Isabel

Alex Pretti’s death ruled homicide after Minneapolis shooting by federal agents The death of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis man killed by federal agents, has been ruled a homicide, the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office said.

The death of Alex Pretti has been ruled a homicide, the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office said. Pretti was shot Jan. 24 during a chaotic encounter with federal immigration officers in Minneapolis. Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez were named as the two officers who fired at Pretti.

Molecular surveillance supports differing roles for Culex pipiens and Culex restuans (Diptera: Culicidae) in West Nile virus transmission in Chicago, Illinois Abstract. The Chicago metropolitan area is a hotspot for human West Nile virus (WNV) cases. Despite extensive surveillance and research, predicting WNV cas

New paper I got to help with: Molecular surveillance supports differing roles for Culex pipiens and Culex restuans (Diptera: Culicidae) in West Nile virus transmission in Chicago, Illinois

They may have different roles, but no evidence of a public health importance . . . yet . . .

Dakota woman recounts more than 48 hours in immigration detainment - ICT Sophie Watso was arrested by immigration agents on Jan. 14 who accused her of obstructing an ongoing investigation

More than 162 years after the Mdewakanton Dakota people were forcibly detained and held at Fort Snelling in Minnesota, a Mdewakanton woman found herself detained by ICE in the same place her ancestors had been. Here's her story. ictnews.org/news/north-c...

N.I.H. Worker Who Criticized Trump Seeks Whistle-Blower Protection

"Dr. Norton told NPR in October, “[the admin and president] is asking us to do things that are illegal and harmful to the American public.”

@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social has been an inspiration to many scientists and citizens.
I can't count the number of colleagues who have praised her to me.

Something I’ve often thought about but never really learned about. Will read with interest!

There is an actual disaster ongoing across Tennessee, Louisiana, & Mississippi, where folks have been without power for a week in freezing temperatures.

archive.ph/oZgB7

Misoprostol is used in many aspects of OBGYN care (abortion, miscarriage management, cervical prep) and to treat ulcers. Methotrexate is used to treat ectopic pregnancies and in the management of autoimmune disorders like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriasis.

European Scientists who said NO to Epstein-funding are the heroines of this hour🦸‍♀️

They show: It was your choice to SAY NO to Epstein's $ as scientist- you just had to have ethics & a spine

Kudos to Physicist IVETTE FUENTES who said NO

She was working at @quantumunivie.bsky.social @univie.ac.at

[upbeat zohran voice] I'm here at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, where 80 years ago some important progressive work started [smash cut] but hasn't ended. So here's what we're doing:

HHS Is Using AI Tools From Palantir to Target ‘DEI’ and ‘Gender Ideology’ in Grants Since March of 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services has been using tools from Palantir and the startup Credal AI to weed out perceived alignment with “DEI” or “gender ideology.”

SCOOP: Palantir's AI has been deployed at HHS since last March to audit grants, grant applications, & job descriptions for anything related to "DEI" or "gender ideology"

The goal was to ensure compliance with 2 of Trump's executive orders:
www.wired.com/story/hhs-is...

'Reminds me of Anne Frank': Jewish seniors are offering to hide their Haitian caregivers as Trump's TPS end looms - Jewish Telegraphic Agency The end of Temporary Protected Status has Holocaust survivors offering to hide Haitian staffers, according to the CEO of a senior-living center in Florida.

For those objecting to comparisons between Germany then & the U.S. now:

“About 500 seniors live at Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Florida, including many Holocaust survivors. Recently, some of them asked if they could hide the building’s Haitian staff in their apartments.”

"you are never quite sure what it is going to come up with" would that maybe explain women's skepticism toward AI? 🧪🧑🏻‍🔬

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

How the Supreme Court Secretly Made Itself Even More Secretive

The idea that the Court should operate entirely in secret is a modern phenomenon. The idea that the Court should be separated from the public is a modern phenomenon. Earlier generations did not accept a powerful, isolated & secretive Court and we shouldn't either 1/6

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...

Within the past 48 hours, the undersigned alone has reported thousands of redaction failures on behalf of nearly 100 individual survivors whose lives have been turned upside down by DOJ's latest release. [...] "There is no conceivable degree of institutional incompetence sufficient to explain the scale, consistency, and persistence of the failures that occurred - particularly where the sole task ordered by the Court and repeatedly emphasized by DOJ was simple: redact known victim names before publication.

One of the most prominent firms repping Epstein survivors identified "thousands of redaction failures on behalf of nearly 100 individual survivors."

The lawyers rip DOJ's "institutional incompetence."

Thanks for sharing this. Here is an analysis of satellite images, which some also tried to suppress, from about 8 months ago

Today is an absolute shitstorm of ICE presence in our MN town of 20,000. They stepped up the invasion like a motherfucker the second they claimed to be stepping it down.

There is no legitimate reason for a sitting president to be in communication with field agents during an investigation.

The Fulton County ballot seizure is entirely compromised and corrupt.

if you are in MN and hear of anyone in need of a flight home from detention please send them my way (contact@standwithminnesota.com)

QuitGPT — OpenAI Execs are Trump's Biggest Donors Join the movement. Delete ChatGPT. Cancel your subscription. It's time to quit.

ChatGPT is Trump’s biggest donor and is used by ICE. If you don’t like Trump or ICE, you should quit ChatGPT.

punxsutawney phil (just had visions of pestilence, blood rain, malignant false idols, stillborn livestock): uuuh 6 more weeks of winter

A flock of pigeons huddled against the cold in the upper right portion of the canvas with the Text THERE ARE MORE OF US beneath them. Painted in acrylic

Today's pigeons know that we keep us safe.

Complete with an experiment using fat brushes, only. Based loosely on a photo by @marthamihalick.bsky.social

Happy #WorldWetlandsDay to the real MVPs.

Incrementalists take it on the chin again. This is why they hate Mamdani. He's giving up the game that people in power HAVE POWER and don't solely exist to beg you for $5 every day. He's ruining the Democratic Party by showing voters that they have the power to do stuff instead of crouching in fear

“The ice-cold flame of the passion for seeking the truth for truth's sake must be kept burning, can be kept alive only if we continue to seek the truth for truth's sake."

Check back weekly for APS Members' words of wisdom!

#wordsofwisdom

I don’t want most people younger than me to ever learn to expect the sort of stuff I experienced even a decade ago. We do have some power to stigmatize shitty behavior, and it’s diminished somewhat if people just…expect it. So keep people safe, but not more scared than they need to be.

I try to be pretty forthright with this stuff - looped someone in on something like this last week - and also I try not to spook the youths by volunteering dark portents if they aren’t helpful. Part of how creeps impose their whole deal on the rest of society is, frankly, fear & “inevitability”

BB eye: A birder’s guide to High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI, bird flu) virus infections have historically been most commonly associated with wild Eurasian waterfowl with...

Our article, a birder’s guide to HPAI, was published today in @britishbirds.bsky.social - it’s open access this month.

We explain how bird-flu infected seabirds in 2021/22 and the importance of citizen science to montoring future outbreaks in the wild. 🪶🧪

britishbirds.co.uk/journal/arti...

Neat short 🧵! Unfortunately, so many compromises in the name of “tractability” alter key features of the organisms we study 🫠

An understated detail here is how ICE are literally just thugs. They are going around the country and literally just stealing shit as routine part of their operational mission to terrorize, assault, rape, and kidnap. They are literally thugs.

The facility is reportedly in lockdown. This is one way to control the spread of measles. But it comes with a cost.

I reported on prisons during the peak of COVID. Grown adults struggled mentally and physically during the lockdowns. In this case, children will also have to endure them.