CD Covington

I love this so much and I am absolutely tearing up about it. The gentleness and plainness of this, the way he just lets her be her (and she seems so damn lovely, who wouldn’t?), the generosity.

It isn’t going to solve the world’s problems, but this kind of humanity is a hell of a start.

The front page of the Wednesday, August 13, 2025 Oregonian newspaper.

Grateful to @oregonian.com for sharing our story about the role misinformation played in killing Oregon's wildfire risk map. (And to @opb.org as well.)

Thanks, also, to @klccoregon.bsky.social for having me on: www.klcc.org/podcast/oreg...

ICYMI: www.propublica.org/article/oreg...

A New Zealand woman who is being held at a US immigration centre with her six-year-old son after they were detained crossing the Canada-US border, is being wrongly “treated like a criminal”, according to her friend and advocate. Sarah Shaw, 33, a New Zealander who has lived in Washington state for just over three years, dropped her two eldest children to Vancouver airport on 24 July, so they could take a direct flight back to New Zealand for a holiday with their grandparents. When Shaw attempted to re-enter the US, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detained her and her youngest son, in what was a “terrifying” ordeal, said Victoria Besancon, Shaw’s friend who is helping to raise money for her legal fight. A younger woman with a large envelope in front of her I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped Read more “Sarah thought she was being kidnapped,” she said. “They didn’t really explain anything to her at first, they just kind of quietly took her and her son and immediately put them in like an unmarked white van.” Ice confiscated Shaw’s phone and transported the mother and son to the Dilley immigration processing center in south Texas, many states away from her home, Besancon said. Foreign nationals caught up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown have similarly been transported to centres far from their homes, support networks and legal representation.

A New Zealand woman who works in Washington state and her six-year-old son have been abducted by ICE at the Canadian border, trafficked to Texas, and imprisoned for three weeks in abhorrent conditions.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

AI Eroded Doctors’ Ability to Spot Cancer Within Months in Study Artificial intelligence, touted for its potential to transform medicine, led to some doctors losing skills after just a few months in a new study.

“The AI in the study probably prompted doctors to become over-reliant on its recommendations, ‘leading to clinicians becoming less motivated, less focused, and less responsible when making cognitive decisions without AI assistance,’ the scientists said in the paper.”

The short answer: the Heritage Foundation have been paying influencers to discredit hormonal birth control for at least 7–8 years now

Hey, as a librarian I need to tell you:

Our funding depends on usage.

So go ahead and check out that book even if you don't think you'll finish it. No one will know. Check out that DVD even though you might not like it. Get ambitious in your quest for knowledge.

On an unrelated topic

Didn't DOGE fire all the FDA workers who inspected overseas factories to see if they should be banned or not?

This is maybe the worst part about being an educator in the AI era.

AI companies are *stealing your time* by making you work around it/find it/adjudicate it. Time that, 4 years ago, you would have used to improve your materials, or stay up-to-date on some area of research.

Heute wissen wir: Niemand, der vor Trumps faschistischer Agenda gewarnt hat, hat „überreagiert“.

Es wird ebenso vor der faschistischen Agenda der AfD gewarnt.

Seid nicht hier auch so naiv und glaubt, so schlimm würde es nicht werden.

John wick preparing to kill a lot of people he's got glowing red eyes

C: A bad thing is about to happen!
T: You're being an alarmist
*bad thing happens*
T: No one saw this coming
C: Another bad thing is about to happen!
T: You're being an alarmist
*bad thing happens*
T: No one saw this coming
C: Another bad thing is about to happen!
T: You're being an alarmist
C:

During COVID, people like the current head of the NIH and the head of FDA's CBER division accused me to an audience of millions of committing "child abuse" for simply creating mathematical models of school closures and childhood vaccination.

This was concerning. IMO they knew what they were doing.

Sorry but folks who want to read old work are better off reading authors with more universal appeal like Russ, Delaney, Butler, and Le Guin rather than work by a sex pest, a child molester, and a fascist.

Those dudes are actually pretty irrelevant to the genre today ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hey WaPo, you should know that crime is at an all-time low in DC right now. Shame on you for perpetuating these lies.

I remember the anxious training about Online Safety and how easy it would be for some creepy adult to stalk you because you gave them too much information about your school/hobbies/town when chatting innocently online!

...and yeah that training was pretty much correct. Good job adults.

Image description (USE ALT TEXT!!! PLEASE!!!!):
screenshot of google maps of downtown DC, centered on the White House. The White House is circled.

I spent a summer in the middle of a rough childhood staying in a “bad neighborhood” in DC - a Black neighborhood. I was endangered only by the threat of making friends which I did. They were great and welcomed me during a Very Hard Time. “Bad neighborhood” is just a racist dog whistle. I ❤️ DC.

Addendum (cause I'm think about this, too):

There is a great argument to be made about the value of reading challenging works rather than reading what merely entertains or is merely comfortable. This is an adjacent conversation to the "classics/canon" debate, but one I think deserves more eyeballs.

With alt-text (please alt-text your pics!)
article link in thread.

email to me: Our disabled son has CP and bladder spasms so urologist is recommending Botox treatments and we read your article and are concerned about the presence of mRNA in the Botox. Is mRNA in all brands? How can we know if it is in there? Is there a safe brand you recommend? He has to have this so what do we do? Thanks

my reply: personally, i'd recommend you follow the advice of your doctor. but what do i know, i'm just a random person you emailed. I have no more formal education around botox than the author Naomi Wolf, whose advice I assume you were actually seeking. but since you emailed me, my suggestion is that you listen to your kid's urologist, who is a trained medical professional, rather than seeking out medical advice from someone with an english degree and a history of making significant errors in her research. best of luck!

a specific skill I've developed over the past ~20 years is crafting responses to emails sent to me, but intended for that other Naomi Wolf

Targeting journalists... Isn't that illegal?

“This kind of lateral thinking is the heart of the humanities. The STEM-or-nothing mindset of the last decades in higher ed has done young people a terrible disservice… For students entering college and universities right now, we owe them the versatility of a humanist education.”

In the 2010s, I had many students say that they were going into STEM as “they’ll never be unemployed.” Some even refused to do more than the bare minimum for non-STEM classes with parent support. I am truly so devastated for them. They were SO certain, no matter how we tried to warn them.

2 images from hackers as characters converse. "I've got a record. I was Zero Cool." "Zero Cool crashed 1.507 systems in one day, biggest crash in history. Front page New York Times August 10, 1988"

Never forget today, when, on this day in 1988, Zero Cool crashed 1,507 systems in one day.

Wir sollen Rechts wählen „für die Freiheit“, aber bereits eine vom rechten Flügel der CDU geführte Regierung fängt nach 3 Monaten schon an, Sprechverbote aufzuerlegen. Ihr wollt nicht wissen, wie das erst ist, wenn die rechtsextreme AfD die Macht ergreift.

For me, this has never been a "first they came for... and I ignored them" situation; it was always a "first they came for the artists and then I fought like hell to protect them because what is the world WITHOUT art?"

A threat to the creative enterprises is a threat to ALL intellectual enterprises.

Seeing an awful lot of people sick with Covid right now.

Many saying “Covid is back”.

It never left. That’s why some of us are still advocating for mitigations.

Every infection is a dice roll with disability.

Wear a mask. Clean the air. Stay home when sick.

Text from the linked article: In a message to C.D.C. employees sent on Friday night, Susan Monarez, who was confirmed last month as the agency’s director, said the shooting has “understandably brought fear, anger and worry to all of us.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, also acknowledged “how shaken our public health colleagues feel today” in a statement on Saturday morning. C.D.C. offices across the country will be closed through Monday, according to an email from the security team at the agency addressed to staff members on Saturday. The team advised employees to work remotely until the buildings reopen and to remove C.D.C. stickers and decals from their vehicles as a precaution.

In addition to an image of RFK Jr, there is this text: Mr. Kennedy has been a prominent voice raising doubts about Covid vaccinations, as well as many routine immunizations. He has made provocative statements — including calling the Covid vaccine the “deadliest” ever made — that directly contradict evidence that has shown the shot to be overwhelmingly effective.

Text from the article: This week, Mr. Kennedy canceled nearly $500 million in grants and contracts for work on mRNA vaccines, the technology that helped turn the tide against the coronavirus. Critics of Mr. Kennedy argued that he also helped fuel the animosity directed at the C.D.C. Federal officials have blamed the agency for botching the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr. Kennedy has previously called the C.D.C. a “cesspool of corruption,” and a fascist enterprise. He accused C.D.C. employees of covering up vaccine harms to children, comparing it to the Catholic Church’s coverup of child sex abuse. The shooting was “just the perfect, terrible metaphor for what public health has endured these past six months — and the past six years,” said Katelyn Jetelina, a public health expert who has worked closely with the C.D.C.

Of the shooter from the text of the article linked: “He very deeply believed that vaccines had hurt him,” Ms. Hoalst said, “and that they were hurting other people.” His apparent obsession with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories seemed to come out of nowhere about a year ago, she said. Mr. White would launch into unrelenting monologues about it on her front porch, describing a vast and confusing conspiracy. She would just let him talk, finding it unwise to acknowledge that she herself was vaccinated. But, she added, she “never thought he would take it out on other people.” “It was a such a belief, it was almost like faith,” Ms. Hoalst said of his obsession with the vaccine. “It was a tenet of who he was.”

While I hate that NYT referred to RFK Jr's lies about vaccines as "provocative statements," this article on the CDC shooting is accurate and stark enough to be terrifying.

Notably, CDC staff being asked to remove identifying stickers from their cars is horrifying.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/u...

The order was based in part on the finding that O’Rourke’s PAC committed bribery or caused legislators to commit bribery.

It’s a completely outrageous finding. Paxton’s allegations don’t even come close to supporting a bribery charge.

Also courts are enforcing internal House procedural rules now?