joke? Part of a Bluesky educational series

Upshot:

🟢 JB says scientist training is his #1 priority.

🔴 Yet, this fiscal year so far, training-related grants are down over 80% from expected levels.

Guys, you can’t do science without scientists. JB gets an F (but not an F grant... ba-dum-tss)

More funding curves at Grant Witness:

First up: F grants

These support individual grad students and post-docs (and some college students).

# of new grants issued through April 15 in

FY2024 (the last “normal” year): 652
FY2025: 402
FY2026: 74

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.🧵

At Long Last, InfoWars Is Ours Let me tell you a story. When I was a child, I suffered from night terrors. It was always the same dream: I could hear my family and neighbors wailing in the street outside as they were pursued and th...

InfoWars now belongs to The Onion.

theonion.com/at-long-last...

Atlantic current shows two-decade decline across four deep-ocean monitoring sites A paper published in the journal Science Advances is adding to the growing body of research showing that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is weakening. In this new study, instead of relying mainly on computer models, scientists used two decades of direct ocean measurements to confirm the decline.

Atlantic Ocean sensors confirm a consistent two-decade decline in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Data from four mooring arrays across the western boundary verify a weakening transport signal below 1,000 meters, validating concerns of long-term circulation shifts.

“…the binding problem may be an artifact of theoretical assumptions rather than a real computational challenge for the brain…we propose a framework where the visual cortex represents naturally co-occurring patterns of information rather than processing isolated features that need binding.”

Double act with @actlab.bsky.social at Cinet in Osaka. Cerebellum and Cognition. Doing paired talks is certainly good for a lively discussion…

I am working so incredibly hard with other people to try and stabilize things in science and government while there are vandals tearing it all apart for selfish reasons of profit and ideological beliefs that are incompatible with healthy, safe, and informed society.

I’m exhausted.

Need to sleep.

In Trump’s Orbit, Women Aren’t the Only Ones Concerned About Their Looks

They mocked the field of gender studies as meaningless, but I think they really just knew it was onto them.

They're the softest bunch of insecure little manchildren play-acting what they have been told is manly and macho.

(gift link)

This bit right here. This is John Roberts basically admitting, explicitly, that he is dreaming up a legal doctrine out of nothing because he does not like or approve of Obama's policy:

Remember, the Roberts’ court is and always has been an active co-conspirator in the authoritarian take over of our country.