Rachel Flink, MD MPH

'Mountainhead' skewers the tech elite — and it's very satisfying Four super-rich tech leaders gather for a poker weekend in a mountain mansion while AI technology leads to global chaos in the new HBO film from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong.

“The keenest observation in Mountainhead is that all of these men pose the same threat, which is that as the world changes rapidly and their power expands exponentially, they never learn anything. They can't.”

The typical Canadian pays 70 percent more income tax than the typical American

the average canadian can also go to the hospital without starting a gofundme campaign

April 26, 2025 Early yesterday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent three U.S.

“…always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

Great @hcrichardson.bsky.social post this morning

“Here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge…

Surprising myself to be quoting Reagan, but what an evolution:

“We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation…

As someone who got to know a LOT of so-called conservative legal intellectuals, there are a bunch of people who claimed that they were just against tyranny and big government who are extremely silent in the moment.

We are so proud of our NYS ob-gyns who attended the #clc2025 in Washington, D.C.! They advocated for polices that improve the lives of all people seeking obstetric and gynecologic care, their families, and communities. Great work #TurningPurposeIntoPolicy! @acog-org.bsky.social

I wouldn’t have minded if our voters could’ve learned from someone else’s mistakes instead of the other way around, but alas.

Screenshot from NYT morning newsletter: Trump’s methods — insisting on tariffs, threatening to buy territory, insulting allies — have infuriated voters in Britain, Mexico, Ukraine and elsewhere. In Canada, for instance, the Liberal Party mounted an extraordinary comeback against the Conservatives this week. Mark Carney, the incoming prime minister, helped revive his party with a promise to oppose Trump: “Canada never, ever will be part of America in any way, shape or form,” Carney said of the president’s threat to annex his country. “Make no mistake. In trade as in hockey, Canada will win.” Then graph showing sharp decrease in Conservative support and increase in Liberal support beginning in late January 2025.

At least the tantrums are preventing Canadians from following in our stupid footsteps…
😩

can't believe it's 2025 and i'm stressed about tariffs and measles, like am i a character in an american girl book

a cartoon of homer simpson holding a card ALT: a cartoon of homer simpson holding a card

I am not going to call this a Bluetorial, because I do not want to sully that term (which, at least I, find joyful).

Let’s call it a Orwellial.

New York Times headline "Trump Called for I.V.F. to Be Free, How Would That Work?" August 30, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/health/trump-free-ivf-treatment.html

CNN headline "Trump proposes making government or insurance companies pay for IVF treatments." August 29, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/29/politics/trump-ivf-treatment-proposal/index.html

Washington Post headline "Trump says he wants to cover IVF costs as president." August 29, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-says-he-wants-to-cover-ivf-costs-as-president/2024/08/29/d480c9ec-d495-4ee7-a1fe-9142ab0334d0_video.html

NBC News headline "Trump says he wants to make IVF treatments paid for by government or insurance companies if elected," August 29, 2024. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-wants-make-ivf-treatments-paid-government-insurance-compani-rcna168804

How could that Trump voter have believed electing him would make IVF free? She must've been into fringey alternative media, maybe saw it from some influencer, professional media outlets would never oh no.

Every Republican Congressperson from Missouri voted to cut Medicaid.

30% of Missourians are on Medicaid.

Why haven't we seen more backlash against the GOP's proposed cuts to Medicaid? One reason is that people may not know they're on Medicaid, because Medicaid has different names in different states (see 🧵). Another is that some people may not realize that they (or their kids) could qualify.

Screenshot of message from insurer saying that since Dobbs v. Jackson permitted states to restrict abortion, legal counsel had advised them to pause prior authorizations and medical review for all “abortion related procedures.”

From a colleague in Montana who diagnosed a miscarriage.

Apparently this insurer is “pausing” all review/authorization of “abortion related procedures.” Unfortunately we don’t get to *pause* patients having pregnancy complications while this crap is sorted out.

(Shared with patient permission)

Wait, what? Which part of making America healthy again is willful ignorance?

Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did Since Texas banned abortion, no one has studied the statewide effects on pregnant women experiencing complications. Here’s how we sifted through data on millions of pregnancy hospitalizations and anal...

Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So ProPublica Did #ReproSky 🩺 🛟

“They know what they are doing is deeply unpopular. They are offering a tax cut to the most wealthy that is 850 times larger than what they are offering working people.“

Scientists here disagreed on whether lockdowns, school closures etc would be worse than the counterfactual of uncontrolled COVID spread. The disagreement was on the latter not the former, for which everyone across the spectrum recognised and discussed the societal harms. 1/

If the goal of ‘DOGE’ were truly to expose corruption and save taxpayer money it wouldn’t have been preceded by the unlawful firing of 18 Inspectors General whose job it is to expose corruption and save taxpayer money.

I hadn’t heard this story before. Even tiny acts of resistance can make a difference.

You absolutely are not allowed to be in charge of science funding if you don’t know the difference between transgenic and transgender, and you should probably lose your $175/yr taxpayer job if you’re this bad at it

I loved this one. Really well written and engrossing. I’m not a gamer myself but it helped me appreciate the skill and creativity that goes into it.

A good way to understand why wealth inequality is a problem is, if some idiot says "no regulations should exist" you just laugh at him, but if that idiot has $400 billion then it's an existential crisis for America.

ACOG Endorsed The following documents have ACOG’s endorsement and are listed in order of endorsed date.

The American College of OB/GYN’s website is now hosting the critical documents purged by the CDC

This is what every professional medical organization should be doing right now

#MedSky

www.acog.org/clinical/cli...

Small good things...

BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed. Any unpublished manuscript mentioning certain topics, including gender and "LGBT," must be pulled or revised.

Having conversations with CDC scientists having to scrub inclusive language from manuscripts, though of course all the reputable journals now require inclusive language, so yeah. #medsky

cannot be said enough that for a decade a critical number of americans have simply refused to accept that he means what he says

Comms Advice for Democratic Lawmakers You didn't ask, but I'm offering it anyway.

"We know you’re out of power. We understand you’re in the minority. We hear that, loud and clear. What we’re not hearing is your anger. We’re not hearing your outrage. We’re wondering whether or not you actually hear us."

charlotteclymer.substack.com/p/comms-advi...