Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
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kathleenrhoades.com
Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
@kathleenrhoades.com
Tree breeder 🧬🌳🍒
Beekeeper 🐝🍯🐝
Opinions expressed here are representative of Doc Rhoades Honey Company and no other entities
she/her

https://kathleenrhoades.com/
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UGH FINE I'M HERE. I have BROKEN my PROMISE to MYSELF I am ONCE AGAIN MICROBLOGGING UNDER MY GOVERNMENT NAME.
"in theater"
Q: Can you be specific about how many ICE and CBP agents are currently operating in the state?

HOMAN: 3,000. There's been some rotations. They've been in theater a long time. Day after day, can't eat in restaurants, people spin on you, blowing whistles at you. But my main focus now is draw down
January 29, 2026 at 7:19 PM
oooh la la it's supposed to be in the *mid to high 20s* next week
January 29, 2026 at 3:55 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
i feel like i don't have room in my brain inventory for everything i am incandescently angry about
I keep taking deep breaths and trying to focus on work and things of direct relevance to me, but I keep coming back to the fact that ICE murdered two people, video is absolutely crystal clear that they did, and no one's been fired, much less arrested. We still don't know the perpetrators' names.
January 29, 2026 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
A number of our students got the following comment back on a rejection for the NSF GFRP. They are in an eligible STEM field. Is this something people in other places are getting too? Is it a quirk or targeted?
January 29, 2026 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
I am hearing that RFK Jr.’s minions are going to go after HPV vaccines. I’ve got problems with these people and now you’re going to hear about them, first from a personal perspective and then from a professional one.

It all boils down to this: WE HAVE A SAFE VACCINE THAT PREVENTS CANCER.
January 28, 2026 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
“Parents should absolutely have the right to choose not to vaccinate” is not a pro-vaccine position. It’s the MAHA premise. It treats children as objects of parental choice rather than persons with independent claims to health.
The first time I remember praying for death I was 7 or 8 years old. The nuns said to offer my suffering up to Jesus. I had Crohn’s disease. Pediatric treatments existed, I never got them

Part 1 of a series on why “parental choice” framing on vaccines is dead wrong

🔗 www.patreon.com/posts/149300...
January 28, 2026 at 4:38 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
Current* conditions near Frankfort, MI:
January 28, 2026 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
Yup. I’m writing a proposal I really love. Lots of great data. And I feel absolutely hopeless about its chances for funding.
January 28, 2026 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
"this soda has 7 grams of protein" and this earth has fallen into irreversible corruption
January 28, 2026 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
No! The vast majority of people in the U.S. who create tech are creatives of conscience just like the creatives in any other discipline or artistic expression. Don’t mistake the financiers for the people who make things. Investors aren’t inventors. Find the indie creators and support them.
January 28, 2026 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
this is basically who you are asking to make a slide deck
January 27, 2026 at 10:10 PM
wtf tim
"I'm gonna give Homan the benefit of the doubt"

"They should coordinate with local law enforcement, pick these people up in the middle of the night when they're not suspecting it"

Walz is capitulating to fascists and encouraging night raids. Genuinely disgusting. Why would anyone settle for this?
January 28, 2026 at 4:15 AM
Today I'm taking persimmon seeds I collected this past fall to the farm so that our farm team get them started in a warm little germination chamber in the greenhouse.
They will go out into the breeding orchard, just down the road from the greenhouse, in 2027.
January 27, 2026 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
There's apparently body cam footage of Alex's murder. Do people know this?

This lets you know that a demand for body cams is USELESS and in fact just a way to give more money to the killers.
January 27, 2026 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
January 27, 2026 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
Dems are starting so far back from what is needed that one of their demands is "warrants for arrests"

MOTHER FUCKER THAT WAS ALREADY REQUIRED
Dems coalescing around 5 restrictions on ICE, I'm told:

DHS required to cooperate with state probes (big)
CBP stays at border
warrants for arrests
IDs, bodycams
ICE out of churches, schools

"That package unites a lot of Dems," Sen Chris Murphy tells me on the pod:
newrepublic.com/article/2057...
A Dem Senator’s Harsh Takedown of Trump Hits Home: “Breaking Point”
As Trump scrambles to contain the damage from the latest ICE horrors, Senator Chris Murphy offers a sharp indictment of Trump-ICE lawlessness—and explains how Dems can meet the urgency of the moment.
newrepublic.com
January 27, 2026 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
this is a fake problem. no one is saying this to regular, offline people who are coming around. they’re saying it to people who are engaged in professional political analysis who committed professional malpractice by scolding people who saw what was coming.

no, those people shouldn’t get a break.
Bluesky idea: if people who didn't agree with you change their opinions so that they do agree with you, why not be happy that you are making progress - rather than complaining that they are "only just catching up"?
January 26, 2026 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
The people of Minnesota have executed one of the most impressive civil resistance campaigns I can remember:

- Organized a city wide general strike
- Maintained nonviolent discipline amidst violence
- Mobilized 10,000s in subzero temps to protest and watch ICE
- Flipped public opinion against ICE
January 26, 2026 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
January 26, 2026 at 2:54 PM
sam and I decided if they make science and therapy illegal we're going to become plow truck drivers
when I was a kid my dad told me that the snow plow drivers (at least in NY state) made most of their money on overtime in the winters, so they were happy to be out before dawn clearing roads and you could count on roads to be pretty clean pretty early.
Iiiiii am not sure that applies to Michigan.
January 26, 2026 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
I think a lot of us get hope wrong. Hope, I do not believe, is an emotion. In fact, hope makes space for lots of emotions to exist alongside it. You can DO hope scared, angry, sad etc...

Hope doesn't find us. We make hope through action and struggle. It's a practice of living and is re-made daily.
January 25, 2026 at 2:05 AM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
I don't want the Democrats to win the midterms, I want ICE to be dismantled, anyone involved with the murders prosecuted, and every person harmed compensated for the harm.
January 25, 2026 at 1:26 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
i think this attitude — that all opposition is illegitimate and nothing we do can be questioned— is probably pervasive in the white house and helps explain why they keep making terrible political choices
Putin pioneered this. No opposition is legitimate. Regular, decent, “ordinary” people cannot possibly be against us because only we represent “the real people.”

Tell-tale sign of authoritarianism.
January 25, 2026 at 3:02 PM
when I was a kid my dad told me that the snow plow drivers (at least in NY state) made most of their money on overtime in the winters, so they were happy to be out before dawn clearing roads and you could count on roads to be pretty clean pretty early.
Iiiiii am not sure that applies to Michigan.
January 25, 2026 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Kathleen Rhoades, PhD
Really hard to look at this and all the other examples of bravery and kindness from ordinary people in this moment not think also of the tremendous cowardice exhibited over the past year by some of the richest, most well-protected people in business, media and politics
Let us all have the courage displayed by the residents of Minneapolis.
January 25, 2026 at 2:24 PM