Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “declaration of disaster,” on the border crisis, signed in 2021, allows him to ignore the usual protocol when handing out valuable contracts to private contractors and vendors. And it’s an expensive business: State agencies are paying for everything from zip ties and razor wire to helicopters and planes. Here’s @TexasObserver’s story on who have been the big winners, including some who have become Abbott’s campaign “patrons.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/abbott-operation-lone-star-contractors-bonanza/

#Immigration #GregAbbott #Border #Texas #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

50 years ago, Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo worked in the Oslo lab of the late neuroscientist Per Andersen, where they made a momentous discovery: the fact that when a neuron signals to another neuron frequently enough, the second one will later respond more strongly to new signals for hours afterwards. The phenomenon is called long-term potentiation (LTP) and it’s fundamental to how we learn and remember. @KnowableMag talked to Bliss and Lømo about their discovery, and to other neuroscientists about how they’re applying knowledge about LTP to their research about memory disorders, chronic pain and more.

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/mind/2025/memory-formation-long-term-potentiation

#Science #Biology #Health #Medicine #Neuroscience #Medicine #MemoryLoss #ChronicPain #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

Ready for some light relief in a heavy thread? Our @ArtPhotosDesk shared some beautiful animal pictures — winners of the Nature Photography Contest — including a polar bear resting in a bed of flowers, a humpback whale swimming alongside a pod of dolphins, and a desert kit fox biting a camera. The story also contains @Phoblographer’s breakdown of the gear the winning photographers got their shots.

#Photography #Photos #NaturePhotography #Wildlife #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

Why does President Zelenskyy dress in military-style attire, and why did he get flak from certain quarters when he wore it to the White House? @timkmak, Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova and Anastasiia Kryvoruchenko dig into it for Counteroffensive.

https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/why-zelenskyy-wore-that-shirt-to

#Ukraine #UkraineRussia #Clothing #WhiteHouse #Zelenskyy #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

“The cost of Trump’s executive disorder is measured in lives” is the headline of this piece in @thecontinent. The team at the Africa-wide weekly newspaper break down how the U.S. government’s freeze on international aid has affected HIV and tuberculosis programs in Uganda, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “American aid to the global HIV response is channelled through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar). It is the world’s biggest HIV response fund and it supports – or supported – up to 20-million people,” they write.

https://continent.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-trumps-executive-disorder

#Africa #DemocraticRepublicOfCongo #Uganda #Mozambique #Zimbabwe #Health #USA #USAID #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

@Flipboard @timkmak It just shows how superficial American political culture is I think.

@Flipboard @timkmak This is all everyone needs to know:

ALT

A new analysis shows that the U.S. has lost more than one-fifth of its butterflies in just two decades. @TheConversationUS explains what’s causing the decline, why you should care, and what you can do to help reverse it.

https://theconversation.com/butterflies-declined-by-22-in-just-2-decades-across-the-us-there-are-ways-you-can-help-save-them-251468

#Butterflies #Wildlife #Conservation #Environment #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

Last of all, given the fraught situation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, our @CultureDesk shared an explanation of the term “elbows up” by MP Charlie Angus. For an extra treat, here’s a video to inspire Canadians through the weekend and beyond: Joe Canada/Jeff Douglas’s updated “I am Canadian” ad, but this time it’s not for beer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LzhCLzfJFg

https://charlieangus.substack.com/p/elbows-up

#LIfestyle #Canada #IAmCanadian #JoeCanada #CharlieAngus #ElbowsUp #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

@Flipboard @TheConversationUS Find out what flowers are indigenous to your area and plant them in every nook and cranny you can find.

@Flipboard @CultureDesk I want to vote for Jeff for president in 2028.