Dr. Rabbithole

Today, I am making a long overdue post, adding USAID to Courage is Contagious On March 5, USAID wrote a dissent letter. It read:

My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man.

Broke: Abolish ICE Woke: Abolish MBA www.nytimes.com/2026/10/18/o...

Unacceptable. Meta took down the No Kings Instagram today and kept it offline for well over an hour. Censoring free speech to appease Donald Trump? We the people deserve answers, but regardless, we will not be silenced.

Students from North Carolina A&T can be seen marching back to their HBCU after voting on the first day of early voting in the state. The Guilford County Board of Elections voted to remove the school’s on-campus polling site. (video via Todd Simmons) greensboro.com/news/local/g...

A wild thing about Harris is that he credits his father for teaching him about the horrors of socialism. His father spent time in a Soviet POW camp. In 1944. Remind me, who were the Soviets fighting in 1944?

🤍 Rest in power. Helen Branswell, whose reporting on infectious diseases and public health drew acclaim, dies at 69 www.statnews.com/2026/10/13/h... via @statnews.com

They found the time to chainsaw 500 trees with less than a day's notice, but the Epstein files are nowhere to be found. Nothing says love of country like clear-cutting the capital before anyone can stop you.

You don't even understand the damage Zelensky did to Republicans midterm messaging by taking out that Russian bot farm.

Uh oh, did someone’s website and personal account experience a big drop in activity after Ukraine hit a Russian data center?

"The 2.25m barrels of diesel Putin offered Trump will have zero net impact on the world price of diesel. But accepting them will collapse the US-led sanctions regime on Russia—and align Trump with Putin against Ukraine's attacks on Russian energy production..." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

Do you know how hard it is to lose the war if you're the United States? It's about as unlikely as bankrupting a casino.

This is clearly not acceptable

Even as someone who has stopped with American football (until CTE is solved, anyway), this hurts as a Chicagoan. www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/...

Alright, this is pretty effing hilarious... www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/m...

...Federal marshals subsequently orchestrated the transfer of all 287 bars to local police. In a secret operation, officers guarded the 282 bars before returning them to the CIA. The agency promises that the 271 gold bars stolen by Mr Rush will be sold and the profits used to reimburse US taxpayers.

So well-deserved. I've been saying Deisseroth and others should win the Nobel for optogenetics since I learned about it in grad school. It seemed like a powerful, field-transforming technique then, and its usefulness has only expanded. Glad to see Nagel and Hagerman recognized as well.

I have absolutely wondered about this. Amazing.

Things Gavin Newsom has vetoed this week: -A ban on secretly recording people with smart glasses -A ban on ICE agents working for the state government -A ban on websites selling your data -A bill giving native tribes more say over water rights -A bill protecting transgender healthcare providers

Standing with Ukrainian scientists. 🇺🇦 www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/w...

This is an entirely new phenomenon because before the vaccine, most women who survived measles were immune because they had it when they were young. But now, idiots who refuse to get vaccinated are giving birth to babies with measles. Two babies have died. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

@angierasmussen.bsky.social is spot on here. Russell Vought is evil and dangerous.

I’M AT THE URGENT CARE I’M AT THE TACO BELL I’M AT THE COMBINATION URGENT CARE AND TACO BELL

JON STEWART: “They began covering their ass 3 weeks after 9/11… There was poison in the air, on the ground, on your pets/clothes… THE CITY KNEW. Rather than limit the damage, they covered it up… After 9/11, business will never be usual again.” (From @mamdanibulletin.bsky.social )

AI companies: This technology we’re developing is dangerous and might destroy humanity and we don’t know how to stop it Other people: So we should strictly regulate it, create legislative guard rails, and monitor its development? AI companies: lol no the opposite of all that & give us more money

Bhattacharya’s NIH has made a habit of ignoring the expert input of NIH staff. They push forward “solutions” even when we point out the new problems they will create. The consequences come in harm to research participants, lost research advances & a contracted workforce. substack.com/@27unihted/n...

“Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth” —George Orwell, from Orwell on Truth

This is the exact type of science the regime is trying to squash. But it's the science we need to build communities that foster health. Adverse social determinants in early adulthood are associated with higher coronary artery calcification risk later in life. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you, Gloria, for all you have done to try to make society more fair. You have inspired me and countless others and we will do our best to fight the good fight without you. Rest in power.

I want younger people in politics too, but not transphobic capitulating losers.

The NIH Director Says a Lot. Critics Call Much of It Misleading www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

A web of the relationships between the new Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the “vaccines cause autism” community. This guy will be controlling what NICHD grants are funded.

Yayoi Kusama has passed on to infinity. This has been a devastating week for creative and fabulous humans, and the people who love them and their work.

Actor Tim Curry has died at 80, TMZ reports

Russell Vought has been deleting some of your comments on the proposed OMB rule to politicize grantmaking. Particularly ones that mention him by name and that his daughter was treated for CF with an NIH-funded therapeutic.