@alexwenzel
Postdoc studying cancer. Academic unionist and transit enthusiast. Trying to make buses less invisible. TF2 Medic main. This account does not represent the positions or opinions of my employer or of my union. he/him
The number of people employed at the NIH is at its lowest level in at least two decades.
Hear from six scientists run out by Trump and the work they left behind on cancer research, tick-borne diseases, and more.
Me + @k-hought.bsky.social @kffhealthnews.org for @cnn.com www.cnn.com/2026/03/05/h...
This middle part of the thread points to specific examples of potential/ongoing automation of ideology-driven evaluation, i.e., using tools to screen for alignment with administration priorities. There are significant implications here for oversight of what is unfolding with NIH grants & reviews.
13/ “The categories of people I am being asked to remove from grants share the same identities of people being forcibly removed, detained, and killed in our country...
11/ ...When people are being shot, detained inhumanely, deported, and abused for having the same identities we are removing from grants, it is abundantly clear we are participating in hate.”
- anonymous NIH program officer
8/ The only course of action that allows the study to be or remain funded seems to be removing the “potentially misaligned terms” and renegotiating the grant. They are receiving emails from their leadership explicitly telling them to stop disagreeing with the tool’s output. That its a waste of time.
I’m not missing anything, I’m accurately describing the ideology. American white nationalists believe that they have to oppress minority groups because Jews are trying to replace them with those groups. Nothing about this statement diminishes their racism, and it worries me that you think it does.
I’m not trying to create a hierarchy of the regime’s targets, I’m pointing out what Hegseth is specifically saying here. The people in power believe all the things they hate don’t just happen naturally, they believe those things are being inflicted on them by a specific group.
If you’re concerned about the Proton news, please read this thread, this context is very important from both a legal and technical perspective.
I suppose they should’ve donated to Trump’s ballroom if they didn’t want to be required to cut holes in Huntington’s patients’ heads for no reason.
Pseudoscientific Push to Frame Abortion as a ‘Water Quality’ Issue Rears Its Head in Iowa talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pseudos...
Ross Johnston, Joel Mott and California Will Be Saved are about to get started at UCLA on Bruin plaza. Not much of a crowd from what I can see. If any students see anything or have any thoughts on CAWBS being on campus and want to reach out my DM’s are open.
i spent all summer organizing for dedicated transit lanes against typical toronto nimbys who claimed that "emergency vehicles would get stuck in traffic and more people would die"
anyways, here's real life:
Someone like Alex Jones will say "globalists" or "international bankers", but the open fascists like Nick Fuentes will say what they all mean.
On the surface yes, but what Hegseth is being vague about (for this audience at least) is that there is some enemy group that is deliberately creating this "test" of "western countries", and in those kinds of great replacement conspiracies, that enemy is nearly always Jewish people.
Also, this is a fare increase. 110 is standard fare ($2.50 one way, $72 month), but 290 is part of premium service ($5.00 one way, $100 month). Transfer to 235 would still have same fare, but 235 takes ~40 minutes to get downtown, current 110 takes about 20 minutes (nonstop, 290 would be the same).
Also, putting on my union contract enforcement hat, worth noting that replacing 110 service with 921 and 290 service means swapping higher paid operators for lower paid ones. ATU might have grounds to oppose if it results in fewer FTEs for SDTC, but I'd be surprised if it did. And I'm not a lawyer.
According to the FY24 performance report (FY25 when?), 110 had the second highest subsidy per passenger, excluding rural and the COASTER connection service that was still under MTS at that point.
MTS is proposing discontinuing route 110 (AM/PM directional Mira Mesa - Downtown express). They'll turn it into a two-seat trip without loss of frequency by adding extra 921 service. Also proposes having route 290 stop at Miramar College. www.sdmts.com/sites/defaul...
*that is ever
If they cave on legally dubious requests, that's one thing, but in general, there's so system or service that is every going to take over 100% of the responsibility for your anonymity.
How to pay for services just needs to be part of security/safety education.
We should hold Proton to technical standards and expect that they're delivering the service and privacy they promise, but it's not reasonable to expect them to protect necessarily cleartext info. It only ends with authorities taking the info at gunpoint anyway and likely shutting down the service.
In fairness, this is correct, and even systems that aim to be far stricter with user privacy than even Proton are still clear in their terms that they might have to turn over payment information to their country's authorities. bsky.app/profile/dabi...
I continue to wish that both Mullin and O'Brien had [ToS].
For humanitarian volunteers, the concern isn’t just privacy — it’s the possibility of being tracked while trying to prevent deaths.
“There’s no transparency, that’s the worst part." - @broloelcordero.bsky.social
Read the full investigation ↓
calmatters.org/justice/2026...
k, where are we moving?
On sabotage of our young scientists, by @holdenthorp.bsky.social @science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Citywide transit signal priority started as an idea in San Jose six years ago.
Today it’s making buses up to 20% faster across the city 🚌💨
My latest column ⬇️
Mallon: Six years later, speeding up San Jose transit is finally paying off sanjosespotlight.com/mallon-six-y...
Cops don’t keep us safe. They exist to defend power, capital, and the white, Christian patriarchy.
It creates more work for mentoring in CS/bioinformatics as well because I don't know what they don't know. For student-written code, a short conversation lets me pinpoint where their misunderstanding is. For AI code, I can debug it, but I can't teach in the process because there's nowhere to start.
