22-year-old Ward Sakeik, a Palestinian woman who has lived in Texas since she was 9, says her experience in federal detainment could only be identified as “human trafficking.” And she’s not staying quiet about the women she was forced to leave behind. thebarbedwire.com/2025/09/22/w...

Today, the New York Times published a long essay glorifying Jay Bhattacharya, the Trump NIH director. What?⁉️ Here’s the explanation: That essay was written by the editor of a Trumpist Republican journal, funded by a Trumpist org that hates science. SHAME on the Times. 🧪1/

The BBNJ "High Seas" Treaty has been ratified by 60 countries and is now officially in effect! What a journey it's been... 🎉 www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/c...

The High Seas Treaty has been ratified by 60 countries! This is about protecting oceans beyond the coastal zones controlled by single countries. There are still lots of steps between where we are and the future we dream of, but wow, this is a big one! apnews.com/article/high...

Any academic folks on H1B visas (even with stamps in passports) please get legal advice from your University attorneys before leaving the US.

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

The Third Reich didn't last 1,000 years. Pinochet was ousted with a referendum. And the US isn't exactly dealing with the smartest, most competent fascists. Those of you insisting that 2025 is forever need to read a book, touch grass, go to therapy, anything other than trying to make others quit.

After a long day of discussing future field work to study #DeepSeaMining, this short documentary was a welcome reminder of the why - there is still so much we don’t know about the deep sea! www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jcm...

NASA Astrobiology Program Call for Applications: NASA-DARES Task Force 2 astrobiology.com/2025/09/nasa... #astrobiology #NASA #NASADARES

"There is nothing new under the sun. But there are new suns." - Octavia Butler 🧪

This is so true for science. Why did the US attract top minds from all over the world to want to study, work, stay, and start companies? Instead of go, say, to Germany, Japan, or China? In large part because the US was a multicultural, open, pluralistic democracy. People felt comfortable here.

Excellent editorial by my friend and colleague @pracheeac.bsky.social: "Academic Publishing Has Become a Racket" www.wsj.com/opinion/acad...

I love my job as a professor, but increasingly it feels like being a lottery winner in the academic hunger games. The best advice for most people thinking about a PhD is: don't. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Though it’s traumatic for me to bring this up, I was targeted by a group allied with Turning Point USA in 2018, with the help of Tucker Carlson on Fox. My home address circulated online and I got death threats. 1/

When Turkey purged their universities, "The 'to be expelled' lists were prepared by the university administrations. The few universities where massive dismissals did not take place were the ones who did not submit any 'to be expelled” lists." merip.org/2018/12/turk...

Thoughts and prayers for Charlie Kirk In total coincidence, we released a TurningPointUSA episode today so I’m gonna use his tragedy to plug that www.buzzsprout.com/2396665/epis...

Everything You Need To Know About The Girlboss Ants That Give Birth To Another Species In Order To Exploit Their Offspring (Slay Ant Queen!) - defector.com/everything-y...

Even though I don't know much about this case, what the Texas State University Star has reported is enough to point out what distinguishes these kinds of cases from the "cancel culture" freakouts about left wing "censorship" our media treated us to over the last 8 years. (1/6)

NASA has a proposal to re-commission the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft for the exact purpose. It's healthy, & up for a 2029 mission—total cost $200 Million, $50 Million already spent. President Trump wants to kill it. Here's more on the OSIRIS-APEX mission - osirisrex.arizona.edu/osiris-apex

Without the Mars Sample Return mission to return the core sample to Earth, however, we will never know if these are 3.5 billion yr old signs of fossilised microbial life or just a normal chemical process ☹️ Fab @sciam.bsky.social write-up here: www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-t... 🔭🧪

Everyone writing about Perseverance today should be asking how many of the scientists and engineers who were involved in this discovery no longer work for NASA bc of Trump.

Protesters Urged Not To Give Trump Administration Pretext For What It Already Doing

It has been great fun to work with Aaron Puri's team @awpuri.bsky.social on this project. InverSIP is a clever tool for linking genotype and phenotype. Inverse stable isotope probing–metabolomics (InverSIP) identifies an iron acquisition system in a methane-oxidizing... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

It’s not just that the President of the United States posted a video of eleven people being murdered in international waters it’s that the President of the United States ordered the murder of eleven people in international waters so he could post a video of it.

The average American simply has no idea how quickly the infrastructure that keeps us safe and healthy is collapsing. These systems run in the background thanks to government employees who quietly do critical work. Those employees are being purged and systems are being destroyed.

Thanks @ianbassin.bsky.social "To “fight the long defeat” is not to surrender to futility but to locate dignity and meaning in the struggle itself — and to recognize that what feels like defeat in one moment may seed the victories of another." What @sifill.bsky.social refers to as a time to plant

🚨Border Patrol arrested two firefighters who were actively fighting a wildfire at the time. When the other members of the crew asked for a chance to say goodbye, a Border Patrol agent told the crew member “you need to get the f*ck out of here. I’m going to make you leave.”

Make America Wormy Again - defector.com/make-america...

At the first Nazi-run faculty meeting at the first university they took over (the nation’s most liberal and most illustrious), everyone expected the most liberal professor to stand up. But just asked the Nazi position on funding in his area.

"The couple has a two-year-old daughter and an 8-month-old son."

The National Science Foundation will stop operating the Nathaniel B. Palmer icebreaker and slash polar science funding by 70 percent, devastating Antarctic research

A terrorist targeted federal workers last week. There wasn’t much reporting on it. But I’m not finished thinking about it! 🧵 An anti-vaxxer fired more than 500 gunshots into CDC Atlanta, shattering 150 “blast-proof” windows on 6 buildings. Employees were pinned down in terror.

If pundits would like to talk about violence, a terrorist recently shot up the CDC and another assassinated Democratic officials in Minnesota but they sort of let both stories disappear Not as threatening as motorbikes in DC I know but maybe we could circle back?

I’m horrified by the scant coverage this story has received www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/u...

The entire business model of R1 public universities rests on 4 revenue sources: 1. Federal grants 2. Private gifts/endowments 3. Tuition (esp. from foreign students) 4. State $ For decades, 📈 in 1-3 offset a secular 📉 in 4. Now, 1 & 3 are being decimated & 4 ain't coming back. The math is clear.

Question for Mike Flood: With $450 million being allocated to Alligator Alcatraz, and ICE burning through $8.4 million a day to illegally detain people—How much does it cost for fascism? How much do the tax payers have to pay for a fascist country?

The University of Pennsylvania is the largest employer in Philadelphia, a city of 1.5 million people, and the fourth largest in all of Pennsylvania — after the federal government, the state government and Walmart

If you work in higher ed, you need to get your folks together and end the use of course evals or at least bar their consideration in evaluation, promotion, and hiring. This needed to happen yesterday because they don't measure learning, they measure instructor gender, but now it's a snitch pool.

This is who Trump shipped to a Salvadoran dungeon: An event planner A coal miner An Uber driver Tortilla maker Barber DoorDashers Soccer coaches Furniture-maker Car washers Taxi drivers HVAC techs Auto parts worker Tire plant worker and 240 more... projects.propublica.org/venezuelan-i...

Trump was willing to make small deals on priorities of key GOP legislators to pass funding bill. But not for science. Despite Ted Cruz et al rejecting Trump's NASA meataxe, WH now pushing to cancel, unplug, RIF so fast that FY26 Congressional budget wont matter www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Everything you always wanted to know about Astrobiology but were afraid to ask! 🧪🔭 www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r_p...

"In the letter, the signatories warned that National Science Foundation grants now underwent a 'covert and ideologically driven secondary review process'...” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/s...

Federal employees from across the government support current and former NASA employees in their formal declaration of dissent. We must protect NASA's ability to operate safely and independently. Stand with NASA and Stand Up for Science: www.standupforscience.net/nasa-voyager...

"Save The NSF" - a little blogpost I wrote to amplify the #SaveTheNSF mission. The National Science Foundation is one of the world’s premier funders of basic science research; proposed federal cuts would derail how we do science in the U.S. aguidetoacademia.blogspot.com/2025/07/save...

do you ever stare at the ceiling and think about how the worldwide scientific establishment did the impossible and created a COVID vaccine in under a year and the response of the general public has been to go on an unstoppable rampage to destroy science and scientists

there is a certain liberal anti-affirmative action scholar who has insisted, like a rube, that once racial preferences are gone we can build support for class-based affirmative action. but the people who oppose affirmative action also very obviously oppose redress for class inequality!

Starting your PhD during a pandemic, surviving everything that entails, only to graduate into this funding climate..... My heart is with these young scientists, and the US science community will feel the effects for decades.