The reason people like the Pope’s AI missive is because there is simply no other institution has taken the side of humanity in the humanities sense. I’m not Catholic, but I am a human who cares about the human mind and the poetics Catholics call a soul.

If you're wondering why Chris Olah, the cofounder of AI company Anthropic, was sitting on the stage with Pope Leo today as the pontiff unveiled his new encyclical on AI, well ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN. religionnews.com/2026/05/22/w...

The pope addresses transhumanism and posthumanism (hubristic sci-fi delusions of some tech bros): “If the human being is treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable or less worthy.” www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

This $2 billion was not stolen from the NSF budget, oh no finance.yahoo.com/sectors/tech...

introduce yourself with ten live bands you've seen Stereolab Yeah Yeah Yeahs The Breeders Throwing Muses / Kristin Hersh Godspeed You! Black Emperor Silversun Pickups Sleater Kinney Bauhaus / Peter Murphy Foals AWOLNATION

Here's another ethics reminder for federal employees, sent just now in an unironic fashion. "Employees shall not hold financial interests that conflict with the conscientious performance of duty" (or it could be that the local point of contact has a sense of humor)

Meanwhile, federal employees were just sent a reminder on ethical conduct 🙄 "Employees shall not engage in financial transactions using nonpublic Government information or allow the improper use of such information to further any private interest."

sad news for grand unified theories of connectomics:

"a PRS is not an internal predisposition waiting to be realized; it is a risk estimate derived from a model constructed from population-level DNA associations without clearly defined biological mechanisms."

What's the deal with X-Labs at NSF? (a grift for the tech industry) cc: @cdelawalla.bsky.social

Well, would ya look at that! NSF is going to send >10% of its current budget to industry (read: tech start ups) instead of universities…it’s as if the admin is trying to dismantle our basic science mechanism and use it as a start up fund for private companies 💁🏻‍♀️ www.nsf.gov/tip/updates/...

The man who forgot his addiction: Sustained remission of cocaine use disorder following overdose-induced bilateral hippocampus stroke www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate But Not Instantiate Consciousness deepmind.google/research/pub... "The problem [with computational functionalism] ... is rooted in a misunderstanding of how physics relates to information and computation.”

Senator Schiff wants a former hedge fund manager (NSF nominee Jim O’Neill) to award grants for “AI Literacy” programs that will promote the views of tech bros. Meanwhile, NSF has been decimated: only 903 awards in FY2026, a mere 25% of FY21-24 cc: @jacquelyngill.bsky.social @jeremymberg.bsky.social

Meanwhile, my senator @schiff.senate.gov has sponsored the awful tech-backed LIFT AI Act, where a Thiel protégé (NSF Director nominee Jim O’Neill) awards grants to teach “AI literacy“ in schools www.404media.co/literacy-in-... This literally steals money away from post-docs

I declined because I couldn’t bear to review excellent grants that wouldn’t be funded

This was fitting news to receive on May 1, international workers day. I will be returning to work on Monday after being kept on retaliatory administrative leave for 5 months and 3 weeks. I return along with the brave Katrina Declaration signers from FEMA, also reinstated this week. 🧵1/?

Grievance, Retribution, Hypocracy, Censorship, Deceit - all the hallmarks are there sciencebasedmedicine.org/censorjay/

Turning Point USA (AMFEST), National Conservative Conf (NatCon), GOP Doctors Caucus, Hoover Institute, Fox (Fox & Friends, Ingraham Angle), Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Honestly with Bari Weiss, Doctor’s Lounge podcast, DisInformation Chronicle podcast, Huberman Lab, MAHA Summit

The Abundance Ecosystem: Understanding the figures and groups behind the abundance agenda therevolvingdoorproject.org/wp-content/u... Funders: Andreessen Horowitz, New American Industrial Alliance, Stand Together (Koch family), Pacific Legal Foundation, California Forever (billionaire-backed)

Last Friday, Trump fired the National Science Board. The NSB is made up of distinguished scientists whose job is to oversee the National Science Foundation, setting research priorities by thinking beyond election cycles. It was designed to be independent. We don't know what this means, but it's bad.

Rep. Lofgren's statement:

Anyone who lives in the vicinity of Russ Vought's home: please make large posters of this image to remind him that he's depriving other parents of live-saving treatments for their children. Vought's daughter has CF and takes Trikafta, developed using NIH funding www.usatoday.com/story/news/h...

New, from me: Take the Palantir manifesto seriously, if not literally. It reveals that our tech philosopher kings want public money, but without public accountability. This creates a dilemma for governments unaligned with its techno-fascist vision. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/palantir-w...

The Blatant Reasons for the Destruction of NSF (and other federal science agencies). This post covers one of three. 1. The tech bros have decided that AI will do everything neurocritic.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-...

Vought believes that if you're not one of the 10% of Americans who adhere to white christian nationalism, you are damned to hell and god will smite you and he — Russell Vought — deserves to see you punished. Perhaps this explains his penchant for traumatizing federal employees.

Palanitir's Project Maven is responsible for killing 150 innocent school girls in Iran. Here is Palantir's manifesto: "We're doing it! We're doing it! ... Palantir is here to disrupt... to scare our enemies and on occasion kill them and we hope you're in favor of that..." youtu.be/G5gC_fParbY?...

Reason #2 for the destruction of NSF (and other science agencies): hateful white christian nationalist troll Russ Vought neurocritic.blogspot.com/2026/04/reas...

Russ Vought specifically calls out USAID as something he's proud of (illegally) dismantling. The cut foreign aid has likely already killed hundreds of thousands of people and will eventually kill millions.

Report the president using: anti-christianbiasreporting @va.gov (no spaces) We cannot allow attacks on the Pope! www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Trump signed an executive disorder prohibiting this behavior. Report him using email. submit any instance of anti-Christian discrimination to [email protected] . Submissions should include sufficient identifiers e.g. names, dates, locations. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

The last time I tried to engage with Jay Bhattacharya in dialogue I ended up on administrative leave. 🤷‍♀️

Maybe you should invite one of the many people podcast Jay censored, you know, to spark productive conversations across divides.

War economies and collapsing health systems www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

This is what comes from cadre of white, Christian evangelical leaders who adopt nationalism rather than faith; from legacy media ignoring Trump’s mental and physical decline; from bastardization of Wa Post and CBS; from GOP abdicating constitutional functions. open.substack.com/pub/contrari...

Vought believes that if you're not one of the 10% of Americans who adhere to white christian nationalism, you are damned to hell and god will smite you and he — Russell Vought — deserves to see you punished. Perhaps this explains his penchant for traumatizing federal employees.

Reason #2 for the destruction of NSF (and other science agencies): hateful white christian nationalist troll Russ Vought neurocritic.blogspot.com/2026/04/reas...

The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...

Here's the full Trump-Vought FY27 budget proposal. www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u... It lists NIH as "-$5 billion" with a top line budget of $41B. The math doesn't math tho bc FY26 budget was $48.7, making $41B a $7.7B (not $5B) cut. Also calls to eliminate NIMHD, FIC & NCCIH.

cc: @abeba.bsky.social @olivia.science @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social @needhibhalla.bsky.social @docbecca.bsky.social @kheyduk.bsky.social @edzitron.com @gilduran.com @xriskology.bsky.social (sorry for the self-promotion, but I cited or was inspired by your work)

The Blatant Reasons for the Destruction of NSF (and other federal science agencies). This post covers one of three. 1. The tech bros have decided that AI will do everything neurocritic.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-...

Meet the billionaires on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. And behold the destruction of NSF neurocritic.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-...

Arrest corrupt Kushner. No nepotism. #NoKings

NO KINGS! #NoKingsSF

Kill Chain: On the automated bureaucratic machinery that killed 175 children, by Kevin Baker. This is the first version of the piece about Palantir’s Killing Machine, which later appeared in The Guardian artificialbureaucracy.substack.com/p/kill-chain

What (i.e., *who*) was responsible for killing over 150 girls in Minab, Iran? Palantir, not Anthropic “Project Maven uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and fuse vast amounts of surveillance data from multiple sources made possible through data integration using Palantir Technologies.”

UNSOLVED MYSTERY

Rasmussen Retorts: NIH FFS: The Freedom From Science Lab Leak Lecture Series discussion of Matt Ridley lecture at NIH hosted by Jay Bhattacharya w @angierasmussen.bsky.social @kgandersen.bsky.social @ggronvall.bsky.social 👉 bit.ly/4cWpiLF

WHAT? “Notably, hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) was well preserved, indicating that the cellular machinery of learning and memory remains operational.” [10 to 15 hr after cryopreservation by vitrification] www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

RETRACTED FOR THE SECOND TIME: phony study on "biofield energy" treatment neurocritic.blogspot.com/2026/03/retr... An update on the saga of a supernatural intervention published in peer-reviewed scientific journals cc: @retractionwatch.com