Josh Currie

Fwd: Fwd: “I hope this email finds you well”

"By 'the deal,' I do not mean ....a contract by which both sides are equally bound. Instead I mean a 'deal' in the special Donald Trump sense: an agreement you and I sign that binds you to do what I want, grants me new leverage over you to demand more in the future, and does very little to bind me."

The question journalists need to be asking is: WHY is the government trying this?

It’s because they want to control universities in unlawful ways that courts will not allow; it’s not working; so they’re trying to get universities to sign up “voluntarily” for unlawful levels of government control.

EV battery component company backs out of plans for $152M Haywood County facility • Tennessee Lookout A South Korean battery component maker has backed out of plans to build a $152.5 million electrolyte manufacturing facility to Haywood County.

tennesseelookout.com/2025/10/02/e...

ESPN shares an interview with a UNC student going into commercial, with Clemson leading 28-3.

"TCU was... I went to that game. And that was, that was one of the saddest feelings I've had in University so far. I've failed midterms before, so that's saying something." 🏈💀 #CFB

Figure from our review paper showing various fluorescence microscopy images of cells and structures of the kidney

Sharing this excellent review now out from postdoc Sarah McLarnon! Lots of useful info on 3D imaging, quantification of imaging data, and how this has been applied to the kidney. And since it's #FluorescenceFriday, sharing a figure with our own imaging data!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Company of Biologists 100 logo to the left and QR code to the right. Portrait of Mark Peifer to the left, text to the right 100 extraordinary biologists Mark Peifer Mark Peifer is a recent Company Director and a prolific author, having published in Development, Journal of Cell Science and Biology Open. Mark is a cell and developmental biologist at the University of North Carolina, USA, investigating the epithelial tissues that form the basic architectural unit of our bodies and of those of other animals. #100biologists #biologists100

Our next extraordinary biologist is Mark Peifer, recent @biologists.bsky.social Director and a prolific author, having published in @dev-journal.bsky.social, @jcellsci.bsky.social and @biologyopen.bsky.social. #100biologists
@peiferlabunc.bsky.social

yep. You can't make a 'better case' that convinces tyranny of the value of science since knowledge is tyranny's kryptonite.

BBC World Service - Newsday, US government shutdown A final vote on extending government spending has failed to pass the US Senate.

BBC interviewer: Is there a fundamental flaw in American politics?

Me: Absolutely. The US is operating political parties software on institutional hardware that assumes parties don't exist because checks and balances will prevent tyranny. That turns out to be wrong.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

Figure 1: Fluorophore intensity in the Drosophila blastoderm (n.c. 14). Comparison of (A) green and (B) red fluorescence intensity using the same intensity scaling in n.c. 14. The fluorescence signal did not saturate. Shown are single imaging planes. Normalised histograms of fluorescence intensity for green (C) and red (D) fluorophores averaged across at least n=3 embryos per line. Scale bars = 20 μm

Identification of optimal fluorophores for use in the Drosophila embryo by Timothy E Saunders and team: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Just a reminder if you're getting a manuscript together (like we are) to thank your core facilities!

1. More Americans work at the Cheesecake Factory than in the entire coal industry, and that won't change. It's because of automation, not snooty libs.

2. Coal energy is now more expensive than wind and solar.

3. So this means: higher energy prices, more pollution, no jobs benefit. Genius!

The platypus is possibly the weirdest animal: it's a mammal but lays eggs, its duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed and venomous. It has electroreceptors for locating prey, eyes with double cones, no stomach, and 26 pairs of chromosomes. It's fluorescent and glows under UV light.

Bruschetta has been a nice, easy meal that the kids actually ask for.

(next to a map of the nearly 2,000 events planned for October 18) NO THRONES. NO CROWNS. NO KINGS. SATURDAY, OCT. 18

Trump’s regime knows they can’t silence us all through investigations, prosecutions or the deployment of brutal secret police. They can only try to silence dissent through fear. As long as we choose not to give into fear, we can’t be silenced. Join us to say NO KINGS: www.nokings.org?SQF_SOURCE=i...

a man is walking down a hallway carrying a backpack . ALT: a man is walking down a hallway carrying a backpack .

Coming into the weekend with a crash landing. Literally counting the hours till I can get the kids to sleep and pass out myself....

Image of a fluorescently labeled adult mouse kidney showing AQP2 staining of collecting ducts and connecting segment in green and alpha SMA staining of the arterial tree in magenta. The collecting ducts look like squiggly branches.

For this #FluorescenceFriday, a gorgeous image of an adult mouse kidney labeled with AQP2 and alpha SMA antibodies. AQP2 (green) marks the collecting duct and distal connecting segment while SMA marks the arterial tree. Courtesy of talented postdoc Sarah McLarnon.

Honestly, this feels like the worst of American punditry. No expertise about public health or health policy, just “Here’s someone who’s doing heinous things that will literally kill people, so let’s see how it’s polling.”

What if NIH had been 40% smaller? Replaying history with less NIH funding shows widespread impacts on drug-linked research

This may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I keep trying to get people to recognize that my having a PhD says a lot more about me being stubborn than me being smart.

Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time One of the most devastating diseases finally has a treatment that can slow its progression and transform lives, tearful doctors tell BBC.

a new mRNA therapy apparently can cut the rate of Huntington's disease progression by ~75%. yet more miracle shit www.bbc.com/news/article...

Read this yesterday and it was shocking and yet not-shocking. I can imagine that BOTs for soooo many universities are conducting themselves this way.

Former UNC Provost Sues Board of Trustees Over 'Pattern' of Closed Session Violations - Chapelboro.com Chris Clemens, a former provost of UNC, is suing the university and its Board of Trustees for allegedly violating open meeting laws.

Everyone in NC and all concerned about overreach by University administrators around the nation need to read this sad but important story about UNC-CH: 1/n Please share
chapelboro.com/news/unc/for...

Eric Peterman @errricpeterman.bsky.social, Jeffrey Rasmussen @jraslab.bsky.social @uwbiology.bsky.social & colleagues discover that microtubules regulate tissue-level navigation in skin-resident macrophages.
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
Article: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Are you interested on how regenerating tissues transit between stages? Am sharing here our work showing that during #Xenopus tail regeneration, tissue stiffening activates a Piezo1-Yap1 mechanosensitive cascade to allow wounded epithelia to transit into regenerative states!

‘Fear and hopelessness’: study finds one in four professors consider leaving US south Survey by American Association of Professors shows nearly quarter of respondents are switching due to states’s politics

Watching red states wreck their own universities, on purpose, has been stunning to watch.

Field notes from a weekend PI at the #microscope: vesicle cargo lanes lighting up in real time like @FedEx. This is the ML1N PX domain in a fibroblast. Hot damn, there’s mind-blowing action under the surface of cells: this video shows 2 min of time 🤯 #Cellbio #MicroscopyMonday #SciArt #SciComm

So cool they discovered the cause of autism on basically day they guessed they would. I’m also glad they are withholding this information for a few days to prep for a WrestleMania-style announcement. This is how science works.

This is it, essentially. The core of it. The goal of ICE detention in the mass deportation system is to make people give up their case without fighting; to have an officer say “if you want to see a judge and plead your case, you’re going to be jailed for months and months, so why not give up now?”