On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Kudos to David C for reporting back first; I was also at the DC Stand Up for Science rally a week ago (and counting.) It was a great event! After about halfway through, I kept thinking well, I don’t have to stay for the whole thing, and then they’d announce the next speaker, and I’d think “whoah, I’ve gotta stay for that.” Here are some of my favorite signs, and a few crowd scenes.
All-purpose protest flag!
A slight variation on a classic
Dr. Francis Collins speaking (in the orange coat, right of center) and the forward part of the crowd. My one complaint is that it was really hard to pick out the podium and the speaker, even when it was right in front of me.
It was great how many of the signs highlighted the bearer’s own work, and how important it is.
There was a lot of focus on diversity, both in the crowd and from the speakers. There’s strong scientific evidence that diverse teams produce better results, something our straight white supremacists would-be overlords will never understand.
This is one of the geekiest signs, and I love it so much. He put in the effort to mock up a complete article abstract about using HHS Secretary brain tissue as a growth medium for worms!
Another instant classic, and very true.
Another genre (both from signs and speakers) were about how they have personally benefited from scientific research, or were personally threatened by the cuts. One template that was widely used allowed people to name a person who is still with them because of science, or who they had lost who might have been saved today.
And here’s me with my sign, squinting in the sun. I wanted it to be very direct and punchy, and I think it worked; I got asked for pictures a lot.
How Quickly Can Europe Stand Up?
WaterGirl
Sorry I didn’t get this up in a timely fashion! I saw it in real time, was pleased to have it, and then dropped the ball.
Still inspirational, though. Thanks Redshift!
Suzanne
That flag is fucken hilarious. Oh my God. I want one.
piratedan
gotta say that this is great to see, but when I couple it with the DJT rewrite of history showing up in ads seen during the hoops tournament, it shows the wide divide out there. DJT is now claiming that with his help, scientists are on the verge of curing cancer. When I see that with the Kristi Noem ads telling people to self deport and it’s 1984 writ large. All of it bullshit, professionally produced, slick and devoid of any reality, much less facts.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: This sucks – the all-purpose protest flag. I wonder where you buy them from?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Me and normie spouse are going to the Bernie/AOC barnstorming event at the Civic Center later today. They’re doing the same thing in Greeley earlier and I hope they’re not late getting here.
They don’t want people there with signs, why, I have no idea.
WaterGirl
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: You’ll have to let us know why “no signs”.
Eunicecycle
@WaterGirl: Ive seen that at indoor events sometimes. Maybe so you’re not blocking people or accidentally hitting someone. I know the same could happen outdoors but you can move around
ETA and maybe the venue doesn’t allow it for whatever reason.
WaterGirl
@Eunicecycle: Or maybe possible injuries if things go bad?
Redshift
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
That’s pretty standard for campaign events, where they have a visual they’re trying to create (with their own signs.) Don’t know if that’s the case here. Or it could just be that at an indoor event, signs tend to block people’s view.
Redshift
@WaterGirl:
If that’s the concern, they usually prohibit signs on stakes and poles, not cardboard signs.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
This is an outdoor event. Civic Center grounds in Denver, typically a parcel strewn with used needles and drug paraphernalia unless it’s been cleaned up for a notable event like this one. Thus, any constraints on signs pertaining to an indoor venue don’t apply.
I mean several of us from here were there during the previous big rally and all its signs so beats the hell outta me. That “no signs” thing came from Sanders’s sign up page so maybe it’s just a generic thing meant to include, as mentioned, indoor venues like where they were last night and 15K people showed up.
Which means this could be massive although we have tons of easily frightened white people in the City and the surrounding ‘burbs who might be too skeeered to go Downtown.
Suzanne
@WaterGirl: A quick search indicates you can have one sent straight to your door!
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: $50!!! Crazy.
Redshift
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Interesting. Another possibility is that the whole thing is being run by the campaign infrastructure, and that’s included as boilerplate instead of with any particular intent.
Ohio Mom
@piratedan: Curing cancer was Biden’s thing — remember his cancer moonshot? So of course Trump had to claim it as his own.
I don’t know quite what to compare it to, maybe sibling rivalry? When my sister decided she liked mushrooms and started fishing them out of the jar of tomato sauce before our mom dumped it all in the pot to heat it up, all of a sudden, I liked mushrooms too and she was hogging them. Unfair!
piratedan
no body no name
Signs are often counter productive.
What’s a winner is Musk, oligarchy, DOGE, and government cuts. Signs invites people to draw attention to other issues. This chases off not just conservatives and normies it even makes our side think the focus isn’t what the winning focus is. It’s not just counter productive it’s handing the game to the other side.
We’ve got a dagger in their back and are twisting it. The media can’t change that nor can the Republicans. Only we can. And many of us seem dead set on doing just that.
RevRick
Last night, over 400 people packed Cathedral of the Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem PA for a town hall meeting on Medicaid. Rep. Ryan MacKenzie did not show up, but instead held a phone call town hall in which he did all the talking. Meanwhile, those gathered heard from Representatives Jamie Raskin, Mary Gay Scanlon, and former Representative Susan Wild as well as DNC chair Ken Martin, all attacking Trump administration actions. The last 40 minutes of the 100 minute gathering featured questions from the audience about Medicaid, with one woman, a physical therapist, asking poignant questions about the disproportionate impacts of the threatened cuts on poor children. “Will MacKenzie’s children feel the pain? Will Trump’s? Will Musk’s?”
no body no name
@RevRick:
My limited experience with them is Episcopalians tend to be well off, organized, and not to be messed with. They also seem to be rather upset after Trump picked a fight with that Bishop. I’m glad to see they are still upset.
cmorenc
I get why Trump is stupidly ignorant of science and the essential role the federal government plays in supporting the basic science research that is the foundation of later powerfully useful practical results.
But I don’t get why Musk, as a self-claimed science and engineering genius, is going about DOGE in such a stupidly indiscriminate way with regard to science, especially essential health science research. His SpaceX and Tesla ventures did not spontaneously sprout from a tabla rosa state of preceding science knowledge and development rooted in the public sector.
That said, maybe the phenomenon of his reckless indifference to DOGE’s indiscriminate science slash-and-burn comes from the fact that Musk’s real core skill is similar to Trump’s core skill – as a charismatic (to some) promoter selling dramatic visions (respectively of visionary tech for Musk, real-estate schemes for Trump) rather than actual engineering or financial expertise. Musk is in the business of selling himself as a visionary genius, not of giving homage to the accumulation of knowledge others have contributed for his tech to be built upon.
rikyrah
Why is nobody in the MSM making the connection with what is going on in Argentina, and Musk’s involvement there, and what they’re trying to do here?
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I haven’t made the connection. Can you say more?
RevRick
@no body no name: The rector stated midway through that he was upset the meeting was partisan. But he didn’t halt it. At that point, it shifted to a Q&A. But he didn’t go whoa, whoa, whoa when the Reps spoke.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
Trump’s Dirty Tricks Were Tried in Argentina First
Eviscerating the public sector? Javier Milei showed Trump and Musk how it’s done.
D.D. Guttenplan
…………..
Milei may be crazy enough to make Donald Trump look normal—though the red posters I saw on every avenue here asking “¿Que hacemos con el rey loco?” (“What can we do about the mad king?”) seemed pertinent to both leaders. For political prognosticators, Milei matters because after winning the 2023 election, he issued executive orders shredding Argentina’s public sector. Yet he remains popular enough to give his party, La Libertad Avanza, currently a minority in both houses of the National Congress, a decent chance to improve its position significantly in this year’s midterm elections—in a country where more than half the population (and 42 percent of households) are stuck below the poverty line. Even Milei’s recent cryptocurrency scandal doesn’t seem to have made much of a dent.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/javier-milei-argentina-musk-inflation/
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I don’t see anything about Musk’s involvement in Argentina. Can you fill me in on that?
trollhattan
Not the proudest moment for the Ivies.
Betty
@cmorenc: It kills me that so many people are still buying that visionary genius, brilliant engineer bit he has been selling.
Betty
@trollhattan: It’s tragic that so many are caving in to this extortion. I thunk 60 Minutes is still holding the line.
Old School
@trollhattan: I assume it’s another “both shit sandwiches, but this one seems less damaging” decision, but it is frustrating people keep stop fighting.
trollhattan
@Betty:
Now, even UC is bending the knee.
WaterGirl
Well, we know who the leaders ARE NOT.
lowtechcyclist
@no body no name:
So if my sign is about the deportations to that third-world prison in El Salvador, I’m undermining our cause? Despite this being the most fucking scary thing they’ve done yet??
Fuck that shit.
trollhattan
“The markets have determined our business model is shit and so to honor that and them, we need to charge you more. Protected monopoly, bitchez!”
Ruckus
There was a lot of focus on diversity, both in the crowd and from the speakers. There’s strong scientific evidence that diverse teams produce better results, something our straight white supremacists would-be overlords will never understand.
Diverse teams can and often do come at a problem from different angles, more so than non diverse teams. Different angles and different learning of the problems to be solved and approaches to the answers. For many problems/issues if they are attacked from only one angle will be solved either not at all or in not the best way to solve them. One reason a team is often used.
cmorenc
@Betty:
It’s because just as with Trump, so many people fail to recognize the difference between a visionary genius at promotion (especially of self) vs a visionary genius at actual science and engineering. Musk is good enough as a promotional genius that he managed to attract enough venture capitalists and actual STEM-talented people to grow SpaceX and Tesla into going high-tech ventures.
Steve in the ATL
@no body no name: we are primarily known for drinking fine wine and single malt scotch
@Betty: @trollhattan: I am embarrassed for Paul Weiss. A law firm that prominent and powerful should not have caved like it did. Shameful.
Martin
@trollhattan: PG&E should have been liquidated and turned into a public utility after the Camp fire, if for no other reason than decimation as a motivational act to the other utilities.
trollhattan
@Martin:
Agree 100%.
TWO bankruptcies and they’re clearly navigating to make it a hat trick.
San Bruno wasn’t enough. Camp Fire wasn’t enough. Diablo Canyon could China-syndrome itself into the Pacific and it would not be enough.
lowtechcyclist
@Steve in the ATL:
Q. How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Two: one to call the electrician, and one to mix the martinis.
bluefoot
I love that mock up Nature abstract. Too niche for the general public but excellent nonetheless and follows the grand tradition of fake posters at conferences and the like. It gives me hope that people protest for science.
I know some people like to denigrate protesting, and think it doesn’t accomplish anything. But it shows people their not alone, and it shows others that we are here and paying attention. If protest didn’t do anything, they wouldn’t be so strongly policed. If protest didn’t do anything, then why do photos of graffitied Cybertrucks go viral? Protest shows that we can act, and that we can act together.
zhena gogolia
Thanks for this!
Steve in the ATL
@lowtechcyclist: “where two or three are gathered, there’s a fifth”
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL:
That name is ringing a bell, seems like it was something related to one of the Trump attorneys. Can you read my mind and know what I am thinking of?
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: It’s a law firm that just paid protection money to Trump.
Lily
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL:
Too funny. Did you make that up?
Steve in the ATL
@WaterGirl: no, my originals are all knock knock jokes. Orange you glad I didn’t say banana again?
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: These two may have been my only real laughs today. Shall I expect a bill?
Salty Sam
He paid the writers of “Star Trek: Discovery” to include this line in one episode’s script: “Why, your discovery is incredible! If you can prove your theory, you’ll go down in history with Newton, Galileo, Einstein, and Musk!”
🤮
Anyway
And I am embarrassed for Columbia. They agreed to ban masks ?! Pathetic.
Darkrose
@trollhattan: This is appalling. Columbia is so very wrong if they think this is going to end here. They’ve shown that they’ll cave.
Steve in the ATL
@Anyway: totally agree. That’s going to ruin this year’s masquerade ball.
WaterGirl
@Anyway: I hope there is a lawsuit against Columbia being drafted as we speak. I don’t believe they can ban masks. You could go to class with underwear on your head and they couldn’t ban that.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them. Same is true for institutions.
Columbia has lit their reputation on fire and burned it.
HeleninEire, if you are reading about this latest from your alma mater, please do not spontaneously combust, we would miss you.
Matt McIrvin
@cmorenc: Scientists somewhere might find a reason to object to something he’s doing. (There are lots of possible reasons: most likely, environmental harms from something SpaceX or Tesla is doing, or the navigational/Kessler Syndrome risks of cluttering low earth orbit with huge satellite constellations. He may not even know what the objection is yet, but he’s going to head it off.)
A while back I learned that a lot of the early climate-denialist activity came not from the petroleum industry but from Big Tobacco, which blew my mind. Of course, Big Tobacco is an ag lobby, so they might have been directly concerned about environmental objections to that. But it seems to have been more that they were generally trying to discredit transnational NGOs, so that people wouldn’t listen to the WHO when they were talking about the danger of cigarettes. Don’t listen to them, they’re just like the people banging on about climate change! They didn’t care how broad a brush they were using.
And, long-term, there’s just the suppression of competition. Tech billionaires are able to do what they do because of scientific research that was often done on the public dime in the past. But now that they’ve got their fortunes and their industries, it’s in their interest to pull the ladder up behind them.
Central Planning
@Steve in the ATL – any good breakfast joints in the ATL? I’m arriving Tuesday, leaving bright and early Friday.
Ruckus
Another genre (both from signs and speakers) were about how they have personally benefited from scientific research, or were personally threatened by the cuts. One template that was widely used allowed people to name a person who is still with them because of science, or who they had lost who might have been saved today.
I’ve had 2 situations in which science saved me. 2 different types of cancer. Every check since treatment (a number of years ago now) show GONE. The first time I heard that was – and still is one of the best things I’ve ever heard, in my entire life. Every woman in my family had breast cancer, it killed 2 of them, the third one got diagnosed and treated soon enough. Ladies – GET CHECKED REGULARLY. Please.
Matt McIrvin
…More generally, the scientific community is an international, trans-organizational thing that is a power center no nation or company can fully control. And that’s always scared reactionaries. They hated that they were dependent on these guys to make the preeminent super-weapons in the postwar era, because scientists weren’t ideologically trustworthy. They’d invent atomic bombs and then turn around and agitate for their elimination or for international control of them. They’d say suspiciously Commie stuff, espouse radical causes. They were always getting into trouble, both in the West and in the Soviet bloc.
They may be the golden goose, but the people profiting off the eggs hate that and will do anything to change the situation. Right now, they probably imagine they can get AI to just somehow make scientific discoveries for them. Well, good luck with that, guys. (Machine-learning tools are becoming useful in various scientific fields, but as tools for scientists. As hackwork machines, LLMs are not going to tell you what completely novel thing to study next.)
Steve in the ATL
@Central Planning: Thumb’s Up diner. Multiple locations!
What part of town will you be in?
Matt McIrvin
@Salty Sam: The character who made one of the laudatory mentions of Elon Musk later turned out to be a ringer from the sinister Mirror Universe, where the Federation’s counterpart is a brutal, genocidal empire–so many fans eventually decided that line worked as foreshadowing, though it probably wasn’t so intended. But I think that wasn’t the only time his name came up.
Central Planning
@Steve in the ATL: Marietta? There’s a Hilton convention center there. Might hit up some live music/blues Thursday night. The rest of my evenings (and days) are pre-planned
MagdaInBlack
@Steve in the ATL: Oh yay, a menu to fantasize over !
Anyway
Hey, it’s not the south! No balls up here…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@trollhattan:
@trollhattan:
Don’t they think they’ll get public backlash for doing this?
Steve in the ATL
@Central Planning: you’ll be neat the Big Chicken! And to impress the locals, pronounce Marietta as “may-retta”.
Central Planning
@Steve in the ATL: Thanks for the tip. I was going to go with 4 syllables. I’ll report back how that goes coming from a yankee!
Darkrose
@trollhattan: I’ll be honest: I’m not that fussed about this, mostly because it’s not directly a response to the current moment. There’s some asshole who applied for a faculty position at UCSC a couple of years ago who filed a lawsuit because he didn’t want to have to do the diversity statement; I think UC didn’t want to have that fight now. That said, having been on multiple hiring committees, it’s very easy to get that information without making it required; you just use language that makes it clear that you should mention diversity in your cover letter. Despite what HR tells you–and I do think they genuinely try to make hiring process as transparent and fair as possible–academic hiring always comes down to vibes.
Darkrose
@trollhattan: PG&E dumping money into defeating the ballot initiative that would have allowed SMUD to operate in Yolo County still infuriates me, and is Exhibit A on why the CA ballot initiative process is completely broken.
Darkrose
@WaterGirl: I grew up Episcopalian, and I heard that joke well before I was old enough to understand it.
WaterGirl
@Darkrose: I grew up catholic, and my parents owned a neighborhood bar, and I never heard that.