Mackenzie Fiss-Nealley, PhD

Solidarity Fund is raising funds for Northwest Harvest Your gift ensures all Washingtonians can access the nutritious food they want & need.

Washington state friends! Of all the grim things happening, one of the very grimmest is going into winter with SNAP benefits about to disappear. I'm trying to raise $10,000 between now and the week before Thanksgiving for Northwest Harvest.

Please donate if you can!

Our institutions were never going to save us; they’ve just expanded the demographics of who they’re failing.

I’m seeing a lot of people radicalized for the first time as the scales fall from their eyes. The key is not to become cynical, but to use that energy to liberate one another.

Study looking at AI chatbots in 7,000 workplaces finds 'no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation' Despite AI’s promise to revolutionize white-collar work, most workers are using it sparingly—or hiding it from their boss.

AI doesn’t help you work less or get paid more, but does destroy the environment and climate.

The National Climate Science Graduate Fellowship brought to you by ExxonMobil

Tinsel the calico glares at you with a furrowed brow

“I asked chatGPT-“ ok, and I asked Tinsel, and she said you’re an uninspired, vapid dork who needs a computer to think for them.

This study was:
-done by immigrant scientists, who are now being turned away from the United States by the Trump regime,
-funded by the U.S. Dept of Energy, which is being defunded and purged by the Trump regime
-hosted at a public university experiencing vast Trump regime funding freezes

Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.

Nature reports that the National Science Foundation has stopped awarding new grants and allotting funds to existing ones. All of them. @colincarlson.bsky.social says that unless the freeze is lifted, it “is going to destroy people's labs.” 2/10
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

busy busy busy at work

hard to manage one's natural resources if you've fired all the resource managers

Eugenicists are so stupid.

Americans Must Prepare to Fight for the Citizenship Rights of U.S. Prisoners Trump's Plan to Render U.S. Citizens to Foreign Jails Seeks to Exploit Americans' Disinterest in the Rights of Prisoners

I pray you’ll read my latest. We are being challenged as a nation and this is a test we must pass.

open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...

Sorry to be a buzz kill but "Deport Elon" & "Send Trump to El Salvador" are not slogans that move us forward.

They center individuals & not the system they're wielding for new cruelties. They accept the use of torture as punishment & they minimize violence people are enduring now. 1/

🚨UPDATE: Rümeysa Öztürk has now suffered three separate asthma attacks while in DHS custody.

She has not received her required asthma medications—a violation of her fundamental right to medical care.

This is cruelty, it is neglect, and it is a damning moral and legal failure.

every person involved in this needs to be in prison

Columbia University agreed to a mask ban to appease Trump.

The school is no longer safe for disabled individuals, not to mention anyone who protests or speaks out on civil rights or Palestine.

Whatever your politics, mask bans should enrage you. They violate our freedom to avoid infection.

This is the gold standard measure of atmospheric carbon, the one you see in almost every chart that tracks emissions.

Exclusive: NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants Studies that touch on LGBT+ health, gender identity and DEI in the biomedical workforce could be terminated, according to documents obtained by Nature.

And so it begins — NIH is planning to terminate active grants that no longer meet the agency's "priorities".

Grants that were already approved for funding through peer review.

The pursuit of knowledge should be apolitical, inclusive, and forward-thinking.

🧪 #PeerReview #DefendResearch

"You have made me feel like I do not belong in science & I cannot forgive you for that."

BRAVO to this student. While I am so disappointed we are still navigating misoogyny in our educational and professional spaces, I am so grateful we have a generation who name it so clearly and capably.

For something completely different from my normal fare, a piece of glaciological art I recently completed.

'Fox Glacier, not looking up'

Draws from a 19th C watercolour, glacier length time-series, and reference to a painter who drew inspiration from a geologist.

The US faces ‘devastating’ losses for weather forecasts, federal workers say “If these cuts continue, you will feel them personally.”

DOGE is gutting the federal agency that leads climate research and oversees the weather service, laying off 10% of staff (with the ultimate goal of eliminating 50%) and cancelling office leases, @justcalma.bsky.social scoops www.theverge.com/news/622990/...

The entire business model of American R1 universities is not viable without restoration of federal funding, & every individual institution pretending it can solve this problem alone is also not viable. University presidents need to be speaking out, collectively & loudly about this, in DC, right now.

The US prison system is intentionally cruel and evil, but this is especially cruel and evil, even by their standards:

Just saw an email sent to a student of mine from a REU canceling their program due to staffing & federal research funding uncertainties.

A REU was when I internalized my science ID & applying to grad school.

If this continues, it will devastate my students #1 pathway to STEM careers.

Federal Register hold makes ‘end run’ around court pause on NIH funding freeze NIH-related updates to the Federal Register, which are required for the scheduling of study sections and advisory councils, are on hold indefinitely, according to an email reviewed by <i>The Transmitt...

A large portion of grants awarded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health cannot be funded for the foreseeable future because of an indefinite hold on submissions to the Federal Register, according to an email reviewed by The Transmitter.

By @avaskham.bsky.social

bit.ly/3X8ngz8

Establishing the President's Make America Healthy Again Commission By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.

This commission statement refers to people with Autism, ADHD, asthma, auto-immune disease, and chronic illness as a “dire threat to the American people and our way of life”.

This is a manifesto against disability.

This is the language of eugenics.

A group selfie of the 2024-25 cohort of MINDS post-baccalaureate scholars and their program director at the 2024 ABRCMS conference. This diverse group of historically marginalized scholars are all dressed up in conference attire and smiling widely for the photo.

Our #MINDS post-bacc program is accepting applications til March 1st! ✨

✅ two-years full-time PAID research
✅ $41,000 annual salary +benefits
✅ personalized grad school prep & cohort of peers
✅ $1,500 to relocate + $1,500 in prof dev funds
✅ dedicated mentors
+ more!

z.umn.edu/minds
Please share ✨

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS IN CASE OF ICE: CONOCE TUS DERECHOS EN CASO DE ENCUENTRO CON ICE:

DO NOT OPEN YOUR DOOR. ICE cannot enter your home without a warrant signed by a judge. Tell the agents to show you the warrant by sliding it under the door. NO ABRAS TU PUERTA. ICE no puede entrar a tu casa sin una orden firmada por un juez. Diles a los agentes que te muestren la orden deslizándola debajo de la puerta.

ASK THEM TO LEAVE. If ICE doesn't have a warrant, tell them you do not consent for them to enter your home and ask them to leave. At work, ICE cannot enter employee-only areas without permission. 2 PÍDALES QUE SE VAYAN. Si ICE no tiene una orden judicial, diles que no das tu consentimiento para que entren a tu casa y pídeles que se vayan. En el trabajo, ICE no puede ingresar a áreas exclusivas para empleados sin permiso.

REMAIN SILENT. You have the right to remain silent. If the agents ask you questions, tell them, "I wish to remain silent." PERMANECE EN SILENCIO. Tienes derecho a permanecer en silencio. Si los agentes te hacen preguntas, diles: "Deseo permanecer en silencio".

It is perfectly legal to know your rights and to educate others about them, too.

EVERYONE in the United States, citizen or not, has rights. I will not allow this administration to intimidate us from helping you know about them.

Here’s our shareable guide ⬇️: (pt. 1/2)

Funny how the Trump administration takes deadnaming REALLY seriously all of a sudden if you do it to a body of water instead of a living, breathing trans person

Dozens of Clinical Trials Have Been Frozen in Response to Trump’s USAID Order (Gift Article) The stop-work order on U.S.A.I.D.-funded research has left thousands of people with experimental drugs and devices in their bodies, with no access to monitoring or care.

Gift link. You should read this. It is wrong on so, SO many different levels. It violates basic principles of research ethics in so many different ways.

Leaving devices IN PEOPLE'S BODIES. Stopping treatments halfway through, with no one to contact if they get sick.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/h...

R package horoscopes are the timeline cleanse we need right now

SCIENCE IRL: Community SciComm mini-grant Skype a Scientist is offering $300-$1,000 mini-grants to support boots-on-the-ground science communication. The Science IRL mini-grants will support projects that put either 1) important science mess...

Reminder! Science IRL mini-grant applications are due February 14!

These grants are to support IN PERSON science communication projects in the US that reach science disinterested people, and ideally encourage concrete action in the audience.

Apply here!
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...