Anyway, if anybody knows a historian/history buff who might be able to answer some fairly basic, but annoyingly hard to search questions about life in Boston in ~1905 my DM's are open.

More for @elizabethginexi.bsky.social on the proposed OMB rule, addressing the far reaching consequences of the rule including and beyond science: open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...

I never met Prof. Pacheco-Vega IRL & only knew him from social media. Over and over again, mostly junior scholars & people doing non-mainstream research said how kind he was. The outpouring of grief & love for him is striking tonight. In a biz full of smart people, his kindness distinguished him.

5️⃣/🔟 In Scientific Reports, 5 of the top 10 most cited articles have an article number of 1. 5️⃣/🔟 In Nature Communications the same: 5 of the top 10 are article 1s. Coincidence? 👇 scirate.com/arxiv/2511.0... I think not.

Sweeping draft regulations released by OMB pose one of the most significant threats to federally funded research in decades. The proposal would affect nearly every aspect of the scientific process. Read more: https://www.ascb.org/science-policy/federal-research-regulations-threat-american-science/

The horrific mismanagement of hospitals by Steward before acquisition by BMC, combined with the horrific changes to Medicaid ... have made this a pretty terrible and scary situation for poor folks in Massachusetts who need health care.

Loud and proud 🫶 Wishing you all a happy Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈

Pretty excited - this week I'm at @netsciconf.bsky.social which is going to be my first in-person conference in a non-administrative capacity since 2019!

I'm sure they're actually very intelligent, but yellow warblers look like the most himbo bird. No thoughts, just bug. 🪶

Not just at NIH and NSF - we've been trying to submit an application for Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students (funds school for MDs, RNs, etc.) since March but they keep pushing out the actual date of posting. Originally projected for 3/9 - now they estimate it will be posted 6/5.

"Amid desperate conditions in detention, hunger strikes have been one of the few tools left for people inside. Immigrant rights groups have reported hunger strikes in recent weeks beyond Delaney Hall, in places like Moshannon Valley Processing Center in PA, and Adelanto ICE Processing Center in CA."

Got to watch a nearly-Storrowed moving truck back up to the previous exit (with police escorts!). How do you drive a moving truck for a Boston-based company and still end up on Storrow Drive?

Daily Memo reporting from Adelanto on the five hunger strikes happening around the U.S.

ICE flights. Friday, May 29, 2026. At least 88 flights on 30 planes, the most I've recorded. At least nine removal stops.

I am, regretfully, reading a scoping review about scoping reviews.

When I was on the bus home I saw this corgi preparing to take graduation pictures with its human.

Under the proposed rules, peer review will be advisory only; proposals will be required to align with "Gold Standard Science" which is never explicitly defined. Peer review is the foundation of our entire federal funding system, dating back to the establishment of federal agencies after WWII. 6/n

"The memo's title is a bold statement of policy, but it writes a conceptual check which the rest of the document never quite cashes." Part 2 of my series on the massive new memo redefining who gets to adjust their status to residency in the U.S. and why deportnation.substack.com/p/adjusting-...

White House proposes new rules giving political appointees final approval of research grants These proposed Office of Management and Budget regulations would render the federal research grant review process opaque www.scientificamerican.com/article/whit...

If cricket has given me nothing else, it has made it surprisingly easy for me to start an interesting conversation with Guyanese people!

Aïssata Traoré has won Player of the Year at the Mali Football Awards 🦢

"The research found there were “clear racial disparities” in outcomes. Analysing individual roles, they found that one in 10 of the positions in the dataset demonstrated “adverse impact” against Black applicants, while one in 20 roles did so for Asian applicants.

Spent a while watching a Canada Goose Supergroup yesterday. 7 adults foraging on their own with at least 29 goslings of various ages from newly fledged to adolescent, all tiny horrible dinosaurs in the best way.

The Trump administration will require most foreigners seeking green cards to apply from outside the U.S., a shift that immigration lawyers say could affect thousands of people who file applications each year while living in America on temporary visas. https://wapo.st/4fCaVgK

How can Congress not impeach USCIS's Joe Edlow? Do your job, Joe. He now demands every green card applicant self-deport, so that 1) applicants have to go through a process where courts are barred from nearly any review of consular decisions; and 2) overstays get 10-year barred....

Grants managers at two of the U.S. government’s largest funders of scientific research have recently placed unprecedented limitations on the ability of U.S. scientists to publish with co-authors from other countries, researchers say. https://scim.ag/3Pvyv4i

Landback IS the return of land to Indigenous peoples. Land that was taken, ceded under pressure, or lost through forced removals, treaty negotiations, and outright stolen. The question it asks: what would it look like to give it back?

Spoke with @andrewdyer.bsky.social about the teens who carried out a racist shooting at a mosque in San Diego this week www.kpbs.org/news/public-...

I have been underestimating song sparrows, I am afraid. 🪶

Our hearts break with each new emerging detail from the deadly, hate-fueled shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego.

Did not know until I read this that there's a protected nature area in Tobago as old as the United States, in case you would like a different 250th anniversary to celebrate globalvoices.org/2026/05/19/t...

I have a piece in press — not sure why it’s not out—about this phenomenon, the logic of triage, racial immunologics in the west African Ebola outbreak

Honk!

oh dear

So we just saw a molting pileated woodpecker and folks, that is a bizarre looking bird. Like a Dracula Vulture with a disproportionately tiny head, or something.

All Protocol Observed Welcome to Issue 239 of The Continent Macron is back in Africa: energetic, ambitious, and still trying to convince the world Paris is relevant. Meanwhile, in Mayotte — legally France, geographically Africa — asylum seekers wait for la République to notice them. bit.ly/239_TC

I saw some of the first dinosaur footprints described by Science! out in Holyoke today!

I don't know about you, but I was on the academic job market in 2016 and this was not the case. 😐

For my newsletter, I wrote about the killing of Juniper Blessing and ruminated on who the media thinks deserves attention in death. Friday newsletters are usually paywalled, but I have made the mini-essay portion of this post free to all: www.burnsnotice.com/her-name-was...

"The deportees are currently on a three-month tourist visa, which does not allow them to work in Congo, the woman said. But they have been allowed to leave the hotel, with supervision."

I love museum interpretation that tells it like it is.

Absolutely devastating read. www.them.us/story/slain-...

"The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe," wrote James Baldwin in 1980. And as an educator, one feels the same sense of responsibility for every student. Every student at UW is the charge of every professor and TA on campus, in a real way.

We now know her name: Juniper Blessing. Her alleged murderer is now in custody and awaiting a charging decision, expected on Monday. Juniper was a graduate of the New Mexico School for the Arts and, active in the UW Chorale, already a soloist.

I can't believe @chrispappasnh.bsky.social is the best NH Democrats have to offer.

Warbler season is wild. I just had a pair of common yellowthroats on the tree outside my window, right next to the warehouse and across from the train tracks. I usually don't see anything more dramatic than house sparrows there.

Oh my God WE WON

A bullshit penalty is probably the best way to see Marta score on your team, at least?

As a person who has the National Geographic Documentary on the Moscow Circus memorized because I watched it so many times as a child, this does feel very personally targeted.

Breaking: Congress is pushing back on the Trump administration's termination of National Science Board members, with the House calling for their reinstatement and the Senate asking pointed questions about OMB's political interference. My reporting for @science.org: