Must-read reporting by @virginiagewin.bsky.social on how US federal actions are affecting science. By pairing the scale of the damage with the very human, personal stories behind the numbers, she paints a powerful and comprehensive picture of just how thoroughly US science is being hollowed out.

Very cool work!

Quick action on the parts of both James and the heron! If you are on Hawaiʻi Island, you can look for these birds in and around the fishponds and wetlands of Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park. #Aukuu #BCNH #HawaiiBirds #HawaiiParks

Proceeds from this sale helped fund the underground railroad for Jewish scientists escaping Germany and Austria via Copenhagen The scheme was arranged by Nobelists Niels Bohr and August Krogh (founder of Novo Nordisk) among others

Two conversations, one question: What happens when science and lawmaking collide?🔬 Anti-science bills are on the rise across the U.S. Plus, a Louisiana law limits whether regulators can use environmental data collected by communities.

Now for the money... Overall, the budget is essentially flat. The biggest winner is NINDS with a 5.9% increase. The biggest losers are NIEHS and NIDDK. 4/5

A year ago, under a flurry of executive orders, it became clear that the second Trump administration was going to make dramatic changes on US science. Here's our 10,000 foot look at the damage. with @maxkozlov.bsky.social, Jeff Tollefson, and Rich Monastersky

The final LHHS bill with funding for Health and Human Services is out this morning! At first glance, it looks similar to the Senate bill with a roughly 1% increase in total funding for the NIH. While it doesn't match inflation, it avoids many of the problems in the presidential budget request. 1/n

RIP Gladys West, mathematician who measured the world to unheard precision (radius to tens of centimeters!), paving the way to GPS.

Tooze on China and climate change: “My deep conviction is that the west needs to accept the end of its era of global domination. ... Ours is a bit part and not the starring role. We’re not the love interest. This song is not about us.” Worth the read!

"If this change happens, over 100,000 children who are diagnosed with autism each year could claim compensation from the VICP...The expected groundswell of compensation claims and lawsuits will easily bankrupt the vaccine compensation pool..." From @zekeemanuel.bsky.social. wapo.st/3NyZ9Yt

Apply by Feb. 3 to become a Janelia Group Leader! Group Leaders drive breakthroughs & experimental approaches in imaging, molecular engineering, protein chemistry, mass spectrometry, & methods that don't yet exist. Learn more: janelia.org/groupleader 🧪

very sad news. Peer Bork was one of the leaders of our field, a wonderful scientist, and he's much too young to be gone. www.embl.org/news/embl-an...

Interesting perspective on the rise of Chinese tech, from @bruces.bsky.social

I think all of us in academia knew this was coming. I've talked for years how, before the rise of the nazis, you needed to know German if you wanted to understand the most important physical science being done. After the war, you only needed to know English. The nazis destroyed German science.

Sigh. Shutting down the National Center for Atmospheric Research will make the world a more dangerous place for all of us.

Burrata, surrounded by cavatappi in a sauce of lion's mane mushrooms, spinach, and fresh tomatoes, topped with basil and pecorino Romano.

LLMs are statistical averages that inevitably focus on the densest part of the distribution. They capture popularity. Which makes them problematic in applications that require novelty, like science. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Online Now: Moving intentions from brains to machines

#Breaking: SAMHSA canceled up to $1.9 billion in grants without staff consultation, accelerating the mental health agency's deterioration under President Trump. www.statnews.com/2026/01/14/s...

There’s a big story everyone is missing—but this article hits on it. We aren’t just seeing public health dismantled bc we’ve been taken over by conspiracy theorists and lunatics. What we’re really seeing is the giant, predatory, underegulated wellness industry come to Washington.

It's University of Chicago's annual certification season! I have once again been trained in HIPPA compliance, prevention of discrimination and harassment, mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect, human subjects research, and infection control. I hope you can all sleep better now.

So sad to see what we almost had slip out of reach...

Bill Joy explaining "why the future doesn't need us". aka GRIN, circa 2000 AD vs Actual future 2026 AD: G enetics -- an agro and pharma biz R obotics -- on its feet, doing a vaudeville dance I ntelligence -- blowing the roof and doors off N anotechnology -- Future didn't need it after all

The economic diagnosis is right on, but this policy prescription feels wrong. Instead of hoping for government action, we need to build community strength. "Giving to charity" feels impersonal. Helping our friends, causes, and mutuals is concrete and builds relationships that can last a lifetime

As I have said for more than 2 years now, advertising is the only path to profitability for chatbots.

It’s absolutely astonishing to me what it took to finally neuter the US military and overwhelm our national security. It wasn’t superior force or violence, but unscrupulous billionaires.

BHL's new chapter has begun! 🌱 Our latest #BHLTransition Update shares where BHL is now: stable, fully operational, and nearing completion of its transition. BHL has retained its people, its expertise, and its ability to operate effectively. 🔗 blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/01/tran... #ILoveBHL

JUST IN: A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore $12 million in grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics, saying the terminations appear to be retaliation for the group's view points re: vaccine safety/efficacy. ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

This reflects only the appropriation levels. The damage done to processes and personnel within the science agencies is considerable.

Hot Mantle Melt Tomorrow is final day of volcano adventure. Still hoping for the Kīlauea Episode 40 fountaining event. I’ve seen a lot of lava. But I really just want to see an arc of magma fly & fall across the sky.

“Science is doing OK,” [AAAS spokesperson says] “Things are not bad at all, given our expectations.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/s...

Hawai’i pop up in Waikaloa on the Big Island.

Some folks have wanted to list Claude as a co-author on @arxiv.bsky.social submissions, which is not permitted. But if it had been allowed, so many Claude-written papers have been rejected at this point, that Claude would be banned from the platform

The world needs so much more of this When they moved to the closer table 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data. If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition. eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...

This is such an important point. #PSB2026 -- a scientific meeting with lots of AI & biomedicine researchers -- was full of this sort of anthropomorphizing language. We as researchers need to be much more careful! And I have been citing that Drew McDermott article forever. It's great throughout.

Letter of resignation from @jennifer-troyer.bsky.social former Dir of Extramural Ops at NHGRI "The NIH is not only no longer the organization that I love but is now an organization that I can no longer be a part of and retain my integrity and self-respect." www.linkedin.com/posts/jennif... 1/6

I loved this 🧵. I was peripherally involved with both "mainstream" (ha!) and contact juggling communities, but had no idea the complicated history!

The district court injunction that prevented NIH from capping indirects at 15% was upheld today on appeal! www.reuters.com/world/trump-...

#MachineLearning researchers: Join us at @msftresearch.bsky.social #ArtificialIntelligence for Science to push the frontier of AI for molecular Biology or AI for Chemistry. Work with @marwinsegler.bsky.social or my team in Berlin, Cambridge or Amsterdam. apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/...

Mildred Cho's #PSB26 Teri Talk: Will Generative AI Ruin Science?

Eric Green’s title

Phil Bourne (virtually) introducing Eric Green's PSB keynote #psb26 @pacsym.bio

First day of PSB plenary getting under way. @pacsym.bio #psb26 to follow...

Naively, I never considered it - if we are to successfully ‘colonise’ space we need to get much better at understanding & building functional ecosystems that include recycling & environmental regulation. We know how to build rockets; time to better understand biology 🧪 economist.com/leaders/2025...

Today is the first day of #PSB2026. Looking forward to another great conference. So nice to see so many old friends. psb.stanford.edu

One of the chief virtues of the book is that it’s nearly the only remaining form of media that isn’t constantly being interrupted by ads. Between the covers is the last place on earth where no one is trying to sell you shit, a place where you can still be a human being rather than a mark.

Ex-Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has Lunch with the FT and in one of those instances so rare that you know he didn't sign an NDA, says exactly why as.ft.com/r/e503690d-8...