Tag Archives: science

October 29, 2025 · 5:15 am

The idea is not the hard part; more thoughts on AI

There’s an anecdote many writers have, myself included. Someone tells us they have an amazing idea for a fantasy story/movie/high-octane thriller; how’s about I write the story based on their idea and we’ll split the profits (which will be huge, of course. Their idea’s that good).

I can’t help thinking this explains, in part, the belief that if someone gives AI a prompt and tells them to write a story, therefore the prompter has written the story themselves. Isn’t coming up with the idea the hard part? AI just makes it easier to build on your concept, by saving you from having to think about character arcs, plot or writing well. Lots of people say “Someday I’ll write a novel,” but never have the discipline to sit down and do it (I’ve known a couple of talented people like that). Now they don’t have to sit

Case in point, Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist who believes AI may never be able to do what he does, is quite confident it can master comparatively trivial skills such as art and filmmaking.

(I got this off BlueSky. My apologies for losing track of the source post).

That is an interesting definition of “future creatives.” No cameras, no set, no filmmaking skills, but they’ve got an idea! Thanks to AI, they can become Spielberg!

It’s true that improvements in tech have made it easier to shoot a low-budget movie than ever before. However that does not guarantee you can make a good or even marginally competent low-budget movie. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, shooting a movie well is a skill. Or as I put it some years ago, “Photojournalism is a skill, not just a matter of pointing a camera because something interesting is happening.” Even less is it a matter of telling AI to point the camera for you.

A less charitable interpretation than my opening remark would be that the AI-is-art boom is a bunch of techbros who do not get art, can’t make art (but remember, Andreessen’s investment skills are much more of an art than art!) and resent the accolades flowing to artistic people. Well, now they’re going to annex art. Their tech will make it and real artists will soon be nothing special!

Plus there’s the money. As comics artist Jamie McKelvie put it, “the main achievement of the tech industry has been increasing the flow of money from people who make or do things to people who already have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes” Case in point, Spotify; great for tech, ruinous for musicians (“It has become entirely unsustainable for a band like us to come and tour anywhere except the coasts.”).

I read a dubious argument recently that using copyright against AI tech companies to protect them from learning on our work for free is wrong: copyright is supposed to promote innovation and this will work against innovation by stifling all the awesome creative work that will come out of AI. I’m less optimistic. As Charlie Warzel puts it in The Atlantic, “This is how it feels to live in the golden age of slop, a catchall word used to describe the spammy quality of easy-to-generate AI material. I’ve begun to think of it as the digital equivalent of an invasive species. Just as the introduction and replication of a novel plant or animal usually results in some form of ecological harm and threatens native organisms, the arrival of chatbots pumping out lorem ipsum–flavored text has polluted Google search results and added hallucinations to scientific archives.”

Warzel also has an answer to claims that AI will liberate creatives: “The idea is that Sora 2, like all AI tools, removes an enormous amount of friction between conception and completion in the creative process. Ideas and imagination are universal to the human experience, but execution is learned, the result of energy and time spent to develop the skills necessary to bring an idea into the world. Altman’s definition of creativity seems to elide this second element altogether—so much so that it appears to be an animating principle behind most of OpenAI’s tools.

‘ “The fact that you will be able to have an entire piece of software created just by explaining your idea is going to be incredible for humans getting great new stuff,” Altman said on the comedian Theo Von’s podcast this summer. “Because right now, I think there’s a lot more good ideas than people who know how to make them. And if AI can do that for us, we’re really good at coming up with creative ideas.”’

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October 8, 2025 · 5:15 am

Thoughts on AI, none of them enthusiastic.

(As you’ll see, all my illustrations are robot/computer themed. Rights to all images remain with current holders)

Henry Farrell speculates that a lot of investment in AI is less about faith in the tech and more about betting on the entrepreneur or figuring that everyone else is investing in AI, maybe you should too?

This theory seems plausible. Case in point company that recently created an AI actor, Tilly Norwood, claims they have studios and talent agencies eager to work with “her.” Maybe so, maybe just hype to generate some real offers. There’s a lot of bullshit in their press relief, like Norwood saying “I may be AI generated, but I’m feeling very real emotions right now. I am so excited for what’s coming next!” No, she’s not feeling real emotions, no she’s not excited, and the article should have pointed that out. SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, was less kind (good for them!).

Vulture agrees the hype is probably smoke and mirrors and says “Tilly” is very far from impersonating a human. However the issues it raises remain: “Technology doesn’t have to be good to be disruptive, only viable enough for corporations to monetize. The concern isn’t that Norwood will “land” a role but that the system might be ready to cast her. She exists to probe what audiences will tolerate and to remind Hollywood, already anxious and penny-pinching, that the line between performance and product has never been thinner. The question of AI isn’t just a technical one about what the tools can or can’t do; it’s a political and economic one about how industries choose to use them.”

Reading x-rays and similar radiology would seem a perfect use of computers. Yet AI ain’t good enough to replace human radiologists. It can, however, make doctors less effective, relying on AI and not double-checking its conclusions. Which fits with a story I linked to earlier, about how some therapists rely on AI to tell them what to say.

Version 1.0.0

Drew Harwell: “OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this” Spoiler: he’s being sarcastic.

Recently an AI Felon promised America medbeds, a nonexistent technology that seems to amount to Wolverine’s healing factor. Melania’s getting in on AI videos too.

If you’re using Google’s AI to research “Trump and dementia,” it will block the search. It won’t if you ask the same question about Biden.

Israel has a plan: put up lots of websites for ChatGPT to scrape data from, said data being pro-Israel, thereby training the AI to give pro-Israel answers. Unsurprisingly the First Family and Oracle bazillionaire Larry Ellison seem to be involved.

Medicare doesn’t require prior authorization for medical treatment. In the Felon era that’s going to change, and AI will make the decisions (at least in a pilot program).

And for a non-AI endbit, the Federal Communications Commission voted to end discounts for library Wi-Fi hotspot lending and school bus connectivity programs on Tuesday, drawing criticism from lawmakers and librarians who say the moves will make it more difficult for people who are low-income or live in rural areas to access the internet.

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September 24, 2025 · 5:15 am

Science … weird science!

The title should be sung to the tune of the Oingo Boingo song, of course.

What could be weirder than the deranged conviction artificial intelligence is the way, the truth and the light? Never mind the environmental damage, the wrong answers, the countless other problems, Silicon Valley wants it to be the next game-changing technology. And it is, but not in a way that improves things.

“A user on X complained that Grok’s answers were too progressive after it said violence from right-wing Americans tended to be deadlier than violence from left-wing Americans — a conclusion matching findings from various studies and data from the Global Terrorism Database.” So Elon Musk tweaked it to be more conservative.

HHS employees have been ordered to use chatbots in their jobs.

“A book collection steeped in 19th century thought could also be “immensely critical” for the tech industry’s efforts to build AI agents that can plan and reason as well as humans, Leppert said.” At this point AI looks more like the flop tech of the past — jetpacks, nuclear powered vacuum cleaners — than anything approaching human.

“She said librarians report being treated like robots over library reference chat, and patrons getting defensive over the veracity of recommendations they’ve received from an AI-powered chatbot. Essentially, like more people trust their preferred LLM over their human librarian.”

AI is spreading into areas it shouldn’t, like therapists secretly using chatbots to tell them what to say to clients. Seriously, what kind of hack therapist can’t think of what to say when a patient’s dog dies?

“The whole tech industry is once again facing questions over the casual way it sometimes turns unassuming people into lab rats, especially as more tech companies wade into health-related services.” And people don’t know because it turns out the Turing test — if we think a computer is intelligent, we should assume it is — is dead wrong.

Podcasts are (I think) what blogs were 20 years ago. So naturally an AI company plans to flood the zone with tons of AI-hosted podcasts. High point: “We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life,”said CEO Jeanine Wright. Um, no, but I get that her financial model probably depends on bullshit like that.

“I’m working every day on using AI to figure out how to cure cancer or launch fusion energy or understand dark matter. Our Defense Department is trying to figure out how to keep America safe. God bless the First Lady. She of course is wiser than all of us.” — Felon Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Yeah, I’m sure he’s lying but why would he even pretend he’s spending his work day to figure out dark matter?

If you’re wondering about his First Lady tongue-bathing, Melania’s calling on schools to train kids in using AI. I’m sure that will be more profitable for tech companies than learning anything valuable.

“On religious apps, tens of millions of people are confessing to spiritual chatbots their secrets: their petty vanities and deepest worries, gluttonous urges and darkest impulses. Trained on religious texts, the bots are like on-call priests, imams or rabbis, offering comfort and direction at any time. On some platforms, they even purport to channel God.The “faith tech” industry is booming.”

“When asked “How many Ds are in DEEPSEEK?” the DeepSeek-V3 model with 600 billion parameters “returned ‘2’ or ‘3’ in ten independent trials” while Meta AI and Claude 3.7 Sonnet performed similarly, “including answers as large as ‘6’ and ‘7.’” — from an excellent look at how AI hallucinations may be inevitable.

“Many of the students have completely surrendered to letting AI do their homework, badly, I might add. How do you fix this?” — Roxane Gay. One solution discussed in the thread: handwritten assignments.

Ted Chiang (quoted in the same thread): “The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write […]. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning.”

Now some non-AI links:

Stuff we post to the Internet doesn’t last forever.

The Toddler of the United States’ new $1,000 fee for HB-1 visas will undermine our tech industry (plus the option to waive the rules is an invitation to corruption).

A solar storm could wreak havoc on our electrical systems. It’s something we can prepare for, but I have a lot less faith in either government or corporate leaders doing so than I used to.

The Toddler claims one in 10 boys is born with autism, which is a lie, and that they get 80 different vaccines pumped into them in infancy, which is another lie. Surprisingly, RFK claims a definite link (spoiler: another lie!) to women taking Tylenol, and his anti-vax worshippers are furious (though he’s still anti-vax — I don’t know what his beef with Tylenol is). Though Newsmax’s fascist toadies are happily embracing the lie. So is ever-idiotic Senator Ron Johnson. And Politico sanewashes the Felon by explaining he’s really compassionate and wants to “solve the autism problem.”

Oh, RFK Junior’s also lying about the Amish not getting vaccinated and therefore not having autism.

I’ll wrap up with a comment from someone online elsewhere: “RFK Jr. seems to walk through life like it was always 20 minutes after he smoked his first joint in ninth grade.”

Remember, every Senate Republican voted for him, knowing he was a hardcore anti-vaxxer. Including the ones now pretending they’re shocked, shocked that he’s an anti-vaxxer.

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September 4, 2025 · 5:15 am

No, RFK Jr. cannot diagnose people by looking at them

According to our crackpot Secretary of Health, RFK Jr., he can spot sick people by looking at them. That’s how he knows that we’re less healthy than we used to be: “I had eleven brothers and sisters, I had about 70 first cousins, and I never saw anybody with diabetes. I never knew anybody with a food allergy. I never knew anybody with autism. And I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like.”

No, he doesn’t. And know, he can’t tell. And while it’s true diabetes and (I believe) food allergies are more common than they used to be, they aren’t a radical new thing either: I’m four years older than he is and I developed a food allergy in college. I suspect Kennedy’s “never knew” is more that he never cared to ask, and that he cannot in fact spot sick people at a glance.

The idea us non-doctors can diagnose someone by looking at them is quite common (“My kid’s distracted, I know he has ADD, give him Ritalin.”). Unfortunately Kennedy’s in a powerful position over our health establishment and he’s too Dunning-Kruger to realize how ignorant he is.

And he can count on sanewashing from journalists who ignore the anti-vax stuff to focus on how RFK wants people eating healthier — he’s just like Michelle Obama (who was mocked for suggesting kids eat more veggies). While his “MAHA” movement is losing steam, that’s partly because Kennedy’s supporters want more vaccine bans, mRNA bans, etc., than he’s offered so far.

His ongoing attack on our healthcare systems was completely predictable. That makes Sen. Bill Cassidy (head of the Senate health committee, putting him in a position to fight the Kennedy nomination if he chose) declaring his concern over Kennedy’s positions very disingenuous and CYA. You knew what he was when you voted for him. If not, why didn’t you? Sen. Roger Marshall is a doctor so he should know too but he’s all in on covid and other medical lies. But apparently anti-vax has such a hold on the Republicans that even the necrotic toddler is saying maybe the vaccines he had developed were fakes.

Hell, right wing pundit Erick Erickson’s wife is dying, she can’t get the drugs she needs because of the state of the CDC — but he insists the left “built the foundation for Kennedy’s rise.” He’d probably blame them for Ron DeSantis may scrap school vaccination requirements.

While Cassidy dithers, Chuck Schumer — not someone I think of as a fighter — has come out calling for Kennedy lose his cabinet post. Meanwhile Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia blames the CDC for everything that’s happening and implies Biden was to blame for mismanaging the pandemic (Biden was not, of course, president when it broke out). Carter also freaked out about former CDC vaccine chief Demetre Daskalakis, presumably because the latter said, quite truthfully, that “I’ve been worried for months. The firewall between science and ideology is completely broken down. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is bullshitting (is she ever not?) that the covid vaccine is death!

Kennedy claims he can also spot the current health bugaboo, mitochondrial dysfunction. As explained at the link, there’s no clear cause and effect between our mitochondrial cell bodies and our health.

Kennedy talks about the horrors of ultraprocessed foods. Now for some reason he’s also upset with the government making sensible recommendations to eat more beans.

In the best “when you have nothing but a hammer, everything looks like a nail” tradition, Kennedy has decided since he doesn’t like drugs, maybe antidepressants cause school shootings. Like a good Republican, he’s never going to blame guns.

Using AI to vet whether someone’s medical needs are covered by Medicare? Yeah, I’m sure that will go well — but it will certainly cut what Medicare spends.

“Despite the many decades of evidence that the aluminum in vaccines is perfectly safe when used in appropriate doses, he believes it just can’t be true.” As noted at the link, a number of medical groups are telling Kennedy to pound sand.

But Kennedy still has a lot of clout, like only approving fall covid shots for people over 65 and other high-risk individuals.

The CDC had a drowning prevention program — that’s now shutting down. I can’t figure out who even benefits from something like that — Big Drowning? But hey, ivermectin’s going to become way more available.

“If you want to make foodborne disease go away, then don’t look for foodborne disease. And then you can cheerfully eliminate all of your foodborne disease regulations. My concern is that that is the path down which we appear to be heading.”

But if you think RFK is bad, here’s a shocker: a group of atheists claim the real threat to science is wokeness.

It’s a good thing some of the blue-state governors are starting stepping up.

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July 17, 2025 · 5:30 am

I think it’s a bad thing to have the inmates running the asylum

“Rush University Medical Center in Chicago is adding a new twist to its curriculum for medical students and residents, using AI tools and learning modules to teach how to more quickly identify measles rashes on different skin tones. It’s another reminder that diseases once thought to have been eradicated are showing up with increased frequency in clinics and ERs, posing challenges for younger physicians and health workers who thought they were relegated to history.”

That’s what you get when you have an ignorant anti-science, anti-medicine dude such as RFK Jr. in charge of health policy. “There have been 1,267 confirmed cases of measles in the U.S. this year, almost 4.5 times the total for all of last year and on track to pass the highest annual count since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” He’s not a vaccine skeptic, he’s an anti-vax extremist who thinks this is a better alternative than kids getting autism (which isn’t an issue anyway — vaccines don’t cause autism, despite Kennedy’s lies). And he’s not just talk. Also this.

This also extends to a hatred for respected scientific journals that print facts. Because the facts are not on his side.

Kennedy says staying healthy is our patriotic duty — which is repackaging old cliches that if you’re sick, it reflects your bad decisions. Because like so many health crackpots he thinks we can stop ourselves being sick if we try (This is not new: Rep. Mo Brooks several years back argued that requiring insurance cover pre-existing conditions is bad because those conditions are our fault. Or complaints by some libertarians (John Stossel) that healthcare would work better if insurance didn’t let us use “too much” healthcare)

Epidemiologist Elizabeth Jacobs discusses how chronic disease is a fruitful ground for flim-flam hustlers and fake cures (something true throughout American history); sewing doubt about vaccines opens up preventable diseases to the same money-making opportunities.

It’s also fruitful ground for women who get sucked from wellness into fascism.

RFK’s vaccine review committee is stuffed with anti-vax clowns. And of course the Felon is an imbecile who thinks maybe 18 people out of every 10,000 don’t have autism. Plus his federal funding cuts have forced projects such as NC’s long-covid recovery clinic to close. mRNA breakthroughs are facing tough sledding, despite their tremendous potential. AG Pam Bondi, as ever a loyal toady to the Felon, has dropped charges against Dr. Michael Kirk Moore for (allegedly) providing people with fake vaccine cards and destroying several thousand dollars worth of vaccine. Fraud and destruction of government property are pretty trivial crimes to Bondi, as long as they’re directed at the public and not her Fuehrer.

Scientific integrity doesn’t matter much to these creeps either. I have a feeling they won’t worry about nuclear safety either — after all, the Felon would never accept any blame if anything goes wrong

Speaking of clowns, here’s Marjorie Taylor Greene. And the guy who wrote yet another RFK Jr. has a point article.

Kennedy talks a lot about how he wants to eliminate environmental chemicals but he’s lying. Apparently he doesn’t care about processed foods as much as he pretends either. I’m also curious if he has a financial stake in his push to get everyone wearing health trackers. We know lawyer Mat Staver approached anti-vaxxing as a tool to raise money; now he’s fund-raising off God supposedly curing Staver’s covid, saying that if he’d taken “Fauci’s deadly protocol” he’d be dead (what, God can’t counteract it?)

Here’s to more lawsuits like this one. And to scientists working on an end run around the CDC, even if they aren’t there yet. Because Republicans will destroy America’s scientific establishment if it doesn’t conform to their distorted reality. For example, Greene’s claim that the Texas floods were caused by weather control. She’s not the only one spewing this bullshit and it’s leading to attacks on weather stations. Lee Zeldin, the Felon’s EPA administrator, says he’s outraged these questions are dismissed. The truth is, they’ve had the answers — no, our government is not doing weather control — but they don’t want to accept them. That doesn’t entitle them to be taken seriously. Hell, they’ve been screaming for years that human activity can’t possibly make the climate worse — but consistency isn’t the issue.

We are indeed in the stupidest timeline. As Paul Campos says, “This country has always been chock full of credulous paranoid morons, but there used to be some sort of effort to keep them handling snakes as opposed to congressional committees and federal agencies.” As witness the Felon, having horned his way into the Club World Cup awards ceremony, is now keeping the trophy. Stupid and pathetic.

But I guess Republicans destroying the Department of Education will keep people too uneducated to notice.

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June 23, 2025 · 5:15 am

It’s good and bad, both at once

A few months back, someone posted on the Bluesky to the effect that it’s hard to grasp that things can be getting better and worse both at the same time. Things can be improving and disintegrating. The backlash against women can intensify at the same time as the fight for women’s rights gets more determined. So here’s the good and the bad, starting with a bad: SCOTUS signs off on Tennessee banning trans care for minors. And by implication endorsed conversion therapy.

As noted at the link, the majority’s argument is that there’s no discrimination against trans people: everyone with gender dysphoria is denied treatment. John Roberts specifically invokes a 1974 ruling that discriminating against pregnant women isn’t gender based because not all women are pregnant (an argument that threatens other gender-based discrimination claims) LawDork looks at how the press’s enthusiastic coverage of the Trans Threat has helped bring us to this point: “If you go into coverage with the resources of the New York Times looking for people to tell you there’s a problem, you’ll find a problem. That then creates a story. And, if you’re the New York Times, more people will flock to you to ask you to tell that story — no matter how contorted the focus of your reporting becomes because of that.”

I don’t have any good news on trans issues handy but here’s good news on another topic: the LA Dodgers blocked ICE from entering Dodgers Stadium last week. Every bit of defiance makes it easier to believe defiance is possible.

And here’s good work by the NYT, showing the bullshit of DOGE’s claim 40 percent of callers to Social Security are fraudsters.

On the bad news side, ICE is making up rules that Congress members can’t enter without advance notice.

Here’s a bad news/good news situation: misogynist Charlie Kirk tells a conservative group that women should only go to college to find a husband. The good news is that even conservative women and girls weren’t impressed by Kirk’s arguments.

Likewise we have FOTUS’ attempt to push criticism America out of historical sites — it seems visitors hate the idea. And apparently even on Truth Social, people hate the Felon bashing Juneteenth as a holiday.

Hatemongering homophobe Christian Tony Perkins is horrified that some companies donate to suicide hotlines for LGBTQ people (the contributions are the good news).

It’s a freakishly bad economy for college graduates. And the EPA is reconsidering Biden’s ban on the last forms of asbestos in use. On the plus side, wildlife tunnels under roads save animal lives.

Good news/bad news: there’s a shot that prevents HIV but the Felon’s medical cutbacks may imperil it getting to people, here and abroad.

Ron DeSantis commemorates the brutal Pulse murder spree — but omits saying anything about LGBTQs and Hispanics, the two groups most affected.

The Felon’s TACO impulse to chicken out is often a good thing — but sometimes it means backing off from good decisions.

Unambiguously good news from across the Atlantic: The UK bans women from being prosecuted for abortion. As Jessica Valenti says, Democrats should jump on this.

Unfortunately there’s still a school of Democratic centrism that doesn’t want Dems jumping on anything: “As data engineer Lakshya Jain explained at WelcomeFest, a “good candidate” is one whose vote share exceeds statistical expectations for a Democrat in their district—a definition that evinces no interest whatsoever in what the candidate actually supports.”

On the plus side, Krugman: “This isn’t the end of the assault on American democracy. It isn’t even the beginning of the end. But it may well be the end of the beginning. Trump spent his first 6 months in office trying to steamroller over all opposition, creating the impression that resistance is futile. Clearly, he hasn’t succeeded. On the contrary, resistance is stiffening, and those who preemptively capitulated seem to be paying a higher price than those who showed some backbone.”

And to end on an up note, Mahmoud Khalil is free.

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June 18, 2025 · 5:07 am

AI, vaccines and other science links

AI gives crap answers to many questions and makes things up a lot. Yet a top Google executive thinks we’ll be colonizing the galaxy thanks to AI in just five years. I doubt he’ll change his tune despite this: “Apple said in a paper published at the weekend that large reasoning models (LRMs) – an advanced form of AI – faced a “complete accuracy collapse” when presented with highly complex problems.”

Despite which, techbros insist AI will give us so much benefit, research is invaluable: sure, AI data centers are sucking up power and worsening global warming but any day now they’ll be so smart they’ll solve global warming. As the linked article shows, it’s an article of faith (whether or not the AI companies truly believe it) that AI will work magic … eventually … so pay no attention to current problems, okay? Shut up about them!

Pixelfish on BlueSky sums their attitude up well:

Despite all their talk about a utopian future where AI takes all the burden of work off the rest of us … I think Pixelfish is closer to what’s really in their heads. Like the reporter in a link up top who got a list of non-existent book recommendations from AI or this year’s WorldCon vetting possible guests with AI, it doesn’t make things easier: someone still has to check all the work. And as the reporter showed, not everyone does. It’s too tempting, I suspect, to fall for the hype and think the computer knows. Perhaps someone using AI and not checking is why the government’s Make America Healthy Again report cited studies that don’t exist. As Erik Loomis says at LGM, “to use ChatGPT is simply an abandonment of your job and any ethical considerations.”

The standard argument is that scoffing at AI is like sneering at cars (never replace the horse!) or the wheel or fire or — well, you get the idea. But there are plenty of bullshit smoke-and-mirrors techno-visions that never came to pass: lie detectors don’t detect lies, nuclear power wasn’t too cheap to measure, personal jetpacks aren’t workable.

Mar Hicks says one way to push back is not to buy into the hype: “Technologies, even widespread ones, do not *necessarily* determine social norms and goods. If you can’t stop a social harm on the level of force/physical coercion (technology) you can often stop it on the level of consensus (custom, norms, law, governance).”

Disney and Comcast are pushing back another way: a lawsuit. As discussed here, these are not companies you want suing you.

Now, as to vaccines:

Fans of bleach-drinking are thrilled with RFK’s policies. “Science guy” Bill Nye is not.

A number of psychiatrists would like to see stronger systems of nonmedical social care to reduce the need for psychiatric drugs. The Felon and RFK just want to gut public health.

“This childish logical fallacy is the classic defense crank conspiracy theories use to defend themselves — expressing skepticism and citing various sources are things that scientists do, therefore every expression of skepticism and citation of sources is scientific.” Therefore, Kennedy’s skepticism is good science, right — wrong! Hell, he doesn’t even believe in germ theory. As the saying goes, you can’t be Galileo because people reject your theories — they also have to be right.

Your Local Epidemiologist shows how germ-theory nutjobs work around the facts: “it’s the belief that infections don’t pose a risk to healthy people who have optimized their immune system. And if you want to prevent infections, vaccines aren’t the solution, becoming healthier through nutrition, exercise, and dietary supplements are.

“We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA [published by the American Medical Association] and those other journals, because they’re all corrupt,” Kennedy said during an appearance on the “Ultimate Human” podcast. He also described the journals as being under the control of pharmaceutical companies. Instead, government scientists will publish in in-house journals that will, I assume, support RFK Jr.’s bullshit. Like Pravda, the Russian propaganda newspaper, but for science!

Kennedy also whines that anti-vaxxers get criticized.

For all alternative health likes to position itself in opposition to corrupt medical money, there’s money in alt.health too.

And tax savings: Mehmet Oz thinks fewer people should have coverage under the Affordable Care Act. It’s our patriotic duty to stay healthy.

RFK talks a lot about fighting environmental chemicals to make people healthier. He’s lying, as witness FOTUS cutting the lab that fights Great Lakes algal blooms. He’s also cool with cutting a Narcan grant program that’s helped cut drug-overdose deaths by 24 percent. And NIH is ending participation in a program fighting sudden infant death syndrome.

In other news:

Felon administration budget cuts are threatening the agency that oversees the accuracy of GPS coordinates.

Mike Lindell (the MyPillow Guy) has a new theory how the 2020 voting machines were rigged: Satan did it.

I thought this year’s pollen season in North Carolina was extreme. I was right.

“Scientists from the University of South Carolina and the National Human Genome Research Institute have begun examining the DNA of 302 feral dogs found in or around the CEZ to better understand how radiation may have altered their genomes.” Other scientists disagree.

When the Felon announced he wanted to bring back manufacturing, he didn’t mean wind farms.

Covers top to bottom by Carmine Infantino/Murphy Anderson, Nicholas Cardy and Rich Buckler.

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April 30, 2025 · 12:25 am

Science, as summed up in a few links

The next frontier in wildlife preservation: fighting ant smuggling.

How about an ancient wasp whose butt worked like a Venus fly-trap?

Open AI’s Studio Ghibli meme.

An AI that defeated the best human Go players, lost to a human opponent.

AIs that lose may cheat and “while cheating at a game of chess may seem trivial, as agents get released into the real world, such determined pursuit of goals could foster unintended and potentially harmful behaviours.“

No, we are not on the brink of true artificial intelligence. We are on the brink of corporate America exploiting AI to make our lives worse — hell, we’re already there.

A convincing argument that acupuncture is nothing but a placebo.

“A year later he shared a video stating that a pilot “proved” the earth is flat because the sun and the moon were visible in the sky at the same time, a phenomenon which occurs on most days.” — from an article about Brett Bussman, a newly appointed Republican Party leader in Minnesota.

How the Felon came to recommend drinking bleach to cure covid. Unsurprisingly the product, chlorine dioxide, is being touted as an autism cure too (of course it is).

The Felon’s plans for remaking the State Department include that “the department must greatly expand its use of artificial intelligence to help draft documents, and to undertake ‘policy development and review’ and “’perational planning.’ I’m sure Silicon Valley is chortling at the government handout.

FOTUS is burying scientific information on cancer, atmospheric research and oh, the Felon’s decided auto emissions aren’t harmful.

You will be shocked — shocked — that Raiders of the Lost Ark gets archeology wrong.

Ted Cruz thinks solar eclipse research is too woke for government support.

Why we get the Monty Hall game-show problem wrong.

Mark Zuckerberg claims that while yes, Meta trains AI on copyrighted books, they’re individually worthless to the project so no harm, no foul.

DC covers by Bob Brown, Strange Tales by Jack Kirby, House on the Borderland cover by Ed Emshwiller. All rights remain with current holders.

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April 24, 2025 · 5:03 am

So what’s RFK Jr.’s end game?

According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Felon’s secretary of Health and Human Services, people with autism are parasites and a drag on society: “They’ll never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” As noted at the link, while this is true of some “high support needs” autism cases it’s not at all a universal truth. Even with HSN individuals, it’s definitely not a truth that autism “destroys families” and children. Plus they all deserve human decency, dignity, and help if they do need it. As noted at the link, Kennedy’s gutting of government health services won’t help them at all.

Of course, Kennedy’s solution is to send them, along with addicts, people with depression and ADHD sufferers off to the country to work the land. Which won’t fix people (though it fits with the civilization-sucks thesis I blogged about last week. It won’t help them, but as noted at the link it’ll get them out of sight and out of public life.

This makes it rather creepy that Kennedy’s plans to relitigate — I won’t call it research — whether autism causes vaccines — includes setting up a database tracking people with autism. I have a strong suspicion this will not include any efforts to conceal personal data or protect their identities. It will make it easier if his plan for farms goes forward. Sure, he says they’ll be voluntary, but I don’t buy it — Kennedy clearly loathes autistic people. Nor do I believe his claims his autism research will be unbiased. He’s already rejected CDC studies that don’t fit his agenda. And I doubt his wish to access to information in the FDA vaccine safety database was for good purposes. Ditto burying a CDC pro-vax measles report.

Which leads to the question of my title: what’s his goal? One possibility is straight-up eugenics: remove autistic people from public life, sterilize them, subject them to whatever crackpot cures he thinks will work. This may also relate to his other awful policies: sure, some people will die but that’s just culling the herd, leaving healthier people behind. If more LGBTQ people commit suicide, well, Republicans are cool with it. Or consider Mehmet Oz, Kennedy’s new director of Medicare and Medicaid, who thinks Americans can cut drug costs by using less drugs. Or Kennedy’s claims our health problems are all our own fault.

Second, Kennedy’s made money off his crusades before and lots of 21st century doctors have profited off quack cures and dubious theories. It’s quite possible it’s all about money, much as phony covid cures are a cash cow..= Or simply arrogance: Kennedy wants to prove his medical nonsense and he wants to make his theories policy, deciding what treatments work and which do not. Or a combination of all three.

Or maybe, as Paul Krugman says of this administration in general: “It’s evil, but it isn’t calculated evil. That is, it’s not a considered political strategy, with a clear end goal. It’s a visceral response from people who, as Thomas Edsall puts it, are addicted to revenge.”

In other bad Republican health ideas:

USDA is suspending milk quality-control tests. Only temporary, supposedly. And it can’t use terms like “safe drinking water.”

ACA’s Medicaid expansion provides healthcare for millions. Republicans would like to kill it. DeSantis allegedly profits off it.

Anti-vaxxers are spreading misinformation about deaths in Texas’ measles outbreak. Hey, maybe it was a bioweapon!

Trump’s one good accomplishment was Operation Warp Speed giving us the covid vaccine. The rest of his response to the pandemic was terrible — and like everything else in his second term, it’s gotten worse.

The “health freedom” movement says people have the right to make their own choices — but like so many deregulation efforts that shifts the burden for safety and health from medical professionals and regulators onto individuals — and “do your own research” gets people killed. And I’m sure makes more money for alternative medicine practitioners and providers. As Paul Campos says, in the context of medicine, “personal choice” is lethal. See also.

Despite Kennedy’s professed concern for environmental health the CDC’s firing the teams that perform cruise ship inspections and firing the CDC’s lead experts. Despite his promises of transparency, he’s firing the teams that handle Freedom of Information Act requests.

I don’t believe in the Book of Revelation as a literal prophesy of the end times, but Kennedy sure does qualify as the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse.

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March 20, 2025 · 5:15 am

The third horseman of the apocalypse is Republican

The third horseman being plague.

“The Trump administration’s pause on foreign aid has hobbled programs that prevent and snuff out outbreaks around the world, scientists say, leaving people everywhere more vulnerable to threatening viruses and bacteria. That includes Americans. Outbreaks that begin overseas can travel quickly.”

“RFK is an utter charlatan and fraud, and the whole key to his schtick is that Americans “used to be” healthy but now they’re not — hence the current “epidemic of chronic disease” — because of Big Pharma and Big Food and not enough fresh air and exercise”

“RFK Jr., a man who has never had any real-world responsibility for anything, is now in charge of the health of 73 million American children. He promised that he would make them healthy, and it’s not good optics when they get sick and die of measles, as is happening in Texas. Now that it’s his job to stop children from dying, RFK Jr. can’t blame vaccines or claim the outbreak is fabricated, as he did with in far-away Samoa.” Except he is blaming vaccines as much as he can, and suggesting cod-liver oil as a cure for measles.

“A little child is dead. From measles. In the United States. In 2025. They were unvaccinated and otherwise healthy, making it the first casualty of the West Texas measles outbreak—and the first measles death in the U.S. in a decade. One death from a preventable disease is one too many.” In another post, the same blogger notes “We’ve seen two deaths so far, yet only 228 cases have been reported. Measles typically kills 1 in 1,000 unvaccinated individuals. They were either extremely unlucky, or there are more cases than reported.”

“While it is true that mortality from measles had plummeted in the decades before the vaccine due to better medical care and nutrition, every year there were still 400-500 people dying of measles, a number that antivaxxers appear to consider unimportant and want to see again” — a look at myths propagated by anti-vaxxers, updated to add that fussing about measles vaccines is just a way to attack RFK.

And revisiting a settled question — no, vaccines do not cause autism — will only give the anti-vaxxers more ammo, especially if Kennedy rigs the game to get the desired results.

Oh, and remember how the price of eggs was supposedly a sign of the terrible incompetence of President Biden’s four years? I don’t think RFK’s suggestion chicken farmers should just let birds with bird flu die is going to help.

“They were ready to enroll,” said Alanna Caffas, the chief executive of the Veterans Health Foundation, which administers the trials. “They had the lab kits on site. They had the drug to dispense. But they couldn’t get the clinical research coordinator renewed.” — from an article on how DOGE is taking a wrecking ball to veterans’ healthcare.

“The termination of these two important advisory committees is very alarming and should serve as a warning to consumers that food safety will not be a priority at USDA in the foreseeable future.” Neither, it seems, is HIV prevention. And despite all the talk of chronic disease, the administration has cut grants dealing with diabetes.

mRNA vaccines might be effective against cancer. But as they were part of the furor against covid vaccines (mRNA will rewrite your genes!) so now they’re research non grata.

The Felon also wants to eliminate federal funding for schools with vax mandates.

“HHS could now change Medicaid requirements with no notice or change federal research grants without input from the research community—something the Trump administration has already tried to do before it was put on hold by a federal judge.”

“Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration are attempting to repeal the Biden administration’s groundbreaking rules that require all the country’s lead pipes to be replaced over the next 13 years and lower the limit on lead in water.

Environmentalists expressed alarm about the moves, which, if successful, would in effect prohibit the government from ever requiring lead line replacement in the future, or lowering lead limits.”

Vaccinating against HPV has led to massive drops in cervical precancer rates. Many religious conservatives have opposed getting vaccinated on the grounds some girls might feel it’s safe to have sex.

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