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Emily Johnson

@emilyrj.bsky.social
5.3K followers 2.5K following 2.2K posts

News/book edits, marketing, linguistics, research. #EDS Iowa admin. #Dysautonomia Iowa, #MastCell & Disabled.Social mod. @RenegadeResearch.bsky.social volunteer. Patient Advocate. #SevereME Same pic, a bit different handles on X, Substack. #Iowa ♿️🏳️‍🌈📚

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Reposted by Emily Johnson
babs ✨ @itsbabs.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
if an article about this conflict HAD to be written, you nailed THE major underlying structural problem at the heart that should’ve been the main subject: “lack of public health tearing apart community space that values accessibility to all” would be a much more apt headline.
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Taylor Lorenz @taylorlorenz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Yup! And this is amidst a MASSIVE COVID surge and the same week the CDC reclassified COVID levels to make high levels seem low aka lie to the public about transmission. Not one of the big “leftists” ranting about this story have mentioned the CDC change or Covid surge once!!
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The Sick Times @thesicktimes.org · 25/09/2026
Study: More evidence of reduced blood flow to the brain of people with Long COVID Analysis: The U.S. is ill-equipped to respond to LC and future mass disabling events Preprint: Assessed over 700 LC clinical trials and found that they emphasized treating symptoms thesicktimes.org/2026/09/22/r...
A visual shows functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain, which allow researchers to visualize the activity of the brain. Three scans surround a 3-d image of a human head with a view into their brain. The text reads, “The Sick Times. Long COVID research updates. A small study found more evidence of reduced blood flow to the brain of people with Long COVID. New analysis: The U.S. is ill-equipped to respond to Long COVID and future mass disabling events. A recent preprint assessed over 700 Long COVID clinical trials and found that they emphasized treating symptoms.” A small study in NeuroImage: Reports has found more evidence of reduced blood flow to the brain of people with Long COVID. The authors concluded that this abnormality was linked with fatigue, after they assessed brain imaging results of 22 people with Long COVID and compared them with 19 controls. Participants of the study performed a 20-minute cognitive test called psychomotor vigilance task (PVT), while undergoing a type of MRI that tracks blood flow. People with Long COVID reported much higher fatigue than controls both before and after the task, and “exhibited significantly longer reaction times during the PVT,” the authors concluded.
The U.S. is ill-equipped to respond to Long COVID and future mass disabling events, a new analysis argues in The Journal of Medical Humanities. Author Philip Finkelstein evaluated the disease through the lens of securitization, or, how public challenges are viewed as existential security threats. He found that modern security strategies remain “shortsighted and poorly attuned to threats that operate insidiously, eroding societies from within.” He stated that to properly address the security of Long COVID on society, the U.S. would need to invest in long-term care, workplace accommodations, and social support, but that these solutions are not “geopolitically advantageous.” 
A recent preprint shared in Research Square assessed over 700 Long COVID clinical trials and found that they emphasized treating symptoms. Only 57 of the 714 trials addressed post-exertional malaise (PEM), prevalent in a subtype of Long COVID, and only eight of those trials used PEM as primary endpoint. “There is a substantial unmet need for well-powered, mechanism-based, disease-modifying trials with biomarker-driven designs and objective, exertion-based endpoints,” the researchers concluded. Still, researchers stated they used a conservative research strategy, which may have missed some studies.
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Atlas Mugged (N95 Duckbill 😷)✊🏿🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @pamacious.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Unvaccinated infants aren't being protected from measles either, partly because of lack of masking.
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
People thinking they only need to mask when they have symptoms of an infection is just so bleak when 1) data centers are ruining the air 2) fires are ruining the air 3) tons of people have asymptomatic infections 4) climate change and air pollution is exploding allergens
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Reposted by Emily Johnson
Julia Métraux @juliametraux.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
"The work and everyday labor of living with ME/CFS contains this recursive loop of everyday labor of being ill." For @motherjones.com, I interviewed @elimrogers.bsky.social on her book tracing the history of ME/CFS and what it's like to be exhausted in America. www.motherjones.com/media/2026/0...
motherjones.com
The relentless work of being sick
A new book examines the labor of getting chronic illness diagnosed and treated—for those lucky enough to get care.
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
On #LongCovid and profiling my colleague @julialmv.bsky.social @smithsonianmag.bsky.social www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/m...
smithsonianmag.com
For Many Americans, Covid Is Still a Chronic, Disabling Disease. These Scientists Are Working Tirelessly to Bring Them Relief
Long Covid saps the strength and vitality of patients, who have little recourse to fight it. A team of specialists—including an afflicted researcher working mostly from her bed—is looking for answers
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Here's today's column on the astonishing, ongoing mistreatment of people with #ME/CFS. Please spread it far and wide: the only thing which can break the media's wall of indifference is seeing an article about the issue go viral. Thank you. 1/2 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Abandoned, dismissed and gaslighted: there is no excuse for the way ME sufferers have been betrayed | George Monbiot
Changes in guidance and science seem to have little impact on millions of devastated lives. It’s a social crisis playing out behind closed doors, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
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Scott Hugo @scotthugo.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
“Long COVID has measurable biology — persistent antigen, immune dysregulation, chronic inflammation. Reporting that ignores the evidence-based science isn't balanced, and it needs to be corrected.” Thank you for your critical work and your support, @drinflammation.bsky.social!
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Alarming trend in “oddity news” in journalism, where certain journalists are abandoning basic @spj-posts.bsky.social ethics like facts, integrity, treating sources with respect, focusing on doing no harm etc for engagement bait. Journalists who do this are a stain on the industry.
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
My take on the lesbian bar article: it misrepresented critical facts and was a hit piece (anyone who paid attention saw this), the bar owner has said this, terrible people build on misinfo and hate engagement driving Discourse harming marginalized people rather than reality
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Greenfield hasn’t updated Covid cases in 11 months But wastewater data on Covid and other infections from other sources have shown surges in these regions of Massachusetts The Boston Globe journo said no cases because she ignored that data @erinbiba.bsky.social is right, consider the sources)
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Reposted by Emily Johnson
Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Hey so uhhhhh that Boston Globe story about the lesbian bar relaxing its covid rules is an *absolute fucking hit piece* targeting the disabled, chronically ill, and covid-conscious and it would be great if folks sharing and joking about it could recognize that framing.
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Me watching Ted Lasso: I want a Ted Lasso to bring me baked goods every week Me later still watching Ted Lasso: wait a minute, I was always the person bringing people baked goods every week, I WAS Ted Lasso!
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Reposted by Emily Johnson
kat excellence ✨ @katexcellence.io · 31/08/2026
this was difficult to read, but it's important to know people are currently in prison for 50+ years for attending a protest + one wasn't even at the protest, but got sentenced for 30 years for "concealing" anarchist zines
motherjones.com
How anti-ICE protesters became prisoners in Trump's war on antifa
“We are not terrorists.”
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Brain is two organs ➡️ my hindbrain is a mess ➡️ ergo i will call my neurosurgery team my “backend developers” moving forward
For or centuries, scientists have thought of the brain as a single, unified
organ. But new research led by Stanford Medicine reveals that what we call the brain is two distinct organs that evolved independently over hundreds of millions of years.
The discovery overturns a prevailing model of brain development. For decades researchers have subscribed to the theory that there is a single progenitor cell early in development that gives rise to the entire brain. This model suggested all parts of the brain shared a common developmental origin.Two brains
The adult brain has three main regions: the forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain. The forebrain handles higher-level thinking - language, consciousness and abstract reasoning. In contrast, the hindbrain, located at the back of the skull and often called the brain stem, controls essential, automatic functions that keep us alive: breathing, sleeping, and regulating our heartbeat and hunger urges. The hindbrain neurons also control the muscles of the face, tongue and throat, which affect speech and swallowing.
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Le Ca-ghoul @lecagle.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
you are *not* prepared for what this technology company is called, nothing can prepare you
wkyt.com
UK installs AI facial scanning technology at residence halls
The University of Kentucky is installing artificial intelligence facial scanning technology on several campus buildings.
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Doctor: you look less bad, I hope your immune system is doing a bit better under all of this stress My immune system: you got more than one vaccine while getting off antibiotics? and still infections and major neuroinflammation? 🗞️ nap for human, nap for days 🗞️
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It's ME(Jaime) @exceedhergrasp1.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I need people to realize that this is PLENTY of time to derail careers, close labs-- the ACLU is fighting against the whole forbidden words thing (textbook censorship) that was introduced in VERY EARLY 2025 right now. www.aclu.org/press-releas...
aclu.org
Researchers Challenge NIH Screening of Grants for Disfavored Viewpoints | American Civil Liberties Union
Class action lawsuit seeks to stop censorship and termination of federally funded scientific research
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It's ME(Jaime) @exceedhergrasp1.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
And that, as they say, is the ball game. 🧪 arstechnica.com/science/2026...
arstechnica.com
Russel Vought will reportedly be given veto power over all NIH grants
Pending move comes over the objections of the NIH director.
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Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcculloch.com · 20/09/2026
You know who HAS read Ong on Orality? Ted Chiang, that's who I'll wait while you read this utterly devastating short story
devonzuegel.com
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling by Ted Chiang — Subterranean Press
When my daughter Nicole was an infant, I read an essay suggesting that it might no longer be necessary to teach children how to read or write, because speech recognition and synthesis would soon rende...
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
And every day there is more Fresh AI Hell. What's worse than polluting the information ecosystem with synthetic text dressed up to look like news? Dressing it up further as the work of fake Indigenous journalists: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
‘Very harmful’: website uses AI to generate northern Indigenous news ‘correspondents’ | CBC News
The website WE NEWS has three northern Indigenous 'AI correspondents.' Their profiles say they are 'a member of Yukon First Nation,' 'of Dene heritage,' and 'an Inuk raised in the North.' Experts in t...
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
“She’s so quiet, her pain level must be fine” when the incessantly screaming husky that is complex chronic pain has me barely able to move or talk #PainAwarenessMonth
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
New — I wrote about this weird thing where people within the Republican party keep being exposed as Nazis and the party then tries to claim each one is an aberration. The facts, as I lay out here, indicate otherwise:
thehandbasket.co
Republicans don’t have a Nazi problem—they are the Nazi problem
A spate of recent revelations have shown the ideologies and their adherents are one and the same.
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Reposted by Emily Johnson
Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org · 15/09/2026
Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State, with @reallandsend.bsky.social and Da’Shaun L. Harrison, hosted with @deathpanel.bsky.social
haymarketbooks.org
Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State (Health Fascism Series)
As governments retreat from care, and health increasingly becomes a signifier of discipline—rather than provision—fitness, disability, fatness, illness, Blackness, impairment, and bodily capacity are ...
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Death Panel @deathpanel.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
In our latest, we’re joined by Da’Shaun L. Harrison to discuss how we became an object of right wing ridicule over the last week and how the media dogpile from Joe Rogan to Ben Shapiro to Fox News proved our point www.patreon.com/deathpanelpo...
patreon.com
The Death Panel vs Fox News w/ Da’Shaun L. Harrison (09/14/26) | The Death Panel
Beatrice, Artie and Da’Shaun L. Harrison discuss how we became an object of right wing ridicule over the last week, and how the media dogpil
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Lauren Eggert-Crowe @laureneggertcrowe.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This quote from @reallandsend.bsky.social was so incisive I had to write it down: "It's about what happens when bourgeois ideology repeatedly converts unequal social and political relations into evidence of individual virtue . . . (continued)"
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
News outlets using generative AI to write public editor responses will keep blowing up in publishers’ faces and wreck subscriber bases If EICs listened to social media managers (the de facto public editors) about this at all during the last decade, this wouldn’t keep happening
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
If people are wondering why I’m on here more this week, it’s the power of amoxicillin combined with infections causing poor sleep, my body is exhausted but my brain is locked in
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Robert Chapman @drrobertchapman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
People still on twitter are saying there is a big reactionary fuss over @reallandsend.bsky.social's timely critique of eugenic ideology on the left. Good time to note her and @avierkant.bsky.social's book is still one of my favourite books on health politics. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...
versobooks.com
Health Communism
In this fiery, theoretical tour de force, Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant offer an overview of life and death under capitalism and argue for a new global left politics aimed at severing the t...
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Reposted by Emily Johnson
BedWords @snacklesbian.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
leftists take heed. i have seen many of you make jokes on par with these. if your line of thinking is basically indistinguishable from joe rogan and his goons, it's time to update your politic and recognize that there are issues for which you are out of your depth
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Meg @prayingmantis.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
"Social murder can masquerade as fiscal responsibility" - @reallandsend.bsky.social on the, e.g., MAHA movement #Socialism2026
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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 07/09/2026
the frame of Health Fascism moves away from individual MAHA behaviors and towards how our health care and social welfare systems, such as they are/aren't, were fertile ground for a far right power grab. @deathpanel.bsky.social has been exploring this for a long time. the full panel chuds clipped:
youtube.com
Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State (Health Fascism Series)
YouTube video by Haymarket Books
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Aren Aizura @incommensurati.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The swoletariat bros got their undies in a bunch over ideas they didn't bother to listen to or understand. Expected behavior from Ryan G. but more than few leftists actually believing that physical fitness and fighting ability is truly a moral good and/or the only way to defeat the fash
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Aren Aizura @incommensurati.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Go listen to the actual @deathpanel.bsky.social episode so you have the context for the clip. (Btw, that clip was picked up because a right-wing Manhattan Institute "researcher" posted it. The pile-on did exactly what he intended.) www.patreon.com/deathpanelpo...
patreon.com
Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State (DP x S26) | The Death Panel
This is the first recording in a series of sessions we organized at this year's Socialism Conference. We're posting it ahead of our usual sc
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they/them might be giants ☭ @babadookspinoza.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
In the year following the 9/11 attacks anti-Muslim hate crimes increased by 1,600% including many murders. The invasion of Afghanistan killed more than 38,000 Afghan civilians. The invasion of Iraq resulted in the deaths of at least 206,000 Iraqi civilians. Never forget them.
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
we’re at the UK euthanasia bill, we’re at the Canada euthanasia bill, we’re in the global forced austerity hut, we’re ringing genocide and palliative cuts alarm bells we’re at the combination eugenics denialism during mainstream passive and active eugenics Pizza Hut Taco Bell
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
People have a profound problem understanding disability pride and resistance responses and actions Nondisabled people do not get to determine what is valid or not, it’s paternalistic (born of eugenics, who gets self-determination and who doesn’t) for them to act as if they do
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ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 11/09/2026
we don’t teach young people short-term history, so it was weird when i realized that gen z had no idea that so many gen x and millennials spent our high school years protesting george w bush and not just because of the wars, but because mosques were being targeted and sikh men were being attacked
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
If someone says “fitness is great” in reply to people discussing fitness in eugenics and fascism (the “unfit” dehumanized, maimed and killed”) because they distorted that as “exercise” — they should be horrified at their reply under proper context The not horrified people? Yikes
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Audrey T. Carroll @audreytcarroll.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Eugenics has a long history with lots of targets that have varied based on cultural contexts! Timnit Gebru & Émile P. Torres trace it all the way back to Plato. The ideas predate the 1883 term from Galton, and they continue to exist today, both through & beyond euphemism. youtu.be/9EUrMHPFFsQ?...
youtu.be
A Crash Course in Eugenics
YouTube video by Audrey T. Heffers
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
“Eugenics doesn’t have a role in today” so why does the American with Disabilities Act cover both disabled people *and people who are perceived to be disabled*? Because disability rights are rooted in history, and eugenics involves *both real and perceived characteristics*
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Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The UK is voting on the Assisted Dying bill today. Most disability organizations oppose it. Safeguards have already been removed or rejected. Please listen to disabled Canadians. What was meant to be dignified quickly became coercive eugenics aimed at the most vulnerable.
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Lot of people this week who know “don’t use the tools of the oppressors” was a hard lesson many before them learned, insisting they should still use the tools to survive, ease oppressors or counter oppressors (all Nuremberg Trial situations, look up Albert Speer)
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
“Fitness” under eugenics has had specific mainstream meaning for centuries — it’s not exercise Anyone distorting that meaning undermines education and advocacy against eugenics, genocide and fascism Ditto for people claiming theory of evolution is the same as social Darwinism
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Taking notes: fascist rhetoric by people on the left and right in recent days: — calls to shut down conferences and restrict freedom of speech because they don’t understand or get what someone said — positioning academics as enemy of, not part of, the working class 1/ 🧵
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Emily Johnson @emilyrj.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
“Come join our movement, we’re making it sexy and brawn” said many fascists “Come join our movement, we’re making it sexy and brawn” said many anti-fascists And the ghosts of fascists and anti-fascists watch as desirability politics destroy everyone again and again and again
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Artie Vierkant @avierkant.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Wrote about data centers and social murder blindarchive.substack.com/p/indifferen...
blindarchive.substack.com
Indifference engines
Brief thoughts on AI and data centers
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