Monica Gerber

I find it bleak how many people seem to have given up on having any kind of intellectual life. Depression is rampant because we’ve abandoned books & hobbies in favor of joyless amusements. The single most attractive thing a person can do is read often & delight in learning.

I get yelled at for saying this but for many hundreds of years people went to university not to get diplomas or be employable but because immersion in the humanities was considered foundational to a good life, and school must return to its original purpose: the joy of learning.

Here Comes the Sunscreen Ingredient the U.S. Has Been Waiting For (Little Darlin') What’s coming, what the science says, and what to do in the meantime

For the first time in decades, the U.S. sunscreen landscape is truly changing. A modern sunscreen filter that has been rigorously tested for safety will eventually give consumers more options that feel better, protect better, and fit seamlessly into everyday routines.

it's worth reposting this at regular intervals these days

❤️

A bearded man in nurse's scrubs offers aid to Justice, wearing a blindfold and holding a sword and scales, who has fallen to her knees.

Street art memorializing Alex Pretti in Seattle. Per r/Seattle, it was painted on a building facing Swedish Hospital in the First Hill neighborhood www.reddit.com/r/nursing/co...

What a way to end a week.

This shit is so inhumane it's unbelievable.

photo 1/23/26 by Alex Kormann for The Minnesota Star Tribune

www.startribune.com/ice-raids-mi...

Two small children hold signs they made. "LEAVE MY FRIENDS ALONE!" "ICE GIT OUT YA FUCKIN DUMBIES 😡"

Gotta remind yourself not to cry when you see the kid's signs.

It's negative -25°F and tears are dangerous.

"LEAVE MY FRIENDS ALONE!"

"ICE GIT OUT YA FUCKIN DUMBIES 😡"

📣Corvallis is a forming a new R-Ladies group and hosing their first event on Jan 22 at 5:30 pm at Common Fields. Details and an RSVP for the event are here: www.meetup.com/rladies-corv...

Please share widely!

@weare.rladies.org #Rstats #Rlang #R #oregon

I’m a designer. The new food pyramid is outdated and confusing The new food pyramid represents “an outdated way of thinking about visual communication,” writes a designer.

In other news, @debbiemillman.bsky.social wrote about the design of the new food pyramid. Spoiler: it's terrible design reflecting terrible politics. www.statnews.com/2026/01/13/n...

You know you work with data nerds when you post a Slack about nearby flooding and the conversation turns into how great @noaa.gov's plots are. water.noaa.gov/gauges/PESW1

Vibe Coding: Empowering and Imprisoning - Anil Dash A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

I sat for a long while with my complicated feelings about "vibe coding". It is _genuinely_ empowering for many — opening a door to creating with code that otherwise would never exist. Also? It enables a dangerous dependency that could be a path to serfdom for coders. www.anildash.com/2025/12/02/v...

Furloughed feds pick up Seattle beach trash to keep serving the public Furloughed federal employees were out in the rain picking up cigarette butts, bottle caps, and other trash at Seattle’s Golden Gardens Park on Friday.

Here in Seattle, furloughed NOAA employees were out in the pouring rain cleaning up beaches yesterday, part of a national week of service organized by federal workers who can't do their jobs due to the shutdown.

Story by @heyjohnryan.bsky.social at KUOW, our federally defunded public radio station.

📣 Come work @openscapes.bsky.social ! We're looking for a NASA Openscapes Team Member to improve access & use of NASA suborbital data thru reproducible notebook clinics. Apply by October 26, 2025. Start December 2025.

Details including pay rate: openscapes.org/connect#work...
Please share!

It's rude to show AI output to people | Alex Martsinovich Feeding slop is an act of war

distantprovince.by/posts/its-ru...

Asking for someone's input and then getting chatgpt-generated text is so discouraging.

If RFK Jr approach to develop a vaccine against all viruses involves sequentially exposing himself to each of these viruses and letting his amazing body develop a vaccine the natural way, then I highly endorse this approach.

I would start with something easy like Nipah or Hendra virus

In the Future All Food Will Be Cooked in a Microwave, and if You Can’t Deal With That Then You Need to Get Out of the Kitchen As a restaurant owner – I’m astounded at the rate of progress since microwaves were released a few short years ago. Today’s microwave can cook a frozen burrito. Tomorrow’s m…

"Many chefs I know get upset at me … But this is the truth: If you can’t cook everything you make in a microwave thats a skill issue. You need to learn now because when everything is cooked in a microwave you’ll be out of a job."

www.colincornaby.me/2025/08/in-t... (h/t @olivia.science )

Thank you Dr. Schrier for visiting us at Fred Hutch. It's such a crucial moment for scientific advances in vaccines & cancer. I appreciate that I have a congressperson who recognizes that.

RFK Jr. & HHS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) YouTube video by LastWeekTonight

Here’s the show. Please watch!
It’s all about HHS and the first segment is about NIH.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H34...

Non-Government Career Paths for U.S. Federal Data Scientists A community support and networking event hosted by rOpenSci and Openscapes

"rOpenSci and Openscapes are lucky to have as members many U.S. federal employees who enrich our work and community. In a time of great uncertainty for so many government workers, we want to support our members who are considering their next career steps."
ropensci.org/events/datas...

To staff at CDC and everyone working in public health: we’re with you. | Tom Frieden | 50 comments To staff at CDC and everyone working in public health: we’re with you. | 50 comments on LinkedIn

Some words of encouragement from Dr. Tom Frieden, former Director of CDC.

www.linkedin.com/posts/tom-fr...

It's getting late on Friday, so you know what that means: HHS has just updated its list of cancelled grants and programs.

The document went from 14 pages long to 42 pages.

Just an incalculable list of cancelled COVID-19 funding.
taggs.hhs.gov/Content/Data...

I Took My Work Outside Every Day for a Month This Winter. Here’s What I Learned. For a month this winter, I committed to taking my laptop outside every workday—no matter the weather—to see how it impacted my life

I Took My Work Outside Every Day for a Month This Winter. (“My work” = typing on a laptop.) “Even though I’m not perfectly warm, it lifts my mood to be outside. I can hear the community of songbirds holding their morning conferences, a barking dog…” [outsideonline.com]

Nice essay!

"LLMs, while they already have all of humanity's knowledge in memory, haven't generated any new knowledge by connecting previously unrelated facts...We're currently building very obedient students, not revolutionaries."

Dozens of Clinical Trials Have Been Frozen in Response to Trump’s USAID Order (Gift Article) The stop-work order on U.S.A.I.D.-funded research has left thousands of people with experimental drugs and devices in their bodies, with no access to monitoring or care.

This is so deeply, deeply, deeply fucked up.

“The trial was shutting down. A silicone ring inserted into her vagina, needed to be removed right away. … The stop-work order was so immediate and sweeping that the research staff would be violating it if they helped the women remove the rings.”

Illustration by Allison Horst. a seaside landscape with animals on different paths

📣 Openscapes Champions Program at Fred Hutch Cancer Center Apr-Jun 2025!
Please share. Encourage your Hutch friends to sign up! Leading this with @seankross.com @monicagerber.bsky.social @tladeras.bsky.social & Chris Lo
openscapes.org/events/2025-...
#OpenScience #KinderScience

This is how you do open science.