Rachel Poretsky

Apple has removed an ICE tracking app that allows users to report ICE activity nearby from its App Store.

The removal came after a direct demand from Trump’s DOJ.

Once again, Big Tech is bending the knee to our tyrant-in-chief to protect its bottom line.

bluesky please don’t implode, I refuse to try any more new things

Logan Square neighborhood, Chicago. Man wearing a balaclava in a white, unmarked vehicle, pulls the pin on a tear gas canister and tosses it in the road.

"Just trying to grab some lunch and these fucking losers showed up. FUCK ICE!"
source: www.reddit.com/r/LoganSquar...

Among them, a Poretsky Lab alum whom we miss very much here in Chicago (but are so excited for.)

Hi, Pete Hegseth. It’s me. Army veteran, Judge Advocate lawyer, and law professor. Your vain and gross performance to our nation’s military leaders succeeded only in proving your incompetence, dangerousness, and childishness. You’re a petty spoiled 7th grade boy without the sophistication or class.

The summarised schedule of Black in Micro Week 2025, October 14-16. All times are in Eastern Standard Time. Mon 14: Pathways for Change. Welcome and Keynote Address 12pm. Marian Johnson-Thompson, PhD. Panel Discussion: Finding Black Spaces in STEM, 1:15-2:15 PM. Weds 15, Careers & Research: ECR Symposium 9-12 PM. Panel discussion: Navigating Careers in Microbiology 2-3 PM. Thurs 16, Community: Panel Discussion - Empowering Your Science 12-1:15 PM. Workshop: Science in Action

This is your daily reminder that registration is open and *FREE* for #BiM2025 #BlackInMicro Week. Get ready to join our online celebration: linktr.ee/BlackInMicro (or see link in bio)

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social I'm an epidemiologist. Sewage systems are sexy. Dosco Jones @doscojones.bsky.social I'm an engineer. Sewage systems are sexy.

I’m a sewage system. I also have a great personality.

Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment.

The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP

jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

NSF GRFP is out 2.5 months late w/key changes

1. 2nd year graduate students not eligible.

2. "alignment with Administration priorities"

3. Unlike prior years, they DO NOT specify the expected number of awards... that is a BIG problem.

a brief 🧵 w/receipts

www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a "battle" rather than what it truly was: a massacre of over 250 Lakotas, mainly women, children, and the elderly. 1/

Stay ahead in infectious disease research! Join the Tools for Tomorrow Webinar Series from the NIAID BRCs. Monthly updates, new tools, fresh insights. Starts Oct 10, 2 PM UTC.

Register: tinyurl.com/NIAIDBRCWebi...

So if Jimmy Kimmel had just suggested killing homeless people by involuntary lethal injection, like Brian Kilmeade did on Fox, he’d still have a job?

TERRORISM EXPERT HERE:
He cannot designate an idea as a terrorist group.

There is no org called ANTIFA. There is no leadership or funding path or no membership. Also there is no terrorism law in America. Ask Luigi.

He wants to call anyone a terrorist. That’s Fascism.

#ReleaseTheEpsteinFiles

I did lab work and didn’t hurt myself or break anything. I did, however, have to constantly ask the labbies where things were.

And, turns out, 1) pathogens don’t care about state borders and 2) people travel to/from FL sometimes.

But they don’t give a shit if it’s illegal; they do it anyway.

Chicago slyline at Grant Park starting point for Bike the Drive. Hmmm. That Revolution Brewing banner gives me an idea for topping up my carb intake.

Bicyclists headed south.

Bike the drive bikers with Field Museum in background. Riders of all shapes, sizes, and ages.

See #3 alt trxt.

Scenes from the nightmare hellscape that is Chicago!

So gross. Starting on the front page, too, along with an article about durian. As if there’s a shortage of news to report on.

Dr. Dmitri Daskalakis, who resigned from the CDC says that RFKJr said he believes that Avian flu should be allowed to "burn through" the chickens and then children and others, so we can propagate a "stronger species". RFKJr believes in eugenics.

RFKJr needs to resign or be fired.

It bears repeating that nearly the entire US enterprise in science and technology has been irreversibly gutted. This is shocking.

All this loss has occurred without any real benefit to the average US citizen. Except we now have the biggest, best funded secret police force perhaps ever.

Yay for us!

💯

Multiple Early Career Faculty Positions in Ecology The Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame invites applications for multiple, tenure-track assistant professor positions that will enhance existing institutional excellence in ecology. We are searching broadly for creative and collaborative individuals (1) working at any spatial scale, from local to global, in any system, (2) studying any level of biological organization, from genes to ecosystems, and (3) using any mode of inference, from empirical to theoretical. Applicants should demonstrate research excellence that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries; ongoing growth in the department will emphasize new hires that use quantitative and/or integrative approaches to study ecological processes. Postdoctoral experience is desirable in applicants. Successful candidates will engage with and benefit from UNDERC, Notre Dame’s 8000-acre environmental field station and home to NEON’s Great Lakes domain, superb on-campus chemical and genomic analytical facilities, an experimental research facility located close to campus, cross-disciplinary interactions through multiple centers and institutes including the Environmental Change Initiative, and a unique Interdisciplinary Graduate Training Program in Environment and Society. New faculty will benefit from Notre Dame’s recent campus-wide Strategic Framework that included the Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative. Modern research facilities exist in a new environmental research building, which opened in 2025.

Multiple ecology faculty positions at @notredame.bsky.social. Apply at apply.interfolio.com/171650. (1/2). 🌎🌐🧪

I’ll be speaking at a Chicago @standupforscience.bsky.social teach-in!

📅 Date & Time: Saturday, August 30, 12:00 PM CST
📍 Location: Lincoln Park Branch, Chicago Public Library (and online)
1150 W Fullerton Ave, Chicago, IL 60614
🔗 Register here: act.standupforscience.net/events/teach...

Quick, hold an emergency city council meeting on the dangers of Ebikes in cities!

Did you miss the opportunity to submit an abstract to MMPC?
We have extended the deadline to August 25! Please consider sharing your latest and greatest research!
www.mmpconference2025.com/submit-an-ab...

one small consolation of being a 60+ year old investigator is the ability to submit to 𝘔𝘈𝘛𝘜𝘙𝘌 family journals — sure they’re low impact (for our knees) but they have an early bird special if you submit between 4:00 and 5:30 on weekdays

Scientists’ role in defending democracy The United States’ democratic leadership, commitment to freedom of expression, and investment in the pursuit of knowledge have long enabled its preeminence in science and technology. Yet today we are ...

My new @science.org editorial on the role of scientists in defending democracy is out today. As authoritarianism takes hold in the US, we must fight for the democratic principles that enable a free society and scientists have a key role. I hope you'll join us.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Vinay Prasad Returns to FDA Within two weeks of his unceremonious departure, the COVID vaccine skeptic is back as the nation’s top vaccine regulator.

One day after a man who reportedly believed that the COVID vaccine had injured him shot up the CDC, HHS announced that a doctor with a history of casting doubt on the safety of the mRNA vaccines is being reinstated as the FDA’s top vaccine regulator.

www.importantcontext.news/p/vinay-pras...

How easy is it to fudge your scientific rank? Meet Larry, the world’s most cited cat “Exercise in absurdity” reveals flaws in Google Scholar’s productivity metrics

Larry Richardson appeared to be an early-career mathematician with potential, racking up more than 130 citations in 4 years.

It would all be rather remarkable—if the studies weren’t complete gibberish. And if Larry wasn’t a cat. #InternationalCatDay scim.ag/4lg3wTp

Serve your country! Defend your culture!

Just in case it’s not already clear that ICE is a white supremacist thug army, Homeland Security is recruiting with a “defend your culture” slogan.