Hey universities… it is good to stand up for yourselves, your students, and the future of scholarship … even if maybe your administration does not

Baltimore Book Thing is open this Sunday 2/15, books up for grabs 9-5, accepting donations 9-2 bookthing.org/2026/02/07/f...

Paging @vanishingcorp.bsky.social

Thinking about this again today “DO NOT BE DAUNTED BY THE ENORMITY OF THE WORLD'S GRIEF. DO JUSTLY, NOW. LOVE MERCY, NOW. WALK HUMBLY, NOW. YOU ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO COMPLETE THE WORK, BUT NEITHER ARE YOU FREE TO ABANDON IT. ~ RABBI TARFON”

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.” ― Octavia Butler

This could be the next “Gourd Season”

“I’ll never leave because my mother didn’t raise a quitter. She raised a complainer”

We broke the internet

Two caveats: (a) our data collection has improved over time, but we don’t think that’s explaining most of the growth across years; (b) the political conditions under which we are collecting data are not identical across years; more on the latter point here: wagingnonviolence.org/2025/03/resi...).

Taken together, an overall look at protest patterns in 2026 reinforces the sense of a growing, durable, and disciplined pro-democracy movement increasingly mobilized at the grassroots.

What are the protests about? The top three claims expressed during the protests are concerns about the presidency, democracy, and immigration. These themes dominate the protest landscape.

These are tiny fractions for a movement of this historic size and geographic dispersion. This discipline is part of why clear instances of lawless brutality by govt authorities tend to backfire—a dynamic that @owasow.bsky.social recently described in the NYT: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/o...

The movement is extraordinarily disciplined, despite escalatory rhetoric, threats, & violence against the movement, immigrants, and observers. Over 99% of reported protests featured no arrests, 99.8% had no participant injuries or property damage, and 99.9% reported no injuries to law enforcement.

Participation is likewise robust. For counts for just 41% of our events, we tallied well over 10.3M participants across explicitly anti-Trump protests, < 111k across pro-Trump protests, and over 387k across other protests.

Overall, we have tallied 4x more protests through Jan 31, 2026 than we had through Jan 31, 2018

Protest volume is escalating. Jan 2026 recorded the highest monthly total of protests during Trump’s second term so far (nearly 5900)—and the 3rd highest total of protests per month since 2017, behind only June 2020 (BLM) & March 2018 (Enough Walkouts + March for Our Lives).

The two No Kings protests (6/14 & 10/18) were among the largest single day protests in history, but we are tallying protests all over the country every day in locally coordinated protests, too, particularly in opposition to ICE - an increasingly large share of the total #.

The volume & geographic distribution of protest nationwide during year 1 of Trump's second term was extraordinary.

I'm not believing this until I hear from people in the streets of MN and neither should you

a lot of co-teaching today, which I love, but I do sometimes feel like... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statler...

Thanks, CNN! But seriously, folks, the real story is that this administration first swore this was an attack from a Mexican cartel. They will say literally anything and aren't experiencing consequences dire enough to make them stop.

CBO estimates that

When I get emails: "It is unfortunate that you are unable to review this manuscript at this time, but I will be glad to keep you in mind as a referee for future manuscripts that fall under your area of expertise." from journals I have never published in nor reviewed for, I confess, it does annoy

Hey social scientists! Do you have any thoughts/expertise on how recommendations to select the top 1% of mathematically precocious 3rd graders to propel into STEMM training is based in eugenics ideology? Please yell in the comments!

Rooting for a "Kaiju Emerge in El Paso" headline right now.

“It was too much. We’d always had a linear understanding of time, of cause and effect, but now, in our panic, in our confusion, it started to come apart.” Senaa Ahmad’s stories have an extraordinary gift for turning around themselves—I am not sure I have ever read something quite like it

Trans and queer people still exist and their historic actions deserve to be remembered. And honestly will be, whatever these silly people try to hide

Like 75% of the US Olympic curlers are from Minnesota. A lot of them curl out of two clubs in Saint Paul, one club is in Frogtown, a neighborhood that has been very heavily targeted by ICE. These curlers are good neighbors.

Also, imagine seeing the Trump Admin + RFKjr knocking the 2nd guy out of the bobsled and you have current US health and science policy The most advanced tech in the world just falling apart because team is being sabotaged…

If you are in Baltimore, and you haven't had an adult MMR booster or recent titers, now is the time to get that booster! Mumps immunity is more susceptible to waning than measles and it needs a single adult booster after age 18 or so for maximum efficacy!

Seriously, the "I didn't sell my children to a rapist I deserve a cookie"–ness of it is amazing.

just a fucking weird statement on it's face but also highlights how filthy rich and completely out of touch trump's whole cabinet is. a private boat for a family vacation? stopping by a billionaire's island for lunch? nannies, plural?? the epstein class, indeed.

Lest you forget, complications of #mumps: * #inflammation of the #testicles (orchitis); this may lead to #testicular #atrophy as well Inflammation of the #ovaries (oophoritis); b#breast (mastitis); #pancreas (pancreatitis); #brain (encephalitis and meningitis) Source: www.cdc.gov/mumps/signs-...

New email from Hopkins Chief Medical Officer: "Mumps in Baltimore What is happening: There is an increase in mumps cases in the community" health.maryland.gov/phpa/IDEHASh... health.maryland.gov/phpa/IDEHASh... OMFG, @standupforscience.bsky.social ... this is so literally preventable

Immigration is important for the health and care of older Americans 👇👇👇👇👇

listening to @tadethompson.bsky.social’s Molly Southbourne when I walked into @greedyreads.bsky.social and found Senaa Ahmad’s Age of Calamities and now 100 pages into that and I’m Wikipediaing Ibn Battuta and how have I not read his stuff or about him? this how I end up with lots of piles of books

This is part of a pattern that is impeachable: Trump cuts previously appropriated Congressional funds, but only to states led by Democrats (California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota).

‘According to Heritage,… the government has to address multiple factors that “conspire” to drive down birth rates: “These include the proliferation of birth control, more prospects for women to receive higher education and work outside the home…”’ [@jessicavalenti.bsky.social is a careful reporter]

Evergreen

Tomorrow!

There are few absolute rules in medicine but «never treat sinus tachycardia, treat the cause» has extremely few exceptions. #emimcc #cardiosky #medsky

Censoring the word "vaccine" doesn't make America healthy. (4/5🧵)

Censoring the word "equity" doesn't make America healthy. (3/5🧵)

Censoring the word "woman" doesn't make America healthy. (2/5🧵)

New data from Diana Bouhassira in Critical Care Science: real world high flow nasal cannula (HFNC) looks pretty different from what RCTs are doing criticalcarescience.org/article/patt...

Beyond honored to have an essay included in this stunning collection alongside so many writers I admire. Intro by the legendary Rita Charon ♥️ #MedSky

Amongst other things, this again highlights the core point about due process. It’s bad enough to be in a “show me your papers” situation, but your precious citizen/non-citizen, “legal”/“illegal” distinctions are meaningless when you can’t prove anything to authorities because they don’t give a shit.

On the contrary, there has never been a better time to DOUBLE your caffeine intake. Fascism isn't gonna fight itself fam, we need FUEL!!!

Catching up on the open sewer of gutter racism emitted last night from the President on down through White House apparatchiks like Loomer, Lake, etc, etc, and I have to say it gives off a strong reek of @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social’s “I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win”.

>>checks notes<< Yup, racism is still bad