Also when we do publish we should try to submit to scientific society-affiliated journals that actually do work for our community!

We can't fully stop playing this hellish capitalistic game... yet.

But we can choose to play the game OUR way, in a way that strengthens scientific integrity and supports each other.

The fascists want to weaken our community, say who is and isn't allowed to be a scientist, shrink and discredit our research, and bend us to their ideological will.

Completing a peer review for a day may mean I have one less day to work on my own things. But it is still a day where I used my hard-earned skills and expertise and did my part to create good science even if my contribution will be anonymous.

It's my own tiny form of revolution.

I am peer reviewing two papers this week. I'm in a postdoc position with stable funding where I can afford to use my time to move the scientific process along.

And it feels like resistance. Saying yes, I will, because I can, take time to help others bring the best science they can into the world.

Focusing holistically on bringing good science into the world may be one of the best ways we in privileged positions who are able bodied, aren't caregivers or parents, aren't living paycheck to paycheck, aren't fighting for our right to exist as we are, can help our colleagues gain a solid foothold.

What if we worked toward a scientific community that valued actual community and mutual aid, and understands that someone's success doesn't need to come at the expense of another person's failure? And by all committing to that, we forced the systems we work under, slowly, to change?

What if for every paper we publish or grant we receive, we choose to accept one to two peer review requests? Soulless incentives be damned. We can choose work that lifts up our colleagues, upholds scientific integrity standards we value, and protects truth in an age when truth is under attack.

What if we all, but especially those in positions of power and privilege, collectively agreed to publish just a little bit less?

Not to do less science, but to slow the pace a tiny bit, focus on quality work, and value peer review as part of our job of bringing more science into the world?

What if we acknowledged that the current "publish relentlessly and probably still perish" system only benefits the AI-crazed capitalist white supremacist patriarchal overlords that run publishing companies and universities and governments and see us as glorified 'content creators'?

#withoutNSF, scientists at all career stages will not have the resources to continue their careers in the US. And worse still, aspiring scientists will not have access to the opportunities, experiences, and support they need to begin theirs.

#withoutNSF, my dream to build an integrative evolutionary ecology research lab in the US and train the next generations of curious scientists and scientifically informed citizens would be out of reach. I, and so many early career scientists like me, would be forced to seek our dreams elsewhere.

#withoutNSF NRT fellowship affording me the funding and time to explore new research areas, I wouldn't have been inspired to pursue my current postdoc synthesizing chemical ecology, evolutionary ecology, and genomics to understand host-microbe mutualisms.

#withoutNSF I wouldn't have received the @uvabio.bsky.social NSF EXPAND fellowship, funded through an NSF Research Traineeship grant, that allowed me to pursue new interdisciplinary perspectives in my research.

#withoutNSF I wouldn't have been able to mentor these NSF REU scientists in their first major research experience @mlbs-uva.bsky.social. Young scientists that are now beer brewers, ecology grad students, conservation workers, and dentists.