BREAKING: New proposed OMB regulation, applying to all federal grants, requiring grant reviews by senior political appointees and re-emphasizes that "peer review remains advisory and does not replace agency discretion". #standupforscience public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-10817.pdf

Misogyny is an increasing factor in far-right attacks, but it often goes unnoticed.

I didn’t know there were FIVE ICE detention hunger strikes going on all over the country.

Congrats to Freedom250 for finally booking a new act.

This proposal includes: 1. Political appointee control of grants 2. Peer review =/ binding 3. Active grants may be terminated whenever, for any reason 4. Nothing that discusses gender or diversity or is "un-American" whatever that means. 5. Applicants can be denied based on affiliations And worse.

*Yes it is normal for historians to spend years reading primary sources in 8 languages + thousands of secondary works to produce one book. This is why those books and our knowledge is valuable! And why a podcaster who reads one book by a historian is not in fact "digging deep" into the subject.

The Virginia Woolf rap you didn’t know you needed

Politicization of science is a pathway to mediocrity, decline, and real-world failure. The White House and OMB might want more power to undermine America's once-leading R&D ecosystem, but doing so comes with costs: to careers, discovery, the economy, our health, and national security.

I may spend the rest of the weekend watching this. Will not be taking questions at this time.

The US Department of Education is currently overhauling federal accreditation rules for colleges & universities. The April 6, 2026, Proposed Changes to Initial Draft Regulations unacceptably seek to narrow & control what can be taught, learned, & researched on college & university campuses. 🧵 1

See, if Albuquerque men did this, I’d definitely go on more dates

This is like trying to drill for oil through the ruins of Pompeii. Chaco canyon is one of the most significant native archeological sites in the United States. Absolutely disgusting to even propose it

Barely Supervised Suburban Llamas = my new band name 🦙🦙🦙

It is genuinely disturbing how much of the current economy is based on having to pretend everything random rich guys say is true.

GOP: We have new rules for this hockey game Dems: Fine G: We just bought the refs D: OK! G: We made our goal 3" x 1" D: We got this! G: We get 10 players, you get 2 D: We'll skate fast! G: We're dulling your skates, amputating your left legs, & your penalties last one hour D: We'll try harder!

@heinrich.senate.gov, what the hell are you playing at?

The metaphor writes itself (hallucinates itself?)

Net cost of attending college has been flat for two decades. I suppose you can tell a story that the 📈 from 1975-2000 (due mainly to 📉 state $ support) manifested itself in a sudden, precipitous decline in trust in universities this decade. But other more serious explanations are right there.

🗃️ As we dive into yet another “what destroyed trust in higher-ed?” debate, this is actually the answer. Follow the $. Always follow the $. When higher-ed was publicly funded it required less ass kissing of the uber-rich “donor class.” And *surprise!* Students trusted their schools more then too 1/

Oz talks a big game about wanting to streamline prior authorizations. But under his CMS, they've introduced new prior auth to traditional Medicare, with the use of AI to aid with processing despite such programs being more error-prone, thus requiring burdensome appeals. www.axios.com/2026/05/13/d...

I'm down a rabbit hole on thermal batteries. These tanks use water, sand, salt, crushed rock or virtually any other substance to hold heat generated by transient or off-peak power generation. It operates at ultra-low cost, has efficiencies of 90-99%. I had no idea how practical they were!

NEWS: ICE detains Chicago Public Schools senior and his mom: “We had done everything by the rules.” ICE also separated Ricardo from her. By this time of year, Ricardo planned to be at prom and preparing for juco in the fall. Instead he’s in jail www.chicagotribune.com/2026/05/18/i...

"Fake citations have turned into a nightmare for research librarians, who by some estimates are wasting up to 15 percent of their work hours responding to requests for nonexistent records that ChatGPT or Google Gemini alluded to." open access link: archive.ph/qt59c 2/🧵

gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/u...

Cui bono? The Kremlin does. And note the decision immediately followed a lengthy meeting between Trump and Putin as to which the White House furnished no readout.

An auditor for the Ontario, Canada government found that AI agents tasked with turning doctor/patient conversations into structured notes routinely hallucinated false treatments, replaced drug names with entirely different drugs, and missed crucial information

In New Mexico, the fossil fuels industry is running its own candidate for land commissioner. His name is Michael Perry, and he firmly believes that whatever the fossil fuels industry wants, it should have... including about 20% of the state.

Ferto, baby

Ají Amarillo, ají panca, Hatch medium-hot, serrano, chipotle, gochugaru

NSF is devoting a large chunk of increasingly scarce resources to people who are not affiliated with universities. My first read on this is, it's just corruption. It'll be a lot easier for grifters and politically connected dipshits to get their hands on public cash through this mechanism.

New in PN: The assault on higher ed goes deeper than you think "This is bigger than budget cuts. It’s not just a continuation of things like longtime GOP efforts to cut Pell Grants. It’s a wide-ranging assault designed to drastically limit access to higher ed for all but the rich & well-connected."

Saying it louder for those in the back: "The United States was not founded, in any sense, on Christian principles. It's simply not true." More people would know this if they were taught history without restrictions. History doesn’t fit your narrative. #Pinks @timothysnyder.bsky.social

Many people have a vested interest in pretending otherwise, but the US research university is globally dominant to an almost unbelievable degree. The typical state university is a football team stapled to a R&D lab with a budget bigger than the entire nation of Belgium.

Good morning readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands. Russia launched a massive 30-hour attack across Ukraine: 1,500+ drones and 50+ missiles. With 100+ dead and 50 homes hit, it’s one of the heaviest attacks in 4 years.

Fact-check: True 😕

Nearly 50,000 people in the Lake Tahoe area have been told that their utility will stop providing power to them, because it's redirecting that power to data centers. /1

why is there an oompa loompa yelling at women so close to a helicopter, yet another egregious OSHA violation at wonka inc

Alabama's gotten me so upset Tennessee made me lose my rest And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam (This song is literally today's news headlines)

The Purcell Principle means it always too late for courts to fix something racist and never too late for states to do something racist

Not the most important thing happening in the world, but Happy Eurovision Week to those who celebrate

I admire the hell out of these Texas Tech students, who held a funeral for academic freedom: pen.org/texas-tech-a...

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

One side is like “can we disenfranchise all the Black voters by this weekend” and the other is like gotta follow the rules that govern the rules that control the rulebook

Lord, Trump is literally re writing US history to adopt Putin’s narrative. The war ended for the USA many months later.

I am grateful just about every day to live in NM, but I do occasionally covet saguaros

"The right never lost their faith that if they were patient and determined enough, the 1960s could be undone — and maybe some of the 1860s too. They knew that even after a statue of a slaveholding traitor is torn down, defeat is not permanent. In fact, that statue may *literally* be raised back up."

Again this should inspire wall-to-wall media coverage for months. The crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement is dead. Black people just lost all of their remaining political power in the South. This is a monumental moment in American history that simply isn't being treated as such.