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metaomicsnerd.bsky.social
Postdoc @ Hess Lab @ UC Davis (PhD @ UCSB). Cow gut microbe engineering at the bench, science policy and politics away from it. Opinions my own. Bluesky’s first Anaerobic Fungi Guru. She/her. ☸️ (Jōdo Shinshū) Hold the line.
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One dimension of the university system is a credibility machine. Credentials backed by competency, rec letters, hierarchies of experts attached to fields of specialization, academic and financial records. When universities are hollowed out or even closed, all the associated credibility is lost.

submitted 11 hours ago • 2 comments

holy shit, fortunately I was on campus I’m safe

submitted 3 hours ago • 2 comments

Men can, in fact, raise the birth rate using methods that don’t require coercing women! It requires they not be misogynists! For example, they need to do half the housework. www.weforum.org/stories/2021...

submitted 9 hours ago • 3 comments

There has never been and never will be a birthrate induced shortage of human beings on this planet. There are many reasons one might want children, as I do. It is simply not the case that anyone in particular has a responsibility to consider having children to perpetuate the existence of humanity.

submitted 14 hours ago • 115 comments

The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services has repeatedly claimed: “If you’re healthy, it’s almost impossible to die from an infectious disease in modern times.” That is dangerously false. www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...

submitted 1 day ago • 457 comments

i have argued before that MAGA is recapitulating antebellum pro-slavery ideas about citizenship and bodily autonomy. one thing i am also thinking about, when it comes to the rendition of people to a foreign gulag, is the way it is reminiscent of the kidnapping of free blacks for sale into slavery

submitted 16 hours ago • 196 comments

This awful trend isn't just a threat to human rights at home, it's a massive strategic vulnerability abroad. The ability to see and understand the humans in Moscow, Beijing, Sanaa—anywhere—is absolutely critical to assessing intentions, developing opportunities, and avoiding crises.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

I monitor right-wing podcasts; multiple figures insist that all the "pain" and "discomfort" of the tariff situation (sometimes including the mass gov't layoffs) is worth it in order to ensure the moral order is restored: "biological sex," ending abortion rights, etc. You can't negotiate with that.

submitted 1 day ago • 17 comments

Right, because Grandma is on X. This is corruption, plain and simple.

submitted 1 day ago • 606 comments

Florida officials are demanding that universities send lists of all research that faculty/staff have published or publicly shared in the last 6 years, even if it wasn't publicly funded. It's not clear what they'll do with the lists, but my bet is on nothing good. www.tampabay.com/news/educati...

submitted 1 day ago • 69 comments

We found in our recent experimental study that politicians who talk about ending "anti-Christian bias" are often heard by White Christians as promising to stamp out anti-WHITE bias. It's a racial dog whistle, a less offensive way of saying "I'll stick up for White people." doi.org/10.1177/0956...

submitted 1 day ago • 6 comments

submitted 1 day ago • 412 comments

I spoke to another person this week—also a US-born citizen—who showed me the DHS email she received informing her that she had to leave the country. Incompetent, evil or both?

submitted 1 day ago • 120 comments

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

The next person who says to “just focus on the science” is going to end up on the receiving end of all of the thoughts I’ve managed to keep inside my head over the past 6 months.

submitted 1 day ago • 7 comments

Notice how they have Christians in one category and lump the rest of us in another one.

submitted 1 day ago • 7 comments

Just a reminder that these are the people purporting to be outraged by antisemitism on campus. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/u...

submitted 1 day ago • 31 comments

WHOA. Trump will strip Temporary Protected Status from thousands of AFGHANS, at a time when the Taliban is fully in control of the country and carrying out total oppression. If any country deservers TPS, it's obviously Afghanistan! We're going to send women back there to be treated as property?

submitted 1 day ago • 54 comments

Useful when thinking about “Dems need to be better at comms.” If events are clear-cut, people figure it out:

submitted 1 day ago • 36 comments

Who needs 'em, right? Right? Go ahead and give this unwell Merganser (below) a big, sloppy kiss, so he will feel better. Will you feel worse? Who can even say? www.reuters.com/business/hea...

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

I'm going to start a magazine that just endlessly cycles through the exact same profiles of Chris Rufo, the creepy "pro-natalist" couple and the Guy Who's Using His Kid's Blood To Live Forever. Apparently, there is an IMMENSE market for these stories.

submitted 1 day ago • 37 comments