Links for you. Science:
Trump slashed spending on clinical trials. The toll is starting to become clear. (paper here)
With an absent CDC and mismatched ‘subclade K’ flu strain, experts face upcoming season with uncertainty
DNA Reveals German Family Has Lived in Same Village for 3,000 Years
A rebuttal to NIH leadership’s screed against pandemic preparedness.
Comb-like wings help the tiniest insects swim through ‘syrupy’ air
Defensive fungal symbiosis on insect hindlegs
Other:
Republicans Will Never Find a Health Care Replacement. The GOP is too wedded to free markets and scornful of the welfare state to ever make anything in health care work.
Moral rot in elite journalism is killing the whole field
Adams Morgan’s streateries are overwhelmingly popular. Forthcoming requirements put them and others at risk of vanishing
Why Don’t People Return Their Shopping Carts? A (Somewhat) Scientific Investigation
What could have happened if Democrats didn’t cave on the shutdown?
Chuck’s Lost The Baileys
Epstein isn’t the only sex trafficker with alleged ties to Trump
Well Now That Laura Loomer Has Said It
‘They’re outbreeding our women!’ Pardoned J6er leads anti-Muslim protest for ‘white race’ (he seems nice)
MAGA Corruption And The Psychology Of Deterrence
Yes, Trump Will Get More Reckless as His Power Ebbs
The potential existential threat of large language models to online survey research
Elon Musk is set to make more than every U.S. elementary teacher combined
Comptroller Brad Lander Seeks Federal Trial for Protest Outside ICE Holding Area
Anti-Corruption Politics Are The Way to Crush Trumpism
Federal Agent Arrested For Assault In Riverside County After Detaining Unarmed 17-Year-Old At Gunpoint (how does an ICE agent afford a $2 million house?)
Trump Honors the Man Who Had Jamal Khashoggi Killed
Trump’s 50-year-mortgage proposal is just the start of his housing problems
Silicon Valley’s Extortion Letter to Democrats
Security Blanket: Will NYPD Smother Mamdani’s Love of Transit and Bikes?
Plastic surgeons wrestle with requests for ‘Mar-a-Lago face’: ‘You’re going to look like Maleficent’
The Saudification of America is under way
ICE employee among 16 men arrested in Bloomington sex trafficking sting, police say
Ponzi schemer given clemency by Trump does another Ponzi scheme
Metrobus tackles fare evasion with ‘Tap. Ride. Go.’ program, but challenges remain
Trump Told a Woman, ‘Quiet, Piggy,’ When She Asked Him About Epstein
Abundance and the Left (the motte and bailey strategy Klein deploys actually limits the scope of what abundance should be applied to)
Defector Annual Report, September 2024 – August 2025
Companies Are Trying to Hide Their Ties to Larry Summers
Almost Have To Respect The Game
mikethemadbiologist
That article on this year’s influenza says:
“Skowronski said she and her colleagues do not believe this strain of H3N2 will lead to a pandemic.”
Here in Japan, the case load is through the roof a whole month before last year’s peak. Last year was pretty ugly, with a whooping cough problem on top of influenza. Being an odd-ball, I came down with an allergy-based pneumonia, and walked into a monster shortage of cough medicines. Sheesh.