Engineering PhD, pastor's spouse, CS entrepreneur. Two lovely launched kids. Army adjacent. Anti-king since George III
695 followers 812 following 1,243 posts
view profile on Bluesky 
Never forget, a 13-year study found that protected bike-lanes led to a drastic decline in fatalities for all road users. ALL ROAD USERS. And painted bike-lanes? No safety improvement at all. For sharrows, it’s actually safer to NOT have them. Via @usa.streetsblog.org @nyc.streetsblog.org
📌
61 years ago today, the Food Stamp Act was signed with the hope that no American would go hungry. Now, we’re still pushing to make that vision a reality. As Trump guts SNAP, we’re fighting back because no one in our country should struggle to put food on the table.
There was an interesting study of Colorado a while back, and the only significant change was higher turnout among younger voters.
New Mexico has issued a public health order that removes federal restrictions to COVID-19 vaccine access so that pharmacies in New Mexico can vaccinate people of all ages and risk profiles. Every state need to do this!
Reminder— Sunday August 31 is last day to comment on USDA’s proposed reorganization to impact Forest Service Regional Offices, as well as regional research station structure. Regional offices are a key counterbalance to local pressures. And, research is best tied to local (regional) landscapes.
There is nothing like a tomato out of the garden, and these tiny ones are scrumptious!
Here's the indictment of Adrian Martinez, the kid who was brutally assaulted by agents after calling out their kidnapping of a guy he worked with. They left out his 1A speech and the assault, among other things. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Cookies are good, I like ground flax seed mixed into whatever. Really gets things going. (I had not thought about cookied tbh!)
My favorite evergreen Molly Ivins quote: "I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag."
With O'Neill (apparently) taking over CDC (if they ever get around to firing Monarez), I think it's worth looking back to Project 2025 and asking what they actually intend to *do* to CDC. So, I went to remind myself today. Here's what's in store:
A while ago I stumbled on www.donorschoose.org and bookmarked some teachers in small towns in my area. Kinda sad that teachers go into the new year lacking supplies 🙁 But when I checked back today ... almost everything was funded 🎉 ... Nice Work Humans ! Not defeated yet.
I vaguely remember tweeting something like the country that effectively captures this free energy source at scale will rule the 21st century. whelp.
Last night I learned foxes scream. A real goose bump raiser. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYyr...
BOOM. The federal appeals court rules Trump's tariffs illegal, because they are. There's no national emergency, and so the power to tariff a country rests with Congress. Trump admin has lost at every stage of the process, but stay tuned for the Supremes to chime in.
Katrina inspired a $3B wetlands rebuilding project. Louisiana just killed it.
I'm old enough to remember "Faith Based Initiatives" in presidential debate as ways to fund groups doing good in communities, and "Thousand Points of Light" from Pres GHWB. This post really took a turn I was not expecting 🙁
Sand batteries are literally just silos of sand that retain heat exceptionally well -- so well that they can be tied to heat exchange systems to serve as proxy *electrical* batteries. Finland's new model can store enough power (100 MWh) to heat an entire town for a week. newatlas.com/energy/large...
📌
holy shit this is a helluva ad from the Democrat running against Joni Ernst in Iowa. worth every second
They've had warning signs for polluted beaches and water bodies...this might be the first one for the air near a polluted river. Direct result of our study just published in Science today. today.ucsd.edu/story/tijuan...
In that case Cambridge too to pick up Moderna HQ and the rest of Kendall Sq
Newsom should create the CCDCP - California Centers for Disease Control and Prevention... and hire every single one of them.
Evergreen
Two dead after ingesting flesh-eating bacteria from eating raw oysters. More than 20 Louisiana residents have contracted Vibrio vulnificus, which can cause illness when a person eats raw or undercooked seafood. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
I will always remember the morgue trucks, the mass grave in NYC. I feel the super quick vaccine development contained that fire before things became Spanish Flu esque
"Air pollution from oil and gas causes more than 90,000 premature deaths and sickens hundreds of thousands of people across the US each year, a new study shows..." If MAHA were anything other than dipshit reactionary fantasies & conspiracy theories, it would focus overwhelmingly on air pollution.
📌
#BreakingNews: CDC Director Susan Monarez is ousted after one month in the job. Removal follows departure of another high-ranking agency official www.statnews.com/2025/08/27/c...
The full story, just awful. www.kivitv.com/caldwell/i-d...
And then there's eastern WA, last D was Tom Foley! 30ish years ago
🚨 Yesterday, Arlington, TX (heart of the DFW metropolitan area) had an AMAZING turnout for their ICE recruitment event. ✊🏼
They're looking sheepish
📌
A whistleblower complaint says that the personal data of over 300 million Americans was copied to a private cloud account to allow access by members of the Department of Government Efficiency team.
There’s plenty of disinformation trying to blame the nascent offshore wind industry for whale deaths without evidence. Not only is that misleading, it also takes the focus away from solutions that might actually address the leading causes of death — vessel strikes and entanglement with fishing gear.
Geneticist Liane Russell was born #OTD in 1923. She pioneered the study of mutagenesis and teratogenesis due to radiation, and identified the role of the Y chromosome in sex determination. Her work led to diagnostic x-ray safety standards for women of childbearing age. 🧪 👩🔬 ⚛️
I don't suppose any reporter has asked: so Obama blew it by not just mandating the public option, for example?
Reup: John Roberts gave Ed "Big Balls" Cositine live and unaudited access to every Americans' social security data. www.emptywheel.net/2025/08/26/a...
A viking longship is rowing up the Thames at the moment. It just left Greenwich and should pass through Tower Bridge at 10pm. www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/vik...
False. www.scientificamerican.com/article/whal...
Moodys chief exonimist says 22 states are already in recession. Trump’s tarrifs are to blame. qz.com/moodys-chief...
📌
📌
🚨BREAKING: In a landmark victory for voters, a Utah judge struck down the state Legislature’s gerrymandered congressional map and reinstated the citizen-led redistricting reforms voters approved in 2018. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has declared that he will not be following the court order to shut down the so-called "Alligator Alcatraz." Apparently court orders are optional now if you're a member of the "Law and Order" party. www.rawstory.com/alligator-al...
On this day in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act, officially creating the National Park Service to protect and preserve America’s natural wonders and historic treasures “for the enjoyment of this and future generations.”
“They’re going to kill me here,” Neri Alvarado thought. Alvarado was allegedly targeted by the Trump administration because of his tattoo of an autism awareness ribbon. Now, free from El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison, Alvarado wants the world to know what they lived through.
📌
Adherence to a Mediterranean diet linked to reduced dementia-related metabolites, many of which showed causal relationships (via MR), and lower risk Alzheimer's disease. Notable relationship with APOE4 genotyopes nature.com/articles/s41...
Russia is wiping villages off the map in Sumy region. Homes, schools and lives are being erased in hours of relentless shelling. This is genocide, not war. 📍Pishchane last night, Sumy region 🇺🇦
Judge Xinis: Your clients are *absolutely forbidden* from removing Mr. Abrego from the continental United States. You understand this? DOJ: Yes.
This is really great stuff. 🥲 The Michael J. Fox Foundation has invested over $9M in DBS R&D. Fox himself had DBS surgery in 2002, and most recently in 2023. He has a documentary out from his 2023 procedure, which I haven’t seen yet.
www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...
76% of Texas’s $2.4 trillion GDP comes from the blue parts. - DFW: $709.0 B (29.5%) - Houston: $642.1 B (26.7%) - Austin: $229.2 B (9.5%) - San Antonio: $201.2 B (8.4%) - El Paso: $49.3 B (1.9%) Blue: $1.83 T (76%) Red: $0.57 T (24%) #EconSky #Gerrymandering comptroller.texas.gov/economy/econ...
ooooo newatlas.com/environment/...
My lab's been attacked by an anti-wind group and their lawyers. They threatened the science funding of my whole university, to shut me and my undergraduate research assistants up. NYT just covered it. 1/n www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/c...
Bolts has a monthly preview of the major elections in the upcoming month, for people to know and engage—this was on it! people would have known this a month ago: this is what we do! See: boltsmag.org/whats-on-the... September one coming out very soon, follow @boltsmag.org to be sure to see it.
Follow the oil money and always follow the brilliant @antoniajuhasz.bsky.social who went to Alaska to see what the tyrants were up to....
wait, have we circled back to the Fairness Doctrine?
Mine swore I was not capable of recreating subs from the subway chain, no matter what I tried.
Why is Chicago now butchering its humanities studies? Because the university's idiot board of trustees invested the university's revenues in crypto and lost their shirt. stanfordreview.org/uchicago-los...
This was a great episode, thank you!
They say the best investment is to buy politicians
ICYMI: Trump says his administration won't approve any wind or solar power projects. Reminder that Big Oil spent nearly $100M to get Trump elected in 2024. It's a huge payoff for his corporate donors at the expense of a livable planet.
📌
🔥 Private forests burn hotter under climate stress A new study shows wildfires are more severe in private industrial forests due to dense, uniform structure and high ladder fuels, especially during extreme weather. 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/gcb.... #SciComm #Wildfire #ClimateCrisis 🧪
In addition to creating a joyous event, Zohran Mamdani just showed the stupidity of Fox News's "Crime is so bad in New York City, people are afraid to go out in the street or take the subway!!!"
🛢️ Oil, gas, and inequality A new study finds that oil and gas pollution caused 91,000 early deaths and over 200,000 asthma cases in the US in 2017. Black and Asian communities bear the greatest burdens, especially near refineries. 🔗 doi.org/10.1126/scia... #SciComm #AirPollution 🧪
TIL the only Gilded Age mansion in WA was built buy a guy who got rich on hops. (Also an Oregon Trail pioneer) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Me...
MAXimum surveillance: how Russians are being driven into the FSB’s pocket messenger. Starting September 1, the Russian messenger Max will become mandatory for preinstallation on all devices in Russia⤵️
Many of the men deported to CECOT said they are permanently changed: struggling to sleep, drink water or leave their homes. One man broke into tears describing how he had a panic attack the first time he walked down a busy Venezuelan street.
The Pentagon is blocking Ukraine from using long-range missiles to hit Russian military targets. No wonder Putin still thinks he can win the war www.wsj.com/politics/nat...
"Twenty-three Democratic attorneys general now gather on near-daily Zoom calls at 8 AM Pacific, which means the East Coast officials are already on their third coffee. They divide responsibilities and share templates for lawsuits they’ve been drafting since last spring."
Trump is slowly, quietly, lifting sanctions on Russia. And halting previously allocated munitions too. Without an announcement, US policy is beginning to favor not a ceasefire, but Russian success www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/u...
The year I was born. we basically had no idea why cancers happened and now we understand the underlying force behind it with 100% clarity and the molecular forces behind it with many orders of magnitude more resolution. We were entirely in the dark, and now the room is lit.
Norwegian Police Security Service (PST), says that Russian agents managed to take control of the Bremanger dam, in the West of Norway. The event last April was unnoticed for many hours, releasing as much as 500 litres a second of water (1,800,000 million litres of water).
If True, people should know... these "third country" deportations are not just turning people lose into society. They're going into prisons in these countries. So... prison in Uganda. It's definitely as bad as you think it might be.
This feels like a spot of good news www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...
Really excellent. Since Wakefield's retracted study, 43 of some 70 studies found no vaccine-autism link For 26 reporting a link: 2/3s authored by David & Mark Geier. Their work's been criticized for "deceptive research techniques & flawed data." Of the 8 others: 4 retracted for data manipulation
The Gestapo Points to Guernica and Asks Picasso, “Did You Do This?;” Picasso Replies “No, You Did!”
Today, the city of Kharkiv turned 371 (founded in 1654). 🇺🇦
Interesting read Young Professionals: Camille Zapata | Comstock's magazine share.google/oQfZRQhAwLzU...
On this day in history - August 23rd, 1939 - the Molotov-Ribbentrop alliance was formalized between Hitler and Stalin. The following month they invaded Poland together and started World War II. Russians are taught WW2 instead began in June 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia.
Yep, rekt. But also, f--k the humans
Each colour is roughly 1/3rd of the US population.
The Trump administration has moved to end temporary protected status for immigrants. Among them are health care workers tending to older and disabled people. www.npr.org/2025/08/22/n...
“We are absolutely getting slaughtered come harvest time, with not enough individuals to do the harvest,” Yakima Valley farmer Ben Buchholz said of his family’s 100-acre operation, which includes cherry, pear and apple orchards. Coverage from Joel Donofrio at the Yakima Herald-Republic.
Experts and members of the public voiced overwhelming opposition to the US EPA’s plan to rescind its key greenhouse gas “endangerment finding” and vehicle emissions standards.
I expect major movement in Texas tomorrow. No one is covering the GOP's redistricting scheme with as much context and analysis as Democracy Docket. Its team of 20 works around the clock to provide you pro-democracy news and information. Support their work by signing up today. hubs.ly/Q03jcjqP0
📌
📌
I debated writing this. It can feel tempting, upon encountering yet another instance of this administration’s racism, to let it be. How many ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet we have to write it down, if for nothing else, so those who come after us know we were against it.
I remember when my kids were in grade school one or more writing teachers urging students to find their own voice, and I hadn't thought about how far away from that we are now in so many places
this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like
Ukraine, Crimea, who can keep these things straight
same. cat food and seltzer. Though I did splurge $12 on cherries -- seems like the season is finally coming to an end.