JS
@jsplaceholder.bsky.social
US foreign assistance, infectious disease epidemiology, & a more perfect union 🫠 Bonus Texas/books/backpacking
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JS
@jsplaceholder.bsky.social
· Feb 6
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...
Reposted by JS
So now they’re going to be doing individualized re-review of tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees’ cases on TOP of the re-review of 200,000+ refugees who entered under Biden?
November 27, 2025 at 3:24 AM
So now they’re going to be doing individualized re-review of tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees’ cases on TOP of the re-review of 200,000+ refugees who entered under Biden?
Reposted by JS
Dear foreign nationals in war-torn countries, terrorism hot-spots, and amidst our enemies:
If you help the United States, we’ll fuck you over and abandon you. Not the individual servicepeople or intelligence officers — they’ll fight for you. I mean the depraved, soulless leadership of the nation.
If you help the United States, we’ll fuck you over and abandon you. Not the individual servicepeople or intelligence officers — they’ll fight for you. I mean the depraved, soulless leadership of the nation.
So now they’re going to be doing individualized re-review of tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees’ cases on TOP of the re-review of 200,000+ refugees who entered under Biden?
November 27, 2025 at 5:42 AM
Dear foreign nationals in war-torn countries, terrorism hot-spots, and amidst our enemies:
If you help the United States, we’ll fuck you over and abandon you. Not the individual servicepeople or intelligence officers — they’ll fight for you. I mean the depraved, soulless leadership of the nation.
If you help the United States, we’ll fuck you over and abandon you. Not the individual servicepeople or intelligence officers — they’ll fight for you. I mean the depraved, soulless leadership of the nation.
Reposted by JS
I need everybody to read this and understand what’s going on. These are spouses of US citizens in the country legally. They have entry clearance and green cards, they’ve passed background checks and have no criminal records. ICE is taking them anyway.
Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...
Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...
Green Card Interviews End in Handcuffs for Spouses of U.S. Citizens
www.nytimes.com
November 26, 2025 at 8:40 PM
I need everybody to read this and understand what’s going on. These are spouses of US citizens in the country legally. They have entry clearance and green cards, they’ve passed background checks and have no criminal records. ICE is taking them anyway.
Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...
Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...
Reposted by JS
This is an insightful but deeply upsetting article about why everyone in the US feels poor, and why the current political situation emerges as a direct result.
www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-...
www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-...
Part 1: My Life Is a Lie
How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America
www.yesigiveafig.com
November 26, 2025 at 1:42 AM
This is an insightful but deeply upsetting article about why everyone in the US feels poor, and why the current political situation emerges as a direct result.
www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-...
www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-...
Reposted by JS
Lots of people sharing this clip because it's funny and cathartic but I also genuinely believe it's important.
We have to win the narrative battle between "I live in a corrupt society and that's just how it is" and "I live in a corrupt society and we are going to defeat and humiliate these ghouls."
We have to win the narrative battle between "I live in a corrupt society and that's just how it is" and "I live in a corrupt society and we are going to defeat and humiliate these ghouls."
Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷
November 26, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Lots of people sharing this clip because it's funny and cathartic but I also genuinely believe it's important.
We have to win the narrative battle between "I live in a corrupt society and that's just how it is" and "I live in a corrupt society and we are going to defeat and humiliate these ghouls."
We have to win the narrative battle between "I live in a corrupt society and that's just how it is" and "I live in a corrupt society and we are going to defeat and humiliate these ghouls."
Reposted by JS
This would be a massive, historic crime even if no one died — a rich guy is not permitted to arbitrarily close a government agency in a law-based society — but the massive body count turns it into an atrocity, the kind of thing we put people on trial for at The Hague.
The numbers vary from study to study but hundreds of thousands of people have died because of Elon Musk and Marco Rubio illegally disbanding USAID — a body count on par with the first eight years of the Syrian civil war — In just seven months. It’s mass death that is simply unfathomable in scale.
USAID shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, accord...
hsph.harvard.edu
November 25, 2025 at 2:07 PM
This would be a massive, historic crime even if no one died — a rich guy is not permitted to arbitrarily close a government agency in a law-based society — but the massive body count turns it into an atrocity, the kind of thing we put people on trial for at The Hague.
Reposted by JS
every single thing hegseth says in public reveals a bottomless pit of insecurity
When you draw a platoon leader like Hegseth, it’s your worst nightmare. You just ride it out until he’s gone and gets replaced by someone who isn’t a complete jackass. Only a fool like Trump would put one of them in charge of the entire defense department.
November 25, 2025 at 1:08 PM
every single thing hegseth says in public reveals a bottomless pit of insecurity
Reposted by JS
The sampling gaps do tell an important story, though: we know catastrophically little about the infectious diseases of endangered and critically endangered wildlife. That's a blindspot for spillover risk, but it's also a blindspot for conservation - think canine distemper, chytrid, or white nose.
November 25, 2025 at 1:35 PM
The sampling gaps do tell an important story, though: we know catastrophically little about the infectious diseases of endangered and critically endangered wildlife. That's a blindspot for spillover risk, but it's also a blindspot for conservation - think canine distemper, chytrid, or white nose.
Reposted by JS
Using just a little bit of statistics, we show that this is a story about sampling: It turns out we just know a lot less about the viruses of endangered species - zoonotic or otherwise! Once you account for those data gaps, there's really no story here about anthropogenic pressure and spillover.
November 25, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Using just a little bit of statistics, we show that this is a story about sampling: It turns out we just know a lot less about the viruses of endangered species - zoonotic or otherwise! Once you account for those data gaps, there's really no story here about anthropogenic pressure and spillover.
Reposted by JS
NEW! 🦠🦧 We revisited a perplexing paradox: do wildlife really pose less of a risk to human health as they become more endangered? Turns out, it's sampling bias all the way down: conservation risks correlate with disease surveillance blindspots. 🔓 esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Viral diversity and zoonotic risk in endangered species
A growing body of evidence links zoonotic disease risk, including pandemic threats, to biodiversity loss and other upstream anthropogenic impacts on ecosystem health. However, there is little current...
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:25 PM
NEW! 🦠🦧 We revisited a perplexing paradox: do wildlife really pose less of a risk to human health as they become more endangered? Turns out, it's sampling bias all the way down: conservation risks correlate with disease surveillance blindspots. 🔓 esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Reposted by JS
Culture. Fascinating thread by @brasidas.bsky.social
These schmucks are approaching what I like to call a "reverse Afghanistan" sexuality here:
November 24, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Culture. Fascinating thread by @brasidas.bsky.social
A fun part of interviewing prospective students as my alma mater gets more and more competitive is that I just had an extremely in-depth conversation with a teenager about diplomatic approaches low-income countries can take to mitigate exploitation in cobalt mining
November 24, 2025 at 3:42 AM
A fun part of interviewing prospective students as my alma mater gets more and more competitive is that I just had an extremely in-depth conversation with a teenager about diplomatic approaches low-income countries can take to mitigate exploitation in cobalt mining
Reposted by JS
I just bookmarked the Cheetah Cub Cam, this is the fucking cutest
Cheetah Cub Cam
The Cheetah Cub Cam streams live from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia.
nationalzoo.si.edu
November 24, 2025 at 1:54 AM
I just bookmarked the Cheetah Cub Cam, this is the fucking cutest
I got so mad at the fake hepatitis vaccination campaign to confirm Bin Laden's presence in Pakistan that I decided I needed to be in whichever future sub-IPCs would prevent anything like that in the future
November 23, 2025 at 1:13 AM
I got so mad at the fake hepatitis vaccination campaign to confirm Bin Laden's presence in Pakistan that I decided I needed to be in whichever future sub-IPCs would prevent anything like that in the future
In other Austin Politics News, my extremely offline private sector boyfriend apparently hung out with our local millennial congressman at the climbing gym for a solid half hour today without realizing it lmao
November 22, 2025 at 3:53 AM
In other Austin Politics News, my extremely offline private sector boyfriend apparently hung out with our local millennial congressman at the climbing gym for a solid half hour today without realizing it lmao
Reposted by JS
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."
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."
November 22, 2025 at 2:30 AM
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."
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."
They are staying at Austin Proper Hotel. Protest @ 7pm Saturday
Austin, surely we can figure out which bars and hotels are posting the DOGE reunion this weekend.
November 22, 2025 at 3:19 AM
They are staying at Austin Proper Hotel. Protest @ 7pm Saturday
Austin, surely we can figure out which bars and hotels are posting the DOGE reunion this weekend.
November 22, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Austin, surely we can figure out which bars and hotels are posting the DOGE reunion this weekend.
Reposted by JS
🚨 NEW: Texas has filed its request to have SCOTUS stay Tuesday’s ruling striking down the state’s new congressional map.
The state’s filing here:
www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/defaul...
The state’s filing here:
www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/defaul...
November 21, 2025 at 11:47 PM
🚨 NEW: Texas has filed its request to have SCOTUS stay Tuesday’s ruling striking down the state’s new congressional map.
The state’s filing here:
www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/defaul...
The state’s filing here:
www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/defaul...
Reposted by JS
big bugs bunny getting elmer fudd to marry him vibes in the white house currently i see
November 21, 2025 at 9:30 PM
big bugs bunny getting elmer fudd to marry him vibes in the white house currently i see
Reposted by JS
It is actually very useful for Dems that Mamdani *cannot* be part of "Dems in 2028" fray. Unlike Obama, he was for-real born in East Africa.
Therefore the skills he shows, and example he sets, in the special circumstance of NYC, can be un-threatening examples and lessons for other Dems elsewhere.
Therefore the skills he shows, and example he sets, in the special circumstance of NYC, can be un-threatening examples and lessons for other Dems elsewhere.
November 21, 2025 at 9:32 PM
It is actually very useful for Dems that Mamdani *cannot* be part of "Dems in 2028" fray. Unlike Obama, he was for-real born in East Africa.
Therefore the skills he shows, and example he sets, in the special circumstance of NYC, can be un-threatening examples and lessons for other Dems elsewhere.
Therefore the skills he shows, and example he sets, in the special circumstance of NYC, can be un-threatening examples and lessons for other Dems elsewhere.
Reposted by JS
That Mamdani pulled this off in, what, under an hour makes you wonder if other Dem leaders have tried and failed at the same, or if flattery is just not a tool in the arsenal.
November 21, 2025 at 9:38 PM
That Mamdani pulled this off in, what, under an hour makes you wonder if other Dem leaders have tried and failed at the same, or if flattery is just not a tool in the arsenal.
Folks we have a teenager in the house
November 21, 2025 at 5:39 AM
Folks we have a teenager in the house
Reposted by JS
RFK Jr. literally doesn’t believe in germ theory. Basically any American learning about science and medicine in a post-MAHA environment is starting in the 19th century.
November 21, 2025 at 5:29 AM
RFK Jr. literally doesn’t believe in germ theory. Basically any American learning about science and medicine in a post-MAHA environment is starting in the 19th century.
Really appreciate an adult in the Senate elevating this (while of course also mourning the decimated capacity of the United States government to do a damn thing about it in practice)
The U.S. has the leverage to help stop the RSF's atrocities in Sudan, RIGHT NOW. But to do that we have to use it.
Today, Republicans blocked my effort to pass legislation to suspend arms sales to the UAE until we can verify they are no longer arming the genocidal RSF. Shameful.
Today, Republicans blocked my effort to pass legislation to suspend arms sales to the UAE until we can verify they are no longer arming the genocidal RSF. Shameful.
November 21, 2025 at 3:37 AM
Really appreciate an adult in the Senate elevating this (while of course also mourning the decimated capacity of the United States government to do a damn thing about it in practice)