In his 2019 memoir The Threat, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe quotes first-term Trump saying Venezuela was “the country we should be going to war with, they have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.” zeteo.com/p/venezuela-...

“History is full of people who out of fear, ignorance, or a lust for power, have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value which truly belong to all of us. We must never let it happen again.” -Carl Sagan, Cosmos Episode 13 “Who Speaks For Earth”

Woke Sinatra For a Merry Christmas

Turkish participants in this study on loneliness cite government control of their lives and policies, leading to economic hardships, thus also the need to work longer hours, as limiting their opportunities to spend time with others. Democracy helps mental health.

Remember: Almost all of us are the descendants of immigrants who fled persecution, or were brought to America under duress, or sought better lives for themselves and their descendants. Politicians who stoke fear and hatred over immigration want you to forget this. Do not.

Dear Rec Letter Portals designers: Please explain this choice.

Our python workshop is returning! Undergraduate educators, join us on July 27-30 for "Coding with Allen Institute Data." No prior coding experience needed. Travel, meals, & stipend included. Apply by Feb. 2 at: https://alleninstitute.org/events/educator-coding-workshop-2026/ #iTeachBio #EduSky

Shameless plug: For a year, I've been working on a series about the vast systems that underlie our lives. Built up over decades, these systems are the cathedrals of our time--but all too few of us know about them, and they're all at risk. Here's the latest:

Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

Before the midterms of 1866, President Andrew Johnson called his congressional opponents traitors and said they should be hanged. Voters were so profoundly moved by his words... that they gave his opponents a supermajority in Congress, and the nation got the Fourteenth Amendment.

“Survival of the fittest” is often used to justify capitalist society, but this wasn’t a phrase that Darwin used. He described it as “better designed for an immediate, local environment" and wrote of groups that survived through empathy and sharing rather than greed. We must change Or die

So the Border Patrol announced that they arrested >250 people in their North Carolina invasion, but that only 44 had any criminal record at all. Some of those "criminal" records include shoplifting and driving with an expired registration. Some were U.S. citizens. www.wunc.org/2025-11-19/b...

Epstein survivor: "Today we stand in a moment that will decide whether our government still belongs to the American people or to those who prey on them."

Love this so much. 💜

Breaking: An Epstein survivor just silenced press conference attendees when she delivered the following remarks: “Today we stand in a moment that will decide whether our government belongs to the American people, or to those who prey on them.”

NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen. Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.

Don't be evil? "Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, and tell local cops whether to contact ICE about the person, while simultaneously removing apps designed to warn local communities about the presence of ICE officers..." www.404media.co/google-has-c...

jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-o... "The world of print is orderly, logical, rational. In books, knowledge is classified, comprehended, connected to make arguments, and propose theses..with print culture came the prestige of reason, hostility to superstition, and the rapid development of science"

Happy to see this work out today www.nature.com/articles/s41... @dukebrain.bsky.social @neurosciencenow.bsky.social

NYT is looking for scientists to tell them about their projects that were cut by the administration for a new series on “lost science”: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...

Hello world! Only a year late, but I am now at the NUS Centre for Sleep and Cognition, where I will be directing the Dynamic Brain & Memory lab!

🚨 New paper in Nature Methods: HippoMaps: multiscale cartography of the human hippocampus Open-source tools & data to explore structure and function of the 🍤🧠 (histology, in/ex vivo MRI, iEEG) Led by @jordandekraker.bsky.social docs: hippomaps.readthedocs.io paper: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

🧪 👇 read the 🧵 for all the posts being cut - health statistics in US will disappear

Motivations are like emotions about (what we know about) possible outcomes. Sometimes incentives spur urgency to act, other times to comprehend. Neuromodulatory systems reflect these motivational moods and shape memories. Out now w @jiahou-poh.bsky.social! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

How does motivation shape learning and memory? In a new review w @ralisonadcock.bsky.social, we propose that under different motivational ‘moods', neuromodulators set distinct neural contexts to determine information processing and memory formation. doi.org/10.1146/annu... #psychscisky #neuroskyence

For decades the NRA and other gun nuts told us that their guns were to protect us all from a tyrannical government. So a tyrannical government is here, they are all sitting on their asses, and the people who want gun control have taken to the streets to defy the tyrannical government instead.

The #BethesdaDeclaration stories are now up on the front pages of both the New York Times and the Washington Post. Thanks again to the brave folks at NIH who stood up and worked together to make this happen. 1/n

Very smart, high ROI initiative from the Spencer Foundation. Providing bridge funding for canceled NSF grants: 1) directs funds to projects already screened by a top-noch review process. 2) avoids imposing proposal prep costs on researchers. 3) ameliorates the disruption from GOP sabotage.

My quote of the day I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. Abraham Lincoln

Obituary: Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat (1923-2025) mathematician who established that Einstein’s equations mirror the real world https://go.nature.com/3HtgQpy

EveryLibrary responds to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals' Little v. Llano County decision, which will allow the government to remove or restrict access to books from public library shelves.

Joint w/@asinclair.bsky.social and the #SCIMaP team: brief correspondence in @nathumbehav.nature.com on the impact of NIH indirect cost cuts on the economy and employment, impacts that will only worsen given similar proposals for NSF/DOE + overall science proposal. rdcu.be/eo3Hp

“It’s why every time an incremental vaccine restriction results in a public shrug, he feels emboldened to go a bit further.” This is important. First he takes away something people don’t care much about—Covid boosters—so that later it seems more normal when he takes away polio vaccines.

Elon and his brother used student visas to come to America, then they overstayed after they dropped out of school

🚨 URGENT RESPONSE CALL 🚨 Trump’s Fool’s Gold Science EO is a dangerous sham. It gives his appointees the power to dismiss entire bodies of research and punish researchers who fail to fall in line with his agenda. We’ve launched an open letter. SIGN & SHARE NOW: actionnetwork.org/petitions/op...

It's also a misunderstanding of what the grants are for. It's not a billion dollar donation, Harvard won the grants to do specific research that it is in a relatively unique position to do. Trade schools aren't going to be able to take over, eg, Harvard's cancer immunotherapy research.

FYI to media outlets, you're misleading your readers if you repeat this at face value. There's no lawful way for him to redirect these grants elsewhere. It's a lie to distract from how the GOP budget guts educational funding, including Pell Grants at trade schools.

For real - and the Truth account for the President of the USA truly just posted this which sure looks like my 16 year olds know more about Ukraine than he does. Being president isn’t a right. Maybe a few more requirements in the country’s interest. Like citizenship & civil service exams. As orals.

Industry is investing less in R&D and turning away from innovation. The NIH and NSF fund science with huge economic ROI to taxpayers. The ratio of government/nongov employees has declined, not risen over decades, If you care about cures and a future for our children, save science funding now.

My take on the consequences of the media's "original sin." member.democracydocket.com/the-medias-o...

🧪⚛️ Deadline extended for comments. Seriously, if you don't want science agencies to be run by political functionaries, please consider making a comment. news.chanda.science/archive/urge...

The cruelty is the point.

You have three days, starting today, to leave a public comment with the FDA about, say, why COVID-19 boosters should remain available to everyone and also free. "Individual consumer" is the category you most likely want (unless you are one of the other categories; if so, choose that).

Also longer healthier lives.

people need to internalize, very quickly, that federal research grants are a hypercompetitive contracting process not charity, and that what Uncle Sam gets in return for that money is American dominance in the future

This is beautiful and compelling. youtu.be/ybVZ7vluYhQ?...

📣 NIH reinstating some terminated grants Exclusive via @chronicle.com 🔗👇 confirms what we’ve seen for weeks Piece asks: what’s “secret sauce”? As an early-impacted PI, I know strategy matters Now I'm advising orgs on appeals, “orderly” closeout & reinstatements: brittanycharlton.com/consulting

Mr. Kennedy said it’s an individual choice as to whether or not to vaccinate. Then he and his minions started taking that choice away by making FDA approval of some vaccines impossible.

There is no aborted fetus debris in the MMR vaccine, or in any vaccine at all. It is worth noting that the Catholic Church, one of the most staunch anti-abortion organizations in the world, has a formal policy that encourages all vaccinations.

RFK Jr. ordered the NIH’s Integrated Research Facility in Frederick to stop all research on serious infectious diseases yesterday at 5:00 PM. They study pathogens like Ebola there. You may be familiar with it from The Hot Zone. www.wired.com/story/hhs-ni...