Candace Winstead

RFK Jr must resign and I believe those of us who work in healthcare, public health, health research, or any related field should demand his resignation

"What's your AI strategy for your university?"

"Tripling the size of our faculty, offering twice the number of classes & cutting the others to half the size...oh, that's not the answer that you were looking for?"

There simply is no substitute for the time-, personnel-, & $$$-intensive way of providing quality education. That we don't want to pay for it, as a society, does not make this any less true, & AI cannot fix that. At best, it can poorly substitute for the real solution.

bsky.app/profile/mcop...

A Single Poisoned Document Could Leak ‘Secret’ Data Via ChatGPT Security researchers found a weakness in OpenAI’s Connectors, which let you hook up ChatGPT to other services, that allowed them to extract data from a Google Drive without any user interaction.

Security researchers found a weakness in OpenAI’s Connectors, which let you hook up ChatGPT to other services, that allowed them to extract data from a Google Drive without any user interaction.

Want to see billboards in every major city that just say

'Power Bill Too High? Thank "Generative AI"' and then a link to a website all about "AI" and data center energy and water use

Stand Up for UC We must stand together to protect our students, staff, faculty and our mission.

I’m heartened to see this.

Open Letter to Occidental College: Student expulsions over Palestine protest are extreme and unjustified Parents of students involved in the movement for justice in Palestine at Occidental College write an open letter to school leadership protesting the harsh punishment given for protesting the school’s…

"We write this letter in alarm, as parents of students in the student movement for justice in Palestine at Occidental College."

"Expulsion is a drastic punishment and, in this case, fully unwarranted."

"We are proud of [our children]."
#California #USA #Gaza #Palestine #Israel #Genocide

Fun fact: even as UCLA is being extorted for $1B by a fascist government, its administration is requiring all faculty to install a “security” program that surveils everything we do and shares that information with the federal government.

📌

DOCTORS W/O BORDERS: “‘This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing’ draws on medical data, patient testimonies — what has been branded “aid distribution” (secured by 🇺🇸 armed contractors) is institutionalised starvation & dehumanisation.” www.msf.org/not-aid-orch...

The only reason these guidelines give for engaging with gen AI is its ubiquity and "inevitability." Otherwise they clearly observe, more than once, that genAI LLMs are an inadequate pedagogical and scholarly tool. It's not clear to me what the AHA is trying to accomplish here. 🗃️

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered…Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

- 1984, George Orwell

Week 29 Within, amongst, against

Each Friday, I summarize what happened this week in science 🧪& higher ed. This was Week 29:

- new executive order makes a mockery of peer review
- UCLA facing demand for $1 Billion, patents are latest attack on Harvard
- mRNA, climate assessments & so much more at buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

Students are now just another market that can be profited off of. Capitalism and education are fundamentally incompatible

Perfect that the only educator quoted in this piece says no, we don't want or need this, what we actually need is more funding. Instead of funneling state money away from schools and into the pockets of tech bros, Gav could just give that money to schools.

Newsom announces agreements to embed AI products from Big Tech into state colleges, high schools The announcement comes amid massive hype and significant concerns over the “generative AI” technology that can produce text, video, sound and computer code in response to prompts from u…

Gavin, you massive disappointment, what are you doing??

(I mean, I know what you're doing, but I need you to stop)

How many educators did you talk to when you made this decision? Oh, none, you say? Ohhhh this is for presidential donations, you say?

www.mercurynews.com/2025/08/07/n...

This is part of what I find tiresome. People ARE in the streets DAILY and it's not just in L.A. And at this point, folks should just assume that this is true and what's needed is for you to plug in too if protest is important to you.

Four CDC buildings shot up. Employees under lockdown and in fear for hours. Public health is physically under attack, and the silence from the administration is deafening.

All academic institutions will soon realize we are in this together, facing an autocratic ruler who wants to destroy academia, science, and public health (together with media and courts - pick up a history book).

There is only one solution - stand up, speak up, and, critically, collective action.

I realize broad science-literacy problems cannot generally be solved just by shoving more facts at people but I really wish more people understood that the entire purpose and mechanism of a vaccine is to educate your OWN immune system, making it about the most "natural" medical intervention possible

SAMHSA's National Drug Use Survey Continues to Be Weird About Fentanyl The category of unregulated drug use includes "misuse" of prescription fentanyl, but not intentional use of street-supply fentanyl.

The category of unregulated drug use includes "misuse" of prescription fentanyl, but not intentional use of street-supply fentanyl.

NIH Directly Saved Millions of U.S. Lives and That Has Been (Intentionally) Forgotten Over the weekend, Russell Vought, Chief Theocrat and head of OMB, launched a nonsensical rant about NIH. Many arguments on behalf of NIH, and they’re not wrong, focus on long-term research th…

“It was the NIH [that played an integral role in the development of a vaccine in record breaking time that saved at a minimum, one million U.S. lives]…It’s our responsibility to remember what really happened and remind other people of this.” 🧪

mikethemadbiologist.com/2025/07/30/n...

Report: DOJ Investigating George Mason Faculty Senate The Justice Department is now investigating the Faculty Senate at George Mason University after the panel backed the university president and affirmed that “diversity is our strength,” The New York Ti...

I really want us to sit and consider that the Department of Justice is using their time and resources to read faculty senate statements that support having a diverse faculty.
www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

Trump Administration Scraps Effort to Pause Health-Research Funding The administration halted and then restarted billions in new research grants flowing from the National Institutes of Health.

Russell Vought wanted to shut down all extramural grants from NIH in this current fiscal year, putting stop to ALL research across the US. Someone in the White House had better sense. But Vought is a dangerous man, who will stop at nothing to destroy science in America. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic The COVID pandemic likely began when the virus jumped from animals to humans, and didn’t start in a lab. But false narratives continue to circulate.

The politically weaponized "lab leak" theory is destroying both pandemic preparedness & all of American science.

Grateful to @kgandersen.bsky.social, @arambaut.bsky.social, @eddieholmes.bsky.social, & Bob Garry for their courage & commitment to our field.

theconversation.com/how-conspira...

A Quiet Policy Shift That Could Devastate American Science Why NIH’s sudden move to multi-year grant funding should alarm every principal investigator and university

A little known - but hugely consequential - part of the government’s changes to science funding:

open.substack.com/pub/sciencea...

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

-- James Baldwin

Tech elites are turning AI into ChatGPTrump The administration's new AI plan gives Silicon Valley everything it wants — for a price.

New in PN: Tech elites are turning AI into ChatGPTrump

"AI companies now face a choice: Either create two sets of AI systems — one for general use, and a right-wing version for government — or just make all their systems Trump-compliant."

Opinion: Gutting humanities signals the end of innovation in business and STEM Lose the humanities, and you lose the very ground of science and business that depend on it.

Without humanities studies, I would not have been a very good scientist. My humanities classes were a master class in creativity, envisioning new futures and how to think. The skills we learned in our humanities classes brought creativity to all our endeavors.
www.deseret.com/opinion/2025...

Trump Targets NGOs to Dismantle Civil Society A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This...

“I’m often been asked since Jan. 20, Why isn’t anyone doing anything? I gently point to NGOs. These are real people doing important things with minimal resources and a lot of guts.”