Tyler Ryan Sizemore

Weakest 3 months of job growth since 2020.

A male dog-day cicada seen from close up, sitting on the arm of a wooden bench at the University of Chicago

Dashing gent ⭐️ my favorite bug looking sharp on campus this morning

guys I just got an advance copy of next month’s BLS jobs report

Me three months ago:

a man with a mustache in a blue suit says tiny celebration in front of a group of people ALT: a man with a mustache in a blue suit says tiny celebration in front of a group of people

Happy Friday! The female adult fly brain-and-nerve-cord (BANC) connectome is now LIVE!

Explore the data here: codex.flywire.ai?dataset=banc

Check out the preprint here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

The first full central nervous system connectome dataset of an adult fly, with the most comprehensive annotation of sensory and motor neurons to date.

A heroic effort with contributions from many groups, a product of the collaborative spirit of the Drosophila neuroscience community.

Did you know that FlyBase maintains a page highlighting papers that report useful new techniques, resources, or reagents? Check out our Papers with Technical Advances page (updated monthly): wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...

In 2020, NCBI considered to remove base quality from free-to-download SRA files. I responded and wrote two blog posts to argue against that. I don't know how much NCBI weighed on everyone's response but they are keeping quality in most SRA files nowadays. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

NIH wants to hear from you. No really.

Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs
grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Full Committee Markup of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Acts | United States Senate Committee on Appropriations United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

Senate Appropriations has a modest *INCREASE* in NIH funding but it will need to be recconciled with the house cut. If you have not been calling your representative of late now would be a good time to start again
www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/ful...

Update: I offered the amendment. Not to refuse acceptance of the Qatari jet; just to prohibit Trump from taking it with him when he leaves office - after the taxpayers spend $1 billion to retrofit it.

Failed 14-15. Every single Republican voted to allow Trump to take the jet.

The “deal” that Brown made with the Trump admin is much more extreme than is being reported. It includes government oversight of course evaluations and no barrier to government interference in faculty hiring.

Read it for yourself here:

www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...

From left to right, Dr. Albert Mulenga, William Tae Heung Kim, Dr. Thu Thuy Nguyen, Dr. Alex Kiarie Gaithuma, Dr Hassan Hakimi and Emily Bencosme Cuevas. Kim is a Texas A&M researcher who was detained in San Francisco last Monday despite being a permanent resident of the United States and a green card holder. COURTESY OF TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

I NEED to tell you the story of Tae Heung “William” Kim.

He's a graduate student at Texas A&M where he's working on a vaccine for Lyme disease.

He's a *legal permanent resident* of the United States.

And he's been in ICE detention for 12 days & counting, transferred Tuesday to South Texas.

My second NCR was awarded, one day early.

NIH staff must be working around the clock to push funding out.

Let's thank our POs and SROs and all NIH staff for working selflessly to keep science progressing in this sh*tshow.

Extra kudos and thanks to all the staff at NIH and NSF and other federal funding agencies for working extra hard in very small windows of opportunity to get grants reviewed and funds released before the attention-addled federal policies change again (on an hourly basis).

Carl Sagan explains how the ancient Greeks knew the Earth was round and calculated its circumference over 2,000 years ago.

Elders remind their elected official:

“You’re here to listen.”

Bove misled lawmakers about his actions in NYC mayor case, evidence suggests The details from a whistleblower complaint emerged hours before a final vote on Bove’s nomination to a federal judgeship.

NEW: We now know what Bove lied to Congress about according to the 3rd whistleblower. He lied when he said he didn’t offer promotions for DoJ lawyers who helped him dismiss the Eric Adams case and consequences for those who didn’t. There is audio evidence. Gift link: wapo.st/4fdVVmX

The Invention of “Sesame Street” Renata Adler’s 1972 review of the program that revolutionized children’s television.

“Small children from poor or middle-class families who watch ‘Sesame Street’ do better on cognitive tests and in first grade than children who do not watch it,” Renata Adler wrote, in 1972.

Senior White House officials intervened to scrap the OMB effort to halt funding to the NIH, reports @nidhisubs.bsky.social, who broke the story for the WSJ

bsky.app/profile/nidh...

Trump administration blocks NIH from awarding any research grants and contracts The order applies to the entirety of new and, possibly, ongoing research grant dollars that go to universities and academic medical centers.

Ugh

A quick update re NIH and NSF terminated grant tracking:

Grant Watch has a new name!

We're now called **Grant Witness**

You can find us at grant-witness.us

Please update your bookmarks and spread the word! 🙏

(And no, this wasn't our preference, but trademarks are a thing. 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️)

This isn't a coincidence, IMO. The fly community is generally super rigorous - because there are so many tools and techniques available, people expect you to really nail things in order to get published (and keep getting funded)

a baby wearing a black space racer shirt ALT: a baby wearing a black space racer shirt

Preprint Alert! Walking mostly feels natural and easy to us - but the neuronal control of walking is actually incredibly complex. We leveraged the fruit fly as a genetically tractable animal model with a compact nervous system to ask how the brain controls walking direction: tinyurl.com/flywalk. 🧵..

Please join us!

Coming up in just a few weeks! @karlakaun.bsky.social and colleagues have great things in store. Prizes available for trainee presentations. Spots are still available, so please consider attending! Looking forward to chatting about growing and connecting addiction neuroscience in the area.

Millionaires won't leave if you tax them

Millionaires don't leave when their taxes are increased. In fact, most of them live in high-tax places like California and New York because of the higher quality of life afforded by higher taxes.

So let's implement that 2% wealth tax, millionaires will barely notice the difference!

a close up of a man 's face with his eyes closed and a beard . ALT: a close up of a man 's face with his eyes closed and a beard .

😭😭😭😭

I'm seeing lots of these stories and they ALL need to be sent to members of the appropriations committee. Many of these members have been asking good questions in hearings, and some GOP members have signaled clear support for NIH

www.appropriations.senate.gov/about/members