jbrown915

A clinical microbiologist seeing the wonder in things big and small.

[Chris Hayes @chrislhayes]

@janecoaston @mckaycoppins It's pretty wild how smoking, drinking and teen pregnancy have all declined *dramatically* along with crime and violence from 30 years ago and basically no one seems happy with those accomplishments

[Shawn VanDiver @shawnjvandiver]

I’m seeing a lot of people posting the NY Times story. Please consider sharing the words of the Afghans who may get sent to DRC.

[Robert P. George @McCormickProf]

I don’t see any way to interpret President Trump's "prediction" that "a whole civilization will die tonight" as other than a threat to order the military to commit crimes against civilians. If he issues such an order, it will be the duty of military leaders to refuse to comply.

[emily may @emilykmay]

paid leave for families results in:

-a 40% reduction in PPD
-a 12% reduction in infant mortality (!!!)
- boosts for breastfeeding rates by 8.5%

it's a small, *flat*, payroll tax and we already have the software to do it, just need to expand it.

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

"You can't make this stuff up" - @cpgrabow #EndTheJonesAct

[David J. Bier @David_J_Bier]

Incredible reporting by the team at WSJ. The government is covering up its crackdown on political opposition with bogus charges and claims of assaults. They are defaming hundreds of people and erasing the first amendment

[Karen Swallow Prior (Notorious KSP) @KSPrior]

In the new issue of @CTmagazine I reflect in my older age on being childless in “The Birds and the Bees, Babies and Me”:

https://t.co/OOQuamUbpH

[Dean W. Ball @deanwball]

I regret to inform you that even as this federal shitshow plays out, the states also are attacking AI relentlessly with rent-seeking legislation such as this, which would sap tremendous utility out of today’s AI systems while doing very little to make anyone safer.

[Alex Tabarrok @ATabarrok]

It's like Iran-Contra but in plain view.

[Kelsey Piper @KelseyTuoc]

@politicalmath Everyone is in fact 'entitled' to not be terrorized in their house of worship!! That's a good thing for people to feel entitled to!!

[Jonathan Chait @jonathanchait]

This is extraordinary https://t.co/Rojs2Q26SB

[Sheila Macrine, Ph.D. @MacrinePhD]

A massive discovery in neuroscience: fMRI signals don't always match true neural activity. In ~40% of cases, signals increased where activity actually decreased. This challenges the core assumptions of tens of thousands of studies.
#Neuroscience #fMRI #BrainResearch #CognitiveScience #MedicalResearch https://t.co/jhZ9Rluq5X via @neurosciencenew

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

The National Guard shooter's story is not simple. He was admitted to the U.S. by the Biden administration through a hurried, temporary parole program that had a documented history of helping Afghan immigrants on the terrorism watch list. Yet, he was granted asylum here by the Trump administration. He wasn’t just an “Afghan national,” but someone who worked with the CIA and whose brother was a military leader in an elite CIA squad. According to Kristi Noem, he was radicalized in the U.S. after immigrating, which would both absolve the Biden administration of negligence and bolster the argument that allowing these migrants in is risky, even when they clear the vetting process.

It's true that this is the fourth publicly reported Afghan national to be arrested for an act or potential act of terrorism since just last October. And it's true this shooter is one of just 190,000 Afghan refugees who resettled here after the fall of Kabul in 2021.

One high-profile shooter in 190,000 people isn’t exactly an endemic issue. For comparison, that’s roughly the same odds of being born with 11 fingers or toes, or of being struck by lightning (if you spend a lot of time outside). There are zero instances of mass shootings in the U.S. committed by Afghan-born people in the last 10 years, and just six Afghan-born perpetrators of attacks on U.S. soil in the last 50 years — 2.5% of all foreign-born attackers.

What's nuts to me is that some aspects of this story are heart-breakingly typical. The shooter was a 20-something male. He had military experience. He was prone to long periods of isolation and was struggling financially. Community members expressed concern about him prior to the act of violence. All of this is common for mass shooters in America.

We have broken immigration programs we can fix, but painting this as a vetting issue, an Afghan immigrant issue, a Biden or Trump issue; it's all just way too basic. We still don't even know his motive or how he got his gun. Until we recognize that violent events like this aren't singularly attached to your pet issue, we're never going to get anywhere.

[Lauri Myllyvirta @laurimyllyvirta]

NEW from us: current clean energy targets and trends enable China, India, and Indonesia to peak power sector emissions by 2030. This would be a global breakthrough given that these nations have been the largest growth markets for coal in the decade since the Paris Agreement.

[FIRE @TheFIREorg]

BREAKING UPDATE: The government pressured ABC — and ABC caved. The timing of ABC's decision, on the heels of the FCC chairman’s pledge to the network to “do this the easy way or the hard way,” tells the whole story. Another media outlet withered under government pressure, ensuring that the administration will continue to extort and exact retribution on broadcasters and publishers who criticize it.

We cannot be a country where late night talk show hosts serve at the pleasure of the president. But until institutions grow a backbone and learn to resist government pressure, that is the country we are.

[Patrick Collison @patrickc]

Saw a talk this week on the trippiest thing: bacterial cultures on skin induce immune responses. At Michael Fischbach's lab, they demonstrated immunizing mice against tetanus by just dabbing an engineered version of a harmless staph culture on its head. Unlike intramuscular vaccination, the antibody levels don't seem to demonstrate any waning, even after a year.

This is both scientifically very interesting (can vaccines just be... creams?), and an amazing reminder of how much we still don't know. We could have discovered this decades ago, but somehow never noticed until now.

[The Associated Press @AP]

BREAKING: The Trump administration says it's reviewing all 55 million people with U.S. visas for potential deportable violations. https://t.co/cH5VAzwer4

[Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @ReichlinMelnick]

At the DeSantis Everglades detention camp, people with green cards are being held in terrible conditions, with maggots in the food, the lights kept on 24 hours a day, and delayed access to medicine.

One guy had his Bible taken and was told "here there is no right to religion."

[Alex Tabarrok @ATabarrok]

What are we doing??? Purple Heart veteran, living in the US since 7, joined army at 19, served honorably, a life not without blemishes but an American in all but papers, now pushed out to live in Korea which is not his home. Evil.
https://t.co/F9NDM3GZHw via @GoogleNews

[Billy Binion @billybinion]

This should be a much bigger story. Murder has *plunged* across the country—so much so that the U.S. may see the lowest murder rate *ever recorded.* That this is even possible after the 2020 murder spike is truly amazing.