Go to an old cemetery. See all the baby graves from before the 1950s & 60s? After that, hardly any. That's when people started vaccinating their children against deadly childhood diseases. If you're unsure what to do to protect your kids, the answer is literally written in stone

Do you fly in airplanes? Drive on highways? File taxes? Have kids or elderly parents? Go to the doctor? Prefer not to be poisoned by toxic chemicals? Then you rely on the government services that Musk is hobbling. It is tragic that many Americans won’t realize this until those services are killed.

“It is not possible to step away from humanity to assert humanity. We always must step towards it.”
@adriennemareebrown.bsky.social
From Octavia’s Parables podcast, which has provided me with calmness and clarity in the past couple months, for which I am increasingly and immeasurably grateful.

I know that "throughout the universe" is often used in legal contracts/docs but it gives me such joy to see it deployed here

Because not only are you critical of collective action… you are not participating in any responsive action

The way that pessimism is used as a preventive to every collective action is unhealthy

Yes. People who don’t want to do anything, constantly critiquing the actions of folks who are doing something.

Sit in silence, then. Stop annoying us. We’re busy.

How Elon Musk Executed His Takeover of the Federal Bureaucracy. Great reporting by the Times here of an effort that began in Sept 2023. “Wouldn’t it be great, Mr. Musk offered, if he could have access to the computers of the federal government?” [kottke.org]

If you have been exposed to #measles you can get post-exposure vaccination. Ideally within 72 hours of the exposure. This can help reduce the severity of illness and could even prevent you from developing symptoms at all.
Given exposures in gyms and at airports consider this a free tip.

More good reporting from Wired on white nationalist Stephen Miller’s role the ongoing coup. “Miller is carrying out the daily work of governance while Trump serves as head of state, focusing on the fun parts of being president.” [wired.com]

Politics are always a grief issue.

Such an important point. Movements for justice begin in steps and proceed through stumbles and successes. The key is to keep trying, in community for the cause.

U.S. Terminates Funding for Polio, H.I.V., Malaria and Nutrition Programs Around the World Here are some of the 5,800 contracts the Trump administration formally canceled this week in a wave of terse emails.

“People will die, but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/h...

YouTube video by WeRateDogs This Dog Is Innocent

Here are The Top 10 Dogs of the week!
youtu.be/3Ni0YXHD6m0?...

I'm convinced this is a genuine problem. The reality of Trump is so cartoonishly, comically awful that an absolutely neutral description sounds like a hit piece, even to me. So if you're at all predisposed to think of press as biased, factual reporting looks like some relentless vendetta.

How a pediatrician persuades vaccine-hesitant parents. “She has found *tremendous* success by just letting the families know she will have to document the higher risk of specific, and often fatal illness, in the chart of their child.” [kottke.org]

The fact that the USA has banned visas for trans people but welcomed rapist Andrew Tate shows how all this "defending women" stuff is total bullshit

🧵 PIH condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the Trump Administration's mass termination of United States Government grants and contracts supporting essential health care delivery and humanitarian assistance around the world.

Here’s what you need to know—and how you can take action 👇

This whole country wants bad things for others more than they want good things for themselves.

I see people deactivating various social media accounts, which I understand & respect, but I’m done letting Bad Tech Bros™️ chase me out of my community spaces.

Maybe there are no more “good places.” Maybe there are only good people doing their best to navigate—& use for good—problematic spaces.

I’m gonna give it a couple more weeks because I’m still in risk-assessment mode but I absolutely cannot do the “firehose of Trump news” again. Part of it is him, but part of it is my own lack of discipline regarding news consumption.

Just opening this app lately makes my blood pressure go up.

Somebody yelled at me for posting about Ganymede instead of /the state of things/ last night.

I know we’re (almost) all on the same page here, but a Bluesky without cute cats, science facts, and dumb jokes would be bad for everyone.

It’s been less than a week & I’m already exhausted by all the “how dare you not know about THIS terrible thing yet!!” & the vague shout shaming “YOU voted for this!” I bet the ppl following you did not, in fact, vote for this. Those that did - aren’t listening. Don’t rage laterally - rage UP. Tysm

Yeah, it’s absolutely part of Trump’s strategy to wear us down via a shock and awe deployment of executive orders, news chaos, etc etc.

But,if I’m being real, I think a lot of folks on the left — myself included — feed the chaos by panicking constantly, shoving the news in each other’s faces.

It didn’t have to be like this.

Kim Kelly: We Only Have Ourselves: The How-Tos and DOs and DON’Ts of Mutual Aid Kim Kelly Offers Advice and Reading Suggestions for How We Might Survive the Depredations to ComeSource: Lit Hub For all of humanity’s many, many flaws, one of our most redeeming characteristics as...

#CriticalVoices: "Mutual aid is not just a disaster response, it’s a way of caring for one another, building stronger communities, and preparing for whatever life may throw at us next. It’s a labor of love—and a way of life." via @kimkelly.bsky.social
anarchistagency.com/kim-kelly-we...

Mississippi politician files ‘Contraception Begins at Erection Act’ "People can get up in arms and call it absurd but I can’t say that bothers me.”

A state senator in Mississippi has filed a bill entitled the “Contraception Begins at Erection Act.”

As written by Sen. Bradford Blackmon, the bill would make it “unlawful for a person to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo.”
www.wlbt.com/2025/01/22/m...