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Jason

@jason23.bsky.social
558 followers 696 following 20 posts

Interests: Climate, biology, astronomy, tech, and music. Not a billionaire.

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Jason @jason23.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
In at least a subset of people with long COVID,the body’s immune system launches an autoimmune attack against the patient’s own cells,causing a cascade of symptoms such as fatigue,brain fog,weakness…findings suggest that long COVID may overlap with autoimmune diseases. news.yale.edu/2026/05/28/y...
news.yale.edu
Yale study links some long COVID patients to autoimmune responses
A new study co-led by Yale scientists reveals that antibodies from some long COVID patients attacked brain and nerve tissues, a finding that could point toward treatments.
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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
“Dr. Antaki, a biomedical engineer, had been building an artificial heart for babies and young children, a pump the size of a AA battery, and he was getting close. But with his research grants stopped, Dr. Antaki slowly drained his lab’s rainy day funds, and he was forced to lay off all his staff.”
nytimes.com
How a Funding Pause Derailed an Artificial Heart for Babies
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Princess Vimentin PhD | Cancer Biologist @princess-vimentin.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
The title is fitting. A patient was being treated for Stage IV colorectal cancer. She had qualified for clinical trial, a her last-chance to slow the spread of her cancer. Her trial was about to start when NIH funding was pulled overnight, & it was canceled. She died. Many more stories. 🧪
nytimes.com
Opinion | ‘Easily the Worst President in U.S. History’
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
A society that runs on this stack doesn't stop holding elections, or debating, or running investigations. The forms stay, but what goes is their capacity to constrain power. The arc bends toward simulation, carried out in the language of defending democracy.
A diagram showing the VDA framework and the Arc of Democracy. At the top, three icons label the essential elements of democracy: Verification (tick), Deliberation (speech bubble), and Accountability (magnifying glass). Arrows descend from each through three horizontal bands representing the arc: Substantial (truth tested, voices included, power constrained), Performative (forms remain but substance is weak, rituals without consequence), and Simulated (appearance maintained but functions inverted: propaganda as verification, polarisation as deliberation, scapegoating as accountability). A vertical arrow on the left marks the arc's direction: improvements, decline, collapse. A column on the right maps counterpublics onto the same three states: functional counterpublics act in a substantial way, hollow counterpublics in a performative way, disordered counterpublics in a simulated way. The bands shift from grey through pink to red as democracy moves toward simulation.
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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 12/04/2026
Orban concedes defeat. The support of Trump, Vance, Putin, Lavrov, Weidel, Milei, Le Pen, Fico, Babis and many others could not overcome Hungarian anger at a stagnant, corrupt regime www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...
theguardian.com
Hungary election live: Viktor Orbán concedes defeat in Hungarian election after 16 years in power
Long-serving prime minister beaten by opposition after early results showed clear lead
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 02/04/2026
the trump administration is selling this country wholesale to rapacious, extractive industries that will destroy our collective resources for private profit morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/breaking-t...
morethanjustparks.substack.com
BREAKING: Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service
The headquarters is going to Utah. Every regional office is being shuttered. The research program is being destroyed.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 08/03/2026
‘Dark, like our future’: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran’s oil depots bombed
theguardian.com
‘Dark, like our future’: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran’s oil depots bombed
Residents report terror of smoke-filled city, from potentially toxic rain, air and water to food scarcity and difficulty of escape * Middle East crisis – live updates * Iran threatens to attack oil facilties across Gulf after Israeli strikes Thick black smoke was still rising in the sky, soot covered the streets and cars, balconies filled with black gunk, and the toxic air had filled the lungs as Tehran woke up after a night of airstrikes on the city’s oil depots on Sunday. In messages and voice notes sent to the Guardian, people described the situation in their homes and on the streets, some calling it “apocalyptic”. With the sun blotted out, disoriented people in Iran’s capital had to turn on their lights to see through the gloom. Continue reading...
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Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 05/03/2026
For those who can't bypass the paywall, the Obama administration, CIA determined that a single strike on a single Saudi water desalination plant would require evacuation of Riyadh and collapse its government. The Saudis have beefed up their infrastructure since, but I would rather not find out.
About 100 million people live in the countries belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman — all now under Iranian attack. Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are, for all practical purposes, completely dependent on the desalination plants, particularly for metropolises such as Dubai. Saudi Arabia, and especially its capital, Riyadh, also relies heavily on them.
Water Desalination in the Middle East
Saudi Arabia is home to most of the water desalination plants in the region, where they are key to supply the capital, Riyadh
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9M cubic meters per day
Sources: Bloomberg Opinion and Nature

Under international law, the desalination plants are protected. But I have seen enough Middle Eastern wars to know the weight of the Geneva Conventions when missiles and bombs start flying. And they are: Iran has attacked a power station in Fujairah, UAE that keeps one of the world’s largest desalination plants running. In Kuwait, debris from a drone interception caused a fire in one of the country’s plants.
The risk is enormous. Take the Jubail desalination plant, located on the Persian Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia. It supplies Riyadh, via a roughly 500-kilometer-long pipeline system, with more than 90% of its drinking water. “Riyadh would have to evacuate within a week if the plant, its pipelines, or associated power infrastructure were seriously damaged or destroyed,” according to a 2008 memo from the US embassy in the kingdom released by Wikileaks. “The current structure of the Saudi government could not exist without the Jubail desalinization plant,” the memo stated.

Since the cable became public, the Saudis have reinforced their water network. Other countries have also built up redundancy. Still, all the water plants are equally vulnerable — and all of them are within range of the Iranian missiles. The good news is that water is so strategic — and so human — that any Iranian direct attack on them would be consider…
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Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
They had names. They had beautiful faces. And they had the same dreams as your kids - crushed when American "precision" bombs slammed into their Minab elementary school, killing 175 Don't blame AI for this. Blame the sick humans who see war as a game My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/iran...
inquirer.com
AI error or not, Iran school bombing is a permanent stain on America’s soul | Will Bunch
A debate on AI in warfare obscures the truth about an Iran school bombing. U.S. humans are to blame for this war crime.
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Alvaro M. Bedoya @bedoyausa.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
One family is about to control CBS, CNN, HBO, and TikTok. They’ll buy Warner Brothers with $24 billion from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi. To win over Trump, they canceled Colbert, blocked a 60 Minutes CECOT investigation, and blocked Talarico. Much more will follow. Block this rotten deal.
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Josh Sternberg @joshsternberg.com · 26/02/2026
Netflix won't counter Ellison's offer. Ladies and gentleman, the full right wing power grab is here and will now be beamed into every home on CBS, CNN, HBO, movies from Warner and Paramount. about.netflix.com/en/news/netf...
about.netflix.com
Netflix Declines to Raise Offer for Warner Bros. - About Netflix
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Jesspooka Kant 🎃 @jessdkant.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Of course isn’t just driving. It’s voting. Working. Travelling. Picking up a package. Applying for credit. Applying for a job. Renting a room. Filling prescriptions. Visiting loved ones in the hospital. Not expired either, but legally invalid.
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
Reading today’s big NYT Magazine story made me physically sick It details how Trump & the men he put in charge of federal research—men like Jay Bhattacharya & RFK Jr—are dismantling cancer research Not just the US vaccine system—they’re crushing cancer R&D 🎁Link www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/m...
nytimes.com
How the Trump Administration Is Dismantling America’s Cancer-Research System
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Chirag Lala @cthelala.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
Yeah I don’t see a universe where this administration can actually cultivate a fossil boom. I easily see one where energy investment generally dries up - causing blowback on all kinds of commercial + industrial activity. To say nothing of consumer pocketbooks.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 28/06/2025
To put it another way, it takes the approach of actively penalizing the technologies of the 21st century and subsidizing the technologies of the 19th century. As solar, batteries, and electrification are rapidly adopted by the rest of the world, we are stepping backwards.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 28/06/2025
The latest version of the Senate's BBB is a death sentence for US energy leadership and a giant gift to China. It eliminates tax cuts for solar that have been around since 2005, adds a new tax on solar after 2027, and creates a new direct subsidy for coal.
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Official George Carlin @officialgeocarlin.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
I miss him so much. M On the 17th anniversary of his death, I share some of his best work. - KCM
youtu.be
George Carlin: Issues | Compilation (1988-2008)
YouTube video by Official George Carlin
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Jason @jason23.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
#ShowYourStripes Day is on June 21. Some share warming stripe graphs to visualise yearly temperature changes. One can see increases over the last 40+ years in Los Angeles. The oceanic graph shows a stronger trend towards warming showing increased heat absorption relative to land. @edhawkins.org
Los Angeles temperature changes over the last 150+ years. A significant warming trend can be seen since approximately 1980.A graph of oceanic sea surface temperature changes for the last 150+ years. A strong shift towards increased temperature measurements can be seen over the last 40-50 years relative to prior measurements.
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
This is what fascism looks like - using a conspiracy theory about a dehumanized outgroup as a pretext for seizing political power and wielding arbitrary authority. What you read about in the history books is happening right here, right now.
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Judd Legum @juddlegum.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
1. The Trump administration has crippled cancer and Alzheimer's research by imposing a freeze on all government credit cards at NIH. An NIH source with direct knowledge tell Popular Information that scientific research has ground to halt because necessary supplies can no longer be purchased.
popular.info
Trump credit card freeze crippling cancer and Alzheimer's research
On February 26, President Trump issued an executive order expanding the power of the United States DOGE Service (DOGE), the government initiative controlled by Elon Musk.
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Brian Klaas @brianklaas.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
I wrote about the dominant creed of American life — the Gospel of Stuff and Status — and argue that these false idols are making millions of people avoidably miserable. www.forkingpaths.co/p/the-false-...
forkingpaths.co
The False Gospel of Stuff and Status
We have become disciples of a flawed creed. To chase passion and value people is a much wiser way to live; or Ikigai, Detectorists, and the real meaning of life.
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Nicholas Slayton @nslayton.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Also wrote about this same topic last night/published today for the New Republic: newrepublic.com/article/1900...
newrepublic.com
Los Angeles Has a Housing Crisis. These Fires Will Make It Worse.
The fires raging in Southern California offer a tragic preview of how the climate crisis will exacerbate homelessness.
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
The "Expanding Atmospheric Sponge" Effect conveys consequences of air's increasing water vapor-holding capacity: Not only can larger sponge yield more water if saturated (& wrung), but its absorptive capacity increases *even if there's no water to absorb.* www.nature.com/artic...
Figure from Swain et al. 2025. Caption reads: The physical processes underpinning increasing hydroclimate volatility in a warming climate can be visualized as an expanding atmospheric sponge. Consider a series of progressively larger kitchen sponges as representing the increasing water-vapour-holding capacity of the atmosphere as temperatures rise. These hypothetical sponges become 7% larger with each degree of warming, such that at 3 °C of warming, the atmospheric ‘sponge’ would be around 22.5% larger than at the pre-industrial temperature (see figure). In turn, the absorptive capacity of the sponges increases such that they can soak up more water from a damp countertop (analogous to increased evaporation over wet surfaces), as will their propensity to yield increasingly large volumes of water if wrung out with sufficient force (analogous to increasingly heavy downpours of precipitation when atmospheric conditions are otherwise conducive).
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Moon lover @moon1over.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
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Jason @jason23.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
Quote skeet with a picture of a sunset you yourself took.
The sun setting over the ocean. A small tree sits directly in front of the sun, casting a shadow towards the viewer.
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