Beza Merid

The head of the US health care system:

“I'm not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.”

The thing is "take it seriously" often means "accept that we're creating Skynet," rather than grappling with real, concrete, well-established concerns around bias, deskilling, unemployment (not the same as "replacement"), and ecology.

75% of my students are future health professionals. Do you really want a physician or nurse or pharm. who has no critical reading/thinking skills, who cannot communicate worth a damn or knows enough to ask questions/problem-solve when something feels off? Would you put your life in the hands of AI?

Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses

Facebook plans to put facial recognition in its glasses and they think we’re too stupid to fight back.

Their internal memo: “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”

While this is better than the current CDC process, this is not a good outcome. The AMA can’t match the capacity and impact of the federal government. Measles is already out of control. Playing with fire.

good thread documenting what's going on here but I think it's important to emphasize this is 100% on the judges. If every DoJ attorney headed into federal court knew that this sort of behavior would result in immediate sanctions or recommendations for disbarment from a federal judge, it would end.

even if you think you “have nothing to hide”, you have a lot to lose from these practices. They work just as effectively from their INaccuracy—people would be remiss to think they’re just about sorting risk or about knowledge. they are about producing categories of people, like “enemy of the state."

The false positives + overly-generic categorizations like “domestic terrorism,” already have significant precedent in phenomena like the 9-11 travel bans and “gang member” databases, both of which included babies. Communities of color have long experience with these practices and *warned everyone…*

There is huge risk to our privacy in terms of the data we *did* produce, the use of our faces, tracking, etc. AND we also need to draw on these important insights to understand how the risks include the dangers of *misrecognition* weaponized against people.

Black surveillance scholars including @hypervisible.blacksky.app and @wewatchwatchers.bsky.social have long warned of the dangers of simultaneous hypervisibility AND invisibility, long known to the Black community. Being always seen and watched, but as a “type,” not recognized as a person.

I am trying and failing to find the article from 2 months ago that adds one more terrifying layer: about the successful altering of a facial recognition database such that the photos no longer “read” as someone’s face to a computer, although they look unchanged to a person.

Nearly 30,000 Minnesotans trained as constitutional observers The Immigrant Defense Network works with more than 100 organizations to help train constitutional observers. At the end of November, there were 2,500 trained observers. That number has soared as more ...

A manager for the Immigrant Defense Network told MPR News that back in November, 2,500 people were trained as constitutional observers. Now, the total is nearly 30,000 trained observers in 77 of Minnesota's 87 counties.

Gov. Gavin Newsom: ‘I disagree’ with calls to abolish ICE The 2028 presidential contender came out against calls to dismantle ICE after an agent fatally shot a Minneapolis woman.

What makes Gavin Newsom such a skilled politician is that he stands up to Trump’s bullying with piping hot memes AND is able to agree with Trump about policy

www.sacbee.com

Free Liam, and his father.

Not going to lie, just very much filled with dread on reporting on Medicaid cuts this year :(

Needless suffering sucks.

CMS to stop requiring states to report childhood vaccination levels

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), run by Oz and his boss, RFK Jr., will no longer require physicians to report vaccination rates.

Instead, they plan to start having doctors report if they’ve discussed “alternative” vaccine schedules.

Keeping the social safety net as small and as punitive as possible helps to ensure that there will always be a steady stream of people for employers like Bezos to exploit--people in such a precarious position that have no choice but to take whatever underpaid, overworked job they can get.

Washington Post Opinions @postopinions.bsky.social I "The purpose of entitlements is not to spend as much as possible," the Editorial Board writes. "It is to make sure the truly vulnerable get the help they need without becoming dependent on government handouts. Scrutinizing food stamp rolls is a small step in that direction."

No. No. No.

Punitive processes make narrowly targeted programs *less* efficient and *more* costly. Because more scrutiny requires more bureaucracy.

Punitive processes also make it *less* likely that people will get aid for which they qualify. Because of the roadblocks and stigma scrutiny creates.

Zillow property listings no longer show risk of fires, floods, and storms The change follows complaints that climate risk scores were making properties less desirable.

Zillow property listings no longer show risk of fires, floods, and storms

Fact-checking one of the single most effective convincing-sounding lie generation machines = trying to sweep the ocean back into the sea (or capture emissions after they're released)

We don't solve this without regulating, attacking and delegitimising the slop firehose

wait THAT is the concern?
“damn the calipers worked so well before people got the ability to alter their face shape!"

The managerial class yearns for phrenology

How about we shut down the government for this very popular and specific goal and then, hear me out, we hold out for like a month and a half and then, ok this part is important, after a watershed election where we ran the table, ONLY THEN, fold and don't get the one thing we said we wanted.

DOGE and others in the administration want to build a giant database of records by haphazardly combining info the government collected for one purpose, like paying taxes, and use it for another purpose, like targeting immigrants. We can't let this happen. takebackctrl.org/get-a-warrant

The biggest challenge is convincing people that things could be different and that their actions matter.

Letitia James criminally charged in Trump’s latest effort to punish rivals Prosecutor who sought charges was installed amid Trump frustrations with pace of investigations against rivals * US politics live – latest updates A federal grand jury indicted Letitia James, the New York attorney general, for bank fraud on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Lindsey Halligan, the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, personally presented the case to the grand jury on Thursday, the person said. US attorneys do not typically present to a grand jury. Continue reading...

Letitia James criminally charged in Trump’s latest effort to punish rivals

We are angered and disheartened by the lack of progress our fields have made over the last 20 years and dismayed by the dismantling of health equity efforts happening in real time. In response, we are determined to reimagine academic public health and drive social change. We believe public health scholars need to share and build power with communities facing inequities now more than ever.

Just published in @amjpublichealth.bsky.social: a collective analysis of the power ecosystem that jeopardizes public health and produces inequity, titled “Why Building Power is Key to Protecting Academic Public Health and Advancing Health Equity”

Cops Used 83K Cameras to Track an Abortion Patient—on Her Abuser’s Tip Turns out the cop was also an abuser

Cops used 83,000 cameras to track a single abortion patient — on her abuser’s tip.

🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿

ICE fears put pregnant immigrants and their babies at risk Fear of deportation is deterring people without permanent legal status from critical care. Doctors are worried for their health — and the health of their pregnancies.

“My biggest fear is going to the hospital."

Pregnant immigrants are terrified ICE will show up outside the doctors' office or at the hospital. So they're skipping the care necessary to ensure a healthy birth.

Some experience dangerous complications as a result.

19thnews.org/2025/10/preg...