A tomahawk missile costs the taxpayers the same amount of money as one five-year major NIH research grant. Remember that every time they tell us one of those missed the target, blew up paintings of enemy aircraft or tanks, or was the fifth and unnecessary hit on the same target.
In today’s episode of “insurance companies are the worst”
@bcbsm.bsky.social & Michigan Medicine can’t come to an agreement leaving ~70% of commercially insured Michiganders possibly out of network 7/1.
Their entire goal is to make $ yet are painting a non profit hospital as the villain.
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NEW: Believe it or not, it’s that time of year: the Wisconsin Supreme Court election is next month.
Liberals have a huge opportunity: if they win, they can lock down the majority of this court thru 2030.
That means they’d have it in the next presidential race, a big democracy guardrail.
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An ICE agent shot and killed Ruben Ray Martinez, a US citizen and San Antonio resident, in March 2025. Then ICE and the Texas Department of Public Safety covered it up. He was 23 years old. I am calling for a full investigation into this shooting, including why there was an 8-month cover up.
There’s a term for this experience (which I imagine many of us are having):
Moral injury.
Moral injury is the distress that occurs in response to betrayal by authority structures and being unable to prevent acts that go against one’s deeply held values and moral beliefs.
Applications are open for PREP Bio at the University of Oregon! A great opportunity for postbacs looking for additional research experience while preparing for graduate school. More here: cas.uoregon.edu/UO-PREP-Bio
This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program is funded by the National Science Foundation to create "points of entry" for students interested in research. Students apply from across the country to spend 10 weeks in Bozeman, Montana this summer (May 26, 2026 - August 1, 2026). Admitted students are paired with a faculty mentor, who serves as an advisor for a student's summer project. Each student receives a stipend ($7000 for 10 wks). Travel compensation, room, and board are also provided. Our program leverages MSU’s unique microbiology expertise, focusing specifically on microbes living with little or no oxygen (like those in the hot springs of nearby Yellowstone). Low oxygen microbes are essential to human and ecosystem health. They influence (or control) such processes as the breakdown of food in the GI tract, removal of toxins from our bodies and the environment, and production of greenhouse gases. They are also models for understanding the origins of life on this planet, and the potential for life on other planets. A key goal of our program is to recruit students from schools with limited research infrastructure. Being in Montana, a state with a vibrant Native American community, we are particularly interested in applications from students at tribal colleges. However, ANYONE with an interest in microbiology - or biology/science in general - can and should apply. If willing and able, please share/tweet/spread the word far and wide. Applications are due February 14, 2026. Full details can be found through our website http://www.montana.edu/mbi/reu/
Friends, please help spread the word about our microbiology REU program at Montana State University.
www.montana.edu/mbi/reu/
Each student receives a stipend ($7000 for 10 wks). Travel compensation, room, and board are also provided.
Details in the attached pic--Feb 14 deadline
🧫🧪🦠#microsky
Can’t do good science in an unfree country. Defund ICE.
A nurse. A researcher. A helper.
one thing i am going to do is every time i wanna post something that could get me in trouble i will post some mutual aid links instead so please know every time you see a link it is because i am keeping an inside thought inside www.standwithminnesota.com
And what are they learning? Experts on the formation of internal security services in authoritarian regimes point to a sense of impunity as a warning sign. Regime officials abuse their power when they know they will be protected, and even praised, for doing so. Over the course of weeks and months, we have seen images of DHS officials abusing American citizens and immigrants alike, including killing them. What we do not hear is regime officials calling for credible investigations into such abuses, or even expressing any concerns. Renee Good’s killer was announced innocent, and both Good and her wife was instead the subject of an investigation, a perversion of justice so obvious that an FBI agent and half-dozen career Department of Justice prosecutors assigned to Minnesota resigned.
What we are watching is a paramilitary force learning that they can kill with impunity, that the regime will smear the victim and defend them. Unless politicians and the legal system exerts accountability, it will not stop. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/past-the-b...
We were lucky to work with fabulous collaborators who helped us figure out this story! @tuowang.bsky.social @balunaslab.bsky.social @kylaost.bsky.social @shannonrighi.bsky.social It is always fun to work with these brilliant scientists
This paper is Faith's main thesis project, where she was working on building models that would better capture the complexity of fungal-host interactions
graphical abstract. Left is a fungal cell surrounded by bacteria, and the Hog1 cascade is turned on. Right is a fungal cell covered in mannan fibrils that prevent IgA and caspofungin and increase CLR recognition by macrophages
Candida albicans is usually hanging out with bacterial neighbors, so what happens to the fungus during co-culture?
The bacteria secrete metabolites that induce massive cell wall remodeling that change immune recognition and drug resistance. Read more in our new paper: www.cell.com/current-biol...
It's worth your time to call Hilton to cancel your account with them. 1-800-446-6677. Here's why:
They asked me if it was because of the ICE thing. I said it was. Then they suggested I wait a couple days to see if they were going to change course.
The pressure is getting to them. Let's keep it up.
I think, every so often, about how the student protesters in South Korea figured out there was a finite supply of tear gas, and then staged retreating marches that caused police to burn off most of it, before the big "bring your auntie and kids" marches that ultimately toppled the dictatorship.
"People who understand, deeply and instinctively, that community is something you practice, not something you simply inherit.
In their willingness to roll up their sleeves — sometimes literally between scenes — I saw a truth we often forget: we are strongest when we take care of one another."
The CDC is funding a profoundly unethical study in Guinea-Bissua.
Growth phase influences virulence in Candidozyma auris systemic infection models journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... @teresaomeara.bsky.social These results will be instrumental in the future development of standardized animal models to study C. auris pathogenesis.
The Henry Ford Museum will offer free admission and free parking on December 1 to honor the 70th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ brave choice to stay seated on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Story from Jackson Coleman
A great intro to academic conferencing.
Not sure how I missed this one.
scienceforeveryone.science/getting-the-...
Institutions are failing us, including universities that, in principle, ought to be standing up for academic freedom.
Academic friends, if you want to survive this moment, join the AAUP. Help yourself and colleagues at other institutions.
"Trump canceled your flight" is about as easy as messaging gets.
Your attorney general determines whether there is pushback against antitrust conglomeration in your state, whether your state fights back against Trump’s illegal use of the power of the purse, whether your wage laws are enforced.
A very small group of conservative attorneys general (and solicitors general) have personally contributed to the erosion of our rights.
The fastest way to shut off the federal judicial shitty case pipeline is to NOT ELECT conservative AGs (or SGs).
Here’s my my pitch for why you care about your state attorney general.
The entire conservative judicial machine *depends* on conservative state attorney generals.
John Roberts can’t take a case asking to destroy voting rights if a state attorney generals doesn’t bring it.
Your state attorney general is probably one of THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT elections you have on your ballot, and most people simply do not understand that who you elect will directly determine your rights—and has in the past.
The implicit assumption that white rural voters are the *real* voice of the masses, while the people who live around the major population centers (ie the majority of the country) are out of touch degenerates remains an unshakable feature of punditry. Truly nasty work
