A friend and I got at least 25 stalks and the plants look like they weren’t even touched. Hoping for a bountiful season.

Time to try all those rhubarb recipes

Those two huge purple spikes abs when they happen

All Childhood Vaccines Were Tested Against Placebos - Here's the Evidence Most Used Inert (Saline) Controls. When They Didn't, Science and Ethics Tell Us Why

“Yes, ALL childhood vaccines have been tested against placebos, and most have been tested against inert placebos (when they aren't, there's a very good reason why).”
theunbiasedscipod.substack.com/p/all-childh...

So much that is good is being cut

NIH insiders: Trump is ‘dismantling and destroying everything’ After just 100 days, agency scientists say U.S. health institutes are demoralized and have lost essential staff and funding

Francis Collins: “Reckless decisions will disrupt a noble institution with a stunningly positive track record, drive young scientists to leave the country, and damage the future health of the nation." www.science.org/content/arti...

It’s chilling how low he can go!

Supporting medical science in the USA The pursuit of rigorous medical science is not compatible with capitulation to government demands aimed at weaponising and eroding science. On April 14, Edwin R Martin Jr, the Trump-appointed interim ...

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

The NIH budget is on a fast track to disaster An NIH insider explains what Republicans are likely to do next, and what we can do

New at Can We Still Govern: An anonymous NIH employee maps out the GOP budget gameplan to permanently gut our most important science agency.
Impoundment, delay and red tape will create artificial "savings" that become the new benchmark for NIH budgets.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nih-bu...

So many people are being hurt by these actions.

I knew tnese people. I loved these people. And they are why I rarely watch smart-people comedies that mostly laugh at them rather than with them even if claiming to do otherwise.

Godspeed Val. Thank you for Chris Knight, Doc Hoilday and Madmartigan, Tom Kazansky, Ray Levoi, and so many others.

"If America hasn't broken your heart, you don't love her enough." - @booker.senate.gov 😭😭😭

I feel this part of Senator Booker's speech in my gut.

Wow.

Americans are going hungry under Trump. Food banks across the country — already strained by deep cuts to locally grown food programs — the U.S. Department of Agriculture is canceling $500 million in expected food deliveries, further disrupting aid as demand continues to grow.

We will be losing a generation of doctors, scientists, engineers. Students who could have made advances on diseases affecting your family and mine now will have to find something else to do or somewhere else to go. I hope schools in other countries will take some in, humanity needs their work.

This student is far from the o my one. Those out there that think,
“this is just going to affect the bloated ivory tower, it won’t affect me. You work at university so I get that you are mad, but this is cutting bloat.” Even if I have to leave campus, I will still worry about those still there.

We are losing a generation

NIH ban on renewing senior scientists adds to assaults on its in-house research Policy follows firings of tenure-track scientists and suspension of training programs

Of the 4000 researchers at NIH, only 20% are tenured. They’re going to fire all the rest as their contracts come up for renewal, absolutely decimating research at the NIH. This is catastrophic, not just for Americans, but for the whole world.

www.science.org/content/arti...

YouTube video by Astronomy Before the Telescope Astronomical Instrumentation Before the Telescope - Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica

What did astronomers use before there were telescopes?

Opinion | The Dumbest Trade War in History Trump will impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico for no good reason.

"The U.S. willingness to ignore its treaty obligations, even with friends, won’t make other countries eager to do deals." @wsj.com

Repeat the data collection yourself if your must, especially if there is more than one way to logically get to the answer, or double and triple check all of your materials and methods, but never just throw out the data.

Guys when Chris Rufo and Trump say "We're destroying DEI, we're salting the earth underneath it" and they're talking about regulations that reach back to 1965, they're not talking about corporate diversity trainings.

They are talking about civil rights

The Chihuly museum was amazing.

Sunset over Elliot Bay

YouTube video by Astronomy Before the Telescope The Flame Haired Stars: Comets Before the Telescope

The popular understanding of how comets were viewed in the medieval period is that they were objects to be feared. It's not wrong, but it's also so much more...

YouTube video by Steve Mould How backspin ACTUALLY works - in super slow motion

Last semester, some of my students looked at the direction of the bounce. Next time I want them to look more closely at the balls themselves at the moment of collision. Sadly, my camera can only make 960 fps

youtu.be/hgcEIKHCI00?...

Looking back on previous scribal work for inspiration on upcoming projects while in a break between lab prep projects. Should get back to the latter.

I love the prairie in all sorts of weather and at all times of day.

For use in the optics portion of my spring classes.