Katie Lee

@caraocobock.bsky.social

Me!

Congrats!!!

I guess owning a huge chunk of a Hawaiian island, a California compound, two Lake Tahoe estates, and a yacht fleet wasn't enough property for the billionaire.

Shame we can't fund things like environmental protections, healthcare for all, and quality public education by taxing the rich or something.

Zuckerberg just spent more on a house by the beach in Miami (~$170 million) that will surely fall into the sea w/in our lifetimes than the gov. of Louisiana budgeted for the Dept of Environmental Quality for FY 2026 (~$156 million).

LDEQ is supposed to monitor air & water quality in a petrostate.

Human biology happens in a world saturated with metals, pesticides, and industrial chemicals. This toolkit paper makes a powerful case: if we want to truly understand human biology, we must measure the pollutants moving through people’s bodies. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

As we note in our commentary, reducing ADEs “will require interdisciplinary collaborations and novel approaches to unravel the accumulation of factors that create sexed and gendered health disparities” - we hope to see continued development in these areas in the future!

So happy that my work with the @genderscilab.bsky.social on sex and gender in Adverse Drug Events is wrapping up with this last (planned) paper, out this year in Women's Health Issues.

Check out the explainer video (linked in the thread quoted below, but also here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCym...)

YouTube video by GenderSci Lab The Role of Gender in Understanding Adverse Drug Events

We’re excited to announce our latest video explainer, which summarizes our work to date on gender and sex disparities in Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCym...

Thinking about newsletter topics - I think I'm going to write about loss again, or more specifically about the we find ourselves in right now, where we fought so hard against disinformation on youth gender affirming care, but the disinformation won, and what you do with that/where you go from there.

The one thing I do not want is more emails, but I would be ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTED to get an email because someone wants a copy of something I’ve done and/or to hear someone has read and thought about something I’ve done.

If you ever want to read a paper for free and can't find it otherwise, email the lead author and politely ask for a copy. You will not be bothering the person. You will in fact make their whole entire day. I have had scientists get so excited I asked they sent me everything they ever published.

Suggesting my book group read The Intermediaries by @bschillace.brandyschillace.com as our next read (seems particularly relevant, unfortunately, these days), and they immediately put The Framed Women of Ardemore House on the list as the follow up.

So I guess we'll get a lil nonfiction + fiction 😎

Assuming those buckets aren't full of poop, I think it's a great photo.

I grew up inland in the Southeast, I don't understand at all where I'm allowed to Beach and just always assume that I'm not allowed unless something clearly states "public beach."

But now I live in Swamp, so that's not really an issue.

Plus the Pacific has 3 states with beach access. Gulf + Atlantic has 18 (?) states on the beach, and much more industrial past.

That being said, I would love if the oil and extractive industries let us use our coastlines for the people to enjoy.

I wonder how much of that is related to state local laws about beach access. IIRC, much of the west coast has far more public access to beaches, even if beach front property exists...beaches are for everyone. Unsure about Gulf & Atlantic, but I think a lot of properties can restrict public access.

Meanwhile yesterday part of the city grid was once *again* taken down by a Mylar balloon.

I don’t believe for a minute that costs won’t be transferred to households as corporate profits stay steady. Like how they expect the New Orleans “grid hardening” “investments” to be paid back with a “Cost Recovery Rider”…🙃
(Slide 32, Feb 12, 2026 Earnings mtg)
investors.entergy.com/investors/ov...

“Entergy Louisiana has an agreement …to build three natural gas-powered turbines to provide electricity to the facility for 15 years without shifting costs to Entergy’s household and small-business customers.”

3 new, polluting, fossil-fuel based energy generation blights on the landscape. For what?

Full answer at 13:15 -->>

"It's data centers and it's nothing but data centers. And the people who start trying to muddy the waters with EVs and electrification, that's not true. Absolutely not true. There's no data to support it. It's it's not true. Our data shows that it's data centers"

It's worth keeping in mind that Kansas has a strict voter ID law, so this law has essentially instituted a poll tax on all trans people in the state because they have to pay to get their ID replaced.

Heads up US demographers. Our main NIH study sections (SSPA/SSPB) are being disbanded. I don’t know what this means. public.csr.nih.gov/StudySection...

Sometimes you get reviews that are both challenging and encouraging. Just feeling blessed that reviewers did a close read and gave thorough feedback in what can be a toxic system.

G. G. Santiago Obituary February 21, 2026 - Billing Funeral Home View G. G. Santiago's obituary, send flowers, find service dates, and sign the guestbook.

Sad to read that G.G. Santiago, creator of “Rainbow Brite,” has died. Her obit is quite moving. ♥️ www.billingsfuneralhome.com/obituaries/g...

"In my view, by conferring this title [president emeritus] on Summers, Harvard is signaling that powerful men can outlast gross misconduct with their honorifics intact." - Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, economist and prof of labour studies at Rutgers.
#academicsky

The author is a "professor of geology and geochemistry at [redacted for Bsky] whose work spans the physical sciences and evolutionary psychology"

🤨🤨🤨

And he's been on some of the gross dude bro podcasts 🫠

The cuts to existing programs and graduate research fellowships have a pattern: the Trump Administration is dismantling our ability to study ecology, biodiversity science, and climate research:

They’re putting Silicon Valley billionaires above studying Earth’s life support system.

Update: They passed it. We witnessed and walked out.

French Quarter Fest to cut ties with Chevron as a sponsor beginning in 2027 The sponsorship change follows a monthslong pressure campaign from a coalition called Chevron Out of French Quarter Fest.

French Quarter Fest to cut ties with Chevron as a sponsor beginning in 2027

The sponsorship change follows a monthslong pressure campaign from a coalition called Chevron Out of French Quarter Fest.