Andy Hall
Maritime, naval, and military history guy, occasional author. Texas Marine Archaeological Steward. Iconoclastic tendencies. Opinions mine, not my employer's.
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- Nothing behind his eyes.
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- AFAIK she was never worked in the federal justice system at all.
- Live coverage of RFK Jr’s testimony. Lord help us, and stay healthy, because you’re going to get fuck-all support or even reliable information from the federal government.
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- I was originally in the placebo arms of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine Phase 2/3 trial. RFK Jr is lying.
- RFK Jr on the cost of drug rehab treatment: "There are many really gold star rehabs that do it for a tiny fraction, like $20,000 to $40,000 a month."
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- Nasty.
- Soooo… We’re taking in these South African “persecuted refugees” who clearly haven’t been worried about where their next meals will come from… But we’re not accepting kids from Gaza who are actually starving? Shameful.
- We will eventually learn that very few, if any, of these people are legitimately refugees fleeing violence or imminent threat of violence. Most of them are using the program as a fast track to immigrate to the United States.
- It’s the grift that keeps on grifting.
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- We do too.
- This gives the term “dipshit” a whole new level. abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics...
- Nasty.
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, posted photos on Sunday of himself and his grandchildren swimming in a contaminated Washington creek where swimming is not allowed because it is used for sewer runoff.
- Nasty. Completely or partially failed seven of eight checks for levels of e. Coli.
- RFK Jr., so-called “Health Secretary,” Swims in Washington Creek That Flows With Sewage and Bacteria. WITH HIS GRANDCHILDREN! Where tf are their parents?! You literally can’t make *this shit* up. 🤢 👉🏽 www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/u...
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- Almost half of the red flags for all of DC are Rock Creek.
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- Runs N-S on west (left) side of the district. Flagged here as RC. Passed ONE of eight water tests that day for e. coli (green), and partially (yellow) or completely (red) failed the other seven.
- Nasty.
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, shared photos of himself and his grandchildren frolicking in waters filled with sewer overflow. Swimming in sewage. Spewing garbage. Sowing cynicism. That’s RFK Jr. alright.
- Nasty.
- wow, wonder who was president when no one was flying during covid?
- Reminds me of a survey of Louisiana Republicans, who blamed Obama for the federal government's failures after Katrina (Katrina was in 2005, and Obama wouldn't become president for 3 1/2 more years, in 2009.)
- A good introduction to university research funding.
- So what country will now buy him a yacht? talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/qatar...
- Andrew Cuomo may have run afoul of New York City rules by using his campaign website to instruct a super PAC how to help his mayoral bid. He denies wrongdoing.
- Funny, "he denies wrongdoing" is his campaign motto.
- The gift is bad enough on its own, but can we talk about how insane it is to use a foreign-gifted jet as *Air Force One* Air Force One has a lot of capability that a luxury jet simply doesn’t, and that’s before we even consider the obvious spying/bugging/security concerns.
- Grok, does Qatar fund Hamas? ______ "Yes, Qatar has provided significant financial support to Hamas, with estimates suggesting over $1.8 billion transferred to the group over the years."
- "A LITTLE racist? Have you been listening to me?"
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- ". . . in between two classy strip clubs."
- On March 11th two our dear friends, warriors and freedom fighters Donk and Brittney were removed from BlueSky Since then, they have fought to see if there was any way they could rectify the situation and reinstate their accounts We are here to send a message of support 💙 go.bsky.app/Mub8nUFat://did:plc:7rkfzwjcknqozv6piqsrtpfo/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3lotqxwwblt2k
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- Fair, but I would pay a similar subscription fee to what that other platform charges, for Bluesky to continue to operate as it does. Hell, I would've paid for that other platform if it had remained as if was when I joined it three years ago, before Apartheid boy bought it.
- The absolute fucking cackle I let out at this headline
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- Also the title of the landmark book on the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
- These El Salvador prison videos have overtaken porn for most clicked-on by Trump supporters. It’s the cure for MAGA erectile dysfunction.
- "FIRST LOOK" except for all the others, including Kristi Noem's well-coiffed photo op?
- Trump really not beating the “not actually president” allegations
- Putting Vance (or anyone else, really) on the phone with Modi was probably a very good alternative to Donald "Do Not Congratulate" Trump.
- There is no reason to doubt that this man speaks for the administration. Read it and consider where we are.
- "There is no reason to doubt that this man speaks for the administration." Stephen Miller *IS* the administration, along with a small handful of others (Musk, Lutnick, Bessent, Hegseth). They are making the policy, and maneuvering Trump -- dumb, incurious, and lazy -- to let them have free rein.
- On Friday 5/19 the NIH announced a suspension of granting routine No-Cost Extensions (NCEs) on funded projects. This may delay or effectively shut down approved, funded projects prematurely. A thread. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide... @altnih4science.bsky.social
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- There are many frustrations dealing with NIH procedural bureaucracy (or any other large agency's), but at least there were established procedures, and changes to them were announced months in advance. The tech bro mentality of "move fast and break things" has now destabilized everything.
- The incarcerated former Silicon Valley star is advising her partner on a new health tech startup. Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors in her blood-testing company Theranos. By @bobbyallyn.bsky.social
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- I am more sympathetic to Mattis than others. He obviously didn't have the educational or professional background to read the science and see the fraud, but he did have very good and well-intentioned reason to want it to be successful. It would have been transformative.
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- The policy came out yesterday, May 9, in the NIH Guide Table of Contents. (I inadvertently wrote May 19 in the OP.) I am not personally familiar with the processing of any NCE requests recently, so they may have been doing it unofficially prior to that.
- I have a colleague, a neuroscientist, who met her at a conference long before Theranos was exposed as a fraud. She said even then it was clear that Holmes was mostly BSing her way through the industry, but had support from people who desperately wanted to believe her over-the-top promises.
- I have a colleague, a neuroscientist, who met her at a conference long before Theranos was exposed as a fraud. She said even then it was clear that Holmes was mostly BSing her way through the industry, but had support from people who desperately wanted to believe her over-the-top promises.
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- Much less dramatic than Montezuma's Revenge, which is kind of on-brand for Santa Anna.
- Sorry, that was Friday 5/9 -- yesterday.
- NIH-funded projects can an individual, case-by-case prior approval request for review by NIH staff, but (again) there’s no indication of how long that will take. If a project is slated to end in 90 days, but it takes NIH six months to decide it still meets their new standards, you’re probably s-o-l.
- Just two days ago, Josh Marshall at TPM wrote about NIH “ghosting” research grants – not terminating them outright, but gradually shutting them down in practice by not processing budget draw-downs and the like. This feels like more of the same. /end talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-n...
- In these cases, the new policy will likely cut off the time available to properly complete the project, and also cut off access to the NIH funds PIs had budgeted to do so. This is dumb and absolutely undermines the conduct of research that NIH has already approved and committed to support.
- Can an NCE be granted for a project that has run its full, original term but could not acquire the routine NCE? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t assume that will happen, even if the project is eventually reviewed and found to be within the new (and yet unclear) “mission and agency priorities” of NIH.
- An in-place NCE allows the institution to continue to draw down funds already approved and awarded to the grant, but not yet spent. (An NIH grant “award” is more like an approved line of credit where the PI/institution makes expenditures, and then submits those reports and is reimbursed by NIH.)
- With routine NCEs indefinitely, there are likely to be MANY grants that will expire without an NCE in place, that likely will result in PIs and institutions being unable to draw on funds already formally approved and awarded, but not yet expended.
- Because NCE requests are typically submitted 60-90 days before the formal end date of the project, there is already a clock ticking on the on the official end of the project. Normally that’s not a problem, but it becomes a huge one when getting approval for an NCE is put on hold indefinitely.
- Remember, the projects in question have already been approved and funded for YEARS, and progress reports of activities and expenditures made to NIH annually. There is nothing about these projects, their investigators, or their activities, that is unknown to NIH and the relevant IC program staff.
- NCEs are routine with NIH grants. They are a way of giving additional time to complete a research project, with no additional cost to the government. Typically they are for one year on a multi-year project, and in most cases are awarded automatically at the request of the PI/institution.
- These automatic NCEs are now suspended, pending full review of each project to ensure it matches NIH’s new “mission and agency priorities.” There is no timeline for reinstating the automated NCE process, which was updated just nine days ago. www.era.nih.gov/erahelp/comm...
- Accurate. “Sorry boss, I can't do any work today, I'm looking at the Chicago Pope memes.”
- Let's look at Jeanine Pirro's life over the years. When Jeanine's children were 11 (son) and a 15-years-old daughter), her husband was hit with a paternity lawsuit. DNA testing confirmed that, during their six-year marriage, Albert Pirro had fathered a child...1/10
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- IIRC, Pirro never worked in the federal system anyway, only State of New York.
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- We’re going from vaccines and chemotherapy to essential oils and crystals. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
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- I don’t see a causality here, most association. This thing goes along with those things. There’s nothing unusual or inappropriate there, coming from the spiritual leader of a major religion.
- Kind of amazing that people seem surprised that the pope turns out to be Catholic after all.
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- There are legitimate arguments that reasonable people can have about what the best qualifications for being US Surgeon General are. Being an online influencer and entrepreneur whose business model is selling glucose meters to people who are not diabetic, is not one of them.
