Christina S. Ho

Engineered stone workers get lung transplants as industry pushes Congress for legal shield Silicosis is a public health problem unfolding for engineered stone fabricators across America, and questions are mounting about who is ultimately responsible if workers get sick

Hundreds of workers who fabricate kitchen countertops from artificial stone slabs have developed silicosis. Dozens have died.

The industry's response: ask congress for complete immunity from lawsuits filed by sick workers.

Check out this powerful news report by Anna Werner for @investigatetv.com

I'm an economist, yes, but as a philosoher I'd like to stress that we should always put all discussions in the bigger context of human flourishing = the good life, and just structures in society.

CDC: Unvaccinated international traveler spread #measles to 17 other travelers to, within US

The index patient had a fever, persistent cough, cold-like symptoms, and conjunctivitis (“pink eye”) during travel.

www.cidrap.umn.edu/m...

Photo: Carrib / Flickr cc

"We have to remember, the founding era, if you want to invoke the founding era, to be a *habitual* drunkard you had to do *double* that."

Habitual drunkard laws are the historical analogue being pushed by DOJ to support prohibiting marijuana users from possessing guns

Ultimately the Trump Admin likely doesn't care if they eventually lose as part of the administrative appeals process or in litigation if they have managed to inflict harm on certain states and their #Medicaid programs in the immediate term (7/x)

The Western far right is at war with modernity, with the fundamental idea that purposive and coordinated human action can improve things, and they NEED to lose.

This is a very nice explanation of why LLMs should be viewed skeptically for both law and medicine. You don't get to run your brief or diagnosis through a battery of automated, non-erroneous tests.

LLMs work when the cost of validation is much less than the cost of production (+ output likely good)

Incredible. Kalshi is not paying out "Khamenei out of power by [date]" contracts because he died.

We are only alive today to debate the Anthropic case because Stanislav Petrov decided to overrule a computer.🫡

Ballet pic of the day

Yekaterina Kurchenko and Olga Golitsa

Photographer Ksenia Orlova

911 calls capture kids burning with fever, struggling to breathe at ICE detention center EMS crews were called to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas at least 11 times since September for children in medical distress, records show.

NEW: We obtained 911 audio from the Texas detention center housing hundreds of immigrant kids and their parents.

Since mid-September, EMS crews have been dispatched to Dilley at least 11 times to treat children in medical distress.

Burning fevers. Low oxygen. Seizures. A broken leg.

My report:

Jil Sander (fall 2026)

Jil Sander (fall 2026)

Jil Sander (fall 2026)

Jil Sander (fall 2026)

WHAT: Jil Sander (fall 2026)

OCCASIONS: punishing silence or a existential crisis on a Copenhagen street corner when you see your ex holding hands with someone who looks like you but smiles more

IF IT WERE A SCENT: airport body scanner

EMOTIONAL RANGE: watchful/devoted

#MJMfashionGuide

Every stage of this process - his arrest, spending a year in jail, being dumped on the streets to die - would be deeply shameful in a society that actually valued human life.

The Nazis stopped Jewish doctors from practising, so thousands of them left the country (my great grandfather was one of them). So many left that this was a good natural experiment for estimating the causal effect of losing doctors on infant mortality (& thousands died)

Welp. Once again @amyklobuchar.com and bunch of garbage @democrats.senate.gov reading the room like US Men's Hockey team.

🤡🤡🤡

So good! Can’t wait to read the essay: ayeshaasiddiqi.substack.com/p/late-empir... and the forthcoming book by @ayeshaasiddiqi.bsky.social

I have been saying for months now that outlets should seek out 911 call logs from these facilities. These are public information from local govs.

The next step is to talk to the first responders. Some of them will tell you their story.

You can do this at all the camps, not just Dilley.

📣 NOTE: To clarify, the 6-month moratorium on Medicare medical equipment enrollment is for new *suppliers,* not enrollees. Still horrible & likely illegal, but not QUITE as horrible as it would be otherwise.

Also, it looks like the $260M is around 14% of Minnesota's total Medicaid budget.

Interesting thing about this finding of high levels of cocaine in Nantucket wastewater is that it was high in the summer (rich people vacation spot) but really surged in the offseason (year round residents with major substance use on a dreary isolated island in winter)

"In its minor version, it is about survival and the willingness to sacrifice or to be sacrificed. Its aim is to turn a forgiving God into an ethnic and angry god. In its major version, it is about collective suicide before the Apocalypse…." p. 106

Sorry, I'm not going to keep quoting him ad nauseum but COMPELLED to do just this one "“Negative messianism…has either forfeited the idea of redemption as such or has been reduced to a crude belief in the expiatory power of bloodshed. It is not about salvation..." 1/2

I can't stop seeing it...so glad others are also seeing it too, co-reading him in the landscape of everything around us now

It's a little funny to destroy the public health apparatus largely in service of funneling money toward some weird incestuous siblings' vitamin company. Like have some vision in your villainy, please

Necropolitics

p. 38 www.dukeupress.edu/necropolitics

"“Necropolitical power inverts—life is merely death’s medium...This life is a superfluous one, whose price is so meager...the only equivalent of which is the sort of death able to be inflicted upon it..racism is the drive of the necropolitical principle, a sacrificial economy, a habituation to loss"

The State of the Union Is the State of Care When politicians assess the “state of the union,” they focus on concepts like the stock market or on partisan fights in Congress. But a more revealing measure tells us far more about the health of our...

When politicians assess the "state of the union," they focus on concepts like the stock market or on partisan fights in Congress.

But a more revealing measure tells us far more about the health of our country: the state of care.

via @familyvaluesatwork.bsky.social

I'll be honest, I'm pretty sure I have PTSD from this. I still wake up thinking about the article I need to write to save USAID.

It could’ve all been so different. We could’ve invested in HEPA air filtration and Far UV light at the very least in schools where illness spreads fast, far and wide. Instead we all get to live in Dickensian times.

Not too late to demand clean air! And N95s prevent airborne TB, measles, Covid etc 😷

life expectancy is generally a reflection of whether you're housed

This whole thing has been so fucking stupid and cost us over $1000 extra that may or may not be refunded. And it’s all just computers that refuse to let humans override them and say look, that is clearly a cello and we allow those.