Just came from a lab meeting where many team members contributed ideas and discussion about some new and difficult questions. It was great. This kind of thing is one of the most rewarding parts of doing science.

Quote is about the destruction wrought in science this year. And it all happened with effectively a flat budget, without budget cuts, because science agencies have been presidentialized since Jan 2025– shifting control from the scientific community to the president.

wrote about Michael J. Fox's appearance on Shrinking, which was cool for a lot of reasons, some of them pretty important to me type-click-type.ghost.io/tell-em-mich...

Another comment on editorials this week. "During the past year, there was much criticism of those who chose to keep their heads down. To the activists, these colleagues may have seemed evasive or even cowardly...But these players of the long game..." They are not playing the long game! 1/

Remember to tell people that things have NOT DEESCALATED. Pulling 700 agents means there's 2,300 agents on our streets, terrorizing us and kidnapping our neighbors.

There is a world where Congress has a constitutional law office that issues a counter-memo, and the Capitol Police go enforce the law and force their way into these detention camps for Congressional oversight

Trump’s falling poll numbers have everyone scared and dropping off. Be ready for crazy things over the next few months as last year’s wall of support springs leaks and the White House tries to compensate.

Congress should set agency priorities, not the president. This is a presidential power grab. And we are in a separation of powers crisis. It’s part of the Project 2025 plan, enabled by the Supreme Court which has been packed with corrupt politicians in robes.

This is about LLMs and comparing activations to large-scale recording in brains

And meaningful that Bad Bunny showed himself as a little kid, dreaming of a Grammy and watching himself succeed on TV, as allegory for every Liam

I still think it's meaningful that we saw Liam in him. Every Liam deserves to have a chance to pursue his dreams.

hugely intense finish drawing on values that will win- parade of flags and then this, and “the only thing more powerful than hate is love” on the screen behind

Bad Bunny “together we are America”

Very similar experience in our household

Lots of Bad Bunny song and slang talk going on in our household. “Dad, yeah, dale! Don’t you know that?” We are ready for the game and the Benito Bowl. www.instagram.com/reel/DUbGKYq...?

I have bad news. Science has already been labeled as left. It’s done. This is clear if we talk to people in red areas. Or if we watch Fox.

Gerrymandering plans have striking similarities to the ongoing science debate—Thorp/AAAS vs @standupforscience.bsky.social . One path is to keep generally to prior norms and hope to get through. The other is to maximize fight, and partisanship, to get to a new place where real change can be made.

Well, there’s a big problem. “The data” does in fact NOT generally say what is valuable and where to focus. The data tells us which of 37 shades of blue produces the highest Google clickthrough rate…before “the data” destroys Google Search because it’s folly to use it for strategy or focus

Ouch

Bezos has rejected multiple offers to buy the paper, and his CEO ignored an offer to spin off the sports and local news sections. The Epstein files provided more support for something we’ve known for quite a while: Rightwing billionaires understand that control of media outlets gives them power.

People are mad at @samuelmoyn.bsky.social but this is a good piece from him and @ryandoerfler.bsky.social on need to accept that SCOTUS has become functionally illegitimate. Key point is legitimacy does require the public to think the court operates in good faith: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It’s always great to hear these stories. ❤️ And yes. My mom died of ovarian cancer. I want more progress there so others can be saved. And it is being blown up. I am horrified at how biomedical research and cures are being destroyed.

New, from me: Trump finalized his Schedule F policy, allowing him to remove job protections from career civil servants. The new rule is dishonest and unmoored from reality in its effort to formalize the politicization of the federal government 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trumps-sch...

MAHA disinformation doctors use pandemic revisionism as a pretext for their scientific vandalism. The NYTimes helps them. My YouTube channel shows the truth they hide from their readers. My latest on their interview with Podcast Jay. sciencebasedmedicine.org/podcastjaybh...

I love the things they hate

Re: Science Mag editorial celebrating mainly the inside/quiet advocacy done this year, I offer this in lighthearted response. 🧪 This is a Myanmar woman doing her usual, longstanding dance routine while black cars speed by to carry out a coup. 1/4

I needed this today. "To succeed often requires–and always demands–of you to embrace the utterly insane notion that you cannot fail... You will need to prepare and make ready everyone around you. To fail as a leader is when you do not prepare people for when that inevitable failure happens."

Filing of lawsuits as a strategy is fine, but it was in an **NIH case** that Justice Jackson said the Court was playing “Calvinball” where the only rule is “this administration always wins!” It is time to take a strategic look at what is happening today, in 2026

“The President’s budget for FY2027, already overdue, is expected in March. Should the president again propose ridiculous budget cuts, we should recognize this as a negotiating tactic.” I agree with basically all of this piece from @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social

Oof. Fun times.

Say it again, Mr Luttig: The Roberts Court has backed the absolute lawlessness and unconstitutional activity of the President. And his White House.

All these men driving women out of their fields with giggly idiot grabassery and then bloviating to the public about how the lack of women is proof of male intellectual superiority... I hate them all. I hate them so much.

The Washington Post laid off a third of its staff at the whim of a billionaire. DC needs a strong local press corps now more than ever with federal overreach. My heart breaks for the people who lost their jobs and for what it will mean for accountability and transparency in DC.

It's going to be increasingly valuable to be able to think and communicate yourself, without outsourcing your thought to AI. LLMs aren't going away, they will likely be a tool, but human thought will still be needed—and people who rely too much on AI will be left behind

Without the Washington Post health and science team the public would have known far less about what’s been happening at NIH and CDC this year. Post reporters have done absolutely key reporting, for example a profile on NIH cancer researcher Steve Rosenberg speaking up about damage to his work.

my most peepaw-coded trait is that I angrily refuse to use DoorDash (and similar apps) because I know the markup is so insane versus “picking the food up myself” - and that money doesn’t go to the restaurant. By god, I will drive or walk my ass over to the restaurant and get it myself.

The layoffs and cuts happening at the Washington Post are a disgrace to journalism and an affront to truth-telling. I’m especially disappointed that the local news this region has relied upon has been gutted. My heart goes out to all those impacted.

Clear parallel between Trump tactics to control federal personnel processes and immigration. You tell the courts that the unitary executive is in charge, and must be given more power & use it to politicize internal executive processes intended to provide due process and a fair hearing (e.g. MSPB).

I wrote for the Washington Post for 10 years; here's my take on the homicide now in progress: paulwaldman.substack.com/p/jeff-bezos...

New from @ymriofficial.bsky.social : Is Rogan really turning on Trump? Ehh... Rogan is now more critical of Trump. But his overall framing of immigration is still negative. Fundamentally he is a pushover, and this benefits rightwing guests. youngmenresearchinitiative.substack.com/p/is-joe-rog...

Here @danancona.bsky.social gets at how public funding for education and research provides wide opportunities. I was lucky in HS to attend an NSF-funded math nerd camp, and a PA state-funded agricultural (cows and chocolate) nerd camp. Those were opportunities open to all regardless of wealth.

Scientists and academics are white collar workers.

whenever i get down -- and you have a right to occasionally get down -- i think about the world black americans faced in 1958. if youre a black kid around then the idea that black people could just go vote in the south sounded like fantasy. you have to keep hope. keep your eye on the prize.

There are lessons from WaPo’s destruction for science too. Public funding (via NIH, NSF &c) built in the US a science superpower in large part b/c of democratic values: agencies are accountable to the public through Congress, not controlled by whims of a billionaire. Autocratic control…

Absolutely. The way data is now often treated — to the exclusion of human judgement — as some platonic truth makes me crazy. I've called this '538 Disease' as its rise seems to have been related to 538/Nate Silver's rise. Story time... 1/

My two cents on the many misleading moments in Bhattacharya's testimony today before the Senate HELP Committee. From claiming that there's no war on science, to claiming there weren't grant cancelations, to using loaded right-wing rhetoric, it wasn't great mirandayaver.substack.com/p/science-po...

Please stop saying the bill allows "no more multi-year funding" - or at least be clear the 'more' is in reference to disastrous FY25 levels. The bill allows 39% MYF, same as in FY25, which contributed substantially to a 24% drop in new research. The bill has some wins. MYF is not one of them.

On the walk home from school today I summarized this thread to my 9 year old. He gets it. I can own this and hold my head high. Can the Trump political appointees?

There are approximately 1000 research groups on the #NIH campuses, including Steve Rosenberg's research group, which develops groundbreaking T-cell therapies for cancer. Effectively all of those groups were suddenly prohibited from buying any (!) supplies last year. That is on the leadership.