Cat-obsessed doctrix of medieval history working in arts & humanities communications; public humanities & alt-ac/post-ac advocate; cute critters, nature, baking, crafts, art, nerdom. 📍Cville
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"The GOP is signing on to mass murder of children based on the novel theories of a man who has no party ties except a single Trump endorsement. It is a measure of the party’s utter hollowness, brokenness, and evil that even in this case, it can barely find the resources to demur."
America heartbroken to discover president somehow still alive
I used to read books like Lord of the Rings or watch movies like Star Wars and think the villains were unbelievable. And of course, now watching the tech oligarchs (who could not spend all their money if they tried) destroy civilization for power, I’m like, guess I was wrong. People are that awful.
Kennedy must be removed from office. He has already caused a catastrophe at HHS and the CDC. I strongly suspect that he is about to use data manipulated by unscrupulous and unqualified individuals to attempt to falsely show that vaccines are in some way a net harm. He simply must be stopped.
Meanwhile at Bari's Basilica and burial place of St Nicolas... PLOT TWIST! ... after all this time, it is finally revealed that he was a Klingon.
If you're in Charlottesville, join us next Friday for the opening celebration of our new exhibition!
🧐😡
I'm on Paxlovid & vitamins.
And now the preschooler is also testing positive for Covid (though seemingly asymptomatic 🤞), so that's the trifecta of us. 😭🤒
Medieval parents trying to make their kid get up and go to school on the first day back after the summer holiday.
www.myprivacy.blog/denmark-make...
Thank you on this labor day!!
Platner: No one cares that you pretend to be remorseful as you sell out to lobbyists. Symbolic opposition does not reopen hospitals. Weak condemnations do not bring back Roe V Wade. Maine deserves better than Susan Collins.
May your luck continue to hold!
Having a sick preschooler is never easy, but parenting a healthy, full-energy preschooler while both parents are sick is so much worse.
It is just wild to me that the largest facility used during Japanese internment will now be used to intern immigrants from ICE raids, people who are disappeared by masked officers off the streets, and there is still a debate about whether naming and shaming those doing it is fair.
It's much clearer today- line appeared right away.
Boo!
It's faint, but there is line (both my husband and I agree it's there).
In stark contrast, Winsome Earle-Sears would be focused on screwing Virginia workers bluevirginia.us/2025/09/mond...
People literally bled & died fighting against corporate interests, robber barons, corrupt local & state politicians, cops & hired killers, & the federal government & US military for better working conditions for the rest of us so reflect on that today for just a bit while you're doing whatever else.
New in PN: "By the time you read this, the White House may have put out a Labor Day statement. It will no doubt offer an effusive tribute to Trump, who in his infinite beneficence has delivered workers a utopia of prosperity. But back on Earth, he's the most anti-labor president in modern history."
If you enjoy… Weekends Safe working conditions Retirement benefits Paid vacations Breaks at work Sick leave Paid holidays … then you’re part of the labor movement. Happy Labor Day.
Wait, wait, wait — read the actual study? Is that allowed? Where's my copy of The Internet Rulebook.
You guys see where this is going? Right?
And so it begins
I just paid $200 for a 5-day regimen of Paxlovid — and the pharmacist said that was a good price, as it lists at $1,700 without insurance. But hey, at least we're making America great and healthy again, right?
I knew about today's teach-in, but had figured that was a special event, not that everyone would already have to be on grounds.
What the heck?? I've NEVER heard of an institution requiring classes to meet on Labor Day! 😡
In honor of UVA not giving its instructors Labor Day off, my class is reading Marx
[FWIW] Large fire engulfs archaeological site in Tyre - Lebanon News www.lbcgroup.tv/news/lebanon...
For those following the NIH budget fight, the next big development will be this Tuesday, Sept 2nd, with the House LHHS subcommittee markups. The bill text will likely come out late Monday. The House bill is likely to be closer to the president's budget request than the Senate's was, so be prepared.
Otters
This is the one Labor Day graph that tells you the actual problem in America. The problem is not that America lacks abundance. The problem is that a handful of oligarchs are hoarding America’s abundance. www.levernews.com/the-labor-da...
Anne Schuchat, former Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, says she's worried about vaccine access, as experienced leaders leave the agency in protest.
Why do I blame Bill Cassidy for the destruction of the CDC and the NIH? Because he is a physician. He knew or should have known the danger that Kennedy poses to the U.S. and the globe. Kennedy has never hidden what he is—a predator, a fraud, an anti-science hack, and a gargantuan narcissist.
🤞🤞🤞
Glad to hear that you're on the mend! I just got boosted 1.5 weeks ago (with last year's vaccine variety), but alas, that faint line still appeared today. 😢
why do transphobes have a fucking monopoly on "having some concerns about fairness", can i have a concern about the fairness of normalizing kids getting their genitals inspected by strange adults for reasons entirely unrelated to health or hygiene as a prerequisite for peewee soccer?
why can't the democrat messaging on trans people be "no, we are not going to force children to undergo genital inspections in order to play sports"
wow
Can you imagine being a governor and spending all of that time and money to push hatred? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
My ten-year-old-self's favourite dinosaur received a kick-ass upgrade.
If you flood the streets of a city with heavily-armed masked paramilitary (1) they will commit crimes (2) they will not stop crimes (3) but overall crime may go down because people are too scared of heavily-armed masked paramilitary to leave their houses.
The Trump administration tried to snatch unaccompanied minors from foster homes, put them on planes and deport them illegally, on the weekend, during the night lawyers worked through the night to prevent it, while kids sat on the tarmac words fail me
This mirrors the recent disappearance of 152 Venezuelans to the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador. Now, the Trump administration is trying to disappear children—alone, in custody, and without guardians—before courts can intervene. #Accountability #NoMoreSilence
NEW: Judge Sooknanan now orders the govt to explain why it has failed to meet her 4 p.m. ET deadline to give a status update on the Guatemalan children who are supposed to be removed from planes and returned to Office of Refugee Resettlement custody.
#archaeology #history #ancientbluesky #France If anyone has lost a cathedral in France, they found it! thecatholicherald.com/article/anci...
I just made a telehealth appt to see if I can get some. 🤞
Well, I guess there's a first time for everything. It was a good 5.5 years of being COVID-free. 👎
Pritzker: "We don't want troops on the streets of American cities. That's un-American and frankly the president ought to know better. This one doesn't seem to. He hasn't read any books. He doesn't seem to understand the Constitution or the laws."
They’re doing all this to prevent people from MEMORIALIZING A MASS SHOOTING
These are my patients. Kids dying of brain cancer. Kids and families desperate for treatment and hoping to find a cure through experimental therapies. Trump is dismantling science and children with brain tumor are the victims. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/w...
SIGNS OF FASCISM 🪧
"The eye has been taken off the ball." Great reporting by Audrey Ash and Curt Devine in @cnn.com. At some point, we need to talk about the relationship between rising domestic terrorism and the evisceration of our domestic counterterrorism capacity. www.cnn.com/2025/08/30/u...
Meringue shell filled with chocolate coconut cream pudding and freeze-dried & fresh strawberries
Medieval peasants would not advocate for letting diseases run through entire populations to make a “stronger species,” sorry this one is modernity’s baby.
Remove RFK Jr for dereliction of duties. Immediately.
Hey friends, Defend Public Health has a new campaign if you’d like to join in. Write your elected reps about ensuring that COVID19 vaccines are available this Fall!
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked the visas of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and 80 other officials ahead of next month’s annual high-level meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, a step the Palestinian Authority decried as against international law. https://to.pbs.org/4naCsqj
www.cvilletomorrow.org/attend-a-lab...
there is no question in my mind that rfk jr is the most dangerous person in this administration and that his eugenicist ideology threatens the lives of millions of people www.advocate.com/politics/dem...
Blue Cross had refused to pay thousands of claims for the center’s patients, but on several occasions executives at the insurance company had signed special one-time deals with the center to pay for their wives’ cancer treatment. (Published April 2025)
They have trained much of the country to accept mass shootings as unavoidable natural occurrences and will approach the era of regular food safety-related mass casualty events the same way. Thoughts and prayers
Living a moral life in an age of bullies requires collective action; it cannot be done alone. Each of us must organize and participate in a vast network of moral resistance. From this solidarity we will grow stronger. This is what our current moment requires.
BOOM. The federal appeals court rules Trump's tariffs illegal, because they are. There's no national emergency, and so the power to tariff a country rests with Congress. Trump admin has lost at every stage of the process, but stay tuned for the Supremes to chime in.
Local folks, for more info & alerts when we open to the public & start holding events and workshops: scroll to bottom of vabookarts.org to sign up for the listserv. Hoping to show you how fun letterpress printing posters w/a Vandercook press is!
My local book arts/printshop was defunded this spring, but months of member work paid off at the last possible moment—keeping equipment, large type collection, & a new small home in Cville; & became a nonprofit under Richmond's Studio Two Three's sponsorship. Info signup at bottom of vabookarts.org
“Chantilly has become this black box where people are being sent after they are being arrested in the streets of D.C. It is an office; it is not intended to detain people”
Huh. Kinda inneresting, ain't it?
It’s easier to purchase an assault rifle in the U.S. than it is to get a COVID19 vaccine. But food dyes and wearable fitness monitors are going to fix everything.
BREAKING: Social Security Administration chief data officer and whistle-blower Charles Borges has resigned after bombshell report that SSA put highly-sensitive data at risk. He sent out an email to colleagues moments ago. Here is the text of his email shared with me:
I recently learned about the concept of inverted totalitarianism and... oh en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverte...
The maddening thing is that we know EXACTLY how to prevent this. Yes, kids should get vaccinated, test, stay home when sick, mask as much as possible. But even without any of that: Better ventilation and filtration in schools can MASSIVELY reduce viral spread, for all sorts of respiratory diseases.
Thread: LLMs👏 ARE 👏 NOT 👏 SEARCH 👏 ENGINES 👏 AND 👏 THEY 👏 ARE 👏 NOT 👏 BUILT 👏 FOR 👏 THAT 👏 TASK 👏
BREAKING: Big moment as CDC staff stage a mass walkout. They have lined the street outside its HQ to greet and salute the four top officials who have resigned in protest at RFK Jr’s attack on the agency’s science base. (🎥 AP)
so grammar, very help
If RFK Jr. will not resign, he must be impeached and removed, for the sake of the nation's health and safety.
I will never get over how a handful of tech bros set billions of dollars on fire to build a plagiarism machine that doesn't work and will destroy human society when they could have used a fraction of that money to fund a new golden age of creativity and knowledge.
How awesome is it that most animals love chin scritches and belly rubs 😊
People also use this analogy about guns. So let’s treat chatgpt (and guns) like cars: you need a license, you need to carry insurance, and the industry is highly regulated.
Imagine if we had footage of the Gestapo taking Anne Frank & her family away Imagine if Republican officials enjoyed watching that footage, they considered it a job well done Florida is banning Anne Frank’s Diary from schools because it makes the Nazis the bad guys and humanizes hiding from them
Enough is enough. The health of the country is in danger. Read our resignation letters: insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-n...
What a cursed sentence (gift link) “The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.”
This should be headline news - the implications are horrifying …
Can we just stop now?
that NEA "we cancelled the creative writing fellowships program because we prioritize fostering AI competency" letter is a really good example of a genre of what we might call found horror
"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?" Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.
I keep thinking about how the COVID vaccine was rolled out for free for all Americans in 2021 by the federal & state governments with support from local health departments & universities. Since, we have seen the privatization of delivery thru commercial pharmacies & the need for insurance coverage.
The first large-scale Nazi book burning was on 6 May 1933, when Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin was attacked by Nazi students. It would take decades for science to recover the knowledge about trans-affirming healthcare that was destroyed that day.
Yes, the government defunded pediatric cancer research, but hey — at least the money paid for a *sick * set of ICE-liveried GMC Yukons to feature in videos for Instagram.
If you have published anything, please consider doing this. The window is closing and you should get your details registered now for a chance at a settlement. The form works wherever in the world you are based.
I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
Police state
Sen. Patty Murray is calling for RFK Jr. to be fired. "We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what's left of the CDC and our other critical health agencies to the ground—he must be fired." "I hope my Republican colleagues who have come to regret their vote to confirm RFK Jr. will join me."