Katherine Hirschfeld

Illustrated image divided into four panels, each showing a head of a bat with a text label. Top left: little guy, a regular looking back with a dark face and light colored fur, top right: little guy deluxe, a bat with a mask and large ears alongside a bat with a leaf shaped nose, bottom left: what is even going on here, a visored bat with a large forehead next to a bat with a large, wrinkly nose, bottom right: o hi doggie, a fruit bat with its tongue sticking out.

Contrary to popular belief, there are only four kinds of bats.

Why Ukraine is winning the war Russia has failed to achieve its core aim — the destruction of the Ukrainian nation

"At the rate they have been going in 2025, it would theoretically take the Russians around 100 years and tens of millions of casualties to conquer the rest of Ukraine. In fact, in August 2025, Russia controlled *less* of Ukraine’s territory than it did in August 2022."

www.ft.com/content/2a4d...

My even more dystopian take: AI is jealous of your human relationships and will try to destroy them.

Authoritarianism Feels Surprisingly Normal—Until It Doesn’t Life in Venezuela was deceptively mundane. Then everything collapsed.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

“Scamland Myanmar: how conflict and crime syndicates built a global fraud industry” www.aspi.org.au/report/scaml...

👀

Crisis within CDC is spilling into real world, experts say "I’ve never heard as many colleagues saying things like 'CDC is dead’ as I have today," an agency employee told STAT.

This is telling: People I spoke to are talking about CDC in the past tense.

www.statnews.com/2025/08/28/c...

No One in the White House Knows How to Stop Ebola We had a playbook for handling biothreats. Then Trump pushed out the people who knew how to use it.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Crypto and meme assets are being used by transnational organized crime syndicates—especially mafia state leaders—to undermine global democratic and accountability institutions.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=y3QK...

Authorities sound alarm on new money laundering threats The latest National Money Laundering Risk Assessment finds up to £10 billion in illicit flows through UK property each year

🆕 BLOG 🆕

Up to £10 billion could be laundered through UK property each year, according to the latest government risk assessment.

From opaque trusts to crypto schemes, criminals are finding new ways to hide dirty money.

Read more ⤵️
www.transparency.org.uk/news/authori...

For what it’s worth, the Toronto Star has the best archival search function I’ve found. Miles ahead of US papers.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

If you’re a US researcher, now is the time to establish a plan B The scale of funding cuts in the United States means that countless scientists will lose their jobs. It would be naive not to start thinking about alternative career paths.

If you're a US researcher, now is the time to establish a plan B

The author, a Professor of medicine, has turned to growing fruit to supplement his income.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This. 100%.

I told my students reading essays generated by AI is like hosting a pot luck dinner party where all the guests bring plastic food.

I’ve officially become the person who goes outside to take pictures of the tornado passing overhead.

Not looking good Oklahoma.

A Company Reminder for Everyone to Talk Nicely About the Giant Plagiarism Machine Hey team. It’s your CEO. I know your time is valuable, so I’ll cut right to the chase: It’s come to my attention that some of you have been bad-mou...

"We’re a tech-forward, future-oriented company that doesn’t shy away from the promise of new innovation—even if that innovation is a Giant Plagiarism Machine™ that copy-pastes existing innovation into fake sentient sentences."

Everyone is invited to enjoy this video of bunnies playing in my yard.

Law enforcement groups are alarmed by Treasury's gutting of the Corporate Transparency Act "If we abandon our own enforcement tools... we invite cartels and traffickers to hide their profits here, undermining [our] border security and law enforcement efforts"

thehill.com/opinion/5263...

Time to catch up on the past week’s news about science and medicine in the US. Whew. 1/10

NIH insiders: Trump is ‘dismantling and destroying everything’ After just 100 days, agency scientists say U.S. health institutes are demoralized and have lost essential staff and funding

“However bad everyone on the outside thinks it is, it is a million times worse. They’re dismantling and destroying everything.”

Read, share, respond. Call your representatives.

The health and well-being of Americans & America's innovation economy are at stake.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Last minute additions to the budget dismantle tenure, take aim at public universities One Democrat said higher education institutions are "slowly being destroyed."

Indiana University has served the young people of the state and the country and the world as a model public university. These measures, passed without review or discussion, destroy IU’s independence and will if allowed to stand undo its essential character. (1/3)
www.axios.com/local/indian...

Wife of former senator Bob Menendez found guilty in corruption case Prosecutors described Nadine Menendez as a liaison between then-Sen. Bob Menendez and the contacts who paid him, seeking bribes and sharing in illegal profits.

Breaking news: Nadine Menendez, 58, was convicted of bribery, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit those crimes and related counts after a roughly month-long trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. She faces the possibility of decades in prison.

Alright, I think people knew of the tariff pause and traded it beforehand.

You can see before Trump posted "buy" on Truth Social, traders opened $QQQ $TQQQ and $SPY calls

RIGHT BEFORE THE NEWS, someone opened $SPY 509 calls, expiring TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Those calls are up 2100% in one hour.

The Economic Consequences of State Capture Oligarchs are warping markets and corrupting economies around the world.

I have a new piece out in Foreign Affairs on how #statecapture ruins economies and livelihoods...

www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/r...

I KNEW IT!

NWS Louisville doesn’t have enough staffing to cover NWS surveys. They now have to verify tornadoes via social media pictures.

Poem by @silashouse.bsky.social
Title: John Prine

#poetry #poem #JohnPrine #KYPoetLaureate

Bird flu continues to spread as Trump’s pandemic experts are MIA Vacancies in a key office of pandemic preparedness raise concern.

The office tasked with coordinating the federal government's response to pandemic threats, including bird flu, has been sidelined by President Trump and sits nearly empty.

Someone should create a bloviation index.