Nice, impossible to see how this could possibly backfire!

Anyway, here's BBC research released last week that found over half of AI assistants' responses about BBC News content contained significant errors, including editorialising, misattribution and factual errors: www.bbc.com/mediacentre/...

On the left:

President Trump: "I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk ... will lead the Department of Government Efficiency ('DOGE")"

On the right:

Government declaration (by Joshua Fisher) submitted to Judge Chutkan stating Elon Musk is not the leader of DOGE

Here's a note at Law Dork on tonight's developments: substack.com/@chrisgeidne...

Yosemite halts camping reservations, with no timetable for their return Yosemite halts camping reservations, with no timetable for their return at a time when federal employees are being laid off

Gift link because soo few people subscribe to local papers, and the impact of the Musk/Trump cuts is worth everybody knowing about.
www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Yosemite halts camping reservations, with no timetable for their return Yosemite halts camping reservations, with no timetable for their return at a time when federal employees are being laid off

Want to go visit the national parks this year?
Sorry.
The reservation system is shut down, EMT personnel are gone, so don't get hurt or lost. No one can clean the bathrooms or cabins, so they'll be closed. Rangers are fired.

www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Susan F. Wood, Who Resigned From the F.D.A. Over Plan B, Dies at 66 (Gift Article) She left the agency because of its delay in approving the morning-after pill for over-the-counter use. Her resignation drew national media attention.

I appreciated this story about Susan F. Wood, which mentions she confronted the politics that were keeping Plan B off the market.

Grateful for another quiet hero.

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/u...

A tiny handwritten sign at the Tesla dealership as a big crowd protests Musk reads “We hate him too” yup 👍

Big crowd at the SF Tesla dealership protesting our unelected overlord. A tiny sign hangs from an upstairs window

Hundreds of people gathered Monday at Houston City Hall to protest President Donald Trump's leadership as part of a nationwide wave of protests called "Not My Presidents Day." Signs say, “You work for us!!” and “No monarchy.”

Hundreds of people gathered Monday 2/17 at Houston City Hall to protest President Donald Trump's leadership & authoritarian overreach as part of a nationwide wave of protests called "Not My Presidents Day."

#houston #texas #protest #trump #elon

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle

A reminder that many Indian Health Service workers were not eligible to take DOGE's "fork in the road" deferred resignation offer

"For public health and safety reasons, and in consideration of the medical and health care needs of the American Indian and Alaska Native beneficiaries served"

My post here about getting fired from USDS went viral, but my post on LinkedIn about it (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7296541591333203969/) went REALLY viral. It was the top post linked to the top article in the Top News section on the LI home page for about 12 hours […]

BREAKING: A bunch of U.S. Digital Service employees (including me) were fired tonight. It's still unclear exactly how many. There is no visibility whatsoever into what determined who was let go. Legacy USDS (i.e., pre-DOGE) leadership was not involved in the decision about whom to let go and […]

CDC 'disease detectors' among hundreds fired as Trump administration ramps up agency cuts Administration officials last week informed CDC leaders of plans to cut up to 10% of its workforce as it targeted federal probationary employees.

On Saturday the trump admin terminated 100s of employees at the CDC, incl 2 dozen workers from the Laboratory Leadership Service, "a pipeline for the next generation of CDC leaders," a senior official said. "We're being cut off at the knees. It is going to cripple public health for decades."

Trump cuts reach FDA workers focused on food safety and medical devices Positions cut also appeared to focus on agency’s centers for tobacco products, including oversight of e-cigarettes The Trump administration’s effort to slash the size of the federal workforce reached the Food and Drug Administration this weekend, as…

Trump cuts reach FDA workers focused on food safety and medical devices

Canadians celebrate flag day in defiance of U.S. annexation threat Feb. 15 marks Flag Day and the 60th anniversary of the maple leaf becoming Canada’s official flag.

“There’s also a lot of Québécois who would usually fly the Québec flag are now flying the Canadian flag.”

You Americans will never appreciate how pissed we are at your country that Quebecois are flying Canadian flags.

The judge says Trump's EO on transgender health care would create a perverse situation in which a cisgender person could get puberty blockers to treat cancer but a transgender person could not get puberty blockers to treat cancer. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

JUST IN: A federal judge in Washington state, who blocked Trump's executive order re: transgender health care, says it is unconstitutional in multiple ways, including usurping Congress' power of the purse storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

SIFT (The Four Moves) How can students get better at sorting truth from fiction from everything in between? At applying their attention to the things that matter? At amplifying better treatments of issues, and avoiding …

The author of SIFT is @mikecaulfield.bsky.social. I first encountered it in 2020. See hapgood.us/2019/06/19/s...

I love that the entire point is (re)building context to support interpretation - “reconstructing the necessary context to read, view, or listen to digital content effectively”

The SIFT method - STOP, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace claims, quotes & media

Information hygiene request - please circulate & take action.

I’m getting bombarded with frantic fragments.

Information flow is crucial right now, and every link in the chain matters. This is a concrete place where you can play a massive role in improving transmission.

Start with SIFT method:

Thousands of probationary federal health agency workers fired by letter this weekend. Here's what it said. The move comes amid a government-wide effort to cut probationary workers by the Department of Government Efficiency task force led by billionaire Elon Musk.

www.cbsnews.com/news/thousan...

#3 -final list of HHS cuts *do not include* CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service after all, sparing agency's so-called "disease detectives"

but other fellowship programs were not so lucky: multiple officials confirm Public Health Associate Program was cut

#2 - cuts by end of today span not just CDC, IHS and NIH as we heard previously...

...but also CMS, ASPR and FDA

A holiday weekend update on HHS cuts

#1: probationary workers from multiple agencies this evening all started getting basically same letter

"you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the Agency's current needs"

“The thing that I can’t get over is that the actual richest man in the world directed my fucking firing. I make $50k a year and work to keep drinking water safe. The richest man in the world decided that was an expense too great for the American taxpayer.”

The British stand in solidarity with American scientists. www.bmj.com/content/bmj/...

« Les décisions des Etats-Unis en matière de santé font peser de lourdes menaces sur le progrès et la coopération scientifiques » TRIBUNE. Dans une tribune au « Monde », un collectif de chercheurs, de médecins et de représentants d’associations s’inquiète des premières mesures de l’administration Trump, et rappelle que la coopér...

The French stand in solidarity with American scientists. www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...

Historical Photos and Images | US EPA EPA's Historical Photos and Images including the 1971-77 Documerica collection.

And the EPA has an incredible photo archive of what things used to be like: www.epa.gov/history/hist...

Bob's follow-up post shows this pic of the same river today and holy shit, what a difference.

The EPA is good and necessary!

These are the sorts of striking images the Democrats should be publicizing at every opportunity!

Grocery stores are rationing eggs as supply falls and prices rise Trader Joe’s, Walmart and Costco are among the stores that are setting limits on how many eggs customers can buy.

“Egg rationing is here.

With prices rising rapidly and showing no signs of slowing anytime soon, some of the nation’s biggest grocery store chains — including Trader Joe's, Walmart and Costco — have begun limiting the amount of eggs individual consumers can buy.”

www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...

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