Diona Poff

People in Los Angeles have been protesting 24 hours for 2 weeks straight and no news outlet is covering it!
8/8/25

Ideology Over Evidence

Wealthy political forces created evidence for school vouchers to support their ideology, but here’s the truth: “vouchers cause some of the largest academic declines on record in education research.”

Learn more from @joshcowenmi.bsky.social in #AmericanEducator.

You have to understand, I'm USAian and here in the States "jab" means "punch" or "insult", and I'm thinking, "Doctors over here have been doing that forever"

The U.S. Senate is currently considering a budget reconciliation bill that quietly includes language that could devastate our public lands. It would:
- Make over 250 million acres of public land eligible for sale
- Mandate the sale of at least 2 million acres of Forest Service and BLM land

This is a deceptively kind way of shutting down the thirsty followers, isn't it?

People need to look beyond the MANDATORY sale of 2-3 million acres. The Bill authorizes an additional 250+ Million acres for future sales, which is 40% of all public lands in the U.S.

www.fieldandstream.com/stories/cons...

Vaccine RCT spreadsheet aims to show the data, dispel myths about vaccines MargJohnsonVA / iStock

🧪 Jake Scott and Stanford colleagues have compiled over 270 randomized controlled trials for licensed vaccines. This spreadsheet provides crucial evidence on vaccine safety and efficacy, aiming to counter misinformation.
#MedSky 🛟

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.

"Thirty percent of boys under 5 are stunted due to chronic undernutrition"

There are 3 things we need to teach from infancy and make true:

We will take care of you, and you will take care of us.

No one matters more or less than you.

Humanity shares one soul, and its name is Love.

The importance of defossilizing our economies

documents.un.org/doc/undoc/ge...

I joke around alot about parenting but will say one of the most challenging parts of being a dad to teen boys is staying on top of the slick and curated toxic masculinity, misogyny and hate that they get served up on a daily basis. It's slick and so insidious.

I'm confused. Why is Vance Boelter charged with second degree murder? What constitutes first degree?

Unfortunately, getting better advice doesn't mean we'll be able to follow it. At the beginning of the year I was told that I couldn't get a pneumococcal vaccine because I "wasn't old enough" and had to pull up CDC guidelines before they would allow me to pay out of pocket to receive it

The world isn't silent on Gaza - this is by far the most vocal I have seen the general public on a political issue in my lifetime. I have also never seen a bigger difference between the anger of the public and the inaction of specific institutions and governments. That's the crucial disconnect.

They keep talking about punishing protestors as if this country wasn’t FOUNDED BY PROTESTERS WHO ENSHRINED THE RIGHT TO PROTEST, I AM SO TIRED OF HOW STUPID THINGS HAVE BECOME

He's absolutely right
bsky.app/profile/davi...

All the people I still know in LA laugh and laugh when they hear that "Los Angeles is burning." I made a couple of maps to show just how tiny and localized the protests are. GOPers are working really hard to make an excuse for declaring martial law. People should be very wary of that.

In May 1992, seven U.S. Marines joined two local police officers as they responded to a domestic violence call in the waning days of the Los Angeles riots. Deployed to the city alongside several thousand other federal troops after President George H. W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, these Marines now found themselves playing a role for which they had little training: that of civilian law enforcement officer. At the scene, as the police officers prepared to enter the home, someone inside fired a shotgun through the door. One of the officers shouted to the Marines, "Cover me" — a request, in law enforcement parlance, that they raise their weapons and be ready to fire if necessary. But the Marines, in accordance with their own training, took it as a request for suppressing fire. They riddled the home with more than 200 bullets. Miraculously, no one was killed.

Does anyone remember when the Marines were deployed to Los Angeles during the 1992 riots? In response to a domestic violence call, they fired more than 200 bullets into a house…

www.brennancenter.org/our-work/pol...

Almost all Nobel Prizes are awarded for work that is exploratory, or absolutely basic science with no obvious commercial or medical benefit.

You cannot predict where advancements come from, so you have to invest in science and scientists.

Targeted (corporate) science investment will never do this.

Israel warns Palestinians against travel on roads to Gaza aid hubs, labelling them ‘combat zones’ An IDF spokesperson said roads to the distribution centres set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation were ‘prohibited’ for Palestinians

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j... #gaza #starvation #palestine #gazaaid

I like this because it demonstrates that dilemmas can be solved with consultation and expertise.

Daily Frameworks for 29 May 2025

"The attainment of any object is conditioned upon knowledge, volition and action. Unless these three conditions are forthcoming, there is no execution or accomplishment." — Abdu’l-Bahá #Bahai #SocialAction

The lives lost in Gaza: A closer look at those killed in the conflict so far The death toll from the war already dwarfs the numbers killed in previous bouts of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza over many decades.

“Reuters examined the data from the Gaza Health Ministry to look more closely at those who have died.

It found that more than one-fifth of those killed in the territory were children under the age of 12. More than 1,200 families were completely wiped out”

World Health Assembly: Health Community Hails Adoption of Climate and Health Action Plan, But Slams Fossil Fuel Omissions The Global Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA) today welcomed the adoption by the World Health Organization’s 78th World Health Assembly (WHA78) of the Global Action Plan (GAP), which will take forward...

World Health Assembly: #Health Community Hails Adoption of Climate and Health Action Plan, But Slams Fossil Fuel Omissions bit.ly/wha78gap #wha78

Western Australia Announces Reparations for the ‘Stolen Generations’ On Tuesday, the Western Australia state government announced a new reparations program for the “Stolen Generations,” Indigenous children who were forcibly removed from their families under racist poli...

The Western Australia state government has announced a reparations program for survivors of the “Stolen Generations.”

This is a critical and long overdue step to providing justice.

Not only was the promise not kept, it’s like it never happened. We get it, there aren’t enough votes to pass real reform.

Most of us are pragmatic—but to just drop it completely? To stop even talking about it, like it’s been erased? That’s the part that hits the hardest for me.

Authoritarianism is bad, we see what’s happening and we say no. That’s it. That’s the message.

The boy who came back: the near-death, and changed life, of my son Max It was, we were told, a case of sudden infant death syndrome interrupted. What followed would transform my understanding of parenting, disability and the breadth of what makes a meaningful life

Your weekend must-read. Beautifully written and very, very moving

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Maybe it's not a division, but the entirety of existence apart from the frenetic, sparkling threads of consciousness