To be clear on this, there are still union work unit staff among the employed at SciAm. The axe just fell heavily on outspoken organizing committee members. see www.wgaeast.org/wgae-scienti... What happens next is an interesting story

Scientific American is being sold to LabX Media, publisher of Discover: group.springernature.com/gp/group/med... They've fired me and other union staff, ahead of June 26 vote ratification. My rates are suddenly more reasonable, if you need editing or reporting - [email protected]

I am not so old that it was that long ago when grade school civics taught us monopolies are something to be wary of and warded against.

A medical examiner has ruled the death of Daphy Michel, a Haitian asylum seeker, a homicide by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after ICE released her from federal custody in freezing temperatures. #AbolishICE apnews.com/article/hait...

i really, truly, find this offensive

Philly Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel said that the scale of the event was part of the issue, while Jacen Bowman, president of Philly Black Pride, said law enforcement presence was far too excessive. billypenn.com/2026/06/09/p...

When you see the story about how the world now has its first trillionaire, and when you see the story about how laboratories in Congo have run out of supplies to test for Ebola, it is important to understand that in many ways these are the same story.

When you hear it said that the screwworm poses a threat to cattle and to livestock and to other animals, please understand that “other animals” includes you. * A compendium of the 326th week of plague poems… librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2026/06/12/p...

The Trump administration is expected to shut down all USDA Climate Hubs unless Congress acts to protect them. “Shuttering the program will likely end up costing us far more than what we spend on it,” said @julianjonreyes.bsky.social in a statement:

Insightful take: "Whether by design or ineptitude, it would essentially make the current system of federal science pretty much impossible. Even if one agrees that the system is in need of reform, breaking the system without having a robust, viable alternative would leave our nation very vulnerable."

RIP Anthony Stewart Head. TY for presenting kindness & bringing to life the Taster's Choice commercial guy, Sir Walter Elliot, a*hole ex husband in Ted Lasso, a*hole aristocrat in Bridgerton, etcetc, and, of course, now and forevermore, the best Watcher & fictional father figure, Rupert Giles.

SCOOP: I got exclusive internal documents from the white supremacist group Patriot Front, showing the group is in 49 states and has grown fast. The docs outline strict rules on propaganda and show the group’s expansion into racist “active clubs”: www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...

NEW: The chair of the President’s Cancer Panel, Dr. Harvey Risch, is a co-author on a study touting ivermectin for cancer. The study is backed by two anti-vax orgs, including The Wellness Company, which sells the drug and with which he is affiliated. www.importantcontext.news/p/chair-of-p...

hate to be that bitch but trans people have been BEGGING libs and Dems to get muscular in the trans debate and we were universally demeaned, discounted, and attacked in response.

a world, to say nothing of a Slate, without the Culture Gabfest doesn’t make sense to me. Legends all.

Acclaimed artist Danny Simmons talks about how Philly inspires his art, and why he believes Philadelphia could be the epicenter of the next great cultural awakening.

The Trump administration's NSF is removing hundreds of ocean sensors that provide incredibly comprehensive and continual data. This is a loss not only for climate scientists, but marine biologists and industries that rely on the health of those waters. www.scientificamerican.com/article/trum...

More magical thinking, if we stop testing... the problem will go away. "The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate."

Some Philadelphians aren't excited for America 250. Billy Penn spoke with some people who say that rising economic and political tension are making them more hesitant to celebrate. billypenn.com/2026/06/01/a...

Proposed changes by the Trump administration to rules that govern how federal dollars are spent "would inevitably lead to unlegislated reductions in funding and damage US leadership in science, both in academia and industry," writes H. Holden Thorp in a new #ScienceEditorial. https://scim.ag/4uK0fBj

Really chilling read on rape as a weapon of war in Ukraine.

It’s really hard to describe how insane this story is. Of course Patel went snorkeling over the USS Arizona - that’s what happens when you put an irreverent internet troll in charge of a government agency. Disrespectful assclown.

Development Assistance for Health dropped 21% in 2025. It collapsed from $80 billion in 2021, to $50 billion in 2024, and is forecast to drop to $36 billion in 2030. The US cut 67% of health aid. UK: 39%, France: 33%, Germany: 12%, Finland: 11%, Canada: 15%

A Tennessee school district has banned Alex Haley’s “Roots” under the state’s so-called ‘Age-Appropriate Materials Act’

All victims of US strikes in eastern Pacific and the Caribbean identified so far came from extremely poor communities

These “data centers” are greedy parasites like the billionaires who own them. Electric Company Says It's Cutting Off an Entire Town So It Can Sell All Its Power to Data Centers

I've heard much drama around Jin Chao in #DevilWearsPrada2 for basically being an awkward yet efficient assistant, but next to nothing abt this actual problematic AAPI rep, Hollywood essentially saying all Asians look/experience life alike so AsAm & mainland Chinese are interchangeable... #APAHM

Why isn't alcohol seen as a public health emergency? @alexhogan.bsky.social talks to STAT's @isabellacueto.bsky.social and @levfacher.bsky.social about their new series on this week's STATus Report. www.statnews.com/2026/05/15/a...

Philly’s Fairhill neighborhood is home to the city’s largest Hispanic and Latino populations. Here's your guide to some of its shops, green spaces and gathering spots. billypenn.com/2026/05/13/f...

275 years after Ben Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond founded Pennsylvania Hospital, a festival this weekend will celebrate its pioneering history and continued service to the city.

Insulting casting for specifically Chinese American story & historical pioneer. Actress is from China, speaks little English, & film will be English/Mandarin --When Anna May Wong was 3rd gen AAPI, native English speaker who only spoke some Taishanese. deadline.com/2026/05/veni...

What's that foul smell in the air in Center City? Probably the Bradford pear trees, an invasive species once popular for their pretty blooms. billypenn.com/2026/04/03/b...

War on water. @reuters.com

Trump now blocking terror threat warnings because it makes him look bad. “They don’t want anything getting out that says what they’re doing in Iran is raising the threat level at home.” www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

Oh, how accurate this is...

Remember, if they make this law, most places online literally cannot afford to do ID verification themselves and will have to outsource it, and the dominant business in that field currently is the one that is connected to Epstien-business-partner-owned fascist-surveillance-corporation Palantir.

MOST places online literally cannot afford to outsource it either; we'll all just end up shutting down.

Finally off Peter Pan bus at NY Port Authority. Driver inside + staff outside couldn't open door for 20+ min, passengers panicked over missing connections, on-board babies were the calmest chillest crew while adults freaked out. Manual release required air pressure which failed. Engineers, thoughts?

Today: Starting a newsletter as a #disabled user: a journalist’s story the-word.news/2026/0305/di...

“At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom....So it was last week in Selma, Alabama." Lyndon B. Johnson, speech before Congress on Voting Rights, March 1, 1965.

Bondi’s outrageous demand for Minnesota voter rolls in exchange for ICE leaving is smoking gun showing their plan to rig midterms. They’ll stop at nothing to spread false claims of voter fraud, wrongly purge eligible voters from rolls & challenge election results www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Two weeks ago this guy announced he was providing legal help to the agent who shot Renee Good. That's how quickly the winds are shifting.

part of this is like, conservatives projecting; part of this is conservatives unable to imagine politics without money; and part of this is dudes who are so out of touch with feminized labor that they think children's birthday parties exist as a spontaneous act of parthogenesis

A moment of silence that ends with someone shouting "fuck ICE!" and the crowd roaring in response

He spent decades bringing the religious right to power. Now he's marching to undo it. Rev. Rob Schenck spent decades helping build the Religious Right—commingling church and state to advance conservative causes. Now, he says he must confront the damage he helped cause.

‘The people are being charged with keeping the peace, asked to stand firm against the federal agents who are disrupting it. This is a sick form of double taxation — your paycheck gets docked so that a guy in a mask can beat you up while you try to calm him down.’

Wrote this paragraph 17 days ago, about the killing of Renee Good.

I do think that a possibly underrated dynamic in The Horrors is that the Right as it has reconstituted itself under Trump legitimately can’t understand sincere moral or physical courage