My friend's NSF CAREER received the highest possible score (Excellent, Excellent, Excellent: High Priority) and it was rejected today. This would have been my friend's first extramural award, 5 years after starting their lab, exactly when grant $ is make or break for an Assistant Professor's career.

A @nejm.org editorial today on the Office of White House Management and Budget (OMB) regarding their new funding proposal and politicization of science www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

A fire broke out at Kyiv Pechersk Lavra during Russia’s massive overnight attack on Kyiv. The UNESCO-listed monastery was previously devastated by war in 1941. More than 80 years later, the historic complex has once again been damaged by conflict.

Friendly reminder that Russia's co-optation of Moscow Patriarchate that made it become an almost parody of itself Warhammer 40k-style military religion does not preclude blowing up sacred Orthodox churches elsewhere.

posted without comment

It always amazes me that this isn’t a bigger thing. North of 700,000 people unable to elect representatives to the federal legislature *because they live in the capital city*.

If this country were a friend, you’d be taking him for a quiet pint and gently enquiring if there was anything you could do to help

Big progress vs cancer, folks. The kind of event curves from randomized trials that we've not seen before for a couple of the most deadly cancers. Congrats to the oncology research community for getting these trial done.

Today is Kyiv Day. A city of marathons and missile strikes. Of concerts and air raid alerts. Of summer evenings and nights in shelters. Kyiv knows the sound of laughter and the sound of explosions. It knows what it means to rebuild after every attack and keep moving forward.

🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

"The document itself is an odd grab-bag of micromanaging grant processes, assertion of presidential power, and airing of cultural grievances... Its lack of coherence, however, will not prevent it from causing staggering damage to the US scientific system." 👇 arstechnica.com/science/2026...

Make America Lysenkoist Again

“I’m part of a community of people who were told their odds weren’t good and who are still here because someone, somewhere, spent years in a lab making connections that made survival possible — and had the federal government funding their tireless work.”

They don’t care that the cast isn’t Greek. They don’t care that the armour is all wrong. They don’t care that Tom Holland in an American accent refers to Odysseus as Dad. They only care about Helen being played by Lupita Nyong'o. I WONDER WHY.

The Arlington National Cemetery Memorial apparently has deleted references and information on everyone interred there who wasn’t a white straight man from their database - attempting to sweep their existence under the rug. My thoughts on this obscenity cannot legally be shared on this platform.

This is monstrous, evil shit "Cemetery officials confirmed to Task & Purpose that the pages were unpublished” to meet recent orders by President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth targeting race and gender-related language and policies in the military."

Doctors say that a Vitamin K injection given at birth saves the lives of hundreds of newborns. A guy who snorts cocaine off toilet seats and takes raccoon penises home for "further study" says the injection can create mitochondrial challenges. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.

Wonderful opportunity to hear about the latest progress in fluorescent probe technology ⬇️

Taken. "A web page that tells you what your browser gave away the moment you arrived. No login, no form, no permission. Most pages do this. None of them tell you." sinceyouarrived.world/taken

This course also pairs nicely with @jcellsci.bsky.social [email protected] training grant funding, which has an application window open until May 8th! Funding Info: www.biologists.com/grants/jcs-f...

Bolivia es un país hermoso

The number of NIH competitive awards is down 50% from 2025, and down ~70% from prior years. Even if they catch up by the end of the year, only wealthy institutions can bridge these huge funding gaps.They're killing science-and violating the constitution-by weaponizing the bureaucracy

A key point: the admin has made things worse & less efficient. "American scientists already spend some 40 percent of their time on grant-related administrative tasks. Now they are being deluged by ever more paperwork, said Dr. Michael Lauer, who led external grantmaking at [NIH] until last year."

Major release available via scienceimpacts.org, including impact assessment of White House FY 2027 budget proposal for NIH and NSF. If enacted, we estimate budget will lead to $35B in economic loss and more than 150,000 lost jobs on top of lost programs, initiatives, and discoveries.

As we’ve come to expect the unacceptable, from the purveyor of misinformation and fabrication

That's right....and so dreadfully wrong www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026...

American science is shrinking. 
A Post analysis found that, halfway through this fiscal year, the number of competitive grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health is down by more than half compared with the same period last year. https://wapo.st/3OgoHKV

New mRNA vaccine research has basically been shelved by this administration. We know that vaccines basically eliminate cervical cancers. The prospect of expanding this to additional cancers is incredible. Particularly the most lethal ones like pancreatic.

thanks again joe manchin!

Odesa has declared a day of mourning for those killed in a Russian overnight strike. Eight people are confirmed dead, with another 16 reported injured. Rescue efforts are ongoing. Photo: State Emergency Service

I will never forget a man in the COVID critical care ward literally dying of a disease telling his physicians that the thing they were trying to treat him for was a hoax. That man died thinking that the thing which killed him was fake news.

Science is good. We should fund it.

At a time when vaccines may mean that some forms of cancer and neurodegeneration may be cured forever through vaccine technology, this is a crime against future humanity.

The FY 2027 NASA budget request hides its science cuts by omitting mission names instead of explicitly zeroing them out. We did the work and found 54 missions cancelled in this proposal. This is another extinction-level event for NASA science. Full list: planetary.org/save-nasa-science

Dziś o wyborach

I wrote about the end of the U.S. Forest Service and the arrogance of trying to kill something like a forest: defector.com/the-trump-ad...

Trump took us to war in the Middle East with: - GDP growth 0.5 in q4 2025 - 5 of last 11 months seeing job loss, not gains - Inflation rising, way above 2% post tariffs Tomorrow, if the estimates hold, CPI is going to see a huge March spike. US econ picture going to get much darker.

It's going to take a century to recover from this administration--which means it's almost certainly terminal.

Pathetic. gift link wapo.st/4ccudpF

Same here, decades of communist bloc conditioning that CEE are a bunch of small friends of Russia left Poles having a hard time internalising the fact that Poland is nowhere near "small".

There have always been despots and awful enablers of same throughout history and around the world. But it feels like starting in 2015 or so, a whole bunch of them came out of the woodwork and moved us collectively onto an alternate less good timeline. I would like to see justice come to them all.

One of these political leaders has been repeatedly portrayed as an untrustworthy radical hostile to others because of his religious beliefs. You’’ll never guess which one!

This thread is shocking in the best possible way.

This advancement in America was only possible through investment in education and science. Over the last year, we have absolutely destroyed our scientific and educational infrastructure. Look to other countries for the next major advancements.

This is called “strategic defeat.” You have ended up in a worse position than before you began, with your adversary, while battered, emerging in a stronger position than before.

I am looking forward! Thank you for inviting me to talk! #aging #eye #molecularneurodegeneration

They keep stealing shit from the people they detain. Remember how they took that kid’s cell phone and sold it for cash? Just straight up lawless gangsters

850 Tomahawk missiles could be $3,060,000,000... That is 3 billion sixty million US dollars. That is 1224 5 year biomedical research grants. Literally, over 6 millennia of biomedical research.