My friends here in San Diego who are R1 scientists, leading some of the most successful labs in their areas in one of the world's densest regions for scientific and medical innovation use words like: broken, bleak, devastating, nihilistic. Half the people I know who worked on equity & science topics have stopped posting publicly about it or producing scicom on it after experiencing too much stress and burden for their safety. Even *left* social media foments rage spirals and pileons

I don't think "science is over," humanity is resilient. I do think individual careers and pathways are lost, and that is a kind of grief that's hard to articulate. I think we'll get what we fight for. It does make me feel sad to see so little content about this outside of my scientific circles. Cures, innovation, and skilled workforces are not inevitable but the result of many choices we make together as a society.

I have to dream about a flourishing of investment in science beyond what seems possible now because it is the thing that brings me hope, to imagine that as fast as our society turned on this, it could turn back.