Rebekah Kati
@rjkati.bsky.social
160 followers 1.4K following 8 posts
Institutional Repository Librarian. Eclectic interests = posts on random topics. she/her. 🏳️‍🌈 This is a personal account.
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Reposted by Rebekah Kati
Transformative work of the day:
New York City… “The Shady Bunch”…
Havok has opinions about protest signage
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
🧪 October is #BreastCancerAwareness Month.
1920: 5 yr #breastcancer survival rate was: 5%
1960: 25%
1990: 64-80%
2025: 92%

We have come so far!

Sustained NIH funding made this possible- from developments in breast imaging to drugs like Tamoxifen & Herceptin.

Credit: @ajvictorymd on IG
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
Perfect image for this moment -- Pete Hegseth wasted millions of dollars flying military leaders from across the globe to hear him blather about gender-neutral physical fitness standards and appearance, and the chryon in the corner notes the government is about to shut down.
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
The idea that an instructor can and *should* be fired for daring to teach something not explicitly mentioned in course catalog is the pinnacle of the "students as customers" idiocy that's been steadily destroying American universities for decades now.

You're taking a class, not buying a product.
A top 50 US university yesterday fired an instructor, a department chair, and a dean because a course made some reference to transgender people without the brief official course description in the catalog saying “trigger warning: gender.”

In conclusion, those intolerant lefty kids, cancel culture.
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
at their core, trans rights, abortion rights, and vaccine rights are actually all the same issue: they’re all about bodily autonomy, and the willingness to concede any of them puts the others at risk.
I’ve seen a lot of cishet allies who are also confused by all the prominent Dem voices suddenly acting like having trans rights means we can’t also have vaccines and schools and national parks, and that’s because some of the “why” is happening at a pitch only queer and trans people can hear
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
"Age verification" laws are actually "upload your ID or get your face scanned to access every website, ending anonymity and associating your identity with everything you do online" laws and if more people understood that they would not be down for this authoritarian nonsense
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
If I have to explain to you why it's a bad idea to use a machine that makes shit up 15-80% of the time AND destroys the environment AND contributes to rising fascism and genocide AND puts brilliant skillful creatives out of work by stealing their work, then we're already speaking different languages
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.
Release from HHS: HHS will wind down its development of the mRNA vaccine development activities under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
Trump team axes contracts with publishing giant Springer Nature

At first, NIH told me its contracts with SN were active and that they help “advance scientific discovery”.

Hours later, HHS said the opposite: "Precious taxpayer dollars should not be used on unused subscriptions to junk science.”
Trump team axes contracts with publishing giant Springer Nature
The action comes as high-ranking US officials criticize top journals as ‘woke’ and ‘corrupt’.
www.nature.com
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
Duke appears to have lost NIH grants because they used the prefix "trans" in reference to disease transmission, transgenic genetic material, translational studies, or signal transduction www.dukechronicle.com/article/2025...
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
I want to reiterate that countless conservative judges issued universal injunctions against the Biden administration, and the Supreme Court never halted the practice. Now, barely five months into Trump's second term, the court puts an end to these injunctions. A brazen double standard.
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
If you were too young in 2003 here is what Bush told the American people:

1) The Iraq War won’t cost a lot of money
3) We won’t need a lot of troops
4) We’ll bring peace and freedom to Iraq
5) We’ll find WMDs
6) We’ll be welcomed as liberators
7) It will be easy
8) It won’t take long

All lies.
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
NEW: The Trump administration cut research funding that sought cures for future pandemics, examined the causes of dementia and tried to prevent HIV transmission.

ProPublica heard from more than 150 researchers to understand the work that’s been lost.
Shattered Science: The Research Lost as Trump Targets NIH Funding
The Trump administration cut research funding that sought cures for future pandemics, examined the causes of dementia and tried to prevent HIV transmission. More than 150 researchers shared with…
projects.propublica.org
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"No professors in the College of Arts and Sciences, the university’s primary academic unit, have received tenure this year."
This is the first media coverage that I have seen of the UNC board's quiet decision to largely pause granting tenure outside of the health sciences. This is worth watching over the coming weeks.
At Chapel Hill, Only Health-Sciences Professors Have Been Getting Tenure
The UNC Chapel Hill board hasn’t tenured a single professor in fields outside the health sciences since January. The inaction has prompted confusion and alarm among faculty.
www.chronicle.com
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Imagine being against asking for consent to any other industry or person. Any other comparison we immediately understand it's wrong. And yet techbros and their AI grift expect to get an exemption.
www.theverge.com/news/674366/...
Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry
Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.
www.theverge.com
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
This Executive Order is a prime example of how to pretend to use principles of transparent science while in fact putting science and scientific conduct in the hands of ‘Senior appointees’ which means “an individual appointed by the President”
tl;dr — this EO co-opts the language of open science to implement a system of political control wherein presidential appointees are given broad latitude to designate any number of reasonable scientific activities and inferences as scientific misconduct, and to penalize those involved accordingly.
Restoring Gold Standard Science
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7301 of title 5, United
www.whitehouse.gov
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So we’ve got $90 million to throw the parade he wanted, but we don’t have the money to fix North Carolina. Got it!
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
We like the sound of this. We ❤️ open source collaboration.
“The goal is a fully open source, federated, safety net, embedded within the international community, with a strong global network of support.”
This is so exciting! The German National Library of Medicine @zbmed.bsky.social just had its first open meeting on the plan for an open & independent PubMed safety net. Here's my write-up @plos.org on the meeting & how institutions & others can help absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2025/05/14/g...
#MedLibs
Germany's Plan for an Open and Independent PubMed Safety Net - Absolutely Maybe
A few months ago, I wrote about reasons to be concerned about the reliability of PubMed under the new regime at the…
absolutelymaybe.plos.org
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So this has been an entertaining 24 hours
Reposted by Rebekah Kati
Fired a black person who was qualified, hired a white person with no qualifications whatsoever. The Trump administration in a nutshell bsky.app/profile/axio...
axios.com Axios @axios.com · May 12
Trump naming Todd Blanche — the former defense attorney from his hush money trial — as acting Librarian of Congress
Trump naming his former defense attorney as acting Librarian of Congress
Todd Blanche already holds the number two position at the Justice Department.
www.axios.com