Hal Siegel PhD
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Hal Siegel PhD
@hsgl.bsky.social
450 followers 2.5K following 6 posts
Been around. NY, NM, AZ, CA. Kids, grandkids, dogs, cats (too many cats). Biotech, Regulatory, science. Currently @ Imaging Endpoints LLC
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Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
jacquelyngill.bsky.social
Aaron Swartz, coding prodigy and hacktivist who helped develop RSS and was a co-founder of Reddit, died by suicide after facing $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison for felony charges, just for downloading pdfs of research papers with the intention of making them accessible to the public.
julieslalonde.bsky.social Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 5d
Being GenX/Millennial is such a trip. In our lifetimes, we saw people our age getting wild criminal penalties for pirating music and now have to sit and watch as companies gobble up our work with impunity.
jentaub.bsky.social Jen Taub @jentaub.bsky.social · 5d
Still trying to understand how Napster got shut down, but Anthropic is going public and still hasn’t paid us authors yet after stealing our work.
October 14, 2026 at 9:03 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
jerasikehorn.bsky.social
Donald Trump didn’t do all this damage alone…

Republicans in Congress had the power and the responsibility to stop him.

Instead…

They chose complacency and cowardice.

Remember that, when you vote in November.

Enjoy. 😎🇺🇸✨
October 12, 2026 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
cwebbonline.com
This tells you everything about how Trump sees this country.

The destruction, the fear and the innocent people who would pay the actual price are just collateral damage to him.
October 6, 2026 at 4:26 AM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
jbendery.bsky.social
JFC, how did we get here:

Gavin Newsom says he’s directed his state to monitor threats after Trump suggested he wouldn’t care if Iran decided to “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego. www.huffpost.com/entry/live-u...
Newsom Says State Will Monitor Threats After Trump Says Iran Can Target Democrat-Led Cities
www.huffpost.com
October 6, 2026 at 4:05 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
gavinyamey.bsky.social
This is truly amazing—RFK Jr openly, gladly, joyfully telling people that under his leadership of the US health system, actual public health expertise, training, & experience is no longer needed. All that’s needed to lead the US health agencies is a past history of being a right wing blogger!
factpostnews.bsky.social FactPost @factpostnews.bsky.social · 19d
RFK: We're never ever again going to be dominated by public officials who tell us trust the experts
September 30, 2026 at 8:03 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
profjacob.bsky.social
🚨🚨 Social media venues such as #facebook and #instagram's algorithms have been designed by #meta to filter out 'social topic' such as #civilrights and #feminism.

#Freespeech my ass.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain because they relate to feminism
Theatre told that Facebook and Instagram filter out ads mentioning ‘social topics’ such as civil rights or feminism
www.theguardian.com
September 21, 2026 at 6:04 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
sesmith.lol
There have been a lot of jokey jokey about this but it is actually not funny. EA and AI bros are scummy and trying to destroy the world and coercing people into sex is very much a core part of their ethos.
faineg.com Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 22d
Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below.

Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.
Ann Pierce @itsannpierce 20h I am disheartened by this as well. I already lost a bunch of followers for agreeing with @tautologer, but it's saddening to see local nerdy women being caricatured as Karen-like outsiders and getting pushed out of the scene. This is exactly why you hear so few concrete, names-attached stories of sexual harrassment and assault. I'm told there is a history of discrediting these because the "slut normalization" thing is top priority and these stories get inconveniently in the way of spreading this ideology. I got roped into attending last year's Saturday Slutcon party because so many local and out-of-town friends were there (to echo sentiments @tautologer expressed about "slut events becoming central to the larger scenes). Mostly I hung out with people I knew and that was great. But in the course of my 3-ish hours there, there were 2 times my "no" was not accepted by a man I didn't know, and I was physically pushing a huge guy off of me who was rubbing his penis on me, who continued to do it despite my physical force against him, and after I finally wriggled away from him, told him I wanted to dance alone etc., he came back and did it again. This was scary and bad, but it didn't even cross my mind to report this because one of the other people who didn't accept my "no" earlier in the night was the bartender (an officially sanctioned authority at the event), and I knew the event was organized exclusively by women into CNC (who are vocal about how rapey behavior turns them on), so I figured this sort of thing would just get me laughed at. And anyway, I heard there were a lot of other incidents like it. Later though, someone encouraged me to report this story to the organizers, and despite my embarrassment I did, so *they know* that this and other incidents happened. This is why they cut the Saturday night party this year and created a larger training program for the flirt girls - *because* of things like this last year. Yet the narrative bein… People who haven't been to Slutcon are saying "it's just group therapy," "it's just innocent flirting." But the environment is much like a sex party in that many people are nude, there is making out and sex acts happening out in the open. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that every nerdy girl who likes rationalist bloggers or is into EA/AI safety should automatically be comfortable with this! That if she's not, there's something wrong with her, we don't want her in our scenes, etc. Not to mention, it's explictly an event *for men*, where men are the clients and the "flirt girls" are the product. Last year I overheard an exchange where a man felt "led on" by a flirt girl and was trying to get her punished/kicked out. (A dynamic that seems inevitable in this context!) Anyway- it does sound like they've upped their consent education a lot this year, are more organized, and that's good! As I've told my friends who are attending: I hope they have fun! I heard several accounts last year of women who had no problems and really enjoyed the event. That's great! Just... can we live in reality about this? There are real reasons why male-female sexual dynamics are tricky. Encouraging autistic men who can't yet read body language to go around asking to see womens' boobs is maybe a bit ill-advised. Maybe not everyone should be/identify as a slut; maybe it's not for everyone. And yeah, filtering the Bay Area Al safety scene down to only women who are super comfy with this eliminates *most* women - including many of the really smart, nerdy, weird women who've been in the larger scenes for years. What a loss for humanity. I absolutely understand why people with a minority sexuality would want to create belonging, would want to create spaces for people like themselves. But why do it like this/at this cost?
September 27, 2026 at 5:41 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
normeisen.bsky.social
Please don't overreact to the SCOTUS SAVE database decision today

Page 6 of the decision makes clear that we are in the 90 day statutory window when mass changes cannot be made to voter lists!

Yeah it's a shit decision for the reasons the 3 dissenters say but we can deal with it. More to come...
Supreme Court Allows Expansive Voter Screening Tool Ahead of Midterms (Gift Article)
Critics of the Trump administration system to monitor the citizenship status of voters had raised alarms about privacy and improper voter purges.
www.nytimes.com
September 25, 2026 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
lookitup.baby
Amtrak didn’t tell us about this exposure, so heads up: if you took an Amtrak train last week through Chicago or anywhere on the Southwest Chief, Coast Starlight, or California Zephyr routes like we did, you may have been exposed to measles!

Please let the train people in your life know about this
czedwards.bsky.social CZEdwards @czedwards.bsky.social · 29d
Re This case:
Most media are focusing on their own states, but this was a multi-state trip. The person took the whole route of the Southwest Chief, so Illinois through the midwest, then across S. Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona before LA. Then up the coast, and back across on California Zephyr.
September 20, 2026 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
crampell.bsky.social
It really is striking how many authoritarian states have ended up in this exact same place, where the leader seizes control of scientific inquiry. Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, Aryan Physics in the Third Reich, Great Leap Forward (also related to Lysenko) in China.
September 20, 2026 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
drdind.bsky.social
Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, offers a probable cause for Trump's sudden beef imports: corrupt alliance with a Brazilian beef magnate previously singled out by then Sen. Marco Rubio.

"According to the The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Trump announced his intention to allow duty-free ...
September 7, 2026 at 9:24 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
tizzywoman.bsky.social
The working class is the backbone of our economy—building our roads, teaching our kids, keeping us safe, and running our communities. They earn every drop of respect and fair compensation for powering America forward. Labor rights are human rights.
#LaborDay
September 7, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
electproject.bsky.social
tbf it works because Democrats have shame and Republicans have none. The media know Democrats will denounce their own while Republicans will deny, ignore, and deflect. Democratic supporters will endlessly wring their hands and click, click, click while Republican supporters will chortle and move on
September 6, 2026 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
atrupar.com
what Scott Bessent says here during this "interview" with Lara Trump is simply an insane way to talk about Canada
September 6, 2026 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
debbie156.bsky.social
Trump made $2.2 bn-yes BILLION- in 2025 while in office -crypto schemes, foreign gifts, selling early access to his posts for $100k/month. A million investors lost $3.8 bn in his coin. Experts call it the most openly corrupt presidency in history. That's looting & it’s impeachable. #OneV1 #Pinks
September 5, 2026 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
ofthebraveusa.bsky.social
@tomjoscelyn.bsky.social: "To be clear, there is no emergency around our elections. Noncitizen voting is minuscule. Fraudulent voting is minuscule. it's statistically insignificant. There is no big outside interference…But they're searching for a pretext to declare an emergency."
August 29, 2026 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
barbmcquade.bsky.social
The ability of billionaires to influence our politics has destroyed our democracy. So much for one person one vote. They are buying elections. We need a constitutional amendment to rid ourselves of the poison of Buckley v Valeo and Citizens United. Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Meet the Megadonors Who Have Poured $1.2 Billion Into the Midterms (Gift Article)
The leaderboard of the top 20 donors is dominated by the tech industry and ultrawealthy Republicans.
www.nytimes.com
August 29, 2026 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
admirablewomen.bsky.social
Virologist/molecular biologist Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal altered the trajectory of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

First to clone HIV-1 & complete its genetic mapping, directly leading to life-saving antiviral drug cocktails. Most-cited female scientist of the 1980s. Born #OTD in 1946. #WomenInSTEM
A black-and-white portrait of Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal (1946–2020), the pioneering Chinese-American virologist who first cloned HIV-1 and mapped its genome. Sitting in her research laboratory, she faces forward with a composed, direct, and confident expression. Her dark hair is styled in a short, neat bob, and she wears long, slender dangling earrings. Over a dark, patterned blouse, she wears a crisp white laboratory coat. She rests her left forearm on a lab counter beside her, while her right hand holds a dark binder resting on her lap. The background shows a busy lab setting filled with shelves of scientific glassware, chemical bottles, and equipment, all slightly out of focus to draw attention to her. The composition places her slightly off-center, capturing an professional and scholarly mood that underscores her historical significance as a leading figure in molecular biology during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
August 27, 2026 at 11:12 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
chanda.blacksky.app
This piece is great and I wish to staple it to several scientists' foreheads.

And while it's about the creation of text, I think it also applies to writing codes, since many (for example, cosmological) codes are publicly available, which means LLMs have vacuumed them up.
The only reason you’ll ever need not to write with AI — The Carlson Lab
Over the last year, our lab has been developing a policy on AI use. To do this, we did three main things: We read a lot of academic publications and tech news. We set up an #ai channel on our la...
www.carlsonlab.bio
August 24, 2026 at 3:52 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
thetnholler.bsky.social
We are just straight up pirates now 🏴‍☠️

(Michael is a former ambassador to Russia)
August 6, 2026 at 4:01 AM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
lizzylawrence.bsky.social
NEW: After Eli Lilly granted one man special access to the obesity drug retatrutide, doctors are struggling to get answers on whether they can get access for their patients (tho one doc did hear back after STAT asked Lilly for comment). W/@elaineywchen.bsky.social:
www.statnews.com/2026/08/03/e...
After Eli Lilly granted one man special access to obesity drug, doctors struggle to get answers
Doctors are asking how to get retatrutide for their patients, after Eli Lilly gave one man early access.
www.statnews.com
August 3, 2026 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
sciamunion.bsky.social
June 24, 2026 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
“Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.”

MTV goes live 45 years ago today. 🤘🏼 🎸

#$VIAC #$TWX #$PARA
August 1, 2026 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Hal Siegel PhD
nunesalt.bsky.social
RFK Jr gutted the FDA and USDA of 1000s of scientists and inspectors who keep restaurant diners and employees safe.

The agencies he leads can no longer be relied on to issue alerts and recalls, which are a critical line of defense for the industry and the public.

www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...
Exclusive: RFK Jr. hosting a new cooking show with celebrity chefs
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in an exclusive interview, says he will be 'reintroducing' Americans to cooking again in a new series.
www.usatoday.com
July 30, 2026 at 8:55 PM