Kate Starbird

Skepticism about vaccines was once a fringe view, held by a small group of Americans. But the Covid-19 pandemic, with its mandates and rapid rollout of vaccines, breathed new vigor into the anti-vaccine movement and bred hostility toward the medical establishment.

“The pandemic” didn’t “breathe” the hesitance, @apoorvanyt.bsky.social. The anti-vaccine movement leaders made a conscious decision to exploit it to undermine trust. They literally made videos about how they would do exactly that, before the vaccines existed. Show your readers those videos!

Deepfake Financial Fraud

🚨NEW REPORT🚨 datasociety.net/library/deep... Deepfake Financial Fraud: The Global Regulation of AI-Driven Scams - a collab with Anya Schiffrin & Navya Sinha, Anusha Wangnoo, Kaylee Williams, Elnara Huseynova & Audrey Hatfield at @columbiasipa.bsky.social

This isn't going to go well for them...

I think about this photo a lot.

He also seems to have a magical power, aided by friendly and/or useless media, to bend reality to his will. Hopefully he’ll fail in this case. But that only through concerted effort to tell and keep telling the truth about this event. Make it impossible for him to deny.

I’m not convinced Trump’s rewriting of the horrible bombing of a girls school won’t be Russia hoaxed, election rigged, and Chinese bioweaponed into Trumpist canon.

How is this legal? If you use my image and name to sell basketball shoes… you have to pay me. So, it can’t be different to use my name to give paper feedback? Who knows a lawyer? I need some $ for my research…

Are they selling our names as their "experts" without even asking much less compensating? We need some NIL for faculty members now?

Wait, WHUT?

Trump is using immigration policy to suppress speech, lawsuit claims A new lawsuit accuses the administration of violating the First Amendment by threatening the visas of researchers for work on disinformation and content moderation of social media.

A new lawsuit accuses the administration of violating the First Amendment by threatening the visas of researchers for work on disinformation and content moderation of social media. n.pr/4be42ye

Technology Researchers Challenge Trump Policy Threatening Deportation for Work on Social Media Platforms and Online Harms

"The Trump administration is engaged in a brazen and far-reaching campaign of censorship while cynically and falsely claiming that censorship is what it is fighting." CITR v. Rubio, new case just filed in DDC by @knightcolumbia.org & @protectdemocracy.org. knightcolumbia.org/content/tech...

Since we got “Iran interfered in the election!” as a justification for war, have Maduro sitting in jail, and Tulsi was snuffling around Georgia looking for “evidence” of god knows what—here are the Chinese, Vezuelan, Italian, Iranian, etc conspiracy theories liars in power are dredging back up. 📡💻🗳️

John Oliver on right wing grifter, "brain" behind the "censorship industrial complex" and USAID destroyer, Mike Benz:

"a chronically online lunatic"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU8S...

Let's be clear about what the "SAVE Act" is all about, another phase of the "rigged election" strategy. Trump is exploiting the voter fraud myth he created to pass laws and enact policies that will make it harder to vote, suppress votes, cause confusion, & sow distrust democracy. Rinse. Repeat.

This is no different from Putin saying MH17 was shot down by Ukraine or Assad saying rebels gassed themselves.

Me speaking at the Stand Up for Science rally.

Group posed with UCS posters plus Beaker.

Today we showed up.

Feeling proud of scientists and science supporters in this moment. Thank you all. #Standupforscience

At the #DC rally today. Good turnout, good vibes. The people get it. Keep up the fight, everyone!
(Rep @repsuhas.bsky.social and @raskin.house.gov speaking behind me.)

I didn’t take that many pics and hope to see more from everyone there!

Learn more about the Seattle rally here!!!

fight2win.standupforscience.net/Seattle-March/

Unfortunately, I was not well enough to help and my youngest had to make his sign alone. But look how well he did! He’s excited to see others out today!

Stand Up for Science plans second rally on March 7 Public health chaos and research funding cuts are inspiring nationwide pro-science protests against the Trump administration

Public health chaos and research funding cuts are inspiring nationwide pro-science protests against the Trump administration

Golden State Warriors' Steve Kerr is standing up for campus freedom. He's joined coaches including Doc Rivers, Jim Boeheim, Muffet McGraw, and more in signing a letter calling on elected offic... Golden State Warriors' Steve Kerr is standing up for campus freedom. He's joined coaches including Doc Rivers, Jim Boeheim, Muffet McGraw, and more in signing a letter calling on elected officials to ...

@goldenstatewarrior.bsky.social's Coach Steve Kerr is standing up for campus freedom!

Coaches across the nation launched a letter campaign calling on elected officials to keep political interference out of our colleges and universities.

We can't have college sports without academic freedom.

I am? That would be strange, because I don’t agree with the argument you say I’m making. First off, my post quotes someone else, who wrote a blog, which also doesn’t make that argument. I’m integrating AI into workflows, especially into my coding but also other parts of the research process.

The Central Lie of Prediction Markets Polymarket and Kalshi promise the wisdom of the crowds. They deliver something very different.

Wrote about the central lie of prediction markets. How they are the perfect technology for a low-trust society, simultaneously exploiting and reifying an environment in which believing the motives behind any person or action becomes harder. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

For sure. Dave makes the first point… but it’s not just AI that is killing it. And I agree that AI is going to be integrated into many parts of the research process. But these “AI just did the study on its own!” papers aren’t the kind of research my team does or values.

Page 2 of letter by Daniel Swain. It begins: constructive suggestions regarding how the already remarkable institutional efficiency and societal impact of NCAR could be further enhanced through increased (not decreased) federal support in the years to come. Please note: To ensure the highest level of technical rigor, this response focuses exclusively on the core atmospheric and natural hazard science topics within the author’s primary domain of expertise; for this reason, I have omitted a response to Topic 4 (Space Weather)." NCAR weather modeling and atmospheric observing capabilities a) Management and operations of weather-related observational platforms, modeling and science as a stand-alone activity. The proposed management of weather-related research as a stand-alone activity is a scientifically regressive path that ignores the fundamental physical reality of the Earth system. Modern atmospheric science has demonstrated (largely, it is worth noting, due to groundbreaking researc

Page 3 of letter by Daniel Swain. It begins: b) Management and operations of weather-related observational platforms, modeling and science as combined with other NSF investments/facilities. The highly specialized nature of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) infrastructure represents an extraordinary value proposition that cannot be replicated by combining it with more generalized NSF programs. The NWSC is not a generic high-performance computing (HPC) facility; it is a laboratory uniquely optimized for atmospheric science workflows, with a hardware and storage architecture specifically designed to handle the massive, high-bandwidth data demands of Earth system modeling. Furthermore, its model of providing an excellent, free-at-point-of-use technical support team ensures that the focus remains on the science rather than the overhead of systems administration. This centralized expertise allows individual researchers, smaller labs, and even entire universities—who would otherwi

Page 4 of letter by Daniel Swain. It begins: NCAR Mesa Lab (located in Boulder, Colorado) a/b) Ownership of the NSF NCAR Mesa Lab building for public and private use. Far more than just an office building, NSF NCAR Mesa Lab is an iconic and purpose-built facility designed specifically for the study of atmospheric science. Its position at the physical interface of the Rocky Mountain foothills and the Great Plains is a deliberate reflection of its mission, serving as a visible symbol—in an iconically American setting—of the federal government's enduring commitment to science in service of society. For many in the field, including myself, the Mesa Lab holds singular importance as a focal gathering point for the global atmospheric science community. My own early career exposure to weather and Earth system modeling, in fact, occurred within these walls, and I have long felt that the facility’s architecture and location inspire a necessary sense of awe regarding the atmosphere’s complexity a

Page 1 of letter by Daniel Swain. It begins: Dear Acting Director Stone and the NSF NCAR restructuring team: I am writing to provide a formal response to the Request for Information (RFI) regarding the proposed restructuring of the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and its critical weather science infrastructure contained within the January 23, 2026 Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) entitled “NSF Intent to Restructure Critical Weather Infrastructure.” I submit these comments in my professional capacity as an atmospheric research scientist within the University of California, where my research focuses on the physics and dynamics of atmospheric processes related to extreme weather events and their role in shifting natural hazard and disaster risk. My perspective is informed by a public-sector career dedicated to bridging the gap between fundamental atmospheric research and real-world application in an academic context, with a particular focus on understanding and mitigating

I just submitted my letter to NSF responding to its proposal to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). I argue that doing so would be an astonishing and avoidable misstep, and that federal support for the institution should in fact be *increased.* [1/4]

Washington defends gender-affirming care against unconstitutional attacks.

Gender-affirming care remains legal and protected in the state of Washington.

Last year, our team secured a preliminary injunction blocking two executive orders that threaten to end federal funding to medical institutions providing gender-affirming care.

Can AI Replace Social Science Researchers? No. No it can't. Come on, now.

Karpf: "If you think Claude Code is a better social scientist than you, then you’re probably right. But that means, at some point, you stopped trying to answer interesting/puzzling questions and started trying to win the publish-the-most-articles race." davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/can-ai-rep...

Screw Covid, I'm going to Sturgis. Troy Tassier is a professor of economics at Fordham University and the author of The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus: How Our Unequal Society Fails Us during Outbreaks.

"Screw Covid, I'm going to Sturgis!" The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, held in August 2020, was the epitome of the individual choice mindset. Of course it spread cases outward and caused infections, illness, and death. A new research paper allows us to watch the Sturgis Covid wave spread across the US.

* what a literature review is for

And if they think AI can do the literature review “better” than human researchers, then maybe they don’t understand what a literature is for? (For a person to gain and the demonstrate that they truly know a space, before deciding what about it needs to be built upon or contested.)