"workers are not allowed to wear masks on the front line, even if they want to" www.nytimes.com/2025/08/17/u...

It's profoundly saddening to read that AP will no longer be assigning or running book reviews because readers don't engage with them enough and they take too much effort to plan and assign. People complain about critics as gatekeepers; wait until all that's left is marketing.

Great episode of “Plain English” by @dkthomp.bsky.social . Rarely would I recommend a 2-hour podcast, but the stakes here deserve this type of attention.

As a trainee, I need people to work for our future w/ constructive reform. The current carnage is terrifying!

open.spotify.com/episode/4Pee...

Air pollution is insidious, a haunting. The particles can enter your blood stream, flow into the brain, and alter the trajectory of your life. Neurodegenerative disease, cognitive problems, lost IQ, stroke. Children can be born diminished because of it. Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

This is a big deal. Spread the word. But it’s tiny compared to the totality of what’s happening at NIH. Cure Research for all cancers, Alzheimer’s, everything is being gutted. Intentionally. It’s all getting burned to the ground but the news isn’t getting out. The new cures won’t be there for you.

Haha! Love this letter from Douglas Adams to his US editor about not Americanising the text of Hitchhiker's Guide. 🐋🌸

It's normally the kind of book I would take my time with to savor the writing, but I am TEARING through Rejection by @tonytula.com because I can't get enough of these oddballs and reprobates destroying their lives in nauseating ways. Great book. Highly recommend. Will make you wanna die a little!

With the flurry of funding cuts & the reluctance of public health officials to talk publicly about their impacts, it's hard to get a picture of what's really happening now & how it will impact you & your community. Valuable insight here: yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/threats-to...

More excellent work by @joyneumeyer.bsky.social in @nybooks.com, reviewing cases of political prisoners in Russia. A dive into mundane free speech becoming grounds for felony charges and ruined lives. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Ron Wyden asks for rules about whether you own your digital purchases

If you wanted to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, you would empower the inspectors general.

If you wanted more waste, fraud, and abuse, you would fire them.

One thing Democratic leadership could do right now is to name an alternate HHS secretary--someone to provide ongoing public updates and health information. And do it for other departments too. Start showing voters what a Democratic government would look like--press conferences, speeches, all of it.

But setting aside the personal, almost everyone knows someone with cancer or another serious illness. The notion that medical and scientific research is some bourgeois fancy is absolutely idiotic. It’s unhinged.

One thing I’ve learned in the past five years is that they’ve made INCREDIBLE strides in cancer research. Immunotherapy, in particular, is a game changer. When it works, it gives people years. It gave my mom five excellent years after being told she has 6 months.

Trying to eliminate vaccines, cancer medicine and other life-saving drugs… is the end goal some kind of eugenicist Darwinist thing?

This is senseless! In the midst of multiple infectious disease outbreaks no less. EIS officers are some of the brightest public health scientists we have.

Doing the unthinkable: The deep cuts to the #CDC's workforce today are expected to decimate the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a program that has trained public health rapid responders for decades.
Envy of the world. Poof!
www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/t...