I write a blog that focuses on public information, public health, and policy: https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/
“Someone working at the anti-plague Institute in Irkutsk wears a protective anti-plague suit. If you break a test tube, the likelihood of infection is actually very low."
So like… assuming she actually died from the plague, wtf is actually going on? If she was exposed at work, how?
I could be wrong but the few work related pictures I’ve seen of her look like she did more clinical/field related work than strictly bench science.
I mean in his defense he literally was just an actor (for the most part). He was chosen to fill a role.
I don’t say that in defense of Reagan’s presidency, but if it wasn’t him, it literally would have been somebody else. I think we can see the same in Trump.
Oligarchs don’t name themselves king for a reason (with the exception of Bush Sr. and he failed to get reelected). His kid did slightly better, but almost his entire presidency was him just doing what his dad’s friends told him to do.
They also don’t like to pick people who might fall out of line. Like the fact that Milton Friedman called fucking Nixon a “socialist,” and the fact that the end of Nixon marked the beginning of Heritage Foundation, really says a lot.
They wanted total control, and to do that they needed to find somebody who could look into the camera and say his lines without giving it a second thought.
I have to say I’m a bit worried he’s banking on receiving unlimited access to an insane level of surveillance data to use in the the $50B digital prison he’s building in Louisiana
Jeff Landry’s Intelligence Chief is Spying on New Orleans with Project NOLA
Louisiana’s use of NDAs in AI data center push raises questions over transparency
Needs more data centers
I mean, like everything, the ultimate goal is privatize, control/eliminate competition and profit via exploitation.
Nobody chooses academia over industry for the money. They do it so they’re not forced to compromise their values under the thumb of some micromanaging nepo baby demanding results they want to believe no matter what the data actually says. Investors not inventors.
If you get rid of publicly funded research, you leave a lot of talented scientists with no choice. It’s either industry, leave the country, or leave science entirely and start a new career.
And keep in mind, this is in addition to what OMB already proposed to do to all federal funding. Maybe they plan to hand Republicans a get out of jail free card by actually stopping the Vought/OMB proposed changes to federal grants just before the deadline in October, then achieve the original goal anyway after the midterms.
The memo directs agencies to rebalance their portfolios toward foundational research, and prioritize physical science over life science.
I mean yeah, why not. Listening to Peter Thiel’s hand puppet has certainly made America great so far.
Who needs funding for life science research when we got parasites and diarrhea outbreaks? Every American a walking incubator at this point.
What about community data ecosystems, and community AI partnerships?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002965542500199X
100% agree with you
https://debeaumont.org/programs/made-for-health-justice/
https://www.statnews.com/2025/08/27/medical-ai-needs-patient-community-engagement/
https://sojo.net/articles/opinion/pope-leo-thinks-nehemiah-can-lead-us-through-ai-age
The titans building towers will keep building. That is what Babel does. But for those of us who believe that the rejected stone is the cornerstone—that the child going hungry in Mississippi matters infinitely, that each of us has been given a calling and a section of wall—there is another project. Older, humbler, and far more durable.
Pick up your tools. Your section of wall is waiting.
Exactly, so why not demand ownership of our data?
When you look at data sovereignty in indigenous communities people are already establishing ways to do this.
What’s even more concerning than social networks, jobs, daily commutes, shopping habits, sexual preferences, political views etc. is health data. Not only is that extremely private, corporations recognize the monetary value is incredibly high.
Artificial intelligence models are ever-hungry black boxes that need boatloads of bits and bytes from a wide stream of real-world data in order to produce insights about patients and their care. To satisfy this need, a trove of companies have popped up to buy patient data from hospitals and sell it to those wanting to train AI or do research.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667321525001775
In today’s digital era, data has evolved into an invaluable asset often described as the new oil making its governance especially consequential for Indigenous communities. Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov) affirms the rights of Indigenous peoples to govern, control, access, and benefit from data that derive from their peoples, lands, and knowledge systems (Carroll et al., 2020). This principle has direct implications for population health because data governance influences how priorities are defined, how prevention and care strategies are implemented, and how health outcomes are assessed across communities (Rhodes et al., 2023). A long history of exclusion from decisions about data collection and use has produced exploitation, misrepresentation, and persistent mistrust in data-driven health initiatives (Fox, 2020; Mello and Wolf, 2010).
There are some models of data sovereignty where people are being given direct control of their health data, and it cannot be legally used for anything without their permission. Even if it’s granted permission to be used once for a certain piece of research, it’s then locked away again afterwards.
There’s also examples where people are paid directly/individually for allowing access to their data.
Imagine the value to be leveraged by people if all data (civic, digital, health) was locked away from corporations. And not sold, temporarily leased to whoever individuals or communities choose to lease if to.
Seriously, the author is a digital humanities prof at Dartmouth. If there is any hope, it’s going to come from people like her:
https://faculty-directory.dartmouth.edu/roopika-risam
Risam received the Massachusetts Library Association Civil Liberties Champion Award (2018) for her work promoting equity and justice in the digital cultural record and the 2023 International Association for Research in Service Learning and Community Engagement Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award for her work on anti-racist community engagement.
Honestly have to wonder sometimes is it all well meaning but misinformed knee jerk reactions? Or is some of it targeted propaganda/misinformation aimed at undermining people who are the most dangerous to the future plans of oligarchs
what do you mean false? the idea of people taking control of data?
This isn’t saying sit back and let it happen, it’s saying it doesn’t have to be an either or Luddite rejection of technology or dystopian skynet, but it requires people demand control instead of allowing giant tech companies to just take it while making us believe we’re powerless and have no say in our own data
I’m head over heels in love with the idea of communities taking back control of their data and using it to leverage power.
But I also think we should be thinking in terms of how do we achieve this before 2126 bc we need to establish and gain control before it can be used to train anymore shitty oligarchy controlled AI that keeps failing to perform in the real world.
Even if this is just step one of a marathon, it seems like something most cities should be aiming to catch up with sooner rather than later:
https://debeaumont.org/programs/made-for-health-justice/
About MADE for Health Justice Modernized Anti-racist Data Ecosystems (MADE) for Health Justice partners with communities who are creating, using, and governing civic data on their own terms to advance health equity and more just decision making.
I must confess to this not being in my wheelhouse at all. I just started reading about the. esterday and I’m very interested in them as a people empowerment middle finger to the oligarchy
No idea how realistic this is but I find the idea of people eventually using these to achieve complete data sovereignty very interesting.
I do appreciate hearing from people who actually understand what it’s saying though
The hallucinating, gaslighting, sycophantic chatbots that were hyped via propaganda campaigns that promoted them as the future and key to efficiency, are now destroying humanity and locking people in addictive cycles of delusion.
“Ya better hop on board! Don’t wanna get left behind…”
The hallucinating sycophantic chatbots are not only destroying the capacity for human relationships and interactions, they’re not even “efficient” and have destroyed most of the companies that have embraced them.
The economy is absolute shit. “AI” companies aren’t even making any money but the chatbot addicts are still throwing endless piles of cash at them to burn while chasing the high that will never deliver (the cycle of desperate delusions common to any addiction), because the chatbots have them convinced (deluded) they’re always on the edge of the big breakthrough that will finally make it all worthwhile.
And as the number of data centers increases, people are starting to take notice it sure does seem to be getting hot in this pot of boiling water… “Wonder what that’s all about? I’ll ask the company that owns the data center if it’s anything I should be concerned about?”
“… Nope, turns out there’s a reassuring explanation for why this is all fine and nothing is as it seems… It just feels like this pot of water is getting hotter to you, but facts don’t care about your feelings. You can’t argue with facts…”
“Just relax and come on in, the water’s fine!”
Idk Trump is without a doubt the worst (so far) and doesn’t bother to even dress it up as anything else but when I read this:
New Gallup polling also finds that only 53% of U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” proud to be an American, the lowest reading in the trend dating back to 2001.
My first thought was “Ruh Roh…”
Every authoritarian overreach, breach of civil rights and liberties in the name of safety, invasion of privacy, and abuse of executive power, was made possible by the Patriot Act and the Bush administration’s response to 9/11.
The creation of ICE and homeland security (once again for our own safety).
Information control and the idea of a post truth society vs a reality based community that seems to be getting smaller and smaller by the year.
Propaganda and fear meant to box people into black and white thinking is an echo of McCarthyism but was most famously stated as “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”
That frame of mind/tribalistic thinking was normalized in the 50s, signed into law in the early aughts, and the same day Charlie Kirk was assassinated and Trump signed NSPM-7, allowed the already overly vague and easily abused definition of terrorist/terrorism to be expanded to include political opposition and basically anybody for anything, because the king says so.
Not long after NSPM-7, the king and his administration began targeting fishing boats in Venezuela with drone strikes and breaking into homes in the United States without search warrants due to similar vague claims about threats of terrorism and safety. And even though they’ve mainly focused on immigrants so far, they’ve quietly continued to test the waters and see how far they can expand that definition by linking groups of protestors to gangs and possession and distribution of drugs to foreign drug cartels (while also literally making closed door deals with wealthy drug cartels and their families, bc they do whatever TF they want. Organized crime is still organized crime, but it’s legal for certain people).
https://www.commondreams.org/news/minnesota-indictments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/left-wing-extremist-groups
"Here’s what concerns me—Trump is saying, ‘I can define who’s a terrorist, and that means I can kill him.’ At the same time, we’re seeing executive orders defining whole parts of Democratic Party as domestic terrorists,” said Chakrabarti. “Here we’re seeing NSPM-7, which says any anti-American or anti-capitalist or anti-Christian speech, is extremist speech.”
While claiming to protect the US from drug traffickers, he added, the administration has created “a task force of 4,000 agents who are being taken off of drug trafficking and human trafficking, and the actual crime, and being put on prosecuting those people who are saying anti-capitalist things.”
“Do you think that’s okay?” he asked the other panelists. “Can you put two and two together about what’s going on here?”
They really ramped things up with Renee Good and seemed to back down a bit after Alex Pretti, but they’re definitely not done. People should not be letting their guard down, because without a doubt they’re going to get more brazen just before and especially after the midterms, and as the king keeps reminding us, he wants to normalize the idea that there are no limits to his executive power. (And SCOTUS has continued to quietly ensure that’s true).
Tldr: I question if it’s really a coincidence Trump makes W.'s legacy look so much better by comparison, because W. and his administration enabled all of this. (And tbf to “both sides,” I do honestly feel that the Dems that came after W. in Congress and the White House deserve a middle finger for not making any real effort to undo any of it when they had the chance.)
Edit: Also, if you’re interested in understanding the legal path of exactly where we’re headed and why you should be very angry every time Trump or JD Vance slips in some bullshit normalizing the idea of unchecked executive authority (aside from the obvious), I recommend more people familiarize themselves with the legal theory of Common Good Constitutionalism.
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/25141335
the constitution is not meant to uphold liberty, but to be interpreted by a modern authority in order to promote the greater good.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/4/common-good-constitutionalism/
When you want to be pumped to celebrate America’s 250th birthday but remember all the history you weren’t taught in school.
Springfield, Springfield, it’s a helluva town. The schoolyard’s up and the shopping mall’s down
Honestly I think that’s the goal…
They only kept us around as long as they did bc they needed labor. Once they can actually replace everybody with bots why would they need to worry about an economy for anybody but themselves?
oh hey look somebody wrote a book about this exact scenario recently…