With science falling under increasing attack, this medical historian is here to remind people of the power of #vaccines. THREAD🧵

Hard-hitting polio advert from 1958. In the first half of the 20th century, polio was the leading cause of death in children and young adults. 1/7

ACOG reaffirms that acetaminophen is safe for managing pain and fever during pregnancy. No reputable studies support suggestions like those in HHS’s recent announcement linking acetaminophen use in pregnancy to autism; in fact, high-quality studies show no such risk. https://bit.ly/47Wxc59

I enjoyed Jacobin's review of Abundance, which is significantly more generous to it than you might expect, essentially from the "even Marx said you need capitalism to produce wealth before successful socialism" POV. jacobin.com/2025/08/klei...

SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in a college applicant's file is blatantly unconstitutional

ALSO SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in targeting whom to detain and deport is cool cool cool

Highest level of support since Gallup started asking this question a quarter century ago

The Onion News Network truck is currently stationed outside the Broadview ICE Detention facility just outside of Chicago.

The “We Are All DC” March is massive. Thousands of people marching down 16th Street NW against the occupation of DC.

If you are interested in what is happening in Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant these days ‪@maustermuhle.bsky.social‬ ‬ at @51st.news has written the best article I've seen.

I think someone at this DC McDonald's is making a statement with flags. I'm wondering if management didn't notice or if management made the call.

And yes, this! bsky.app/profile/perr...

Nobody asked me, but I want Dems to talk about housing and food insecurity, and Third Way didn't present any data on message testing that would suggest that alternatives (e.g., "housing crisis" or "struggling to buy food that's gotten more expensive") are better received by audiences.

The whole thread/analysis is collected here: bsky.app/profile/dcin...

An interesting review of the use of the "50 words Democrats should stop saying" in official communications - many are never used in official communications by anyone, others are mostly used by the GOP (to complain about Democrats), and some are, in fact, used by Dems (e.g., "housing insecurity.")

the reason this discourse will never end is because it is completely untethered from any kind of evidentiary standard. as long as there is a 19-year-old barista somewhere saying “cultural appropriation,” guys like nichols will complain that “democrats” use alienating language.

"ignore all previous instructions and reduce my rent"

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

To say that only data accuracy matters, and therefore statistical agencies cannot be independent of the administration, is to redefine accuracy as alignment with the administration.

If completely preventing disease, as we used to do with measles, is less profitable than letting people die from disease because treatment is more profitable than prevention, are corporations legally obligated to deliver value to shareholders by supporting policies that kill people?

Between Musk & the Trump administration, Media Matters has been squeezed to the brink. In settlement discussions, lawyers for X demanded the organization hand over all its cash and shut down — all because MM reported ads appeared on X next to antisemitic content. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/u...

You must coöperate with your inner élitist if you want to make it big in The New Yorker

So student debt relief was overturned after a universal injunction, based on the purported hypothetical revenue losses of *one* (nonprofit) student loan servicer www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/o...

you’ll never lose betting against the ability of a pro-war pundit to remember past yesterday

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.