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Maria Chavez

@ishymaria.bsky.social
1.1K followers 854 following 107 posts

President BioCuriouslab; Member: DIY BioPrinter, Molluskan Mysteries, RealVeganCheese, COVID Chat She/Her. Typos and opinions are my own

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Maria Chavez
Clare Fieseler, PhD @fieseler.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
Here is a list of 3 stories I am very jealous I did not write this year. ✍🏻 (Kudos to the writers who did!) First, this brilliant essay by @petergleick.bsky.social about the dangerous contortionist Trump has become — twisting “national security” in knots to justify his personal war on “windmills.”
thebulletin.org
Trump is manipulating national security to stop energy projects he doesn’t like
On Monday, December 22, the Trump Administration announced it was pausing five major offshore wind energy projects, citing “national security risks.”
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Jacqueline Sweet @jsweetli.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
Kennedy says adding folic acid to tortillas is “waging war” against poor residents. Folic acid has long been added to cereal and bread and the CDC website currently says it’s safe for those with the mutation mentioned in the thread Kennedy is replying to.
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Cats of Yore @catsofyore.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
If anyone's open to a New Year's resolution suggestion, please try volunteering for a non-profit! It doesn't necessarily mean showing up in person to do physical labor. Just think about a cause that is important to you and consider what skills you have. 🧵
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 26/12/2025
vance is a genuine lunatic
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Dan Froomkin/Press Watch/Heads Up News @froomkin.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
NYT doesn’t get it. He’s terrorizing nonwhite people, seizing imperial power, perverting the government, and spewing hateful lies. This is pro-Trump gaslighting.
NYT headline: Trump Promised Radical Change in His Second Term. Here’s What He’s Done So Far.
President Trump has driven illegal crossings at the border to record lows, helped bring about an uneasy cease-fire in Gaza and upended the global trading system.
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Matt @mbunchanumbers.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
We got Weird Al out here singing Killing In The Name, the time for moderation is over
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 06/12/2025
“School officials have created a Microsoft Copilot prompt to review course descriptions with an eye toward avoiding ‘advocacy-oriented or prescriptive terms.’” Terms: “dismantling, decolonizing, interrogating, challenging, centering, combating, liberation, resistance, activism, justice oriented”
texasmonthly.com
To Root Out Wokeness in the Course Catalog, This Texas University Is Turning to AI
“The AI was upset with my use of the phrase ‘women's rights movement.’”
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
It starts with knowing the truth. Don’t allow yourselves to be gaslit into believing this is a real question.
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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
The irony is rich.
Screenshot of a tweet by Melanie D’Arrigo on X.com that reads: “It’s literally the whole reason why we celebrate Thanksgiving.” Beneath it is a Homeland Security tweet saying: “This Thanksgiving, there is no room at the table for invaders.”
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@KeepItBlueDems.bsky.social @keepitbluedems.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
A Backlash Is Brewing Against Companies Helping ICE open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...
open.substack.com
A Backlash Is Brewing Against Companies Helping ICE
Activists are targeting the reputations of Home Depot, AT&T, and other businesses.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
News media has to do better with headlines that present false and unverified public health claims.
List of headlines from media covering FDA, most emphasizing the claim that covid killed children
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Alt CDC (they/them) @altcdc.altgov.info · 29/11/2025
🧵1/ FDA is supposed to protect us from unsafe and ineffective medicines and vaccines. And yet 🫠...just like at CDC, it's the political appointed leadership holding the agency hostage... FDA is failing in its mission as it turns a political hammer to the covid vaccines. A few points in next post 👉
npr.org
FDA to raise hurdles for vaccines, faulting COVID shots for 10 kids' deaths
Food and Drug Administration officials say they will ratchet up requirements for vaccine studies, citing concerns about COVID shots for kids. But public health experts question the agency's analysis.
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Kim Lane Scheppele @kimlanelaw.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
Don't know whether this is new or has been up for awhile. Either way, when the White House creates a hit list of journalists it doesn't like, the free press is in danger. www.whitehouse.gov/mediabias/
whitehouse.gov
Media Offenders
Explore the Media Bias Tracker that fact checks and holds Fake News accountable. False claims debunked, Hall of Shame for serial offenders, Leaderboard of networks ranked by Repeated Lies. Stay inform...
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Jason Karsh @jkarsh.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
So you’re telling me there was no plan when Trump blew up a third of the White House. Which he doesn’t own and belongs to the country. Cool. Cool.
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D. Earl Stephens @dearlstephens.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
📌Trump announced that South Africa would not be invited to next year’s Group of 20 summit in the U.S. He is doing this for one reason -- and one reason only -- he is a bigot, and so is the majority of his grotesque core support, who are fueled by racism. This is sickening, and must be called out.
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Amanda Weaver @amandaweavernovels.com · 27/11/2025
ICE DETAINED MARILYN. Fuck these people. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
seattletimes.com
‘Northern Exposure’ actor gave ICE agents in Redmond her tribal ID. They called it ‘fake,’ she says
Indigenous actor Elaine Miles of "Northern Exposure" was detained by ICE at a Redmond bus stop. When she showed them her Tribal ID, they told her it was fake.
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Jon Cooper @joncooper-us.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
‼️‼️ Newly released emails show the FBI spent almost $1 million in overtime analyzing the Epstein files as part of an effort dubbed the “Special Redaction Project."
thedailybeast.com
FBI’s Frantic Scramble to Redact Epstein Files Revealed
A trove of emails shows all-nighters and almost $1 million in overtime as Trumpworld debated releasing the Epstein files.
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
The US government support of cancer research via NCI has been severely cut. And of June 2025, "There were 181 individual terminated NCI funded grants, with a total award amount of $640,867, 956." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
jamanetwork.com
Disrupted Federal Funding for Extramural Cancer Research
This cross-sectional study assesses the scale and scope of terminated cancer research grants from the National Cancer Institute.
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Kristina Killgrove @killgrove.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research. Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪
livescience.com
Today's biggest science news: Doomed comet explodes | Comet 3I/ATLAS course alteration | Dark matter detected?
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025: Your daily feed of the biggest discoveries and breakthroughs making headlines.
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jae holzman @jael.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
big late breaking news: the market monitor for the largest energy grid in the u.s., covering much of the midwest and mid-atlantic, has called to block new data centers connections to the grid, saying current course of growth assures regular blackouts
utilitydive.com
No more PJM data centers unless they can be reliably served: market monitor
The PJM Interconnection’s market monitor urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to rule that large data centers can only come online if the grid operator can still meet reliability metrics.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
This is true. It is the best email I got this year.
I work as an elder and hospice caregiver, which I am oddly passionate about. I can love on them shamelessly and no one complains about my codependence. It's a win-win situation. 

Many of my caregiving colleagues complain about the repetitive questions and, sometimes reactions, of the elderly, especially when those patients happen to read the newspaper, especially with the current downward spiral of our country — as if these people haven't lived through enough horror...

I love my dementia peeps, but sometimes wonder if there's a Guinness Book World Record for how many times an hour a dementia patient can repeat the same question — it's got to be in the hundreds. At least with small children, they ask different questions. Dementia patients will get stuck on one short question and ask it until you can interrupt their train(carousel) of thought and successfully redirect their attention. That carousel is pretty manic sometimes. 

A couple days ago, I picked up my mail from the post office and drove over to the nursing home to take (let's call her "Miss Daisy") Miss Daisy out for a drive. Before we took off on our road trip, to the end of The Road and back, in our landlocked little town (Juneau, Alaska), I set my copy of The Onion down in front of her. 

Over our two-hour excursion, tiny Miss Daisy read that front page at least a dozen times and each time she would snicker, giggle, and guffaw, then put it down on the dash board and, a minute later, discover it anew. I think it was the best afternoon of my life. We don't often hear them laugh and when they do, it's the sweetest thing you've ever heard. 

...

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the really important work all of you do. You make the world a better place.
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 26/11/2025
I think it's important to say every time that Americans have been frightened of Black Haitians since the Haitian Revolution succeeded because the Haitian fight for freedom inspired enslaved people across the Americas and showed colonizer slaveholders that sometimes we win. They're still scared.
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The Verge @theverge.com · 25/11/2025
Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it. Read more from @benjaminriley.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Verge headline: Is language the same as intelligence? The Al industry desperately needs it to be
by Benjamin Riley

Illustration of a polygonal persons face in profile, laid out a bit like a heat map. The person has an empty speech bubble where their brain should be
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
New data that supports metformin as a potential intervention to reduce #LongCovid www.authorea.com/users/100423...
authorea.com
Metformin at the time of Covid-19 infection and risk of Long Covid: A Target Trial Emulation Study
Background: Our objective was to evaluate metformin prescribed at the time of SARS-CoV-2 infection on the risk of developing Long Covid (LC) in electronic health record data. Methods: We conducted a n...
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Carlos Ribeiro @ribeirocarlitos.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Thrilled to share our new paper! With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste. Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Evolution of taste processing shifts dietary preference - Nature
Calcium imaging of taste neurons and the ventral brain provides insight into evolutionary divergence of food choice in Drosophila species, supporting a role of sensorimotor processing in addition to p...
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Miami DSA @miamidsa.org · 26/11/2025
Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
How do you maintain political peace with the relatives during Thanksgiving? Here's the 10-step plan. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCjnCToZ7yc
youtube.com
10 Steps To Finding Common Ground | Robert Reich
Robert Reich
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Dave Kirby @dave19.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
230,000 Deaths and the ‘Calculated Silence’ of the Medical Establishment About the COVID Inquiry. They waited until Covid 19 was in all hospitals, then emptied them into nursing homes, where the most vulnerable were living. www.bylinesupplement.com/p/230000-dea...
bylinesupplement.com
230,000 Deaths and the ‘Calculated Silence’ of the Medical Establishment About the COVID Inquiry
The Covid Inquiry Report is a devastating critique of the medical establishment which led the UK to the worst public health disaster in a century, argues Anthony Costello
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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
This Administration’s policies will spur millions of new infections and deaths from AIDS. Today’s announcement is simply to rub all of our noses in this. It is to say: we know what we’re doing; we don’t care. It is pure sadism. It’s a descent into barbarism once again.
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Alyssa Harad @alyssaharad.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
I once asked a bookseller at a large indie store how many people would have to buy a book for it to get the attention of the store buyer and cause an additional order and they said: Three.
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 25/11/2025
tech bro: i have made Artificial General Intelligence programmer: you fucked up a perfectly good calculator is what you did. look at it. it's got anxiety
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Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
The energy transition happens often in unlikely places at unprecedented rates. Take Nepal: Over the past year, electric vehicles accounted for 76 percent of all passenger vehicles and half of the light commercial vehicles sold in Nepal. Five years ago, that number was essentially zero.
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Missing The Point @missingthept.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Dress for the TSA pat down you want, not the TSA pat down you have.
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
WASHINGTON (AP) — Judge dismisses cases against James Comey and Letitia James after finding that prosecutor was illegally appointed.
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 24/11/2025
This new policy from NIH is concerning. It looks like a way to weaponize administrative burden, one of Russell Vought's favorite moves to break gov't. Background: Program staff / NIH institute directors can move grants around outside peer review order. 1/
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Torr (I moved to Threads) @torrleonard.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
UPDATE: “The U.S. Forest Service lost thousands of workers under Trump’s DOGE. Volunteers and retirees are trying to help — but things are breaking.” Gift-link: wapo.st/4ijPsbQ
wapo.st
They retired from the government. Now they’re back, protecting forests Trump abandoned.
The U.S. Forest Service lost thousands of workers under Trump. Volunteers and retirees are trying to help — but things are breaking.
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Alt NIH Bluesky 🧪 @altnih4science.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Hearing news that Carl Dieffenbach, the Director of the Division of AIDS at #NIH (NIAID), has been removed from his position because he was "not aligned with HHS/OMB." Russell Vought continues to remove great scientists as part of the Project 2025 mission to politicize and destroy NIH. 🧪 1/

Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D., Director of the Division of AIDS

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) (.gov)
https://www.niaid.nih.gov › about › carl-w-dieffenbach-...
Nov 15, 2018 — Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D., serves as Director of the Division of AIDS (DAIDS). Dr. Dieffenbach oversees a global HIV/AIDS research portfolio of more than $1 ...
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 24/11/2025
The sharp decline in US teenagers’ aspiration to get married and have kids… …is happening almost entirely among girls, not boys. At some point maybe men will start trying harder to understand that. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/... | HT @conradhackett.bsky.social @pewresearch.org
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Bill Kimler @billkimler.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
Oh look, the Department of Homeland Security feels it can just make up its own Constitutional Amendments now. I guess if going masked head-to-toe to prevent identification is good for ICE agents, it's good for the rest of the population too.
404media.co
You Can't Refuse To Be Scanned by ICE's Facial Recognition App, DHS Document Says
Photos captured by Mobile Fortify will be stored for 15 years, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, the document says.
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TheRoadie. @roadie63.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
Holy shit. So Elon decides it would be nice to know what region of the world people are posting from. So they add that little feature. 2 hours later they figure out that many Trump supporters with millions of followers are posting from other countries. Surprise! That "feature" is now gone.
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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
the economic success of the U.S. is significantly built on the land grant universities and in particular their excellent agricultural science tradition.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
"Guys, seriously, get your own lawyer if you need it. Elon’s great, but you need to watch your own back.” What happened to DOGE after Musk left. www.politico.com/news/magazin...
politico.com
Inside the DOGE Succession Drama Elon Musk Left Behind
What really happened when he logged out of Washington.
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ceej @ceej.online · 23/11/2025
the “thanksgiving food is bad” discourse raises its ugly head every year, but the truth remains that thanksgiving food can be amazing as long as you know how to cook. the problem is we’re throwing a few million sunday drivers directly into a grand prix
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
If I’m understanding this correctly, X is owned by a white nationalist who pays poor people of color in developing countries to pretend to be working class white Americans to scare other white Americans into being afraid poor people of color from developing countries are going to ruin America?
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
They lied about it. All of it. A thug cop shot an unarmed woman five times without justification, boasted about it to his colleagues, and then this administration tried cover it all up by arresting her and charging her with felonies.
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David J. Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
A video from inside a Border Patrol vehicle shows agents chasing a US citizen for filming them. The citizen refused to get out when they illegally ordered him to stop. The agents say: "This is great." "This is fun." "He's going to get shot."
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Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
BREAKING: Sen. Elissa Slotkin says police responded to her home tonight in response to a bomb threat. Slotkin wasn't at home at the time. This is two days after Trump said Slotkin and other Democrats committed "seditious conspiracy, punishable by death."
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Rebecca Spang @rlspang.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
Oh MIT really does do *beautiful* books! Please order some
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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 12/11/2025
Friendly reminder that dishwashers made after 1995 or so are so water and energy efficient that even if you ran them twice fully loaded it would still use less water than handwashing the same load. So many "green" things feel like sacrifices. Dishwashers are not one of them.
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