DocMaertens

hilariously shady content from Pew this Fourth of July

Just for the record, I've worked on stigma, inequalities, and pain for 20 years, & the evidence is utterly overwhelming that women are vastly less likely to have their pain adequately diagnosed and treated than men. And of course WoC are less likely than white women. Etc. cc @maybell.bsky.social

But yesterday, soldiers from the Minnesota National Guard arrived in DC to aid and abet Trump's immoral and illegal occupation of the capital city.

There are words for that and they are “political” and “prisoner.”

This is IMHO extremely important Keep an eye out—other government departments will hopefully follow🤞 The right-wing disinformation, violence, & abuse of women & children on X led the Attorney General to take his office OFF that Nazi cesspit Hermer himself has suffered grotesque antisemitism

In case we had any doubt

If any future student of history wishes to learn what our era was like, they simply need to know that there was less than a year between Elon becoming a historic mass murderer and officially becoming the world's first trillionaire

Twitter/X is an enormous national security threat on a global scale, and a lot more nations need to grow a spine and start blocking it (and taking other active, aggressive measures).

In this @hannamwebster.bsky.social piece I’m quoted about how vaccination rates are a key component of school safety that should be widely publicized and also how it’s not suprising to see 60+ measles cases in PA as the virus has re-established endemicity. www.post-gazette.com/news/health/...

It's hard to be excited about the Artemis III mission announcements when the CEO of the company making one of the mission's rockets has spent his week inciting racial violence via his personal social media platform.

reminder that the last time trump was at madison square garden was for a literal nazi rally

Read this whole piece.

I grew up in apartheid S Africa, where muzzling of speech and encroachment on academic freedom were the norm. I came to the USA to pursue a career in science. I never thought that at this stage of my career, I would ever experience my youth again. #StandUpForScience #ADA #ADA2026

Remember the current NIH director going on about protecting researchers from government censorship? Today his people called the police in to forcibly remove my colleagues from their own society meeting for sharing an editorial published in their flagship journal that was critical of him. Gift link

The new NIH policy requiring co-authorships with foreign scientists to be reported seems like an opportunity for a mass protest-by-cooperation: if each of us requested permission for each of our co-authorships (1 email per ms), the NIH would be deluged with these and it would convey how absurd it is

I work on global ocean conservation policy. I don’t know if it’s possible to do that without collaboration with foreign experts. It’s definitely not possible to do it well.

www.capitalweather.com Found it and sent some bucks.

“Twenty of those cases are part of an ongoing outbreak that started in Lebanon County over the past month and has spread to three other counties: Berks, Dauphin and Lancaster.” www.post-gazette.com/news/health/...

100% worth your 63 seconds if you have my reading speed. sinceyouarrived.world/taken

The most accurate portrayal of the pro-Jim Crow, white nationalist Roberts Supreme Court I've seen yet.

Happy Frances Perkins feast day (Episcopal Church calendar, May 13)! Witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, later FDR’s Labor Secretary; she wrote the Social Security Act in her church’s rectory kitchen. She pushed to admit Jewish refugees. Known as FDR’s conscience and author of the New Deal. ⚓️

Look, even this level of idiocy is not reason to panic. It just reemphasizes the point here:

When Rubio abruptly halted foreign aid last year, cleanup crews in Vietnam were forced to abandon one of the largest chemical spills in the world for weeks. Left exposed: open pits of soil contaminated with dioxin, the deadly byproduct of Agent Orange. From Pulitzer finalist “The End of Aid”:

Zelensky has issued a presidential decree “allowing” Russia to hold its annual Victory Day parade in Moscow. The decree provides exact coordinates of the Red Square that shall be excluded from the list of Ukrainian strike targets. Phenomenal power play.

This should be a bigger story. I didn't know Isaiah but almost everyone in my lab, my TA, and a few close colleagues knew him well. They all say he was a sweet guy who was just really into herps. This is a tragedy.

NIH Director's stump speech lists stats on how it's hard to be early career & proposes no solution past "elevate new ideas" while he slashes our opportunities. If you're a scientific org inviting him & don't point this out, I'll assume you don't care about us. deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/04/that...

This photo should be on the front page of every single newspaper in America today.

Yousof Azizi, Iranian researcher, journalist, commentator and PhD candidate at @virginiatech.bsky.social with valid legal status, has been illegally detained by ICE. He was taken from in front of his home, has been denied access to a lawyer, and may be transferred to a detention center in Louisiana:

Once again, I have no words (or at least words that won’t get me in trouble) for the shit that our government is doing 😡

Public servants who are doing everything they can to document the damage and throw sand in the gears are CRITICAL to saving our democracy. I trust @repauchincloss.bsky.social and his team. If this is you, please reach out. You will be protected and supported.

“Año Nuevo State Park in San Mateo County, California, is set to reopen this upcoming weekend after a bird flu outbreak killed several elephant seals and other marine mammals.” www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influe...

If we are using taxpayer fairness as a criterion, Black Americans make up ~14% of the population yet receive less than 1% of of NIH funding. 5/5

OH. MY. GOD. THIS IS THE MILKY WAY SHOT BY THE ARTEMIS II CREW. LOOK AT ALL THOSE STARS!!!!

I'm on the train back to DC – I call on all my colleagues to come back, too. Congress must vote to end this war IMMEDIATELY.

It you watch one thing from the Oscars, let it be this…

I read the “Save America Act,” so you don’t have to. Most of the media apparently *hasn’t* read it because, if they had, they would be sounding the alarm about the provision in Point 1, below, which almost none of them have even mentioned. I hope this summary helps raise awareness. 1/

In 1896, Florence Bascom became the first woman to work for USGS! She was also the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from @jhu.edu (in 1893) and created the geology program at Bryn Mawr College. She retired at age 74. #WomensHistoryMonth

Finally, a flag worth fighting for.