Jack Iwashyna

Holy shit - this would be very, very bad:
"The databases, called “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” include records for more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names."

Removing race from kidney function algorithm helped more Black patients access transplants Removing race from the eGFR had a big impact, resulting in 5.3 more kidney transplants per 1000 Black candidates.

This is great health equity news for something Black health advocates knew would happen if change happened. www.statnews.com/2026/03/10/k...

I said what I said

Narrator: It was, in fact, a correlation + the seething obsession of a sad little man

To give you a sense of how big a deal this is: Summers’ PhD advisor made NBER what it is today

Important work by members of two of the best #healthpolicy research institutes in the U.S…

Looks like Artscape will be Saturday and Sunday May 23-24 (Memorial Day Weekend like last year)

baltimore.org/event/artsca...

"they pick individual institutions to bully [and] make sure the others are too scared to intervene… It disturbs me. I was a nerdy kid in the 80s. I recognize these tactics from the folks I knew growing up who valued humiliation… [Biff Tannen] is running the country right now.”– @iwashyna.bsky.social

First day of Spring at Homewood
Johns Hopkins University

The Unmaking of the American University For decades, research universities have relied on federal funding, with no guarantee that it will last. Now their survival may depend on compliance with the government.

Must read piece in @newyorker.com for those who care about science or education:

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

by Nicholas Lemann

The Unmaking of the American University For decades, research universities have relied on federal funding, with no guarantee that it will last. Now their survival may depend on compliance with the government.

“What if a university president had taken the conservative critique seriously long before Trump recaptured the White House—would it have made a difference? We have a natural experiment to test that question: Johns Hopkins. And we know what happened: it didn’t help.”

U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies

The U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office.

A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies. Read more: https://scim.ag/4boPkq8

One minor complaint about new Acela: no water fountain anymore

Worth checking! (Especially if you still have @jh… email)

Hey Hopkins fam: we can get a free subscription to Bloomberg through the library

“It wouldn’t just stand there and be. It tried to hide behind its own cleverness. It wasn’t brave”

~ @nicolaz.bsky.social

Also science, too…

Top 5 meme repurposing

I agree with [checks notes] Republican Senator Tillis

I think this deserves at least as much sustained attention from US media as Claudine Gay's dissertation

Cityscape from Kips Bay at night overcast as heck

I believe in forest-bathing ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinrin... ) and the healing power of immersion in nature

And I find a parallel beauty and peace in spending a weekend in the glorious polyglot humanity of NYC. It was a grey weekend in Manhattan, and it was still wonderful

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge

Rebecca Solnit Says the Left’s Next Hero Is Already Here

This happened. The print interview was edited in ways that feel very jumpy, but I got to say some things. Like: Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war. Too many people still expect it to look like war. [and then there's a crazy jump-cut w/out transition.]

Not helping, Joe

Friends, I am in the Strand unsupervised with a credit card

If you know of a plant swap/share focused on outdoor plants, ideally with a native plant bent, somewhere in central MD before late May you have to tell me. It's a rule.

While we're complaining about terminology bells we'll never get to unring, I hate the term data science. All science should be data science. What is science without data??

A person with a microphone saying “ because I think that something awaits me in the divine for resisting“

Them: why do you keep calling yourself a “statistician” instead of a “data scientist”

Me:

“The primary fact of human life is not the lonely individual, but the group which makes the individual possible”

~ Rufus Jones

Two young men in all black, one at a keyboard, one with a woodwind instrument

Hopkins Peabody Conservatory students doing a performance at #Baltimore Penn Station