Last week, the child caught me doing The Mini crossword and asked me why I was doing "the duplo of crosswords". Now I only do the real NYT crossword until she falls asleep so I don't get shamed.

It's that time of the year again. The mornings have a crisp edge. The smell of hot PSLs fills the air. The NIH SROs are sending out their "what to do if a government shutdown happens" emails. Magic is in the air.

I use Slack for precisely one thing.

Excellent coverage of our study out today on climate impacts on wildfire smoke and related health impacts.

I'm just saying I've never took the day off work, went for a bike ride, enjoyed the summer inversion and then regretted it.

Given the situation at the NIH, constant chaos, and everything else that's happening right now, are we still volunteering for study section? Just seems like whatever incentives existed before ("insiders' view" or prestige) no longer apply. (Obv, money is good and I am poor but I'm not *that* poor.)

Just in time for the bird migration, which will almost certainly bring bird flu cases back... apnews.com/article/kenn...

The Pearl quote is unsurprising and wildly on brand. That Terry Tao needs to apply for funding is shocking. Dude should just be swimming in research money.

"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week." --Willa Cather, 1925 and timeless

Making travel decisions at this point in my career:

The piñata at this birthday party is made of some kind of mithril and adamantium alloy.

This whole time I just thought Skarsgard was a really popular Swedish surname.

The 2025 Budget Reconciliation Bill's proposed Medicaid changes, including eligibility restrictions and reduced funding, are projected to cause negative health, economic, and healthcare system impacts. https://ja.ma/469dTok

Grad school really doesn't prepare you for the volume of awkward self-promotional materials you'll need to write just to get paid.

This is a bad take: - >90% importation is from US residents visiting other countries - Canada and Mexico account for only ~20% - there are over 120k active cases in Europe - 90% vaccination is still below the threshold - xenophobic policies during mass illegal ICE kidnappings is a garbage suggestion

Karolinska is looking for 20 (!!) assistant professors and offering 6 year appointments with ~1M USD startup packages. ki.se/en/about-ki/...

I was watching Kobe practicing free throws at the London Olympics before a game. After a string of makes, he missed one and I instinctively boo'ed — but I was the only person in that section. He just made eye contact with me and then shook his head in disappointment.

I heard this morning that my informatics colleague Dr. Atul Butte passed after a battle with cancer. He was a giant in the field & inspired many of us over his distinguished career. He was a passionate champion of the power of big data & his impact on our field is immeasurable. RIP Atul & thanks.

What if we tried like... not bombing each other?

The people change but the coffee stays the same.

Whenever I visit a city with a proper public transit system (that allows tap to pay with any card you want), I feel so embarrassed for San Francisco, supposed tech capital of the country.

When your child is reading a pick-your-own-adventure book and asks how many different ways you can get to the various endings, and you've got too much time on your hands...

The US has the highest rate of firearm homicide of high-income countries A last minute addition to the Republican budget bill lifts regulations on silencers Gun deaths: www.healthdata.org/news-events/... Bill: www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05...

☝️🥇 Introducing the INAUGURAL issue of AJE Advances: Research in Epidemiology! @ajeadvances.bsky.social is continuous publication (more articles will be added and move from Advance Articles to the issue as they are typeset) Proud to be an editor for this new journal! academic.oup.com/ajeadvances/...

It wasn't until my friends 45th birthday dinner did she learn that hens lay eggs regardless of whether or not they are fertilized. Up until then, she thought the rooster was just banging chickens all night so we could get eggs for breakfast.

Random thread: In middle school, I met a UCSD PhD student at a family friend's dinner party—very smart, super nice, and I asked him where I could learn more about biology. He suggested reading Scientific American and I was like "I'm too poor for that" so he gave me an old issue he had lying around.

New NIH Notice "expiring" a large number of funding opportunities because "We have identified a number of Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) that were not expired or reissued as indicated in the implementation plan outlined in NOT-OD-24-085." grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

More context: Our tracker (grant-watch.us) currently lists 877 terminated NIH grants. We have 820 rows in the tracker, but some rows list multiple grants. As of yesterday, NIH RePORTER listed 807 NIH grants specifically at Harvard. So we're looking at over 1600 formally terminated NIH grants now.

Quite the payoff

Whoa -- what a cool and terrifying paper. Under the most conservative global warming pathway, half of people born in 2020 will experience an "unprecedented lifetime exposure" to heatwaves. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nobody puts you in your place like your old classmates: "Nice paper... I'm proud of you. It wasn't that long ago you were nearly failing introductory methods..."

New office nameplate: "Kiang. The largest wild ass."

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

I was on a NASEM committee that received a stop work order earlier this week. It happened as the meeting was about to begin—and after flying everybody out. It was bizarre. You've got a dozen excited experts who are literally not allowed to take money for the work. This isn't a cost-saving action.

A new study forecasts more than 850,000 measles cases over the next 25 years if US vaccination rates stay the same. Millions of infections are possible if rates drop. My latest for @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/scient...

At the risk of misleading people into thinking this is a professional account, I want to highlight 2 results from a new paper with @katebubar.bsky.social, @nathanlo.bsky.social, @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social, and Bonnie Maldonado. Short (I promise) thread. 🧵

🧵1/N New study published in @jama.com on re-emergence of vaccine-eliminated infectious diseases under declining vaccination in the US. We model long-term risk and conditions for return to endemicity for measles, rubella, polio, & diphtheria. Collab w/ @Mathewkiang.com jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Breaking news: The United States faces millions of measles cases over the next 25 years if vaccination rates for the disease drop 10 percent, according to new research published Thursday.

The two types of academics at conferences these days:

This will be the thing that finally gets me to actually donate to their alumni fundraising campaign. www.thecrimson.com/thread/2025/...

Harvard redid its whole homepage to push back against the administration’s demands. I mean, this is just a website but I think it’s kind of a great PR move: www.harvard.edu

Game on. ✊

I got bit by the weirdest R bug I've seen yet... Turns out seq() and c() don't produce the same representation of 0.85?

Uses negative outcome controls. Uses negative exposure controls. Uses a different method with different assumptions. Uses a different data set. Findings are robust and consistent (and in line with other studies by other teams). Guys, it's ok to just be like "yeah, that's a pretty good study."

Shingles vax appears to prevent dementia! Our Nature paper is first of many from my group to show this. We use a really neat natural experiment to provide causal (not just correlational!) evidence. Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...; video (👏 @DrMayaAdam): bit.ly/4ciRfLh

My PO was a part of today's NIH RIF and wrote us the kindest goodbye email.

"Just diversify your funding sources..."