Erin Templeton

RFK Jr. pulls $500 million in funding for vaccine development The Department of Health and Human Services plans to cancel contracts and pull funding for some vaccines being developed to fight respiratory viruses like COVID-19 and the flu.

Yet more abhorrent sabotage of life-saving vaccine research. “Kennedy said in the Tuesday statement that he wants the health department to move away from mRNA vaccines, calling on the department to start “investing in better solutions.” He provided no details on what those technologies might be.”

Trump's a huge liar and gets zero credit for honesty, but, as a way of understanding his actions, this seems true. A lot of his decisions (e.g., gutting FEMA, turning off weather satellites, etc) are hard to understand unless Trump sees the whole federal gov't as his personal funds.

A businessman should know this is impossible in the real world. A 100 percent cut would make an item free. You can’t cut more than that.

Suggested for you Follow ... More than a dozen slavery displays in Philly, including at Washington's former home, have been flagged for a Trump admin review. Thirteen items at the President's House Site, which illustrates the paradox between freedom in the new nation and the ongoing horrors of slavery, were among those flagged for review.

I don’t think there is a day that goes by that I am not reminded of an old teacher’s admonition: “If the only history that interests you is the history that makes you feel good about yourself, you are not interested in history; you’re interested in propaganda.”

Two dogs lying on an upholstered bench, their heads together but bodies oriented in opposite directions.

Two dogs lying on an upholstered bench the one in front is much larger and looking off to the right side. You can only see her big head. The one behind is a puppy and all tucked up into a ball.

Two dogs lying on an upholstered bench facing opposite directions; their hind quarters are touching

Easy like Sunday morning

Let that sink in. What DOGE burned through in six months, through sheer stupidity, carelessness, and cruelty, could have funded the NEH for more than a century. This was never an attempt to save money, it was a mugging.

The truth is, that living or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a species are by no means creatures of ill odor

Have we forgotten everything we know about corporate COI in research? Citations to papers (paper-shaped objects) by "OpenAI" and "Anthropic" are citations to advertisements.

#acl2025

Texas library users statewide are going to be losing a LOT of databases available through TexShare, thanks to IMLS cuts.

Here's the list: www.corpuschristitx.gov/department-d...

Acrylic painting on canvas (Edvard Munch's Scream) used as a protest sign
@hcrichardson.bsky.social

Please do support your local bookshops. They are esential for independent publishers and have been the patron saints of my writing career through their word-of-mouth support.

In Patriarchy No One Can Hear You Scream: Rebecca Solnit on Jeffrey Epstein and the Silencing Machine One of my favorite books when I was young was T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, and one of its central themes is the attempt of King Arthur to replace an ethos of “might is right” with someth…

Me, 2019: "Epstein gambled on the differential between his power and voice in the world and theirs and for the most part he won, because the game was rigged by dozens of people around him... Monsters rule over us, on behalf of monsters." lithub.com/in-patriarch...

Without federal funding, public media — and the truth-telling, community-connecting role it plays — is at risk.

Local stations may vanish. Millions could lose trusted news and vital information. If you are ready to join the fight for journalism, donate now: n.pr/458sOhq

Research Associate - Percy Bysshe Shelley at University of Sheffield Apply for the Research Associate - Percy Bysshe Shelley role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

This looks like:

1) a genuinely nice role for someone
2) Sheffield has resurrected Shelley and is using him as a Research Associate - taking Gothic Studies to the next level!

Two dogs sitting with their back hips touching and their tails intertwined.

Close up of the intertwined tails.

Good morning.

College majors with the best and worst job prospects — art history beats finance In general, what college students choose to major in has significant implications for job prospects and future earnings potential.

(1) that STEM produced more job prospects. Then has been debunked w studies showing employers increasingly seek humanistic skills & this will increase w AI. “when it comes to employment prospects, majors in art history and philosophy outperform some STEM-based counterparts.” according to the Fed/2

Station Eleven
Wrinkle in Time
Cloud Atlas
House of Leaves
Kindred

🧪 UPDATE: All 63 House appropriators will meet **this Thursday** about science funding levels.

They'll deliberate on the proposed multi-billion dollar cut to NSF's budget ($9.0B --> $7.0B).

If you think that's bad for our country, here's who to call: appropriations.house.gov/about/member...

do you ever stare at the ceiling and think about how the worldwide scientific establishment did the impossible and created a COVID vaccine in under a year and the response of the general public has been to go on an unstoppable rampage to destroy science and scientists

there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby

The entire point of good reporting or good scholarship is to tell us something we didn’t already know and the idea that they could ever be replaced by AI tools that rely on scraping the internet database of what we *do* know is just ludicrous.

Just tried to do interlibrary loan - which I have been planning on using heavily in the research phase of this book - only to be told interlibrary loan at the DCPL no longer exists thanks to Trump’s cuts

Two dogs lying on their sides on a blue carpet. You can really only see their heads: the one on the left is significantly bigger than the one on the right.

Same two dogs lying on their sides blue carpet but from a different angle. This photo is taken from slightly above their heads.

Last photo of the two dogs still lying on the blue carpet. The one on the left is close up and you can only really see her eye. The one on the right is sleeping.

Good morning.

The only thing that would make this better is Gritty.

holy shit lmao

Types of dog:

- silly goose
- small and angry
- large potato
- one who Knows
- sir

Exclusive | Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump. The leather-bound book was compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell. The president says the letter ‘is a fake thing.’

gift link to the WSJ story Trump didn’t want anyone ever to see

www.wsj.com/politics/tru...

a humanities degree teaches you:

how to analyze and evaluate information
how to think
how to communicate
how to situate oneself in the world

all skills that are extremely important in the workplace no matter what technologies we use. all skills that are necessary for a democratic citizenry.

All text: If you’re in a relationship that causes you to cover your face and throw your body to the ground when a camera is on you, maybe you shouldn’t be in that relationship.

I mean, this is Pygmalion just with cyber culture instead of marble.

And 💯💯💯