Life of a drone bee: Honey, Nut, Cheerio!

So in a huge surprise to absolutely no one, it turns out that NIH director Jay Bhattacharya's new journal based on the premise of letting his friends and only his friends publish essentially whatever they want is full of crackpot nonsense from retired cranks.

If you’re in STEM and you’re eligible to vote in the midterms…YOU BETTER BE VOTING. I want “I VOTED” sticker selfies in the comments. This is an unconstitutional robbery of our scientific ecosystem cen.acs.org/policy/resea...

Girls! Girls! You're *both* right! Bask in the novelty.

ICE has put the future of a vital community resource in jeopardy by kidnapping Aleksander Nilaj. #mutualaid #food #pantry

CDC just closed offices in Angola and South Sudan. Zimbabwe is next; a dozen more may follow. CDC staff overseas support countries to find outbreaks early and stop them before they reach us. Decisions have consequences. Lives will be lost, including American lives. bit.ly/4B5n6uG

Measles is absolutely tearing through unvaccinated communities. There were more new cases of measles in the US in the past seven days (330) than we had in ALL of 2024 (285). A total 4,410 cases this year, which everyone agrees is an undercount. www.cidrap.umn.edu/measles/us-m...

Does my Speak-n-Spell feel pain when I type O-U-C-H? The jury is out. Philosophers and neuroscientists say that's fucking stupid, but I called a guy from the Center for Pretending that Household Electronics Are Sentient and he said there's no way to know for sure.

Another study finds no link between taking acetaminophen (Tylenol) during pregnancy & autism or ADHD The study examined data from 7 meta-analyses involving more than 3 million participants I wish RFK Jr & Trump would stop terrorizing people about this drug onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This new paper is... a lot to read 🤔 #chemsky doi.org/10.1002/chem...

RUSSELL VOUGHT'S ILLEGAL ACTIONS MUST BE STOPPED

This skit is not even funny, it's just stupid. SNL needs new writers.

Sens. Susan Collins and Patty Murray are rejecting efforts by the Trump administration to give the White House control of National Institutes of Health grant funding. https://to.pbs.org/4iH9YW1

This is the type of AI disaster scenario that I ACTUALLY worry about. (1) AI industry oversells the capabilities of its products to score fat government contracts. (2) govt puts the AI in charge of critical shit. (3) AI fucks up, because it has a nonzero error rate. (4) shit, now we’re at war.

Anyone remember when we had three branches of government?

So much of the right these days have a massive patriotism problem. This guy: - is a tax exile (left long before this govt) - hates his own country while complaining he doesn’t get big enough subsidies from it - laments the manufacturing hit from a Brexit he supported www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Lord give me the arrogance of a tax exile who feels the right to comment on the tax policies and general running of a country who you have deprived of billions by registering yourself in Monaco

"IRS sent 10 agents and three analysts to national effort to police 'anti-capitalism' and 'extremism on migration, race, and gender.'" talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fbi-nsp...

Standing firmly for the dogfucker lobby 🫡

Ed Sheeran’s tour opener, Irish singer Aaron Rowe, has dropped out of the tour in solidarity with Palestine and Macklemore.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKNi...

Imagine a Vice President of the United States getting a fact-check Community Note that the heckler was right and you are lying. These people just can’t stop lying.

Notice how often we say this and not a single person has been sued? Hmm..

A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...

More details in Popular Information:

🚨 BEWARE of VoteSafe.org 🚨 While it bills itself as a “safe” way to register to vote, it is actually a digital surveillance machine created by Elon Musk’s super PAC.

80 year-olds with pro-Palestine signs: arrested as terrorists. Greens planning to block a road, to highlight an existential crisis: sent down for years. Masked far-right thugs blocking roads and ports, using intimidation, obstruction & threatening behaviour: no arrests. The real two-tier policing.

The world has gone mad! Folks getting arrested under the UK Terrorism Act for holding a sign that said "I oppose genocide" 🇬🇧 That is fucked up! The majority of those arrested have been pension aged women, often with disabilities. Do these folks look like terrorists? Shame on you England. #Free 🇵🇸

Ed Miliband’s parents survived the Holocaust, Ed Miliband is Jewish - that is immutable Questioning his Jewishness like this tells you all you need to know about people like this, and what their values are - and what they truly think about Jewish people that don’t behave how they want them to

Writing some scientific workflow slides for this week’s MPTC class.

New email to Director Bhattacharya to start Labor Day weekend regarding the secret transfer of appropriated funds to the Department of Defense.

The current NIH director is a grievance-driven weasel, a sycophant so desperately out of his league that he lacks even the most basic of bureaucratic reflex arcs: the impulse to protect if not expand his own domain.

John Fetterman called in sick to avoid a meeting with three Pennsylvania paralyzed military veterans. Then he walked into the office less than an hour later to shoot a Fox News interview www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Undercover footage verified by Channel 4 News reveals a secret plot by senior Reform UK figures to break the law on party donations. A leading legal expert is now calling for a criminal investigation. 🔗 Read the exclusive story on Substack:

Parents refusing the vitamin K shot for their newborns has increased by 57% in 2026 alone. This puts their babies at risk for brain and GI bleeds. Rate of refusal is higher for girls than boys, as some hospitals won’t circumcise male infants unless they’ve had the shot. RFK Jr. caused this.

It's like a parody, but it's deadly serious; the Commerce Department (which includes Census, NOAA, and others) has outright deleted "don't alter or suppress scientific findings for political reasons" from its scientific integrity rules. Seriously.

NIH's Aug 2026 proposal would scrap exact scores and percentiles for three broad bins (top = top 25%). With funding rates at 5% or lower, too much then rides on administrative discretion. It devalues peer review and is a deterrent to engage. Tell NIH before Oct 13. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

I don't think it should be controversial to say, "we will not provide financial or military assistance to a country where the Minister of National Security brags about popping people's dreams of 'food' and 'education' then sending them to a prison where they are starved."

As expected, the Lake Ontario change is rolling out in the wake of GNIS updates. Bleah. Sure, “companies should simply refuse”, or “USGS employees should resign en masse”, or blah blah blah but the root cause is that the US was dumb enough to re-elect Trump and here’s another stupid consequence.

First RFK lied under oath during his confirmation. Then he lied about lying under oath. He’s not only nut job; he’s a nut job who lies. Impeach him already. #ProudBlue#Voices4Victory #OneV1 apple.news/A4bNx_mEDSxe...

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... Why aren't companies refusing these summons?

Amazing to live in a country where the secret police are handling inter-chud beefs. It's like the Night of Long Knives playing out in the parking lot of a Dollar General.

life comes at you fast

The Milo stuff is the perfect picture of fascism. You think you're protected because you go as big as you can on racism, you spend years harassing the movement's perceived enemies, you even disavow your own sexuality. They'll still throw you in a cage over the tiniest disagreement already forgotten.

THIS is an example of what many have been worried about wrt NIH Institute Directors. No NIH experience, limited publication record, minimal management experience but LOADS OF CONNECTIONS AROUND POLITICIZED ISSUES THAT OVERLAP WITH SCIENCE.