Great episode: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f...

Senior researchers at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association were handing out copies of an editorial, published in the association's journal, condemning Trump administration cuts to diabetes research. Police came to arrest them. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/w...

Recognize that your parents are your allies. Invest in relationships with people. Get as many no’s as possible.

When people stop seeing govt as a provider of public goods & collective action and instead see it as a source of personal profit

I also am a lifetime m dash writer and am befuddled by what to do about their sudden “AI slop” connotations stigma. If everyone changes, too, would not AI writing gradually change with us and we would just be setting off on a new version of the euphemism treadmill?

“a thousand rivers, roughly one percent of the world’s rivers by count, carry an estimated 80 percent of the plastic that flows from land into the sea.”

The Defense Department will no longer allow military service members to claim roughly 180 different religious traditions in their personnel records, leaving just 31 to choose from — 22 of which are Christian denominations. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/u...

MAGA Republicans won the party but may lose the future. (Elaine Kamarck and @ejdionne.bsky.social) www.brookings.edu/articles/mag...

The Planetary Society created a fact sheet and action alert about the recent OMB proposal that would, among other things, insert politics into the proposal review process across science. More discussion here: www.planetary.org/articles/whe...

Our hope is that the guidelines can elevate the importance of social connection to the same level as basic public health practices such as exercising, not smoking and relying on a designated driver when you go out drinking with friends. theconversation.com/we-created-h...

"'No figure,' she writes, 'has been more significant, and yet more invisible' in the 'ecosystem' of contemporary American fiction, and her shrewd, scholarly, and generous work shows why.” Read the full review of @lbmcgrath.bsky.social's Middlemen in @nybooks.com:

Sounds like VERY major changes are coming to @bsky.app. www.cnbc.com/2026/06/04/b...

Wowee!!!! Payrolls grew a massive +172k in May, well above expectations. April also revised up +64k to +179k, and March revised up +29k to +214k. The labor market appears to be motoring along after a slow 2025. Take that recession talk off the table.

Implication: buyers of US Treasuries are now effectively loaning money to pay off Trump and his allies that will have zero ROI.

Chilling piece by @helenwarrell.bsky.social & @christopherjm.ft.com on how teenagers are being recruited by hostile states. ‘the states view the teens they employ as disposable. There is little risk for them if the operations fail, and only upside if they succeed.’ www.ft.com/content/58da...

Fourteen of the 27 known corporate donors to President Trump’s White House ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion during the past six months, according to a report. Read more here: https://wapo.st/4o85ZCx

You’ve got to pay to play: Ballroom donors won $50B in contracts after giving to Trump’s project: wapo.st/3QmJjSz

Gold just surpassed US treasuries as main reserve holding … states are hedging. apple.news/A3HcKJ8zJSXa...

By allowing Alabama to use a congressional map previously deemed intentionally discriminatory towards Black voters, the Supreme Court has essentially flipped its own 2023 ruling. Here's how the court's latest decision highlights the majority’s hypocrisy — and sows chaos for the midterms:

Guard presence in DC has reduced opportunistic but had no effect on violent crime, which was the stated justification for the mission. WH spokesp says we should ignore this detailed empirical report and believe her evidence-less claims that it’s been highly successful. apple.news/ArKj2uuznSe2...

An MIT report last year found that despite $30 billion to $40 billion US in enterprise investment into generative AI, 95 per cent of organizations were not seeing a financial return.  www.cbc.ca/news/world/a...

Holden Thorp is an institutionalist. He's been a university chancellor, provost, now EiC of Science. When institutionalists pull the fire alarm, we listen, because the call to action he issued this week exposes the dire nature of the threat we are facing. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Interesting narrative. I'm not denying the existence of fraud, but 35%? Seems like we are baby-stepping towards a welfare version of "election fraud": any govt. assistance received by likely Democrat voters is fraud & abuse. That received by corporations and likely Repub voters is noble & deserved.

Fascinating piece

The U.S. Justice Department's agreement with President Donald Trump to bar future audits into his or his family's past tax records will remain in place even as his weaponization fund has been put on hold, two sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

L - GOP Rep and MI senate candidate Mike Rogers actual photo from the campaign trail. R - Photo put out by staffer.

Out today: "1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World," by Pulitzer-winning Liaquat Ahamed. A gripping read and insightful look into a forgotten crisis with lessons for today. Loved it. politics-prose.com/book/9781594... www.amazon.com/1873-Rothsch...

Congressional statute: "There is a Director of National Intelligence who shall be appointed by the President ... Any individual nominated for appointment as Director of National Intelligence shall have extensive national security expertise." 50 U.S. Code § 3023

Get the full story here: interc.pt/4uDq0mU

To declare 'problem solved, peace is at hand' on a regular basis, only to have it contradicted by more war on a regular basis is not conducive to effective leadership or deal-making.

Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System The $368 million network of instruments collecting data in both the Atlantic and Pacific has been critical to climate and ocean research www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...

Do we forget that, throughout 2020, every 2 weeks, Trump declared that the COVID crisis would be over in 2 weeks.

New reporting points to another round of suspended and canceled NSF research grants. Arbitrary funding cuts to the sciences threaten the rule of law and America's economic future, as we wrote in a recent analysis. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

A YouGov poll has the percentage of US adults who identify as MAGA as just 18% of citizens. However they account for 57% of Republicans. Both percentages are much lower than you would expect from the noise they make.

OMB moves ahead with a sweeping governmentwide crackdown on federal grant awards, centralizing control of the approval process in the hands of political appointees and giving them more power to cut off funding they believe isn't aligned with the president's agenda. plus.cq.com/doc/news-847...

GOEHRING: “.. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted a major portion of global oil and LNG trade, exposing what we believe may be a far tighter commodity market than investors currently realize.” www.gorozen.com/commentaries...

Stocks for the long run... US stocks produced a 6.9% real return (closer to 5% for ex-US) 1802-2025 Bonds 3.3% Bills 2.5% Gold 0.9% Oil 0.4% (since the early 1900s) Dollar -1.5% My take: commodities may be tempting, but their long-term returns are dreadful

Submit comments for the OMB/NSF rules here #polisky www.regulations.gov/document/NSF...

Trump's recent disclosure of his stock trades is a tale of profiteering, with telling connections between his purchases and his public support of companies. bit.ly/4dXnm4z

It’s truly astonishing to see how comprehensively the US government is tearing down every part of the system that has made it up until now a world-leading power in science, research, and technological development. The entire world will suffer from this wanton destruction.

Trump bought stock in the UFC’s parent company while promoting fights set to take place at the White House on his birthday, HuffPost has learned

Wild: www.gi.alaska.edu/news/uaf-pro...

Cute: www.aol.com/news/vibe-co...

Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule. Russell Vought is going destroy American Science. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of...

The corruption spreads to Republican party leaders: "Republican lawmakers’ brokerage accounts have undergone a significant shift as GOP members of Congress load up on investments into areas touted by President Trump — in particular Intel and Bitcoin." finance.yahoo.com/economy/poli...

This Is How to Defeat an Autocrat www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/o...