Great summary of why this is a 5-alarm fire for the future of US science. Public comment is open at this link, and it takes only a few mins: www.regulations.gov/search?filte...

Comments are now open. You can comment here: www.regulations.gov/search?filte... Note that even if the administration goes ahead with this abomination, the comments are essential to aid subsequent litigation! 2/2

hard to emphasize how much power this takes away from career civil servants and experts/scientists and gives it to trump and his deputies like vought. spitting in the face of congress and the rule of law

Just in case anyone out there was not clear about where the GOP now stands on this issue...

Is there a cat version of the quinceanera? Toby is celebrating today—he was adopted as a stray so his exact birthday is unknown, but CVS needed a date on record to fill his prescription (for ‘Toby Feline Jennings’) so I arbitrarily picked May 26, and so it has been ever since. Happy birthday!

NYT reviewed "over a dozen hours of cabinet meeting footage ...On average, at least one of every six sentences either flattered Mr. Trump, gave him credit or criticized his political opponents.'" And based on the individual stats Rubio is Flatterer-in-Chief, outperforming all other cabinet members.

1/ Important story. “Even the president’s supporters are alarmed...as this war stumbles to a close, it is clear that the president, too, is lost: He didn’t know what he was doing when he began it, and now he doesn’t know how to get out of it...”

This new policy threatens to do great damage to US research.

For the unpatriotic, those are: Paddington, Winnie the Pooh, Rupert and Sooty. WE SHALL REMEMBER THEM.

This threatens to do further damage to US science - it will deter many international researchers who hope to make their careers here in the US, as I myself have done.

"...compromised Bluesky accounts included those of people who are influential in their fields, though perhaps not famous. They were journalists and professors, a pollster in Texas, an anime artist and a filmmaker..." Watch out everyone!

If anyone is visiting London, I’m told that the exhibition of native Hawai’ian art at the British Museum is very impressive. Also, they were apparently fans of Beavis and Butthead.

@maxkozlov.bsky.social covered the staffing shortages at NIH. www.nature.com/articles/d41... 1/3

"You cannot celebrate European civilization while simultaneously attacking the legal and political order invented here, or while openly seeking to undermine the institutions that protect pluralism and dissent" An answer to Vance and Rubio: www.erstestiftung.org/en/a-speech-...

This is shocking and should be widely reported. He died needlessly because nobody was motivated to help.

MIT is among the most important research institutions in the US and for decades it has been a magnet for global talent. Now thanks to Trump, its research is down 10%, and federal awards and grad student admissions are both down 20%. Not the way to make America great again…

I moved from UK to US and got my green card many years ago, but procrastinated about becoming a citizen until 2023, when I realized that Trump might be reelected and that bad things might happen. Those things are now happening, so I am glad to have a citizenship certificate from Joe Biden.

interesting rationale from a prospective juror in the Elon Musk Twitter stock manipulation case

And for what?

Almost as prestigious as Trump's FIFA peace prize.

This is a great parenting lesson - teaching kids self-confidence at an early age.

Looks like the results were not even close. Indiana voters have spoken, and have made it clear that the GOP is inextricably tied to the most corrupt and dishonest president in the history of the country.

I don’t doubt that antidepressants are sometimes overprescribed, and I’m not up on the latest evidence, but RFK is not a credible source and there is no reason to trust his advice. His recommendations will be driven by political ambition, ideology and money, but not by medical evidence.

A friend asks: “Has it occurred to anyone that the MAGAs think you have to show IDs at restaurants because they’ve been eating all their meals at strip clubs? This isn’t even an unreasonable theory”

Today I did (but can't quite say ran) the 7 Sisters Trail Race in Amherst MA. It’s about 11 ½ miles with 4500’ ascent and is reputedly one of the hardest trail races in New England. It attracts a serious crowd, so I was toward the back of the pack as expected—happy to have survived without injury!

"But in addition to its terroir...a garden will inevitably reflect its keeper, acting almost as “a type of self-portrait that reveals one’s way of being in the world.” If that's true, I am in deep trouble!

NYT says he 'cites falsehood,' because we don't like to use the L-word...

Never mind what's happening elsewhere in the world, it's heartwarming to know that "Melania Trump, the first lady, led preparations for the dinner, which the White House has said is aimed at honoring the “special relationship” between the two countries."

If this is leadership, I would hate to see capitulation. If the Republican's drummed up opposition to gravity, the National Academy would stop speaking about it. 4/4

Remember that every dollar that Trump and his family are making on these markets is a dollar stolen from other people who do not have the same access to insider information.

Important point—domestic violence amplified by access to guns is so common in the US that a horrific massacre of 8 children hardly registers in national news. Many voters are fine with that, but smaller changes are politically possible, and could help reduce the death toll.

God moves (drugs) in mysterious ways – a woman in Wichita Falls TX pleaded guilty to soaking the pages of Bibles in synthetic cannabinoids before mailing them to prison inmates.

It's not the first example. A few months ago Trump was channeling the same speech in an address to the nation - referring to immigrants who were 'poisoning and destroying our population"

The negative conclusion from this analysis seems unfounded. Anti-amyloid antibody drugs are not identical, even if based on the same general hypothesis. Most failed in clinical trials, but two were successful and are currently approved. It makes no sense to combine both groups in a single analysis.

"An early indicator of the illness can lead individuals to slowly develop worse judgment or begin making more dangerous choices..." Perhaps starting a war in the Middle East might be one example?

In this short clip he says twice that “it's supposed to be me as a doctor,” then suggests that he is depicted as a Red Cross worker, and that only ‘fake news’ could interpret it as Jesus iconography. Has any other president ever spouted so much nonsense within 30 seconds?

Trump posted an image depicting himself as Jesus healing the sick and sharply criticized Pope Leo XIV, accusing him of weakness on crime and backing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. #US

While Trump’s GOP deserves to own the electoral consequences in this case, it’s not good that the US has built so much infrastructure based on the expectation of cheap gas forever, and that gas prices have so much impact on US elections.

Magyar appears to have the necessary 2/3 majority that will allow his govt to clean up the mess that Orban has left —presumably a difficult task after years of corruption and misrule. Will there be lessons here for a future Dem president and Congress who will need to clean up after Trump?

JD Vance is heading to the US and is ready to offer his assistance to any candidates back home.

If Hungary can free itself from the rule of a corrupt Russian agent, the USA can too.

Trump's response to a question about the effect on US oil exports. Listen to the whole clip. He is unhinged.

"As the night grew late on Saturday and the war once again seemed poised to spin out of Mr. Trump’s control, the vice president departed Pakistan without an agreement. The president stayed seated in Miami, his eyes trained on the men punching and kicking each other in a bloodstained cage."

Great explanation of why Hungary’s election matters. Orban is Putin’s stooge within the EU and has been working for years to undermine European democracy. He is also Trump’s role model for how to transform democracy into autocracy—a model that is about to be put to the test tomorrow.

I never expected to feel sympathy for Peter Mandelson, but what else was he supposed to do?

Good short explanation from Linda Bilmes, a Harvard expert on public finances, on why the long-term cost of the Iran war will be $1 trillion.

I’m no physicist and my intuition may be wrong, but it seems implausible to me that you can detect a heartbeat based on magnetometry at 40-mile range, above the background (surely not zero, even in a remote wilderness). Can anyone with medical physics expertise weigh in?

A small (in the grand scheme of things) but much-needed item of good news.

The only good to come from this is Nichols’ excellent metaphor: The people around Trump were chosen “not for the strength of their character but for their pliancy: [Hegseth and Gabbard] exist as national political figures only because they circle Trump like dwarf moons around a gas giant.”

Seems a long time ago, but on Feb 14 I was ice climbing at the artificial canyon in Auburn MA. One of my companions had a drone and just sent this photo. I am still a novice and was safely top-roped here (I don’t have the skills to lead), so it was less dangerous than it looks—but still a cool pic!