Emily Heydon

Our handsome, patient oaf of a cat Titus has passed on. He enjoyed finding heat sources, joining us in the bathroom, falling gracelessly off of things, and looking like he was dead until one day, he was. We will always remember you Mr. Titus.

This is an absolutely insane administrative process. Within the space of a week, states were told by judges/White House
*no SNAP benefits
*half benefits
*full benefits
*pause provision of benefits.
Result is chaos, uncertainty, and uneven access to benefits depending on where people live.

The Vertlartnic (Image of person at doctor) Large Increase In Numbers Of People Diagnosed With Something That Totally Wasn't Caused By That Thing MIGUEL FRIDAY

glad it wasn’t that though

Fedora man unmasked: Meet the teen behind the Louvre mystery photo Fifteen-year-old Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux has become an internet sensation after an Associated Press photo captured him outside the Louvre on the day of a crown jewels heist.

Loving today's news that the mysterious "fedora man" outside the Louvre heist was actually a 15-year-old museum visitor who dresses like a 1940s French detective all the time, just because. apnews.com/article/louv...

So it begins — from LOTR

The first snow flurries of the year.

every single joint in my body is swollen and stiff and I wonder if things are going to be this way all winter

Two words in UC Berkeley grant application have led to defunding of 50-year-old program The Trump administration canceled UC Berkeley’s Educational Talent Search — a 50-year-old program that helped thousands of East Bay teens get to college — over two words in its grant...

‘The presence of two words — “equity” and “inclusion” — on page 50 of a 5-year-old grant application just killed a program at UC Berkeley that for half a century helped thousands of East Bay teens recognize that they could go to college and even pay for it.’

it just started snowing for the first time this year and I have no idea where my ice scraper is, which is why I’m eating ice cream for breakfast at 1pm while reading about nuclear weapons

I will also add:

I can do this for evictions in Illinois too, if SNAP benefits being cut off or the government shutdown means you can't make rent.

A waterfall and Fall colors

Multnomah Falls, Oregon

Plainsboro Preserve, Plainsboro, NJ. #DSLR #Sunset #EastCoastKin #NaturePreserve #Plainsboro #NJ #NewJersey #Photography #PhotographersOfBluesky

Pope Leo XIV is infuriating MAGA Catholics

Concern for the poor and the planet rubs some the wrong way
Pope Leo XIV blessing a piece of the 20,000-year-old Greenland Ice Sheet at the International Conference Raising Hope for Climate Justice Tenth Anniversary

We are also currently hiring a curatorial fellow to work with the papers of Rosalind Franklin and others in the History of Molecular Biology Collection!

This is a 2-year staff position in the archive with a salary of $55k/year and full benefits:

www.sciencehistory.org/research/fel...

It happens to me...

There’s a young southern woman on tt doing an experiment: calling churches & asking if they can help her get baby formula, saying she can’t afford it. Of the 30+ she’s called, nearly every church has said no. The ones who said yes were:

Black Baptist Churches
A Mosque
A small Appalachian church

I’m also not sure how this is supposed to be interpreted in the case of Chinese nationals with TT jobs who are seeking eventual US citizenship. Is no one else in a department allowed to work collaboratively with these people? This sounds like it will be messy AF

the 90 days loophole seems to incentivize mass layoffs of Chinese grad students and postdocs, so I’m curious about the legal repercussions there. Would universities be legally permitted to abruptly terminate multi-year contracts with these folks? What if your advisor doesn’t want to work with you?

correction: I’m reading the actual wording of the bill and it seems it isn’t a lifetime ban, but you can’t have worked with Chinese internationals within five years of applying for a grant which is still wild

U.S. Congress considers sweeping ban on Chinese collaborations Researchers speak out against proposal that would bar funding for U.S. scientists working with Chinese partners or training Chinese students

for anyone who hasn’t seen this yet: the SAFE Act would prohibit any faculty who have *ever* worked with Chinese international graduate students (including retroactively, in the past five years) from receiving federal funding in the future: www.science.org/content/arti...

this is incredibly interesting and fantastic news if true

but part of me has to wonder whether this is due to covid tests not being updated to reflect rapidly evolving new strains

It shouldn’t be forgotten that a big piece of Mamdani’s campaign was simply “cities are cool and lots of people enjoy living in them” which in and of itself dismantles alot of rightwing talking points

then ofc these people refuse to listen to experts because they “know better.” But that is also a growing problem in many other areas.

sorry just had to vent because I’m tired of trying to reason with people

There are then echo chambers that reinforce these interpretations of bmi and diet culture as being completely orthogonal to “true measures” of health (I’ve yet to be told what these are supposed to be). Anyone who says otherwise is morally bad, body-shaming, anti-leftist, etc.

Anyone who then tries to gently (or less gently) correct them is then labeled not just uneducated but *morally bad.* the question of whether these people are healthy is frequently conflated with the question of whether they are attractive. anyone who questions either is “promoting disordered eating”

The fact that Michael Phelps can benefit from eating five whole pizzas a day does not mean that the average person is fine on the same diet. But too many average people seem to begin with the assumption that they are outlier the usual rules don’t apply to.

I genuinely feel for any public health and sci communications people trying to do good work in this area. I imagine that it is an uphill battle

I don’t know how society can correct course on these issues. It seems like genuinely good and honest and well-intentioned messaging (“it’s healthier to carry ten extra pounds and work out daily than never work out at all”) has been warped into an “anything-goes-and-you-can’t-criticize-me” mentality

The threads I see about dietary issues are just as bad. I just got “in trouble” over on threads by suggesting that 3,000 calories’ worth of cheese dip for dinner might not be the best remedy for a binge disorder. Because it contains peppers and broccoli, the dip is “a healthy, shame-free choice”

I occasionally encounter whole threads of women complaining that their bmi is an inaccurate indicator of their health because they’re so muscular. They’re all posting pictures to prove that they’re not actually significantly overweight. The pictures tell a different story

…is that they all suddenly think that bmi is an inaccurate measure by which doctors ought to evaluate *their own* body size and make recommendations for better health. This results in them moralizing about the origins of bmi while trying to school the doctor on why they’re not actually obese