JS
@jsplaceholder.bsky.social
500 followers 300 following 780 posts
US foreign assistance, infectious disease epidemiology, & a more perfect union 🫠 Bonus Texas/books/backpacking
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jsplaceholder.bsky.social
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...
USAID agriculture assistance supports farmers, universities, and nonprofits across North Carolina. USAID agriculture assistance supports farmers and universities across Florida. USAID agriculture assistance suports farmers, universities, businesses, and nonprofits across Georgia.
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
I recently told some significantly older friends of mine that Paul Biya had been in power longer than they had been alive and wouldn't you know it, that was true
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
this is a good article about the politics of a country you probably don't know anything about but also this photo of the 93-year-old president and his wife is mildly insane. his daughter has also just condemned him and renounced her family wealth on social media.

foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/07/b...
Cameroon’s Predictable Election Will Produce Unpredictable Chaos
At nearly 93, Paul Biya is all but guaranteed a victory—but has no successor.
foreignpolicy.com
Reposted by JS
andycraig.bsky.social
Aside from shattering core state sovereignty, it's saying one state's Guard (TX) is somehow more loyal to the national authority than another's (IL). It's treating the latter as something bordering on hostile, or at least alien. One part of the country and its soldiers are more America than another.
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
They're so good. Here are two as babies being mad at me after I went to the completely unnecessary trouble of making them my problem
Black and orange kitten in separate cages on their way to get their Equipment Removed. Neither wants to be there. Orange giving a mean stinkeye.
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
If you wanna keep Austin weird you gotta be the weird in Austin, is all I'm saying
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
For a few months in 2023 I made spaying/neutering the cats at a local dive bar my entire personality. Now they are ON A SHIRT.
VERY cool shirt with an orange cat spinning a record, a black cat mixing drinks, and a gray cat getting wasted
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
I've got a plane ticket out of Austin the morning after ACL weekend 2 - historically the biggest air traffic day annually - before the House will even reconvene on the 14th. Do I premptively give up and just drive to Phoneix or what
Reposted by JS
theophite.bsky.social
an ICE agent rammed a car and shot the woman inside five times for no reason. she only survived because she escaped
urocklive1.bsky.social
This is not going to end well. Sooner or later an American citizen is going to get killed.
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
For Austin I guess all the California expats moving here, but that's only because outsiders and national media still don't realize *they're* the ones who are boring republicans
golikehellmachine.com
since portland’s business is apparently everyone’s business, what’s something about *your* city that you can make fun of but outsiders can’t?
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
San Antonio as a black hole of ambition where the number one social question is "where did you go to high school" and the default assumption if you meet them anywhere outside of the city that it was in a wealthy enclave or private

(all true and drives me mad but the systemic poverty is real)
golikehellmachine.com
since portland’s business is apparently everyone’s business, what’s something about *your* city that you can make fun of but outsiders can’t?
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
This letter exceeded my increasingly high "save image to phone for posterity" bar
heathercherone.bsky.social
Pritzker is also furious: “Should National Governors Association leadership choose to remain silent, Illinois will have no choice but to withdraw from the organization.”
Gov. JB Pritzker’s letter to the National Governors Association
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
good lord I might be mad enough about this to post on l*nked*n
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
Polio in Gaza is an *excellent* case study, by the way. UNRWA only switched from the oral to the inactivated injectable vaccine about a decade ago. Conflict/supply chain issues on the Gaza side combined with large pockets of non-adherence on the Israeli side is a great cross-border health study!
atherton.bsky.social
"Along with the termination, Tulane altered the course’s syllabus, removing the article, a Harvard School of Public Health discussion about the resurgence of polio in Gaza."

My alma mater continues to embarrass. Public Health students learning public health?
oh no
lailluminator.com/2025/10/06/t...
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
(The vaccine switch was a question I got during my master's thesis defense, but had prepared a backup slide for, so the entire context from 2014-2016 is burned into my brain simply because of how satisfying that was)
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
Polio in Gaza is an *excellent* case study, by the way. UNRWA only switched from the oral to the inactivated injectable vaccine about a decade ago. Conflict/supply chain issues on the Gaza side combined with large pockets of non-adherence on the Israeli side is a great cross-border health study!
atherton.bsky.social
"Along with the termination, Tulane altered the course’s syllabus, removing the article, a Harvard School of Public Health discussion about the resurgence of polio in Gaza."

My alma mater continues to embarrass. Public Health students learning public health?
oh no
lailluminator.com/2025/10/06/t...
Tulane changes syllabus, fires academic manager over Gaza article • Louisiana Illuminator
Some say that the incident is yet another glimpse of the tense climate experienced on local and national campuses by people who support Palestine.
lailluminator.com
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
☆ Constituent Services All-Timer ☆
doggett.house.gov
Those aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla, like Austinite Greg Stoker, drew critical attention to Netanyahu’s endless war by starvation w/their attempt to reach Gaza with humanitarian aid.

After working to facilitate Greg’s release from Israeli custody, I look forward to welcoming him home to Austin.
Austin activist Greg Stoker released from Israeli prison
Stoker was among roughly 170 people held in an Israeli prison after attempting to sail to Gaza to deliver aid.
www.kut.org
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
It probably also would have helped me mentally during my 20s to confirm that the target weight I had in my head would have put me below the minimum viable body fat % for women lol
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
Not to pile on, but I got a DEXA scan for the first time this year and wish I'd done it five years ago simply for tracking my muscle mass (at minimum so that I'd know how much it tanked during deep pandemic 🫠 but we're getting back there!)
essencesimmone.blacksky.app
Those who are 35+, what advice do you have for people just entering their 30s?
Reposted by JS
golikehellmachine.com
one of the upsides to stephen miller being a relatively young man is that life imprisonment is a very long time in prison
ronfilipkowski.bsky.social
Miller has Fascist Hissy #3 today after another court ruling. This one from a judge appointed by radical left marxist Donald J Trump.
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
Regret to report from experience that she will never, good luck dude
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
I have to regularly remind myself that James Madison was 32 when he wrote the framework for this shit (complimentary)
brandonfriedman.bsky.social
If you showed this tweet to James Madison, he would be like, "yes, this is why I wrote the 2nd Amendment"
@Sec_Noem on X: Chicago, we’re here for you.
jsplaceholder.bsky.social
Ratification feels hopeless, but I have intensely come around to the idea that at least becoming a signatory to the Rome Statute must be a crucial part of The Reckoning lieber.westpoint.edu/united-state...
Reposted by JS
cwarzel.bsky.social
all of these videos are horrifying. what feels so singularly striking and scary to me in all of them is the individual seething contempt and rage of these agents
eric-reinhart.com
ICE just blatantly violated the law and arrested sitting Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes while seeking to illegally arrest a patient in a hospital. Fuck these fascists.
Reposted by JS
jaylyall.bsky.social
This is straight-up murder.
annabower.bsky.social
Pete Hegseth: “Earlier this morning, on President Trump's orders, I directed a lethal, kinetic strike on a narco-trafficking vessel affiliated with Designated Terrorist Organizations in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed..”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth # @
CX.com
@SecWar
Earlier this morning, on President Trump's orders, I directed a lethal, kinetic strike on a narco-trafficking vessel affiliated with Designated Terrorist Organizations in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike, and no U.S. forces were harmed in the operation. The strike was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics - headed to America to poison our people.
Our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route. These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!