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

The entire business model of American R1 universities is not viable without restoration of federal funding, & every individual institution pretending it can solve this problem alone is also not viable. University presidents need to be speaking out, collectively & loudly about this, in DC, right now.

submitted 1 day ago • 40 comments

Your weather app gets its info because of NOAA. Your mail arrives at your home because of USPS. Your plane navigates the skies because of the FAA. Your food is safer -- and we get alerts when it isn't -- because of USDA. You hear about earthquakes worldwide because of USGS.

submitted 16 hours ago • 17 comments

When I was 6 or 7 years old, my mom told my friend Todd and me that she'd give us fudgesicles if we picked up all the sticks that had blown into the yard after a storm & decades later whenever I do yard work I want a fudgesicle

submitted 15 hours ago • 11 comments

A source recently pointed out to me that for people who have a double-digit number of billions of dollars, economic crashes are great. Limited impact on their life, and they buy up assets at a discount.

submitted 1 day ago • 10 comments

Mapquest lets you "Name Your Own Gulf" boingboing.net/2025/02/20/m...

submitted 1 day ago • 10 comments

Should you confront your terrible boss on your way out? Here are some things to consider, from our new GOOD JOB advice column at @slate.bsky.social. It may be hard to imagine now, but at some point you will stop wanting to push your boss off a rooftop. slate.com/advice/2025/...

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

This is a critical and challenging time for the scientific community and now is the time to show up for our democracy. Join @ucsusa.bsky.social for a webinar next week on how to protect scientists engaging in advocacy on Feb 26, 8-9:30 pm ET. secure.ucsusa.org/a/2025-02-26...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

WHAT. Ecuador's government recently authorized a U.S. military base on the Galápagos Islands. NO. No no no no no no noooooooo NO 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

submitted 1 day ago • 31 comments

Science (and science policy, and conservation) friends, I need your help! We are collecting specific, clear examples of harms caused by the Trump administration's attacks on science, to be included in an open letter. Can be links to news stories/social media posts. 🧪🦑🌎 #SciComm #SciPol

submitted 1 day ago • 25 comments

Refusing to study or share information about climate change will not stop climate change, you greedy, short-sighted, sociopathic fucks www.axios.com/2025/02/20/u...

submitted 1 day ago • 21 comments

I naively thought we were all agreed that apartheid was bad but here's Elon Musk running a shadow government agency in an elaborate trolling exercise. Totally unconstitutional and illegal, and MAYBE the judicial system will see that. By @mjsdc.bsky.social on @slate.bsky.social

submitted 2 days ago • 7 comments

For Slate Plus subscribers: What do you do if a colleague you value just isn't doing their job? slate.com/advice/2025/... on @slate.bsky.social

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

👇 Know that this isn't the end of the cuts... #ScienceIsPeople 🧪

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Paraphrasing a colleague jokingly told me, "maybe you can be less loud for a few years about issues to be safe". Let me tell you something, I lived that life in my childhood when people step by step lost their rights to be safe. Once day we opened our eyes and we were living a dictatorship.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Calling yourself a king doesn't make you a king. Getting your head chopped off by a crowd of revolutionaries does.

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

If it's about saving government money why are they firing people who make money for the government? DOGE is a lie, start to finish.

submitted 2 days ago • 16 comments

The National Association of Science Writers is strongly committed to the free exchange of scientific information, diversity in science and science communication, and combating propaganda. Here are encouragement & resources & a call for ideas from @sciencewriters.org: 🧪 www.nasw.org/article/our-...

submitted 2 days ago • 6 comments

“This is truly a national tragedy and one that is being executed by people who do not understand the value of scientific research.” 🧪 from @science.org

submitted 2 days ago • 146 comments

"Sometimes deciding what not to do is the most important contribution a manager can make" & more advice about how to handle a forgetful boss, whether to confront a bad boss on your way out, and a script for how to stop a boss from talking about your appearance, on @slate.bsky.social

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Trusted & accomplished science writer & editor Laura Helmuth has found a new jam at Slate writing an advice column giving guidance on job related difficulties & encounters at work. Her decades of writing experience & leadership together with her seasoned sense of humor provide great fuel for reading

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Bad boss, forgetful boss, overly personal boss? We answer all your boss questions (and any other work problems) in @slate.bsky.social new GOOD JOB advice column slate.com/advice/2025/...

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

This advice from a @carolynhax.bsky.social column has stuck with me. If you want people to want to stay with you, let them be themselves & remember their favorite flavors of ice cream www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/st...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

If I had a band or a label, I would do a punk cover of "No More Kings" from Schoolhouse Rock. And then I would gather a bunch of people to write a whole album of next-generation Schoolhouse Rock songs, with songs about Social Security and Medicaid and NOAA. I am not kidding in the least.

submitted 3 days ago • 407 comments

"The diversity of sexual phenotypes across species is vast and spectacular" & so is this delightful story. Thanks to @professormaney.bsky.social for showing how white-throated sparrows are more proof that we shouldn't "flatten nature’s wondrous diversity into two categories, male and female." 🧪

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

The accelerationist belief that if things get bad enough, then things will start to get better is quite something to see in the wild. It’s wrong though. Historically, misery creates more misery and is visited on the most marginalized in ever intensifying cycles of horror.

submitted 3 days ago • 115 comments

Every safety regulation is written in blood. As in, we get regulations only after terrible things have happened, to prevent them from happening again. Now the Trump Administration is firing the people whose job it was to stop the bleeding.

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

They get a thrill out of firing people, those fucking psychopaths

submitted 7 days ago • 10 comments

What these nihilistic vandals are doing to dismantle science & medicine—generations of expertise & public service & life improving benefits—is cultural revolution level national self harm. No foreign foe could inflict such brutal damage & senseless suffering on US so fast & effectively & unresisted.

submitted 8 days ago • 510 comments

yes! the idea that the executive can simply make spending decisions independent of a legislature or parliament is basically antithetical to the entire anglo-american political tradition

submitted 8 days ago • 112 comments

I interview a lot of international scientists. Without fail, every single conversation starts with some version of: "We are watching in horror. How can this be happening in the US?"

submitted 8 days ago • 6 comments

if I were writing stories about the gov "firing thousands of probationary workers" I would probably rewrite as "firing thousands of new hires -- who are often on a status called "probation" --" because I think the general understanding of "probation" is "in trouble for something they did"

submitted 8 days ago • 87 comments

That’s 1,300 news outlets now blocked from traveling with the president of the United States. And any other outlet with a seat on that plane could take a stand on that if it wanted to.

submitted 8 days ago • 7 comments

Trump is taking over the Kennedy Center to purge it of "degenerate" art

submitted 8 days ago • 17 comments

Pro tip for presenters at the #AAASmtg: You do not have to limit your remarks to what was in the abstract you submitted months ago. Speak to this moment.

submitted 8 days ago • 4 comments

"In an act of revisionist history Joseph Stalin might admire, the National Park Service disappeared all references to transgender and queer people from its main page for the Stonewall National Monument" www.wonkette.com/p/park-servi... on @wonkettemedia.bsky.social

submitted 8 days ago • 15 comments

Words of wisdom from a friend at the #AAASmtg: We can't despair. Despair never liberated anybody. (I would amend to: We can't despair for long, and we can take turns despairing.)

submitted 8 days ago • 5 comments

With both RFK Jr and Gabbard confirmed, two people who rose to prominence spreading conspiracy theories about public health and national intelligence will now run the U.S. government agencies in charge of those areas. For someone studying these conspiracy theories for a decade... this is nauseating.

submitted 9 days ago • 186 comments

current mood: things are going to get worse before they get worse

submitted 10 days ago • 25 comments

One thing Democratic leadership could do right now is to name an alternate HHS secretary--someone to provide ongoing public updates and health information. And do it for other departments too. Start showing voters what a Democratic government would look like--press conferences, speeches, all of it.

submitted 9 days ago • 558 comments

Just a reminder that Germany was the center of scientific progress until the Nazis suppressed, drove away, or killed all the non-Nazi scientists.

submitted 9 days ago • 67 comments

Did anybody else play the New York Times‘s Strands game yesterday and end up with an earworm? (The theme was “don’t stop believin’” and the answers were all words from Journey’s lyrics for that song)

submitted 9 days ago • 11 comments

Trump banned the Associated Press from a White House press event because it didn't change its style guide to "Gulf of America." "This isn't just about a name change — it's about whether we're going to allow the government to dictate how the press covers basic facts." @parkermolloy.com

submitted 9 days ago • 4 comments