Drug Monkey
drugmonkey.bsky.social
Drug Monkey
@drugmonkey.bsky.social
Reposted by Drug Monkey
I remember talking ~shingles in class and thinking, “I could probably handle the pain”…

In my 40s, shingles emerged in my hairline and spread across my face.

I’m here to tell you, it hurt like a mother&^%er, and that was before it spread to my eye.

People can go blind from it.

Get the vaccine.
All over my FB people talking about their bad experiences with shingles vax and dissuading each other from getting it! We need to give people real info on how to mitigate the symtoms caused by vaccines because vaccines are always better than meeting a virus unprepared. Yet drs aren't coaching ppl
December 9, 2025 at 1:24 AM
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Jasmine Crockett announces her run for Senate from Texas; Collin Allred terminates his Senate campaign and is announcing for Rep in one of the new gerrymandered districts.
Support them as you can!
December 8, 2025 at 11:33 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
Cal State East Bay just got $50 million
UC Merced just got $38 million

And our President just called an emergency cabinet meeting. I'm hoping it's because her Foundation sees how CSU Dominguez Hills is a sister to those campuses, knows the change we can make happen.

Not holding my breath tho.
Grateful to MacKenzie Scott for her $38 million gift ... the largest in UC Merced's history, surpassing even her own record-setting donation to our campus in 2021.
She continues to be one of the few doing billionairing right.
news.ucmerced.edu/news/2025/uc...
UC Merced Receives Transformational $38 Million Gift from MacKenzie Scott | Newsroom
news.ucmerced.edu
December 8, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
Dear White House Press Corps: when he insults one of you - ALL walk out, defend each other. Learn from the law firms that stuck together
“You’re the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. A terrible reporter.”

Trump again attacks a Black female reporter, ABC’s Rachel Scott, for asking about releasing the full boat strike video - which he said he would do 5 days ago

And the other journalists stay silent🐔
December 8, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
Given the relationship between my computers and I, the expletives would preclude my version of a similar live online stream.
December 8, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
I'm doing this for three reasons:

1. Most Americans don't know a living scientist, and essentially 0% Americans have seen the process of applying for funding from the systems that Trump, RFK Jr., etc. are destroying. Come take a peek behind the curtain with me: a guy who isn't very good at this.
December 8, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Mine would feature soooo many hours of procrastination.
So, it's Monday, and there's no way to say this that doesn't sound stupid, so I'm just going to come out and say it: I've decided to Twitch stream the entire writing of an NIH R01 proposal, and you can follow along at twitch.tv/ColinDoesScience
ColinDoesScience - Twitch
I'm only doing this because they messed up science real bad forever
twitch.tv
December 8, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
Two grants getting reviewed this week and one next week. I have had to wait almost a year for some of these to get reviewed as they were submitted as part of an at risk mechanism, which was removed when they were sent. I hope to get a good score, or at least discussed, but who knows.
December 8, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
I published a paper with Plos One in 2021 and the fee was $1695 then, it's now $2382, a ~40% increase in 4 years. I'm at a PUI where myself and many faculty don't have grant funding, and the college provides $750 in publication fee assistance. Cost is a big factor in where I can/can't publish.
December 8, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
OMG, some of the fees are just ridiculous. Scientific Data, for example, is $2500 to publish an article describing your dataset. Data to be archived elsewhere.

I have definitely left some things as preprints for multiple reasons.
December 8, 2025 at 5:49 PM
I don’t track this very closely but it seems to me the OA fees from the publishers have gone up a lot lately. PLoS ONE launched at what, about $1,200? I just saw what amounts to a dump journal in my field asking about $4,000. The reasons one might publish in such journals mostly run against it
December 8, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
“The only reason I don’t have this funding is because my last name is Rodriguez.”

MOSAIC checked many of the boxes of the administration — but that didn't matter. It was terminated, and left grantees scrambling

Next installment of American Science, Shattered:

www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t...
NIH shut out hundreds of young scientists from funding to start their own labs
Special Report: The NIH has shut out hundreds of young scientists from funding to start their own labs.
www.statnews.com
December 8, 2025 at 2:51 PM
It often gets lost that since URM are hugely underrepresented, the number of white scientists from disadvantaged backgrounds benefiting will be higher than the number, eg of Black scientists benefiting from this prior interest of the NIH.
December 8, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
A point that was made repeatedly in reporting this story:

NIH's definition of diversity does include racial diversity, but it's much more expansive than that. This has been taken down from the website.

As @jeremymberg.bsky.social put it, “It’s a good cross section of America"
December 8, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
I get so much shit from spouse for this but I absolutely adore this song 😬😭
December 8, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
This is still far less than the percentage of cops who admit they've beaten their spouse and kids
December 7, 2025 at 9:08 PM
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Every time Butker misses a field goal, a woman gets a PHD.
December 8, 2025 at 2:22 PM
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there is a pattern. All with 3 authors. All titles have colons. Most had sequential alphabetical first initials.
December 7, 2025 at 11:11 PM
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One of the things I was most excited about 1yr ago was joining 1 of the MOSIAC UE5s as a project scientist to work with those ECRs assigned to it. The opportunity to serve our greater communities.

Truly a program that supported people across broad institutions, unlike the parent.
December 8, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Watch the #allegedprofession work.
washington post reporter code-switching on twitter and bluesky like a key & peele sketch
December 8, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
Here is the same graph, limited to the "diversity" K99-R00 programs including MOSAIC.

See if you can detect a subtle change after Judge Young's ruling that "DEI" terminations were illegal on June 16th.

2/3
December 8, 2025 at 4:06 PM
December 8, 2025 at 5:47 AM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
A study on 1.7 million people in Hong Kong shows superior hybrid immunity to Covid in people who got vaccinated before infection vs. people who got infected first. "Our findings are a direct rebuttal to arguments for natural immunity," the authors write. doi.org/10.1016/j.va...
Redirecting
doi.org
December 8, 2025 at 3:05 AM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
That might be a reflection of your geographical location. Our application portal is still open, but we're on track to surpass our numbers from last year.
December 7, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Drug Monkey
Here too (NYU neuro), about 10%.
December 7, 2025 at 7:56 PM