I've studied the great works of political theory for over half my life, yet the most important insights for our times can be gained from Scorsese films. Like this one: The bully who demands loyalty on the grounds that only he can protect you sees your loyalty as your weakness

This would sink a presidency in any other era. I would bet most Americans will never hear it even happened.

“Everything is Tuberculosis” by John Green is a close second, tho more focused on the personal impacts of disease and (perhaps intentionally) does not highlight airborne spread and what that means for society

fwiw, of the books on his bookshelf my personal favorite is Snowden’s “Epidemics and Society” - there’s a reasonable audiobook version that is excellent (and easily absorbed at 1.25x speed)

This is a classic Voughtism: we have not eliminated the program - it still exists. It is just not distributing any resources.

For over a decade, the National Science Foundation’s SBE has funded my work, leading to discoveries that have improved how we do science, including mechanisms for efficient grant proposal contests that are now used worldwide.

NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:

never the wrong time for this classic

Do I write with AI? No. I write with the spite I inherited from my disapproving ancestors who keep trying to convince me the profit would be so much easier if I just started a cult already FFS

No one can fill this void left by the theft of basic research funding.

I don’t think everyone realizes how bad things are for US science: For the fiscal year that just ended, the Trump regime withheld $1.4 billion from the National Science Foundation’s research budget, which is about 1/5 of its primary research budget.