Sam Holtzen, PhD

what's that thing called where you profit on war? some sort of war profiteer?

NIH is not issuing awards. You may think that it's because they it is coming up with new directions of research...The apposite is true.

Here is a graph showing how many fewer new funding opportunities that NIH has posted over time.

-91%, a trend that started on Jan 2025.

COVID’s origins: what we do and don’t know Researchers summarize key insights from the world’s first comprehensive investigation into how a pandemic started.

After nearly 3.5 years of deliberations, researchers concluded their independent assessment of the origin of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2

go.nature.com/4qUxijx

"These tariffs have been in effect for almost a year. They have upended whole sectors of the U.S. & global economies. The fact that a president can illegally exercise such powers for so long & w/ such great consequences for almost a year means we’re not living in a functional constitutional system."

What GLP1s should teach people is that it was never about willpower and it isn't a moral issue. But people don't want to have that conversation.

All about "reactionary centrism" Michael Hobbes joins me to diagnose the pundit class's obsession with scolding the left while the right burns down the house.

Today on Volts: I'm joined by the great @michaelhobbes.bsky.social to discuss "reactionary centrism," an intellectual tendency that's come to dominate US public life. You know the type: would never view themselves as conservative, yet finds voluntary pronoun use vastly more aggravating than fascism.

i've been saying this for years. not enough clump

Kudos to the NYT editor who took “Appears to” out of the lead headline (finally)

AfD-Fraktion will Abschiebe-Polizei nach Trumps Vorbild ICE Die AfD-Fraktion im Bayerischen Landtag verschärft ihren Kurs: Zum Abschluss ihrer Klausurtagung in Oberbayern forderte sie eine Sonderpolizei zur schnelleren Aufgreifung und Abschiebung von ausreisep...

Für die deutsche Perspektive relevant: Es gibt in der AfD mehrere Stimmen, die sich eine ICE-verwandte Truppe in Deutschland wünschen. Also die ICE, die Menschen auf der Straße erschießt, Kinder wegnimmt & Wohnungen ohne Beschluss stürmt. Ein aktuelles Beispiel aus Bayern. www.br.de/nachrichten/...

Spotlight graph of X discourse about the shooting/killing of a man by ICE agents on January 24 in Minneapolis. Graph showing X posts along time (X axis) and cumulative number of X posts shared by that time (Y axis). Post counts are estimated (by Brandwatch) and include both X posts and reposts where the text contained terms indicating the post was about the *shooting AND the video* during the time period. Individual posts are plotted on the graph, sized by the number of reposts that post received (during the time period). Plotted posts are limited to posts that received >1 reposts. Two posts are highlighted. One by @gremloe (1/24/2026, 12:31:31 PM EDT): “It appears from zooming in just moments before ICE/CBP shoot yet another US citizen, one agent removes the victims firearm from his waste holster. The victim was UNARMED when he was shot multiple times. This is a state execution. Again.” A second by @bennyjohnson (1/24/2026, 1:21:28 PM EDT): “Tim Walz just a few days ago was climbing on the gate of his mansion urging protesters to keep causing “trouble” and fighting ICE. An armed man just attacked agents and got killed. See how that works? Minnesota officials are fueling this.”

If you're interested in seeing how framing contests are taking shape after the ICE killing of another person in Minneapolis, here's a window into the conversation on X this morning.
Link to interactive graph: faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/Spot...
* I put this together quickly. Sorry for any errors

the titanic, a ship that famously returned to port

Opinion | I’ve Covered Police Abuse for 20 Years. What ICE Is Doing Is Different.

"This is no longer a conversation about law enforcement or immigration policy. This is about authoritarianism."

The President telling a prime time network news host effectively "I got you this job" is not something you see every day.

High-voltage anode-free sodium–sulfur batteries - Nature A new architecture based on high-valence sulfur/sulfur tetrachloride cathode chemistry is described for manufacturing high-voltage anode-free sodium–sulfur batteries, demonstrating promise for applications in grid energy storage and wearable electronics.

Nature research paper: High-voltage anode-free sodium–sulfur batteries

go.nature.com/4qEcxsz

A python import line reading "import napari as np"

Wake up babe new deranged import just dropped

We Are the Bad Guys The swaggering threat to global stability is us.

“What do we call it when a stronger person decides to rob a weaker person because he can? It is just gangsterism. We are the most dangerous gangsters in the world today. Not in the sense of being charming rogues or alluring antiheroes. We are the bad guys.”

When the LAPD arrests a dude at a gas station they don’t take over the gas station and use it to gas up all the cop cars tho

i find this so fascinating because, for the most part, we don't discuss Trump! we discuss how and why his policies and decisions are bad in the hopes of combating them. they think people documenting the flatly illegal activities of trump are running some sort of gossip column!!! unserious

im deutschland frohe weihnachten

Extremely funny to call the pope “holier-than-thou”

This is genuinely horrifying. Fact-free far-right agitprop given accolades by credible media across the political spectrum.

husband had a piano recital today :)

"you're a bioengineer? are you working on Covid-20?" 😒

Rare SCOTUS W

YouTube video by Ziwe ERIC ADAMS IS AN ICONIC GUEST | ZIWE INTERVIEW

@notalawyer.bsky.social HAVE YOU SEEN IT youtu.be/-9CmFvGEXXk?...

[Exit Clown.]

i think it's the latin gerund ending that translates as "must be ___" which is WILD