Could write a novel on b, featuring my large wrench of yes scientists are workers

The NIH has arbitrarily defunded grant recipients on baseless claims, forcing scientists to sue the Trump admin and their "war on science" to restore funding for terminated grants. Read the latest by Minoli Perera and Northwestern's AAUP Dispatches, a column dedicated to academic freedom:

This ridiculous union busting does nothing to help the early career researchers the NIH director claims to support. This is ridiculous.

The new Pokemon game allows me to live out my childhood dream of being best friends with charmander

A fair question for our director!

Great new piece by @melodyschreiber.com in The Guardian about NIH/CDC Director Bhattacharya . In it, I talk about asking Bhattacharya in January about a recent issue affecting the affordability of healthcare for thousands of early career researchers on the NIH campuses.

NIH Fellows Union speaking at the Take Back Our Science Rally in Washington D.C.! They are putting out the call to ORGANIZE!!! #StandUpForScience #science #March7 #March7DC #savescience

Speaker Dr Jenna Norton NIH and NIDDk has fans in DC!

My first @standupforscience.bsky.social rally was ten years ago. Excited to be here in DC to once again affirm the importance of science for the US and beyond

DC IS LIVE! #STANDUPFORSCIENCE

If you block junior scientists from ensuring that they can afford to live (or start families!) in the exorbitantly expensive areas around their workplaces, only family-subsidized solitary rich kids will be able to pursue careers in research - amidst exponential inflation, increasingly few people.

They just hate to see girls winning

Online now! Costa, Chen et al. performed RNA-seq on 13 tissues, six ages in male and female African turquoise killifish. The Killifish Aging Atlas provides a comprehensive resource for aging studies. @emkcosta.bsky.social @jingxunchen.bsky.social @brunetlab.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s435...

NIH sent notice this week that it will no longer recognize a union of early career researchers on the basis that trainees aren't "employees." My latest for @science.org. www.science.org/content/arti...

Is there such a thing as "gold standard union busting"?

Podcast Jay continues to attack the very people he promises to support, early career investigators. Now he wants to rip up the collective bargaining agreement with the NIH Fellows Union (illegal, BTW). Who's next, the NIH police union? The firefighters? www.notus.org/health-scien...

NIH HR deleted our CBA off the website. Luckily for us, even if the agency says there is no CBA in ba sing se, the union still exists.

More evidence for my thesis that the right wing freak out we’re currently experiencing is entirely due to the widespread adoption of birth control and subsequent emancipation of women

We gotta turn pepco into the people’s co, asap

I’m starting to get why a bunch of men were very very scared about MeToo going “too far”

Invalidating ID cards based on gender is literally a key plot point in The Handmaid’s Tale. This is horrifying.

I sat down with Dr. Jenna Norton, an NIH employee & my guest at the People’s State of the Union. She was put on leave by the Trump Admin after speaking truth to power. Dr. Norton told me Trump’s actions risked creating a super-bug that would endanger us all.

This is so cool! When my rheumatoid arthritis flares my appetite is strongly reduced, contributing to fatigue and the loss of muscle mass that occurs with the disease. Very interested in finding out how all of these processes are interrelated!

“When we speak up together we are powerful.” @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social a guest of @vanhollen.senate.gov . Strong stuff.

This is why we refused to concede our Respectful Workplace article in 2022 bargaining for grads, postdocs, and project scientists. And likely why the employer fought it almost as hard as they fought wages.

Sign this petition against egregious union busting happening at St John’s. Employee working conditions are student learning conditions!

It’s really important to always have a paper revision due or some data to be analyzed, otherwise you would never be motivated to clean your entire house

Is sea lion massacre a winning political issue?

Last week, I was fired in retaliation for confronting DOGE staff in 2025. Today, I launch my campaign for U.S. Congress in Maryland’s 6th district. Marylanders show enormous bravery in defense of our communities. #MD06 deserves a Rep as brave as its residents. secure.actblue.com/donate/alexi...

Them: the left hates technology Me: don’t talk to me or my son ever again

Variation in male paternal care reflects context-dependent regulation of conserved hypothalamic and melanocortin signalling mechanisms via gouti integration of environmental cues @nature.com @princeton.edu www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Oh.

Vonnegut actually predicted this technological innovation in “Harrison Bergeron”

One day I shall learn to put thoughts to paper better... but for now. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/what-nih-s...

This is a really good point about the value of publicly- funded knowledge work. Having to beg wealthy people for research money means only the kind of research values by the so-called elites gets funded.

There are far more talented candidates than there are tenure-track jobs. Mentoring students is a major component of a faculty position. It is entirely possible to pick talented candidates who aren’t weird assholes, it just requires hiring committees to value interpersonal skills.

This is one of Trump’s performance evaluation goals for federal workers: “Find and annihilate Government censorship of speech.” So… just wondering… does that maybe mean I get to go back to work? www.performance.gov/pma/

Moderna has 2 trials for EBV vaccines in Phase 1/2 and Phase 2. EBV is now widely believed to be a causative agent for Multiple Sclerosis. Just under 3 million people in the world, about 1 million in the US have MS. trials.modernatx.com/study/?id=mR... trials.modernatx.com/study/?id=mR...

My “we’re not disappearing people or denying civil rights” t shirt is bringing up a lot of questions that have already been answered by the shirt

Congressional Republicans are going to deprive D.C. of $700 million in revenue and repeal a local program projected to reduce child poverty by 20 percent, solely to spite District residents and make us suffer. They’re also throwing our tax filing into utter chaos. This is a disaster.

Laugh it up pythoncels, the fact that LLMs are worse at R means that we will lead the resistance when ChatGPT starts unleashing the plagues

Not to detract from the rest of Mark's point, but a recurring theme from reporting last year I encountered was the damage done by uncertainty. Without long term assurances, PhD offers were rescinded, new grants were scaled back at NSF & NIH. At Harvard people left before the grants came back.

house of leaves core

We should look to come out on the other side of this with a significantly expanded and enhanced civil service, a legislature that engages the people and enacts a real vision, and a shrunken, mostly useless office of the president

As someone who has been the kid asleep on the chairs at a loud AF wedding I really appreciated that in the halftime show

I’d personally like a Wolfenstein-style game

Sucked in. This is terrifying. I can see myself becoming intolerable about this in short order.

Legacy organizations still believe if we just shut up and pipette, then everything will be fine. Be quiet and don’t upset the powerful and be happy you still get to do science. It’s the same message grad workers get about unionization.