laggingstrand.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Success in academia often has more to do with luck, patronage and the job market than “hard work”. Good academics acknowledge this. I worked hard, but I was in the right place at the right time on occasion. Historians far more talented than I have fallen between the cracks.

submitted 32 days ago • 24 comments

Northwestern has not received any NIH funds since March. No written communication about why or what can be done. Thank you Ben Singer for raising awareness at #ATS2025

submitted 35 days ago • 20 comments

Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab

submitted 40 days ago • 146 comments

Great opportunity to join a new lab doing exciting science. Neurons! Mitochondria! RNA transport!

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

I'm not saying anything novel here but it really is just truly despicable to watch them use THEIR OWN COLOSSAL SCREW UP to slander the reporter THEY INCLUDED ON THEIR CLASSIFIED GROUP CHAT

submitted 89 days ago • 3947 comments

Today I lost an NIH grant training clinicians to do research about intimate partner violence with perinatal women. More women are murdered in the perinatal period than die of obstetric complications. I didn't just lose a grant. We lost an entire cohort of people building careers to prevent that.

submitted 93 days ago • 875 comments

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

submitted 91 days ago • 0 comments

So we’ve got two competing schools of what the Democratic Party should do next. One of them is hosting the largest political rallies in history in places like New Hampshire and Arizona, and the other one just got $120 million from Silicon Valley and is on a book tour.

submitted 92 days ago • 133 comments

This is like Gina Raimondo going on MSNBC and telling people to buy Hunter Biden’s paintings, only if Hunter was the unelected co-president and not a private citizen

submitted 95 days ago • 281 comments

The Trump admin cut $400 million from Columbia under the guise of “protecting Jews.” Now they’re freezing $175 million in Penn funds under the guise of “protecting women.” It’s not about protecting any of us. It’s about gutting our institutions and our democracy. www.thedp.com/article/2025...

submitted 95 days ago • 15 comments

Schumer needs to quit. He’s useless. Completely clueless.

submitted 95 days ago • 577 comments

"Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child"

submitted 95 days ago • 0 comments

Fentanyl is very much like a weapon of mass destruction in the sense that Republicans like to lie about finding it and then use that lie as a justification to do ruinous, destructive things

submitted 96 days ago • 119 comments

There are days in life that shake you. I’m shattered 💔 to share that I just found out that the US Government terminated my 2024 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (~$2 million), threatening my long-promised assistant professor job at Columbia University & academic career... 1/🧵

submitted 96 days ago • 96 comments

My lab at NYU is hiring a postdoc in microbial ecology and evolution! We are looking for someone interested in both wet and dry lab techniques, including experimental evolution, genome editing, bioinformatics, and some modeling. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/164683

submitted 96 days ago • 4 comments

One reason this government can so easily frame protesters as terrorists is that others—including some at universities—have already laid the groundwork. When we treat students engaged in constitutionally protected speech like criminals, we make it easier for authoritarian governments to do the same.

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

I’m told this is a real letter. It basically says, “We’ll destroy Columbia unless you destroy it first.”

submitted 101 days ago • 378 comments

New Yorkers: Call Sen. Gillibrand’s office to vote NO on cloture and NO on the Republican Spending Bill. They vote in the morning. ☎️: (202) 224-4451

submitted 101 days ago • 1043 comments

if Trump and his cronies are able to veto appropriations made by Congress, then we've already moved into a dictatorial system of government. Why would Democrats waste time negotiating spending deals if Trump can just rip them up after he signs them?

submitted 101 days ago • 278 comments

Tommy Tuberville: "When it comes to protesters, we gotta make sure we treat all of them the same: send them to jail."

submitted 102 days ago • 1421 comments

Great job, Sen. Dr. Bill Cassidy. This is what you, a physician, voted to confirm to lead Health and Human Services. Pa-fucking-thetic.

submitted 102 days ago • 4 comments

I know this is going to sound naive or earnest, but I genuinely find myself shocked by how little people seem to be upset by the levels of corruption we're seeing. Is that the median voter assumes everyone is corrupt already? Or isn't actually getting stories about the corruption?

submitted 103 days ago • 7761 comments

@propublica.org reporter Brett Murphy with an explosive scoop. This is insanity.

submitted 103 days ago • 156 comments

A dear friend of mine just had all her funding pulled. All she has ever done is work exceptionally hard to do excellent science and help others do great science. This is heartbreaking

submitted 103 days ago • 36 comments

Not just students— hundreds of faculty are on visas or green cards

submitted 105 days ago • 0 comments

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more apt metaphor

submitted 105 days ago • 11 comments

In light of the news about Columbia, I want to reiterate a point below by me and Levitsky: universities, collectively, are among the most economically powerful and geographically thick sectors in the US. If they stood up together in opposition to this tyranny, they would be incredibly powerful.

submitted 107 days ago • 83 comments

SCOOP: The new DOGE official seeking private taxpayer information at the IRS has ties to a sanctioned Russian oligarch considered part of Putin's inner circle. Sam Corcos is married to a woman who partnered w/ a VC firm handling Suleyman Kerimov's money. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

submitted 107 days ago • 103 comments

How do replisomes walk on DNA? And what happens when they run into a G-quadruplex? @sahilbatra.bsky.social and @benallwein.bsky.social provide unexpected insight in our latest paper with Richard Hite @mskcancercenter.bsky.social @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/.... Congrats to all authors!

submitted 108 days ago • 8 comments

In an unprecedented move, the US National Institutes of Health has begun mass terminations of research grants that fund active scientific projects because they no longer meet “agency priorities”. https://go.nature.com/4bpG2It

submitted 108 days ago • 22 comments

Rebuilding after Trump is gonna be like rebuilding after someone destroys the Lego town you've been building for 250 years and everyone who knows how to help you build it is gone and you're missing half the bricks and they don't make the instruction manuals anymore and also you're dead

submitted 110 days ago • 1 comment

#LRP I recognize we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding for med schools but at some point universities need to draw a hard line & refuse to comply. First because it’s right & second because it’s not like the research funding isn’t going to get cut anyway.

submitted 110 days ago • 1 comment

I need the institution where I teach (NYU) to respond clearly and unequivocally saying this is unconstitutional and they will not be adhering to it. This is a red line.

submitted 110 days ago • 55 comments

Any word on when NIGMS council might meet? Like many others I have a grant that’s been stalled and I have good people depending on these funds. I’ve heard nothing.

submitted 111 days ago • 1 comment

I am not going to call this a Bluetorial, because I do not want to sully that term (which, at least I, find joyful). Let’s call it a Orwellial.

submitted 112 days ago • 14 comments

I have of late - and wherefore is blindingly fucking obvious - lost all my mirth

submitted 113 days ago • 0 comments

There has been a lot of chatter today about Zelenskyy's meeting with Trump, some regarding this moment when White House correspondent Brian Glenn asked if the Ukrainian president plans to wear a suit. I want to address idea in this thread. 🧵

submitted 114 days ago • 485 comments

relatedly, why is the entire political press completely uninterested in the verifiable fact that JD Vance has close relationships with online nazis?

submitted 114 days ago • 290 comments

RFK really missed the simplest lesson of LBJ’s career, try not to get any kids killed if your name rhymes with “how many kids did you kill today”

submitted 115 days ago • 23 comments

My NIGMS R35 renewal (submitted 1/16/24, approved by council 9/20/24, original project end date tomorrow) is still pending. Clearly no chance the $$ arrive before Monday. Assume many are in the same boat and curious as to whether anyone anywhere has received institutional guidance. NB I have not.

submitted 115 days ago • 1 comment