Cozy levels: extreme

As God willed it. Here in the DMV, us NIH people watched the Washington Post venerate Youngkin, and then watched Youngkin’s approval bomb when he got into office and voters figured out what he actually stood for. It’s not unlike the Trump story — in 2024 and last night — actually.

Sure, the Democrats Won All the Elections, But Is that Really Good for Them? by Ezra Klein

A lot of the political scientists criticizing Dick Cheney right now don't have an APSR article. You know who does?

We are focused on some big state-level stakes in VA today, but don’t forget your local offices as well! If you live in Charlottesville, please vote for candidates who oppose the recent school board measure to put armed police back in city schools (like @zysaidso.bsky.social )

be safe, hoos.

How did I wake up to my kid constructing a Halloween candy histogram?

I just watched a student narrowly avoid a Final Destination-style fate when her labubu got tangled in a drapery lift cord. Be careful out there, folks!

@aaup.org Legal Advisory Letter to General Counsels about the significant First Amendment violations the Compact creates and that will face any compact signing university or college #NoCompact www.aaup.org/sites/defaul...

So stoked to read @alixeharrow.bsky.social’s new book, surely it will not emotionally devastate me in any way.

My daughter, blissfully unaware of how any and all sports work: “Did he score a football…objective?”

Trump: "I don't think we're necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war, I think we're just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We're going to kill them. They're going to be, like dead."

During the furlough, we've organized #FEDstrong days of service in our communities. Today, eight of us recovered food for Nourish Now. Last week at @nihvigils.bsky.social with @27unihted.bsky.social's leadership, the #NIH community donated more than 450 pounds of food to Manna Food Bank.

This administration is now even appointing loyal friends and family to civil service position. This role is not a political appointee. www.science.org/content/arti...

A politics major at the University of Virginia was allegedly dismissed from a student-operated news site for refusing to apologize for asking hard questions of UVA interim President Paul Mahoney.

To paraphrase Thaddeus Stevens, slay every traitor, burn every rebel mansion, and turn these misbegotten monuments into the broken moral monsters that always festered within

Two tons of bronze ingots, from melting down Charlottesville’s statue of Robert E. Lee, are now on display in the LA Museum of Modern Art “Monuments” exhibit. The @jsaahccville.bsky.social Swords Into Plowshares project will select an artist to use the bronze to create public art for Charlottesville

UVA has rejected the compact! And on the heels of a 1000 person rally today. When we organize we win!!! First public university to reject Trump’s poisonous loyalty oath. ❤️❤️ cvillerightnow.com/news/208802-...

Where are all the free speech people now? Bari Weiss? The free speech on campus alliances? It looks like those people are merely “Free Speech For Me” people. But that’s now how free speech or the First Amendment works. Support it for everyone, or free speech doesn’t exist.

UVA says no to the compact

VERY TROUBLING NEWS REGARDING NIH INSTITUTE DIRECTORS A new appointment for NIEHS 1/3

On the college presidents' rejection letters for the so-called "compact" www.chronicle.com/article/in-d...

Around 1,000 people rallied today to ask UVA to risk this extortionate and unprecedented threat to academic freedom

Hundreds are gathered at the steps of the historic Rotunda to urge UVA leadership to reject the Compact

let’s see what they canceled children’s cancer research for:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17: Join colleagues and community members in a rally at the Rotunda where we will urge University of Virginia leadership to preserve academic freedom by rejecting the Trump Administration’s compact. This is part of a national day of action across all 9 targeted campuses.

Good piece: DOGE was the battering ram, but Russ Vought was the one enabling it, and then hiding it's impacts.

For the uninitiated: The pope being this direct and explicit to U.S. bishops about how to respond to a domestic policy happening in real time is…unusual.

Do you find the rapid growth of the police state alarming? Are you concerned that the Charlottesville City School Board voted to have armed officers police our kids in schools? Then you should vote on the issues this election, and vote @zysaidso.bsky.social and Lisa Larson Torrez for School Board.

You laugh, but this is what NIH funded research is going to look like after political appointees start deprioritizing peer review in favor of political priorities in grant approvals.

PubMed Update (no pun intended) Publications with Pub Date 8/1//24 62209 9/1/24 64765 10/1/24 68211 8/1/25 61610 9/1/25 63719 10/1/25 35936 (as of 10/2/25) 10/1/25 38673 (as of 10/6/25, 8:00 AM) It appears that ~40% of the expected number of publications are missing for 10/1/25 1/2

This is the first semester my students truly struggled to perform on an in-class midterm. As lame as the language of human capital is, the professoriate need to commit to ensuring college graduates come out of here with a basic skill set, including the ability to answer a short prompt in real time.

dear university presidents and boards: it won’t

THEY CLOSED PUBLIC POOLS RATHER THAN SWIM WITH BLACK PEOPLE YOU ARE DEALING WITH THE SAME GROUP OF PEOPLE AS THE FOLKS WHO DID THIS PLEASE WAKE THE FUCK UP

Good morning. This is fascism.

People on the East Coast trying to guess my ethnicity

Here's the assignment folks. Write op-eds for your local papers and campus newspapers too. Just. Say. No. This is a classic authoritarian move and risks the future of higher education and science and innovation in the US. Speak out today. No time to lose. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

University of Virginia faculty senate passes a resolution to delay the search for Provost until the tenth President of the University is in place. 59 in favor; 6 opposed. Tons of students in the room.

It’s a really hard time to be someone who studies US federal science policy, so from now on if anyone asks I play didgeridoo in an Australian jazz band.

Not surprising, but maddening. Such a loss of talent! www.science.org/content/arti...

it makes me incandescently furious that roberts invented the idea of banning coercive conditions on funding to kill medicaid expansion and refuses to do a single thing about the fact that the trump administration's entire deal is "coercive conditions on funding"

Clever work by economist Pierre Azoulay and colleagues shows that if the NIH budget had been 40% lower in prior decades, critical new drugs never would have seen the light of day. www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Best thing I have seen in a long time. Nazi interrupts and heckles Psych 201 class, gets a quick and appropriate response. 10/10, no notes

Please read. #NIH #shutdown

US government is shut down, post your freshest lotr memes

Impressive how one political party can control the White House, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, but not bear responsibility for whether the federal government functions. Neat trick.

👀 Just Now -- President Trump in the Oval Office said a government shutdown gives his administration the power to cut benefit programs, which include Social Security and Medicare. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

DHS is proposing a rule that would end "duration of status" for J, F and other visa holders. This would decimate the international graduate student and postdoc population, which are a crucial part of the United States biomedical workforce. There's still time for you to comment on the proposed rule.

RFK Jr. really stood up here and said, when NCI is the FIRST and LARGEST of NIH’s categorical institutes, that “Cancer, like other chronic diseases, was long neglected in federal research attention.” I couldn’t breed a HHS Secretary more ignorant of basic facts in a lab. www.nih.gov/news-events/...