scenes from the wreckage of the endorphin crash, after the most peaceful commute of our lives, gleefully blasting The Dog Days Are Over on repeat, feet perhaps a tad too heavy, wind metaphorically messing w/ already quite messy hair, trying to vaguely remember what exactly our children look like.

"Hope you had a restful break!" we all frantically type, trying to vaguely remember what exactly our jobs are.

Back to school AM after winter break ends.

On the recommendation to read a book—listen to Ann Patchett, on Kate DiCamillo’s wonderful world of kids books: “Don’t miss out. Do not make the mistake I nearly made & fail to read them bc you are under the misconception that they are not for you. They are for you.” www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/b...

it is your DUTY as a parent to be basic and cringe. if your child says "6-7" and you do not say, loud enough for their friends to hear, "8-9?", causing profound silence and intense discomfort, you are neglecting your responsibilities. being cool is for kids. your days of being laughed WITH are over

“It’s true that demographers are real nerds about our data & our statistical methodologies; we are technicians who want to get the numbers as right as they can be. But the reason we study death rates is that deaths really matter….for our culture & the way our society functions.”🧪

“In the Profession of Arms, there are many moral claims, virtues & beliefs that one might consider part of military ethics.… [*But*] Articulating the virtues, claims or elements of military professionalism is morality. **Reflecting, questioning or arguing about those things is Ethics**.”

Every Day is Ethics Day. This means Ethics as a practice is everyone's concern.

"’[as] a direct result of our work tens of thousands of turtles were rescued, rehabilitated, & released, getting a 2nd chance at life.’ NOAA established the STSSN in 1980, which documents sea turtle strandings along the coastal areas from ME to TX & in parts of the US Caribbean.”🧪

Book 1/2026: Redeployment by @philklay.bsky.social I don’t know where I got this copy but I remember when it came out. Three deployments done when this was published in 2014. So much amuses, angers, chastises, and saddens. He writes powerful short stories. Like Owen, I’ll keep writing poetry ✍️

There is a tiny child riding a tiny tricycle through the grocery store, helping his dad with the shopping, and it's comforting to know that even with all of the awfulness, there is still joy and care in the world.

“One of our goals was to publish this huge database of African genomes. This resource would be avail to thousands of biomedical researchers in the US &globally. Now I don’t have money to pay to host the data or run an analysis.I have 200 terabytes of data that’s just sitting on a server in Quebec.”🧪

“…the creators of these [nonconsensual, violent AI] images often seemed to be treating the action like a game or meme, with an air of laughter & detachment.”

Former (forever) New Yorker here — who once conducted a ton of qualitative interviews with seniors living alone in nyc🧪 — footstomping THIS:

if you push the buttons on a vending machine and it spits out a coke, that doesn't mean the vending machine understood thirst

2025 feels like both yesterday and some ancient myth

Good morning! 🪶

“It is no small thing to have the opportunity and permission to use all one's strengths” 🧪

I wish you, and me, and all of us, strength & solidarity & joy in the new year as we find our way together: which we have done this year already, and will arise tomorrow to do again. /thread

snakes leave behind whole skins. all manner of flying creatures, not just butterflies, do them one better, whole new selves from wriggling worms. rocks into gems. mystics die to the flesh to be reborn in the spirit. rebirth is the rule, not the stray exception, if we can grasp it

The share of counties where 95% or more of kindergartners were vaccinated against measles has dropped from 50% before the pandemic to 28%, according to our analysis of public records from 44 states and the District of Columbia. At least 19,000 schools are now more vulnerable to outbreaks.

"When you're in the middle of seeing the curve start to go up, we just don't have any sense of where it's going to stop…. That's the big concern in most of the medical communities right now." 🛟🧪

“The share of US counties where 95% or more of kindergartners were vaccinated against measles—the number doctors say is needed to achieve overall protection for the class, known as ‘herd immunity’— has dropped from 50% before the pandemic to 28%”🛟🧪

“I wait for a scream. I wait for a shout. I wait for the muted tone of polite conversation. I wait for anything other than this silence, dark and thick as smoke. I hold my breath against it and I wait, and I wait, and I wait.” Also: 2025’s ending—perfectly said.

“Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is traditionally considered irreversible. Here, however, we provide **proof of principle** for therapeutic reversibility of advanced AD…[& reveal] targets with potential for optimizing translation to patient care.”🧪🛟 www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Absolutely haunting new reality for writers … and for our entire society as the world embraces AI without considering the dire consequences. Must-read essay by @briangroh.bsky.social — Gift article: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/o...

This year has turned me fully to mush. I'll straight up look a friendly cashier in the eyes and whisper: "Never lose what you have inside you."

💔

Very sad to read that Tatiana Schlossberg died today. I have thought about this essay so often since reading it last month.

I miss my iPod. I miss how I’d pick it up to listen to music and it didn’t do anything else so I didn’t get distracted.

There’s also this weird thing where the media keeps running profiles of different women telling me that a person “thinks she’s brilliant” and every single time I have to pause for a second to ask “wait, people didn’t already know she’s brilliant”?

There’s this weird thing where the media keeps running profiles of different men telling me that people “hate him because he’s brilliant” and every single time I have to pause for a second to ask “wait, people think he’s brilliant”?

Indeed it has been. To keep the focus on early career & grad students: Please know what you are going through is tremendously challenging. It would be easy to throw in the towel, but I've witnessed incredible resilience and grit. So proud... Celebrate your wins! 😎🧪

This has been a tough year for early career scientists including grad students. If you had a professional success this year, no matter how small, share it with us so we can celebrate with you! 🧪

heroism, heroically embodied 🤣 @wendiaarons.bsky.social & Johanna Gohmann — wowsers

How I’m walking out of 2025. See you at the equator.

“She tried 25+ meds; 2 dozen different talk, art &behavioral therapies; dozens of rounds of ECT; &guided psychedelics. She felt better, s’times—for a while.But, relentlessly, they would return, the monsters that stalked her when she was awake &then moved into her dreams” @stephanienolen.bsky.social

The numbers for Baltimore are astounding. www.thebanner.com/community/cr...

“Baltimore is days away from finishing 2025 w/its lowest homicide total in at least 48yrs—read that again. The city could end the yr with <150 killings, the lowest since the BPD reported 171 homicides in 1977, before 2/3 of Balt residents were born, according to the 2024 American Community Survey”🧪🛟

i just did it all scared

Kevin’s chart really says it all. this is what it looks like when a vulnerable user gets sucked in by an engagement optimized chatbot

here’s a gift link to the piece wapo.st/49uy2q1

Study “est’ed that more than 1 in 8 Americans 18-21 use gen AI for mental health advice, w/90%+ of them finding its advice at least somewhat helpful. Roughly 1.2M users per week on average share ‘explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent’ w/ ChatGPT, according to an est’ed prev”🧪🛟

What a beautiful photo from last night’s snowfall. Photo credit: Adam Gray for The New York Times

“Many who want medication while incarcerated don’t get it… In a recent JAMA study, representing over 3,000 US jails, fewer than 1/2 offered some access to medication for opioid use disorder.… often jails & prisons don’t have providers with the expertise necessary to give the medications.”🧪🛟

“Many studies have shown that medication for opioid use disorder makes recovery more likely, & reduces the risk of overdose death…. Federal data…showed up to 1 in 4 overdose deaths nationally in 2021 involved people recently released from jail or prison.”🧪🛟

“For decades, autism has been described as a spectrum—an elastic term that stretches from nonverbal children to adults w/ doctorates. Beneath that vast range lies a shared pattern of social communication & behavioral differences, long resistant to neat explanations.“🧪

“The [autism]spectrum spans such a wide range that she assumed the categories would blur together, like overlapping circles in a Venn diagram. Instead, the data resolved into 4 grps w/their own genetic &behavioral signatures. ‘That level of distinctiveness was really surprising,’ [lead author]said”🧪

This is so core to the misunderstandings (purposeful and not) about AI in education