My front porch here in Austin, TX, seems like it’s on an animal trail. Here are some grey foxes (which can also climb trees!). In addition to the foxes we also have trash pandas by the dozens.

For folks interested in the impact of the Trump administration on our nation’s scientific enterprise. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

I am experiencing severe pain (9 level) because of pinched nerves in the spine. I was part of a team studying pain, but now I’m my own lab rat with my prior self as the control. All I can say is I’m impaired physically and cognitively. I may have enough data points to publish a few JAMA articles.

@bsky.app At least one news outlet is reporting the slowdown in grant funding at NIH. What better way to attack science than starve its essential funding. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Congress has appropriated funds for the NIH budget, but Russell Vought, the head of OMB and co-Author of Project 2025 is only releasing funds to pay NIH staff. The money to fund new grants and continuing studies is not being released.

The folks who still work at CDC, NIH and FDA are heroes. Everyday, they confront the madness of the administration while struggling to protect our nation’s health, quality science, and people’s lives. Someday, our nation will realize that we all owe them a debt of gratitude.

The administration’s war on children won’t be a surprise to a lot of folks but here is a nice summary of the major attacks children are experiencing.

Some days-maybe most days-it feels like academia and science are being asphyxiated.

I think it’s time to re-read Orwell’s 1984. Best to be prepared for the 2nd year of the Trump regime.

There is increasing interest in whether vaccines have broader benefits for aging and health beyond their specific disease infection. Here's a recent study linking the shingles vaccine with biological aging, pointing to systemic benefits of a vaccine. academic.oup.com/biomedgeront...

I just wrote my first external tenure review letter for 2026. I don’t want any of my academic colleagues to assume that I will be equally available (or quick) in the months ahead. Just saying.

As an IU alum (PhD 1980), I’m happily stunned by the Rose Bowl halftime score. I have too much respect for Bama to assume they won’t come back. But this is a once in a lifetime event. The program with almost the worst historical record up on a legendary successful program. I’ll relish this moment.

I’m a demographer who studies US mortality. Looks like 2026 is shaping up to be a banner year, with vaccination rates crumbling and people foregoing health insurance because of rising costs. Why isn’t health an American value?

Today was Pearl Harbor Day. Not a peep in the NYTs or Washington Post. It was a day that changed our country and the world. But now it’s invisible since history has become passe.

I’m a Boomer who has watched the US come apart at the seams (eg, Vietnam), then lace itself together, only to come apart at the seams!(Watergate)…and it still continues. This dynamic is crazy making both domestically and internationally. But at least I have perspective LOL.

My research team has published research showing that malnutrition and hunger in childhood are long-term risk factors for dementia decades later in life. Makes me think about the long-term health consequences of withholding SNAP benefits from families.

I asked one set of kids who came to our door on Halloween if theyd already been at my house. They said yes they had…but their mom said it was OK to swing by a second time. Hmmm…some parents need parenting lessons.

I never realized that Trump owned cattle ranches and soy bean farms in Argentina. Who would have guessed?

I gave a keynote at a conference & have been relaxing at the hotel bar. I struck up a conversation with a guy next to me. He asked what I do for a living and I hesitated. I’m a biodemographer and social epidemiologist. This led to an amazing conversation about our nation’s health.

My lab group met today. Grad students and postdocs engaged in cutting edge research on health and aging topics. Every meeting it seems that they have a new article accepted or fascinating results. They’re provocative and fun! The next generation in this area of science. I love it!

I continue to be stunned at how poor health literacy is in the US. You’d think folks would have learned something during the worst of the pandemic. It almost seems the opposite. Perhaps the COVID “worm” ate people’s brains.

Today in my mortality grad seminar, we focused on what transpired in the US & comparisons with high income countries.The students were shocked by how devastating COVID was to US life expectancy compare to Europe. Then we discussed the Great Barringron Declaration. They were stunned.

New evidence showing that educational attainment has a dose-response association with dementia risk throughout the entire distribution of education. 🧪 read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...

If you think the far rights’ proposals to raise US birth rates will work, think again. www.newsweek.com/low-birth-ra...

I was thinking about 9/11 today as I was traipsing around airports. I was surprised by the lack of government attention and the media. 9/11 was a turning point in our history and had wide consequences, e.g., the War on Terror, the establishment of Homeland Security and wars in the Middle East. 1/2

#IAPHS I’m at a population health science conference in Pittsburgh. Researchers from many disciplines have gathered to talk about ways of improving health, bringing in “cells to society” perspectives. So wonderful at a time when HHS has declared war on the health sciences. Science will triumph.

I’m traveling for biz. Staying at the Westin in Pittsburgh. I’m in the bar and just watched the bartender help out a street person fill their thermos with ice water. I love this place even more. Kindness. It still exists.

My head spins when I see vaccine resistance—especially for children. Children’s lives in today’s world are at serious risk because of vaccine resistance. How do I know?Because of a real life counterfactual. Yeah, science

open.substack.com/pub/insideme... Some days I wonder whether Kennedy will start staffing CDC with witch doctors. Clearly, the germ theory of disease has been demoted within CDC.

When the USSR was collapsing, they stopped publishing life tables because life expectancy was rapidly declining between 1974 and 1986. That’s one of the indicators the CIA used to gauge the level of internal rot in the USSR. Makes me wonder whether the US will continue publishing its life tables.

I’d really prefer not to go to Mexico or Canada for my Covid booster. Just saying.

Years ago UT students protested the Texas Lege allowing guns on campus. The students started a passive protest, “Cocks for Glocks.” They attached dildoes to their backpacks, bicycles, whatever. The campus was flooded with sex toys to affirm how stupid our Lege was. 1/

Education is now what defines social class in the United States. www.linkedin.com/posts/conrad...

Summer in Austin is now 24 days longer than it was 30 years ago. A longer summer is the case just about everywhere in the US. Maybe that’s why the feds are closing down climate research and disappearing the data.

Here’s an example — among so many — of how the GOP kills great institutions — but is incapable of building them. www.texastribune.org/2025/08/21/u...

Nothing says grandparent love like waygu hot dogs, fancy ice cream sandwiches and pool time. Unless we had a pony. 🤣

My neighborhood has a group chat in WhatsApp. Today they are chatting away about housekeeping services, contact information for their housekeepers, cost, etc, blissfully unaware that they could be placing people at risk of "La Migra." Stupid, rich White people.

Another bad day for science. Kennedy cancelled nearly $600 million dollars in mRNA vaccine contracts, the best defense for fast-spreading diseases like COVID. He’s advocating using the traditional vaccine technology which is 100 years old. The threat to American lives is enormous.

We have just published our outreach video about our dementia studies on the leading video science communication channel, SciTube. nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Existentialism is illustrated with the myth of Sisyphus. Pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll down-and the process begins anew.The modern version can be summarized using cats and cat barf. The cat barfs.Then we clean it up, and then the cat barfs again the next day. Modern existentialism.

Travel hack #1. Always pack delicious homemade cookies in your carryon. I recommend oatmeal cocholate chip and peanut butter cookies. They both pair well with rum. Don’t ask me how I know. Scuba diving in Bonaire

I am numb and feel helpless. The tragedy in Kerrville has done me in. It has touched so many people. All I can think of are the missing, the grieving family, friends and the 1st responders. Thank god for HEB who has reached out to care for the survivors. I love my HEB. They’re the best of Texas.

The new Medicaid work requirements need a motto. The words “Arbeit macht frei” strike a chord.

Remember when we had COVID dashboards that tracked how many Americans died? 1.1 million deaths. Maybe we should have GOP dashboards to track the deaths their policies cause. I’m betting that 1.1 million COVID deaths will only be a drop in the bucket compared to GOP deaths. Adios US life expectancy.

2 cardinals wanted to build their nest in our poolside umbrella. There’s an entire forest by the pool but they wanted the umbrella. Sadly, we had to close the umbrella so that they had to build their nest in the forest. Bird parenting sometimes requires tough love.

One of my grad students went home to Korea to help her family with a health crisis. While there, she decided to schedule an interview with the US Embassy to renew her visa. But the embassy is now canceling scheduled interviews. What an awful situation.

I think Trump should require his cabinet and all GOP members of Congress to attend his birthday parade. Even better, they should all be required to stand for the entire parade. Bonus? Free tacos for everyone!!! Oh, and don’t forget to wear your Russian flag lapel pins.

Changing trains in Vienna today and what did my little eye spy? Why a sign with a street name honoring one of the great philosophers of science, Karl Popper. It was clear that I wasn’t in the United States, LOL.

I am in Melk, Austria. This evening I listened to a local choir at the Melk abby sing Edelweiss. There were a lot of Americans in the audience. The symbolism of the song for refusing to fight for the Nazis wasn’t lost on many of us. More than one tear was shed as we thought about our own homeland.

FDA may limit future COVID-19 shots to older people and those at risk of serious infection - CNN. Homestly, what did you think would happen if one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration was head of the FDA while another was director of NIH?