JS
@jsplaceholder.bsky.social
510 followers 300 following 790 posts
US foreign assistance, infectious disease epidemiology, & a more perfect union 🫠 Bonus Texas/books/backpacking
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How much money will Americans lose if USAID is cut? Quite a lot, it turns out. I've made shareable graphics showing the ties betwen AID agriculture funding and each state. A public Google Drive repository is here: drive.google.com/drive/folder...
Now at a coffee shop where I met the father of a foreign service officer in Uzbekistan and a recently RIF'd CDC guy so we are all going to the protest together after I file a police report lol
Hike events include an extremely fresh mountain lion kill smack on trail (didn't have glasses on so can't confirm lion), feral hog, coyotes summoning other coyotes to my campsite, and finally some emboldened asshole aiming a rifle at me deliberately. Fuck him but I'll be back 😤
I've been hiking the Arizona trail all week but just bailed back to Flagstaff so I guess I'm going to No Kings Flagstaff today
Reposted by JS
Reposted by JS
This is a very good point about DHS. They direct harassment campaigns on Twitter using quote-tweets.
US Government accounts have arrived on Bluesky.

Block on sight.

Protect your digital space.

Be aware that the DHS account in particular is known to quote dunk on regular people to encourage their followers to harass them.

The detach quote function will come in very handy here…
And if he beats her enough hopefully it will give anyone pushing 80 pause about running for office ever again. (that said...legislation for an age cap needs to be a priority as soon as enough under-60s are in)
there are a couple of ways to think about this, one is that no one should be running for their first senate race at this age, and the other is that if platner can’t beat her, he definitely can’t beat collins. i think he can. everybody needs to stop crying and start fighting.
Janet Mills going to the Senate at 79 would make her the oldest elected freshman senator in history — but just as old as or younger than 1 in 9 senators serving in this congress. www.pbump.net/o/a-79-year-...
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"we can't have regulation or we won't be able to grow to scale quickly why don't u understand!"

"well at our scale we can't be expected to regulate what happens with our products we are just growing too quickly surely u understand"
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The servicemembers who are conducting these strikes need to be told, explicitly, by Dems in Congress that they have criminal liability, because they do
Trump has no legal authority, "standing" or otherwise, to order the killing of people in international waters for unsubstantiated accusations of non-capital crimes.

Calling them "narcoterrorists" does not make it right or legal to order their deaths without any due process.
Trump announces another strike "just off the Coast of Venezuela" that killed 6 people
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a real water is wet scenario here
POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

@politico.com
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...
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In 1972, a whistleblower leaked to the press the details of the highly unethical & racist Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments run by the United States Public Health Service. Because of that (and other unethical experiments) Congress passed the National Research Act of 1974, which includes the IRB process.
The entire HR department at the CDC is gone. Everyone at the IRB, which makes sure studies are conducted ethically and rigorously, and the ethics office, which oversee conflicts of interest for CDC leaders and advisory committee members, were also let go.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
‘Instability and confusion’ as CDC slashes 1,300 jobs before reinstating half
Trump administration says 700 notices were sent in error, while top CDC officer says ‘they didn’t think through what they were doing’
www.theguardian.com
Hahaha I had a *great* weekend trip to Lubbock for a Mountain Goats concert a few years ago and would not shut up about the windmill museum so someone sent me this post, here are my other itinerary recs bsky.app/profile/jspl...
Ditto Lubbock! Fancy Llano Estacado dinner, Prairie Dog Town, show @ Cactus Theater, people watching on the campus drag, Evie Mae's for lunch, windmill museum, & then northeast to Caprock Canyon = genuinely fun long weekend trip from Austin.
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If you don't have an IRB (Institutional Review Board), you can't to research. Every research study needs an "Authorization to Conduct Research" memo that the IRB issues; without that, no research.

My prediction: HHS will announce that it is outsourcing it's research oversight to a commercial IRB
The entire HR department at the CDC is gone. Everyone at the IRB, which makes sure studies are conducted ethically and rigorously, and the ethics office, which oversee conflicts of interest for CDC leaders and advisory committee members, were also let go.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
‘Instability and confusion’ as CDC slashes 1,300 jobs before reinstating half
Trump administration says 700 notices were sent in error, while top CDC officer says ‘they didn’t think through what they were doing’
www.theguardian.com
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Reposted by JS
I now realize that for my entire adult life, I've had a very narrow conception of what "supporting and defending the Constitution" means. Standing on business when armed agents of the State are knocking on your door is way more important, by a country mile, than anything I did overseas
Border Patrol “attempted to arrest a plumber working inside a Logan Heights home but left empty-handed after the homeowner refused them entry.

The homeowner told agents she would not allow them inside because the warrant they presented did not include her address and lacked a judge's signature.”
Federal immigration operations target San Diego neighborhoods, sparking community resistance
Federal immigration agents conducted operations in Logan Heights and Southeast San Diego on Friday, with community members capturing footage of the enforcement actions.
www.10news.com
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don't worry, Sam Altman is confident that his efforts to eliminate vast numbers of jobs will all just sort of work out for the unemployed, eventually, possibly after they starve to death, which is technically a form of having it work out

futurism.com/artificial-i...
Sam Altman Says If Jobs Gets Wiped Out, Maybe They Weren't Even "Real Work" to Start With
Worried that AI will destroy work? Well, Sam Altman asks if you've considered what a farmer from half a century ago thinks of your job, first.
futurism.com
My instinct is that they are too deep in social silos for anyone to mouth off to the press, and I desperately hope that is wrong
Why are there so few (none?) news stories about individual ICE agents themselves? Who they are, what motivates them, any moral dilemmas they face? Why aren’t protesters trying to get some to speak out?
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Per CDC source: At internal leadership meeting this afternoon, it was shared that 1,257 people were RIF'd at CDC. Number may not be final. Apparently, chief of staff was unaware that RIFs were going to occur so not clear who is making decisions. (Short 🧵)
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Among other RIF notices at CDC:
—Center for Forecasting and Analytics;
—all of CDC Washington
—Office of Human Resources
—National Center for Injury Prevention and Control 3/4
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NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd:
—leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases;
—leadership of global health center
—leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4
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BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:
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I've had this conversation with a LOT of people who were DOGEd or otherwise chased out of the gov't in DC and every single one of them is like "yeah if and when things swing back the other way I will come here and rebuild with my bare hands if that's what it takes"
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EPA officials directed scientists to assess whether the government could develop methods for detecting abortion pills in wastewater — a practice sought by the anti-abortion movement. The request appears to have originated from a letter sent from GOP members to Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator.
Under Trump, E.P.A. Explored if Abortion Pills Could Be Detected in Wastewater
Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency found that they could develop methods to identify traces of the medication if necessary — a practice long sought by the anti-abortion movement.
nyti.ms