Katie Wilkinson

I have a male friend who spent some time in Axel's lab. About the 3rd conversation he had with Axel, Axel broke the ice with "So, have you fucked [a female postdoc in the lab] yet?"

My friend was horrified...

"In the university’s records, I remained a student of Professor Prominent. The junior faculty member who actually did the work of commenting meaningfully on my dissertation was relegated to 'committee member.' Her only reward was having to write letters of recommendation for me for years to come."

I sat down with Dr. Jenna Norton, an NIH employee & my guest at the People’s State of the Union. She was put on leave by the Trump Admin after speaking truth to power.

Dr. Norton told me Trump’s actions risked creating a super-bug that would endanger us all.

I'd probably be more enthusiastic about AI if everyone involved weren't just the dumbest guys?

The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”

There were so many of us, exactly when these emails were being written, expressly working to undo the harms of sexual harassment and sexual discrimination in science. And so many people refused to believe us that any of it was real. It was all real.

19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

Opinion | The Human Cost of Trump’s War on Science

Deep, well sourced, moving, and enraging story from the NYT

[Gift Link]

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

what even is the fucking point

That drop is more than the entire NSF budget.

I'm glad schools stood firm and refused to comply in advance, given how obvious this outcome was-

*puts finger to ear*

Wait, I'm getting word now...

F.D.A. Reverses Decision and Agrees to Review Moderna’s Flu Vaccine

Some good news...

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/h...

[Gift link]

1/2

www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/09/m...

A valentine from Public Health of Seattle and King County. A man shivers in bed while a smiling lady in a red mask shows off her bandage on her arm. Text: Noses are red Ice packs are blue I'm vaxed so miss me with severe symptoms of flu.

A valentine from Public Health of Seattle and King County. Two lady scientists shrug lackadaisically. Text reads: My love for you can't be explained by science. Just like the new federal vaccine guidelines.

A valentine from Public Health of Seattle and King County. Protesters in Minneapolis wear thick clothes and hold signs of support for immigrant neighbors. Text reads: To the health departments in the Twin Cities: Love unites us. Our hearts are with you.

Oh my GOD King County Public Health is just wilding out for Valentines Day (and a lovely one).

thread. related, my impression is a lot of higher ed administrators are significantly oriented toward making a mark on an institution in the short term so they have a claimable on their CV to get their next admin job elsewhere. that incentivizes vandalizing institutions, whether by AI or otherwise

A four panel comic, from left to right: 1960s LIFE IS BASED ON DNA, WHICH USES RNA TO MAKE PROTEINS THAT DO STUFF. 1980s ALSO, THE RNA DOES SOME STUFF ITSELF, WHICH IS WEIRD. 2000s THERE ARE 50 MANY KINDS OF RNA. IT'S DOING SO MUCH STUFF! 2020s LIFE IS A SEETHING MASS OF RNA THAT SOMETIMES USES DNA TO TAKE NOTES. WHAT DO THE PROTEINS DO? ERRANDS FOR RNA.

It’s an RNA world. RNA is posited to be the first genetic material, arising 4 billion years ago. It can store information and act as an enzyme. Eventually, it duplicated its information into a more stable form, DNA.

I'm not sure if this is the message people are looking for from the secretary of health and human services

To be fair he has passive aggressively buried their mailbox on numerous occasions. But I’m thinking at some point they will need a snow blower or better neighbors.

Growing up we shared a driveway w a nicer older woman. We would always shovel for her. Then younger family moved in and have just expected my now almost 70 yo dad to do all the shoveling except in front of their garage for going on 20 yrs. Fingers crossed you both get good new neighbors.

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics?
1) Write NSF
2) Write your Congressperson
3) CC us at grfp@grant-witness.us so we can compile + follow up

Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

To echo others, I have written a few dozen recommendation letters/email recommendations in my 12 years of university teaching and of fucking course I have NEVER felt the need to describe a student's physical appearance in any of them, what the actual fuck...

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

San Jose State Football Assistant Coaches' Salaries - USA TODAY See the complete salary history of San Jose State Football Coaches Salaries, including scheduled school pay and bonuses. Brought to you by USA TODAY.

sportsdata.usatoday.com/ncaa/salarie...

In honor of the athletics budget town hall tomorrow about a new student fee to primarily fund athletics: 10 SJSU assistant football coaches appear to make more money than full Profs like me (some over double as much) and the head coach makes over twice as much as our president. #priorities

Going to try and watch this until I’m blinded by rage

i know portland doesn’t count as real america on the east coast but i saw very little national news coverage of this over the weekend—and the coverage i did see wasn’t prominent. i think a bunch of little kids and nurses and families getting gassed is newsworthy

Tear Gas Is Way More Dangerous Than Police Let On In the middle of a respiratory pandemic, law enforcement agencies have used tear gas in especially dangerous ways. The chemical agent also seeps into homes, contaminates food, furniture, skin and surf...

Tear gas is banned in international warfare, yet classified as a “riot control agent” that law enforcement can use for crowd control.

“It just doesn’t work well, and it hits the weakest people the most, and causes the most complications in them,” an anesthesiology professor at Duke University said.

Pb concentration by decade in hair from Salt Lake City region residents. Value plotted for 1940 includes all samples from 1916 to 1959; value plotted at 2022 includes all samples from 2020 to 2024.

Lead (Pb) in archived hair in Salt Lake City.

"Lead (Pb) in archived hair documents a decline in lead exposure to humans since the establishment of the US Environmental Protection Agency "

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The California State University system spent $16.9 million last year giving ChatGPT to all students, faculty, and staff. We are asking the CSU chancellor not to renew the contract with OpenAI when it expires.

Anyone can sign the petition — link below!

Meanwhile, at a school and university near you, AI tools that have yet to be tested on the types of students and subjects you teach are being rolled out to/in them without robust discussion and analysis. It's a major, shameful failing of the management of education systems.

Opinion | ICE Took Their Classmate. They Started Writing Letters.

Well, that’ll wreck you. Gift link.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/o...

I live smack dab in the middle of an ordinary block in Minneapolis. I borrow occasional eggs or vanilla from the neighbor on my right when I get caught short baking. My partner shovels our elderly neighbor’s sidewalk; she knit him a hat in gratitude. The folks down the street watch our cats when we’re away. In other words, a pretty typical American neighborhood, perhaps not unlike your own. Imagine if you heard that heavily armed, masked agents were going door-to-door where you live, violently grabbing people from gardeners to grandparents – no questions asked, no warrants offered. What would you do? Especially if you knew that having more community members as observers decreases the likelihood those masked agents will use violence.

Another view of "Love Thy Neighbor" from first hand account of detention in Minnesota:

www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...