Andy Vaughan

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.

Three-byline alert: 🚨 “.. Last week, Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network .. .. One of the people also claimed Musk and Trump discussed the matter prior to the decision ..” @wsj.com www.wsj.com/world/ukrain...

Theranos 2.0

My review of You Can See Everything

Oh.

Hopefully NIH will put the RFI back up and extend the deadline. This is not acceptable and I know several people who had prepared comments they didn’t get to submit. You can see the very clear deadline in red text here: web.archive.org/web/20260821...

www.thedp.com/article/2026...

Zelenskyy tells Piers Morgan Trump has betrayed him and that Musk and the US deliberately cut off Starlink and people are being killed as a result “This is not the right side of history. It is a pity that we are losing a strong partner”

Oct 13 comment deadline for NIH peer review score binning is fast approaching! Please add your voice! Direct link to RFI: rfi.grants.nih.gov?s=6a2b1c22c3... Background on why it matters: 27unihted.substack.com/p/nih-wants-...

Comments due Tuesday! rfi.grants.nih.gov?s=6a2b1c22c3... Here is mine.

Okay so we have a number now: the Onion is officially 6 months ahead of reality.

This is like answering "What is 2 + 2?" with "Abraham Lincoln"

“Being in higher ed right now is just being on the receiving end of an onslaught of attacks…so it feels really good to know that we were able to build this strong coalition of people across the political spectrum to come together on this.” — Lorena Grundy, @aaup-penn.bsky.social

There is no NSF leadership. They were removed and never replaced.

This strikes me as really fuckin bad

So my brother Carson Vaughan teamed up with Joel Sartore to write his biography! Super excited for this www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/837430...

A fifth measles death in Pennsylvania. Entirely preventable.

Very excited to announce our annual Fall Conference featuring @proftwolf.bsky.social, Nov. 7 in Philly! Free for Pennsylvania AAUP members and travel stipends available. Register here tinyurl.com/96fcevme

man, LANTERNS is good

God I love Angie Nixon. I hope she wins

I hate it so much. This can happen to you too. A year ago, almost everyone doubted this would happen. I had faculty at other schools telling me I was hysterical. (Irony!) Watch for the installation of right wing figureheads without an academic background. Watch for assaults on faculty governance.

Well this is a pleasant surprise. While PA's "democratic" senator is out there boot-licking Trump, McCormick actually seems to get it with regards to research funding

and take action--call your Senators today--its pretty simple. Tell them two things: no stealing NIH money to fund Trump's losing war and no to an EO that makes trump in charge of all funding. Both are cronyism and theft

The horror has come to our city: ICE has shot a person in Austin this morning. As the facts emerge, I am demanding a full, independent investigation, immediate release of the body camera footage, and accountability for any ICE officer who broke the law.

Recall that the OMB rule got 500,000 comments, opposed mostly by scientists, medical professionals & advocates. Trump has asked Vought to draft an EO to create a board that decides what NIH grants get funded. Vought would be on that board. Vote blue in November. 🧪 www.politico.com/news/2026/09...

Article is useful in that it shows that a) Trump is directly involved in these decisions, b) sees them in purely personalist terms - he wants to politicize research grants so he can destroy Harvard for daring to defy him

Could be totally wrong but I get increasingly weird vibes about Piker and I have a feeling DSA (of which I am a member) and progressives in general should be careful.

My old band opened for Macklemore back in 2010 at Western Washington University. Gotta say never really thought much about it but feeling sorta retroactively proud with the recent news.

Aaron Rowe, Lukas Graham and Finneas, the remaining opening acts for Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour, have quit in solidarity with Macklemore, who was dismissed from his opening spot for pro-Palestine comments. https://wapo.st/4cPZP5M

Breaking News: The Supreme Court blocked a Trump administration plan to dramatically change mail-in voting for the midterms. Follow live updates.

"i will shoot myself in the gut if you do not let me cut off my dick!!!"

A very provocative and important piece from Sylvia Chou and colleagues, who @aaup-penn.bsky.social hosted at Penn last semester. www.aaup.org/toward-recon...

This is absolutely terrifying. Jacob Coxon and Evan Hubinger, top researchers at Anthropic and formerly OpenAI, said these companies are creating technology that could "kill us all by the end of the decade."

When Chip Quinn isolated the first Drosophila learning mutants. H wanted to name them after Republican Presidents but got worried about funding so named them after vegetables {look it up--it was in the WSJ 😉😜]

Right. Vought and Bhattacharya tried to gut NIH in 2025 via stopping spending (Fed Reg bans) and rescission. That failed. Now in 2026, they’re still using bureaucracy inside the agency to try to slow spending. But they need a new way to get the leftover money (meant for science!) out of NIH. 1/

The NIH Director confirms they are giving away biomedical research money used to develop treatments and cures for infectious diseases such as influenza, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, Ebola, and other dangerous pathogens, to the Department of Defense. Outrageous.

"The Trump administration is now trying to rob NIH of billions of dollars that Congress provided for medical research so that it can pad the Pentagon’s budget."

WITAF

www.nytimes.com/2026/08/30/n...

Government funded scientists aren’t the only ones struggling these days. Featuring my high school classmate Clay from Broken Bow Nebraska. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/u...

Four adult men grapple with their spiritual crises.

"Democratic Socialists of America extends our deepest condolences to the family, friends, and fans of Dolly Parton, a hero of the working-class and an inspiration to us all."

"Area Carpenter's Son Defends Feeding Poor, Says It's His Duty to Help The Less Fortunate"

Biking through Denmark, 10/10 would recommend

Out today with a piece with Max Stier of @ourpublicservice.bsky.social on how the Trump Administration is dismantling the scientific workforce, to the detriment of the American public. scienceandfreedomalliance.substack.com/p/the-trump-...