Gardening nightmares TFW you recognize that a line of brush and trees is infested with mile-a-minute, and it’s already gone to seed.

BadAssWife™️ and I have made the executive decision that we deserve a lunch of ice cream. Chocolate Fudge Brownie for me Carmel Cine Crunch for her

Reductions in Force not required by shutdowns, have never happened in any previous shutdown, and a judge has ruled they are illegal. The shutdown is an excuse, not a reason, for them to do what they wanted to do: destroy government.

Remember when Russel Vought, know the Director of the Office of Management & Budget, said he wanted federal workers to wake up every day feeling traumatized…

This seems to be a seasonal perching spot- thankfully in this area they prefer the stouter loblolly pines. Shelby (my small papillon lap dog) does not approve 😳 This nest is not too far away at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge - it’s massive

2 bald eagles in the sycamore tree this morning

Shameful

Happy Birthday Marines! Got a call from a close family friend today and I’ll be helping them put together a uniform for a Marine relative’s funeral- going to a Henderson Hall so we’ll have lots of support, but ya’ll need a uniform accouterments flow diagram…

ICE doing the lord’s work to make a papal visit to Chicago happen sooner rather than later

Wait. So hateful homophobic and transphobic “prayer” in sight of military funerals is protected 1st amendment speech…. But someone thinks this will fly?

An amazing day for birding if you know how to listen 🤩 [I don’t really know how to listen but I do love my Merlin App 🤗]

The Trump administration’s quiet constraints on public health funds have usurped efforts to provide medical care, respond to measles, and prevent HIV. @amymaxmen.bsky.social reports ⤵️ ⤵️ https://bit.ly/4qMABKL

This made me laugh. And the replies are adorable. 😻

Writing about Elon Musk’s pay package without leading with this is like profiling John Wayne Gacy’s booming party clown career.

There are no words for how evil this is

The man who ended USAID is the world's first trillionaire

Those of us who worked with USAID and in global health more broadly warned of this- shouting, screaming into the void. The administration- at every level- understood this would happen. It’s unconscionable.

One of the great tragedies of our time. Completely foreseeable, preventable, and irreversible. Pure moral cowardice on the part of our political leaders.

This came across my TikTok feed and gotta say that I love it

Good! Let’s see if there is pushback or foot dragging www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

👏👏👏

Most Americans still believe their food supply is safe despite our elected officials' support for cutting public health funding to eliminate "waste, fraud, and abuse." #publichealth #foodborneillness www.propublica.org/article/fore...

I’m in between meetings doing “serendipity rounds” where I sit in the lobby and see who comes by - have had three super useful conversations with folks I would not otherwise have connected with - now back to my regularly scheduled programming

Important study Children & adolescents are "far more likely to experience rare but serious heart & inflammatory conditions after a COVID-19 infection than after being vaccinated–and the risks after infection lasted much longer" Next post has link to study itself 1/3 www.gavi.org/vaccineswork...

Quoting from another post: “I think people are just starting to realize that the "harder right over the easier wrong" is, in fact, hard.”

Cue the participation trophy memes

Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion, according to our analysis, which found the sepsis rate for women hospitalized as they miscarried in the 2nd trimester shot up by more than 50%. (Published February)

Brava: “If I don’t file a complaint, then what message does that send to all Mexican women?” Ms. Sheinbaum said at her daily news conference, noting sexual harassment was a crime… “If this can happen to the president, what’s going to happen to all the young women & women across our country?”

Having spent some time in Liberia’s “Lassa Fever” belt during the Ebola outbreak response in 2014, this was actually the disease I thought I was more likely to acquire 🤔. So glad to see this work advancing!

I don’t know why, but memories of photos of people, voting in Iraq and Afghanistan- proudly showing off their purple-died fingers just came flooding back.

Nice and brazen; “we’re too big to fail” 🙄

The amount of time I now spend trying to keep up morale…

1. New 🇬🇧 study, 13.9M under-18s: compares vascular & inflammatory outcomes after first COVID infection vs first Pfizer dose. www.thelancet.com/action/showP...

So much winning

I just did my annual insider threat training for DOD. This article from CNN hit hard. www.cnn.com/2025/11/05/p...

There are many worse things the Trump Administration has done but this one hits close to home for me. One of the things that the US government does very well is create high-quality data sets and tools to use them. It is sad to lose these tremendous resources. apnews.com/article/cens...

Taking the long way back to the office and taking a moment to listen to the ducks below

Copy writer at CNN about to learn there are 5 burroughs that comprise NYC

If you work with or rely on academic journals - don't miss this strange, funny, horrifying story about what happened when @carloschaccour.bsky.social published a paper on a malaria breakthrough in a prestigious journal – and AI came for the letters page. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/s...

👏👏👏👏 Tougher voting rule for Americans overseas — including military members — halted by federal court www.stripes.com/theaters/us/...

Just gonna say this now… but all of the Veteran’s Day messages of “thank you for your service” from elected officials are going to hit a lot different this year

What a day…

Speaking of food insecurity among military families… here is the video abstract on a new publication by Dr Binny Chokshi and colleagues on work being done at Fort Campbell to identify better ways to increase WIC enrollment by eligible families. publications.aap.org/pediatrics/a...

30 day furlough notices just went out for my agency… Noticeably lacking verbiage from the original: “Under 31 U.S.C. § 1341(c), after the lapse in appropriations has ended, both excepted and furloughed employees will receive retroactive pay at the employee’s standard rate of pay.”

Sometimes you just have to do what has to be done.

A 2020 study found that Amazon—which shares owner Jeff Bezos with The Washington Post—is one of the largest employers of people on SNAP.

Googling otter vs raccoon tracks….

Meritocracy!

These guidelines were cutting edge 30 years ago when I started training & caring for kids with bacteremia was COMMON and meningitis was a regular occurrence- lots of lumbar punctures. Made obsolete because of vaccines. Sad to know I’m starting to teach them again. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8517575/