@mdgarfinkel.bsky.social
"Native New Yorker, adoptive Chicagoan, 24-year veteran of being a stranger in a strange land." Drosophila (fly) person. Childless cat man. Cinema buff. "Fascinated by everything except how to dress," as Matt Groening would put it.
Another call for action for the entire month of August from @standupforscience.bsky.social ⬇️
www.standupforscience.net/31-days-of-a...
If you are a #Drosophila person, study #genetics, benefit from #NIH, #NSF, #CDC, #FDA, #NASA, #NOAA or other embattled Federal #science research agencies, ACT NOW!
Screening four-star promotion candidates for fealty to Trump is exactly why “Coach” Tuberville, the Republican root-vegetable in the US Senate from Alabama, blocked >400 3- and 4-star military promotions for nearly a year during 2023-2024.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/u...
Mike Braun, the governor of Indiana: “As a lifelong entrepreneur for 37 years actually in the automotive business, I think I know a thing or two about [climate harm of tailpipe emissions].”
Actually, no, you don’t. You’re taking the position that a surgical-tools salesman can remove a brain tumor.
A week ago Zealot Zeldin was thinking about reversing the EPA’s “endangerment finding” re GHGs and climate change. Now he’s taking more steps towards doing it.
I’m reminded of the old quip,”Mother Nature always bats last, and she has a 1.000 batting average.” Fools.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/c...
CTA:
If you are, were, or aspire to be an #NIH grantee; if you are a #Drosophila scientist, work in #genetics, use resources such as @flybase.bsky.social or are a member of @genetics-gsa.bsky.social, this substack report is VERY important.
scienceandfreedomalliance.substack.com/p/a-quiet-po...
Even more disturbing than the NYT piece on AI-fueled video games is this substack article it references:
www.afterbabel.com/p/its-not-ju...
It's long, but worth the time to read in its entirety.
This article is very disturbing. But for everyone who sees William Gibson's 1984 _Neuromancer_ becoming real, I'd point to Crichton's 1973 movie _Westworld_ & HAL's death in Kubrick's _2001_ as prior art.
And they all owe something to the Greeks' _Pygmalion._
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/a...
This piece summarizes 150+ years of #Birmingham #Alabama economic history. It then outlines the harm to the city & state that the Trump-Vought assault on #science, its draconian #NIH cuts, will have on #1 employer #UAB.
Our Republican delegation is silent & complicit.
www.al.com/news/birming...
It is also crazy to realize that Nixon signed the National Environmental Protection Act, creating the EPA, and the Clean Air Act amendments of 1970 & the Clean Water Act of 1972, etc.
Republicans once took stewardship of the environment (“conservation”) seriously. Hard to believe, I know.
What’s also unhinged is that RFK Jr. seems to think paying 12k claimants over a 40-year period (avg 300/yr) is evidence that the dangers of vaccines have been suppressed.
Rational people would think that the low rate of claims paid means vaccines are safe.
But what do I know, I’m just a scientist.
“What we have here is… a failure to communicate!”
— The Boss, in _Cool Hand Luke_
If they didn’t _see it_, it didn’t really happen.
How many laypeople know or care about how drugs are developed & approved? They only see the direct-to-consumer ads. Or about how their doctors are educated & trained? How many laypeople can name a Nobel Prize winner, let alone describe their work?
The current vaccine injury compensation program paid each claimant an average of $450k. In exercising his mandate to “go wild on health” RFK Jr. wants to expand VICP while deeply slashing #HHS, #NIH, #CDC & #FDA personnel & budgets for, IMO, more important programs.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/h...
This is rich. A Project 2025 founder is running against Lindsey Graham, claiming he is an old-guard Republican insufficiently devoted to Trump.
This is the same Lindsey Graham who has spent most of the last 9 years on his knees in front of The Donald’s… YKW.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...
#Harvard, are you effin’ out of your collective minds?
Don’t you understand that capitulating to a lawless bully government makes you susceptible to further bullying and extortion?
The only reason I donate to #Harvard is to aid #FlyBase — not to pay a shakedown.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...
Actually… I’d say the fun began a decade earlier. For example those Bill Engels papers (among others) that defined P-M hybrid dysgenesis and demonstrated gap-repair as an important component of transposition.
…and the 1970s work on zygotic induction of Tn3 & phage lysogens following Hfr mating.
…and Squeaker of the House Mike Johnson thinks that Ghislaine Maxwell’s 20-year sentence for child molestation and sex-trafficking is too light. That she should have been given a life sentence “at least.”
Query: what is more severe than life imprisonment?
Much of Tom Lehrer’s music is timeless. Though 60 years old, “Who’s Next?” is still a topical tune about nuclear proliferation, for example.
His was a long life, well-lived, even if much of it was out of the public eye.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/a...
It's #Caturday...
Here are two now-departed members of the "Tabby Cabal" trio who moved from Chicago to Birmingham in 2001.
The grey tabby is the Turkish immigrant I've mentioned before.
His head-licking property-marking behavior extended to _me_ as well. (Don't ask; there are no pictures.)
During the campaign, Donald Trump urged RFK Jr. "to go wild on health."
I guess this is just another notch in the "promises made, promises kept" column... right up there with firing the entire #ACIP at #CDC and stacking it with anti-vax whack-a-doodles.
www.wsj.com/health/healt...
"A state of mental decline"??
Billy Joel — and about 15 million current and former New Yorkers — would like a word.
"It comes down to reality / And it's fine with me..."
You forgot the bit about DJT being willing to f*ck the teenage Ivanka were she not his daughter.
25.07.2025 18:58 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I tried to comment on the New York Times article about this, but the moderator rejected it.
Perhaps because I was blunt about Columbia's capitulation to bullies being a bad idea, and that Claire Shipman might need to update her CV in anticipation of needing to look for a new job very soon.
No... but the bedsheets are very wet & sticky.
(Get yer minds out of the gutter. That's a reference to _The Godfather"!!)
Some of us argued that confirming #Bondi, #Blanche, #Bove & #Sauer to the top four jobs at the #DOJ would be a huge mistake — that these former paid employees of Trump would put fealty to _him_ above fidelity to the Constitution and laws of the United States.
www.thebulwark.com/p/why-the-hu...
I haven't posted about #movies I've seen on #TCM for awhile.
Here's this week so far...
_None Shall Escape_
_The Movie Man_
_Hearts of the West_
_Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession_
_Film, The Living Record of Our Memory_
They're all very different from one another. All are fascinating.
The Japanese Government just gave Donald Trump principal decision-making authority over how to invest _$400-billion_ in American industries. Yet another expansion of presidential “discretion” to reward himself, his family & friends and punish those who do not yield.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/b...
Zealot Zeldin wants to repeal both the law and the science, as he continues to gut the Environmental “Protection” Agency.
The 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA SCOTUS case on the endangerment finding for GHGs was the one Scalia said “I’m not a scientist” in oral args.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/c...
The assault against #NSF continues, and today over 140 of its employees signed (all but one anonymously, for fear of retribution) an open letter to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, asking for her help in defending the endangered 75-year-old agency.
Read about it here…
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/s...
