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  Trump, who took out full page ads demanding the death penalty for five Black and Latino teenagers falsely accused of rape (and never apologized after they were exonerated) is speaking out because he's worried that the seven Cornell frat boys accused of rape (who are mostly white) "won't get a fair shake." I wonder what the difference is.

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  Republicans say they want to protect women which is why they make an issue of transgender people in sports. But there are more men from one Cornell fraternity accused of rape than there are openly transgender women competing in all of professional sports. Let's talk about where the real headlines and political outrage should be focused!

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  An estimated one in eight cancer cases worldwide may be caused by infections. Do you get vaccinated? Are you more careful when COVID, flu or RSV are surging? It is so simple to reduce your risks of an acute infection and a chronic health problem. Why not do a bit more to take care? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/one-in-eight-new-cancers-are-likely-caused-by-infections-theres-an-easy-way-to-protect-yourself/

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  Speaking as someone who just visited and was bedazzled by Grand Teton National Park, let me ask, WHAT THE F*@& IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?! The Trump administration is considering the construction of a baseball park in Grand Teton National Park after being approached by Major League Baseball about hosting a game on public lands. Are you going to vote in six weeks? Are you asking everyone you know to vote? It's time to return sanity, ethics, and patriotism to the US. https://www.wash...

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  STUDY: "A fourth vaccine dose was associated with a decreased risk of being diagnosed with post #COVID19 condition, with a vaccine effectiveness of 31%." A fourth vaccine dose in those with risk factors for severe acute COVID-19 had a "vaccine effectiveness of 38% for the fourth dose against post COVID-19 condition." https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(26)00468-2/fulltext

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  Sunset at Lions Park in Moab.

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  Do any of my friends in Southeast Wisconsin have Long COVID or know someone who does? I've been contacted by a reporter interested in interviewing someone with LC in the Milwaukee area. Respond here or reach out privately if you know of someone who'd be interested in sharing.

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  Imagine you go back in time to 1928 to 1933—a period during which ordinary Germans could have prevented Hitler from rising to power through elections, protests, and strikes—and you ask Germans why they didn't act. If they told you, “Well, I did not want to annoy my friends,” “It was inconvenient,” or “My boss might have seen and objected,” would you accept that? 1/6

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  Leaving notes on cars with Trump and MAGA bumper stickers can be fun!

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  Something is happening in Anchorage with #COVID19. COVID has exploded an incredible level of 10,450 PMMoV. I'd say this might be an error, but the sewershed has reported 3 consecutive levels with huge increases. If this is true, it suggests 1 in 45 or more is infectious in that city. This would be one of the 5 highest readings ever reported on WastewaterSCAN in any sewershed. It is 12x higher than any other sewershed at present.

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  I continue to track and share that this #COVID19 surge is quite uneven throughout the US, with the South, California, Hawaii, and Alaska as particular hotspots. (There are others, however.) The CDC only tracks COVID hospitalizations in 16 states. Currently, only four of them have rates of COVID hospitalization that are above average: Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and California, which tracks closely with wastewater data. 1/2 https://www.cdc.gov/covid/php/covid-net/index.html

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  Want to see the scariest thing on the US CDC's website right now?

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  A month ago, I shared that I would no longer maintain my spreadsheet of studies on the long-term risks of #COVID19 infections. While I'm not maintaining it with the same rigor (I used to spend dozens of hours a week beating the bushes for studies), I am still adding studies I run across. My spreadsheet just surpassed 3,700 studies. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12VbMkvqUF9eSggJsdsFEjKs5x0ABxQJi5tvfzJIDd3U/edit?usp=sharing

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  Leaders of the Democrat Party: We need to listen to Independents and Republicans, build bridges, and find compromise to unite our nation. Leaders of the GOP: Democrats are radicals who want to destroy America, and we must fight their hateful ideology. Americans: But both parties are the same!

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  Everyone but MAGA knows Trump is making the US weaker, less safe, and less powerful. A Chinese think tank “published an assessment titled 'Thank Trump,' which wryly hailed his efforts to hasten the 'twilight of an empire,' by undermining America’s alliances, civil service, scientific institutions, and democratic credibility. In the past two years, the international approval rating of the U.S. has dropped nearly forty points… China now rates higher than the U.S.” https://www.ne...

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  "In war, men lose what makes them great. Their creativity. Their wisdom. Their joy. All that’s left is their utility. War is not monstrous for making corpses of men so much as it is for making machines of them. And woe to those who have no use in war except to feed the machines." - Pierce Brown, from Morning Star, book 3 of the Red Rising series

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  This summer's #COVID19 seems poised to continue through August, with risks varying around the US. The Biofire Syndromic dashboard shows the positive rate rising steadily. The WastewaterSCAN dashboard shows the same. Regionally, WastewaterSCAN reports COVID in wastewater: Midwest (35 sewersheds): 45 PMMoV Northeast (25): 55 PMMoV South (62): 86 PMMoV West (74): 59 PMMoV Even within regions, risks are widely varied: In the west, Anchorage is at 489 PMMoV, San Jose at 98 & Sunnyvale at...

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  STUDY: “Within the long COVID cohort, full COVID-19 vaccination was associated with a significantly greater small-vessel pulmonary blood volume and lobar airway volume compared with non-vaccinated individuals. “ The study needs further confirmation, but it suggests that #COVID19 vaccination has a potential protective effect on pulmonary structure and function. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3271/14/3/413

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  This is what racism looks like in 2026. On July 26th, the New York Post ran a cover story blaring, “Thousands of 9/11 families demand Mamdani be banned from the 25th-anniversary ceremony.” Call the underlying prejudice what you want—Islamophobia, xenophobia, or racism—the mechanism of right-wing propaganda is the same: take a brown, Muslim, or immigrant-born person, manufacture a mass movement against him out of a handful of voices, and launder it through a front page. 1/4

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  Trump is losing. The US is losing. And the world is losing. We just had another week of Trump TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out). He threatens Iran, they bomb some allies, US bases or boats passing through the Straits, and Trump backs down. Trump promised no endless wars (and a whole bunch of American morons believed him). Now, we're in an endless war. In three months, we can change all this, but only if you vote! #VoteBlue https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/world/middleeast/iran-trump-e...

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  Care facilities: “We care for people.” Me: “Then you'll require workers to get vaccinated?” Facilities: “We don't care that much.” STUDY of #COVID19 long-term care facilities: “A 10% relative increase in staff vaccination coverage was associated with 2.7 fewer resident infections per 100 beds... The median relative change in vaccination coverage (between (June 1, 2022, and May 31, 2024)) was -15% for residents and -53% for staff. “ https://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(26)0061...

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  Jesus is mentioned 1,310 times in the New International Version of the Bible. Harry Potter is mentioned roughly 18,956 times across the Wizarding World 7-book series. Donald Trump, his family, and his businesses are reportedly mentioned 38,000 times across more than 5,300 individual files in the Epstein files. 1/2

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  Is this the reason we're seeing progressively lower surges the last 2.5 years? STUDY: #COVID19 was "doubling in fitness every 6 months from Jan 2021 to Jun 2022, " but slowed "to every 2.4 years from Jul 2022 to Dec 2025." This compares to seasonal influenza H3N2, which sustains a slower, steadier pace, doubling in fitness every 10.0 years. https://blab.github.io/fitness-flux/

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  Damn it, another favorite musician of mine has died. Too much talent going to waste. https://variety.com/2026/music/global/glen-hansard-dead-once-best-song-oscar-winner-1236823238/

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  Michigan Republican Jack Bergman was asked about Iran, and his response was, "I'm not going to blame Jimmy Carter, but..." Donald Trump started an expensive, costly, disasterous war, and the Republicans are blaming... the president who was in office FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. The GOP in 2026: No accountability, no care, no brains, and no ethics.

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  STUDY good news: “We found that #COVID19 vaccination was protective against Long COVID, and we did not observe a significant waning of this protection within seven months after vaccination.” The not-so-good news: "Patients who were vaccinated had a lower risk of Long COVID (adjusted risk ratio 0.84) or mortality (adjusted risk ratio 0.83) than patients who were unvaccinated.” A good but not enormous 16% reduction in risk of LC. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-39...

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  STUDY: "The risk of long #COVID19 was not static but evolved with the pandemic; we observed a precipitous decline in incidence from the Wild-type/Alpha waves (>50%) to the Delta/Omicron waves (<21%), highlighting the profound impact of changing viral variants and vaccination on long-term outcomes." This study also, contrary to many other studies, found reinfection was not associated with LC risk. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9059/14/8/1662

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  Conservatives ignoring science and putting their health at risk is nothing new. A new study found that, in the 2010s, “conservative Americans experienced worsening health and higher mortality than liberals.” Among the causes is “declining trust in medical professionals among right-leaning individuals, including lower willingness to seek care, follow clinical advice or believe in medication effectiveness, even for issues unrelated to COVID-19.” FAFO! https://www.fastcompany.com/91561329/widenin...

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  In a healthy body, we have a name for cells that grow without limit while starving everything around them: cancer. So what do we call it when one person's wealth grows from $180 million to more than $1 trillion in 25 years? That's how Elon Musk's wealth grew. Over the same period, the median net worth of American families grew roughly 45%. 1/2

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  #COVID19 is presenting a very modest summer surge in the US. After rising from mid-June to early July, COVID has stopped rising the last two weeks (per WastewaterSCAN data). It still has not risen above the LOWEST point we'd seen in the prior four years. Strangely, WastewaterSCAN is now labeling COVID levels as “high,” even though it's (much) lower than ~90% of the last two years. 1/2