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Mike Sharp

@mikesh8rp.bsky.social
288 followers 433 following 14 posts
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Oliver Willis @owillis.bsky.social · 17h
If you have $100 million to spend on ads saying you shouldn’t be taxed you’re not being taxed enough Google cofounder Sergey Brin has spent $102 million to fight California’s proposed billionaire tax—he could owe $13 billion if he loses fortune.com/article/how-...
fortune.com
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has now spent $100 million to fight California’s proposed billionaire tax—he could owe $13 billion if he loses | Fortune
The state’s ultrawealthy, including Larry Page and Peter Thiel, have similarly donated to efforts opposing the wealth tax.
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I’ve been obsessed with this possible trendline for a decade. If you cut the things that keep people who remain in state healthy and increase access to guns guess what happens
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Schrödinger's Sneetch Belly @rtodkelly.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Please know that this is one of my few legitimate areas of actual, high-level professional expertise: Kicking the healthiest people off of a health insurance program will bankrupt it. Not 'could;' not 'might,' not 'probably," but absolutely will, with mathematical certainty.
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davidrlurie @davidrlurie.com · 22/09/2026
The Oligarch who funded Don Jr.'s wedding is deeply linked to Russia's mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children.
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Reece @thiccreese.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Meta's new AI agent wanted my passport info. Not to help me. To train on me. Actually, it wanted everything: bank accounts, email inboxes, ID info. No surprise coming from Meta. But always worth reminding readers that AI automations come with major privacy risks. www.wired.com/story/metas-...
wired.com
Meta's Muse Is Better at Surveilling Than Helping Me
The Muse app continues Meta’s trend of opting users into data collection for AI training. It also nudges you to share your bank account, email, and passport information.
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I graduated med school in 2014. I was taught-and saw-how hard melanoma was to treat, like a death sentence Since then, new treatments have made it possible for people w/ the most advanced melanoma, like Jimmy Carter, to live to 100! We are killing ourselves by letting them destroy American science
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
My grandfather, who is 102 and a medical doctor, has told me about the times before polio was cured. Most years, upon returning to school after summer’s break, there would be some children would didn’t make it back to school because of polio.
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
If you're wondering why Trump is all of a sudden pushing AI and dismissing concerns about its safety as a "hoax," just look at his stock trades.
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
This “game” on the White House website, a version of Snake where you play as a white man in a suit and you run around picking up identifiably black, Asian, and Latino men and putting them in orange jumpsuits, might be the most openly white supremacist thing I’ve ever seen the US government produce
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 02/09/2026
There are endless studies showing this and also the financial and societal benefits of universal basic income and or housing-first policies but the U.S. never goes for any of it because it would require allowing the poor to receive benefits that the rich consider “undeserved”
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Elon Green @elongreen.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
tbf, it was an underappreciated scandal of his first term, too www.politico.com/story/2018/0...
politico.com
How Trump favored Texas over Puerto Rico
A POLITICO investigation shows a persistent double standard in the president’s handling of relief efforts for Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Maria.
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
It's like a parody, but it's deadly serious; the Commerce Department (which includes Census, NOAA, and others) has outright deleted "don't alter or suppress scientific findings for political reasons" from its scientific integrity rules. Seriously.
Protecting against "inappropriate influence" is no longer a "hallmark" of scientific integrity

The Commerce Department updated its policy for promoting a "culture of scientific integrity" in January 2025, days before Trump's second inauguration.

A new Trump administration order bans the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis from using statistical “noise,” or data for fuzzing survey results, to protect people’s privacy in their statistics.

The 2025 version included bans on attempts to shape or interfere in data collection, statistical analysis and other scientific activities "against well-accepted scientific methods and theories or without scientific justification."

The department's policy, the 2025 version said, involves ensuring scientific findings at its agencies "are not suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and are not subjected to inappropriate influence," as well as making sure there's "independent review of facilities, methodologies, and other scientific activities as appropriate to ensure scientific integrity."

That language is missing, however, in the Trump administration's revision of the policy, according to an NPR analysis of text posted on the Commerce Department's website.

And while the revision adopts a definition for "scientific integrity" that is similar to the previous version, it no longer says that "protection from inappropriate influence" is among the "hallmarks of scientific integrity."
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
US media: Why in the world are people voting for democratic socialists? Financial Times: “US corporate profits have hit a record high while workers’ slice of the pie has sunk to historic lows.”
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Four-year-old girl dies from suspected diphtheria after parents failed to vaccinate her. Please protect your children with extremely safe and effective vaccines! www.unionesarda.it/e... 1/2
unionesarda.it
Four-year-old girl dies from suspected diphtheria after parents failed to vaccinate her. - L'Unione Sarda English
The prosecutor's office has opened an investigation. The little girl had arrived at the hospital for the first time with fever, vomiting and loss of appetite.
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Emanuel Maiberg @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
We put a tracking device in a shipment of rare books acquired by an anonymous buyer. It ended up at an Amazon facility where the company scans books for training data and destroys them in the process: www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
404media.co
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility
We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.
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jkavanagh.bsky.social @jkavanagh.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
“You see this in the top ranks of the Trump administration, which is a lot of people who are incompetent, and their only pathway to success is through slavish devotion to this moron. And there was no other way for them to get there. So they’re willing to make those compromises.”
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
So the answer to "how did the super spooky all powerful AI go rogue" is that they just let it rip and then went home for the day In a normal world, this would be a story about OpenAI's culture of negligence and half-assery, not how we should all bow down to the AI overlords
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Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
‘Anthropic described the project as “our effort to disruptively scan all the world’s books” in an internal memo, which noted “we do not want it to be known that we are pursuing this project”.’
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Leah Greenberg ❌👑 @leahgreenberg.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Remember the SNAP cuts in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill?” Children account for nearly half of the 2.4 million people who are no longer receiving SNAP in at least 19 states. The true number of kids impacted nationwide is unknown. This is horrifying. No child should go hungry.
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
The US built the greatest talent magnet ever, attracting the smart, skilled, and striving. They’d come to study, then stay and build things here, or leave with positive impressions and fruitful connections. Helped make the US wealthy and powerful. Then America chose to throw it away. And for what?
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Sista 𓅓 @sista.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
The world would be significantly better if meta ceases to exist
reuters.com
Meta says US states are seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties in August youth safety trial
Meta Platforms ​said in a court filing on Monday that four states were seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties over accusations the company designed its Facebook ‌and Instagram platforms to addict young us...
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Reposted by Mike Sharp
Josh Rosenau @joshrosenau.org · 10/07/2026
I charted city property tax revenue in real dollars vs the Seattle-area inflation rate for my little city. Everything is bad but post-COVID inflation (including tariffs, trade wars, wars, labor, etc.) is just killing cities. Road construction costs are up like 70% year over year.
Property tax in nominal dollars vs Buying power according to the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue CPI-U. Nominal dollars rise fairly linearly at around 1-2% (1% is the baseline, supplemented by increases due to redevelopment).

Buying power declines steadily from 2001 to about 2020, then inflation absolutely devastates the buying power. A decline from ~$4.8 million in 2001 to about $4.4 million in 2020 becomes ~$3.6 million by 2026.
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Soraya Nadia McDonald @soraya.press · 07/07/2026
"His wife has said that he relied on an inhaler for asthma, but ICE agents rejected her attempt to give them the device when he was taken into custody."
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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Facebook’s own researchers found that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools”, an internal report in 2016 found. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
'It let white supremacists organize': the toxic legacy of Facebook's Groups
Facebook has said it will no longer algorithmically recommend political groups to users, but experts warn that isn’t enough
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
I’m not sure why this isn’t being mentioned more, but: IRS policy for 50 years has been that the sitting president & VP get audited every year, in an effort to reassure the public they’re not corruptly abusing the office to enrich themselves.
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Keith Kurson @keithlaugh.love · 17/05/2026
just talked to a state CIO the other day who’s entire budget is getting eaten by this change and now needs to figure out how to quickly pivot
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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
This is a deeply reported story that is not just about vapes, but about how powerful corporations and wealthy people get their way by using access and methods that simply aren’t available to the rest of the country.
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Jesse Eisinger @jeisinger.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
This would constitute one of the most brazen, most appalling acts of corruption in U.S. history. I know we’re numb to all of this but this is a seven-alarm fire. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/b...
nytimes.com
Justice Dept. Officials Consider Settling Trump Suit Against I.R.S.
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Ari Berman @ariberman.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Today's demolition of Voting Rights Act by Roberts Court will likely trigger largest drop in Black representation since end of Reconstruction. They're taking America back to Jim Crow, when white supremacy and one party rule enshrined across South www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
motherjones.com
Supreme Court deals a death blow to the Voting Rights Act
The "now-completed demolition" of the law could take us back to the Jim Crow era.
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FactPost @factpostnews.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
The Trump administration is removing protections for over 59 million acres of the National Forest System, opening untouched land to logging.
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 21/04/2026
Yet again I remind everyone (as Elizabeth does in her very next tweet) that "foreigners are corrupting our pure blood with weakness & disease" is Fascism 101. Not some variant, not some metaphorically similar thing, not some echo -- the thing itself.
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Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
This is incredible. Also. Fuck RFK Jr.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 17/04/2026
the president of the united states is personally looting the treasury to the tune of literally billions of dollars and that he is not being immediately removed from office and tried for high crimes against this country is a devastating indictment of every part of our political system
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FactPost @factpostnews.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
TurboTax and H&R Block spent $7 million lobbying the Trump administration to kill Direct File. Both companies donated to Trump's 2024 campaign and inauguration committees.
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Spooky Back From The Dead Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
JFC do you have any idea how much $41 million dollars is in the world of state legislative elections? I don't have the figures at hand but I'll bet that in 2024, every candidate for every state seat in the legislatures of all 3 states combined didn't collectively raise half that much.
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David Rothschild @davmicrot.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
(1) By gutting IRS really rich people are going to cheat US today, costing US hundreds of $billions (2) By gutting free-filing, tens of millions of working Americans are going to pay TurboTax and H&RBlock for what the government could easily go do free
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Mina Kimes @minakimes.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
My god. Essential, horrifying reporting here.
A few days after the incident in which Amalia lost consciousness, Marcano brought her back to the clinic at Dilley. A staffer measured Amalia’s blood-oxygen saturation—which, in a healthy individual, is between ninety-five and a hundred per cent—and found that it was in the low fifties. “Such a low amount of oxygen going to the brain can, if it’s long enough, kill off parts of the brain—it’s really, really high-stakes,” Prantik Saha, a pediatrician who reviewed Amalia’s medical records, told me. “It’s shocking that this level of callousness and omission of care could occur.” Amalia was taken to a local hospital, where it became clear that she needed care beyond what the facility could provide. She was transferred to a larger hospital in San Antonio, where she was given five diagnoses: Covid-19, RSV, bronchitis, pneumonia, and an ear infection. She received supplemental oxygen and intensive care.
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Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
An mRNA treatment for PANCREATIC CANCER was in trials, among many other uses. Choosing to end this research is choosing to sentence millions to an early, painful death
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The UnPopulist @theunpopulist.net · 10/04/2026
Kennedy canceled $500 million in mRNA research and announced no new mRNA projects will ever be initiated—killing the technology that produced the fastest vaccine rollout in human history.
theunpopulist.net
RFK Jr. Lied His Way Into Office and American Health Is the Victim
He is pushing quackery as science as health secretary
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Sarah Tuttle @niais.cryptoanarchy.network · 10/04/2026
This is so horrifying on so many levels. Again, please call your members of congress and beyond - The states should fight this hard too. The impact is ... difficult to comprehend.
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Unprecedented corruption
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PodKATT @podkatt.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
I should draw the line clearly if you are unaware. Woodside, a petroleum company with almost no consumer facing business, is spending multiple millions of dollars to put their logo on every LSU sport jersey in 26-27 for the sole purpose of lobbying to get state gov support for this plant.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 06/04/2026
Trump on his military advisers: "I was told this is a very dangerous mission. They didn't say it's a foolish mission, they said 'We're gonna be sacrificing hundreds of people to do this.' I just felt it was worth it."
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
"I think we should invest in our own people," says the toady from the administration that has slashed billions of dollars in federal funding for colleges and universities.
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Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
“The last night I was a pediatric resident, a child came in with Hib and promptly died by the next day. I didn’t work for 50 years to have everything destroyed by one man.” -Dr. Kathryn Edwards, Vanderbilt University This is what RFK Jr. and the anti-vaxxers have wrought.
nbcnews.com
A deadly bacterial disease is returning, doctors warn, as vaccination rates fall
Hib once killed 1,000 children a year, permanently disabling many more. Doctors who've never seen the disease say the comeback is changing the way they practice medicine.
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
I know it’s competing with an illegal war and 10,000 other major scandals but I feel like people should be making a bigger deal out of the DefSec systematically trying to resegregate the military
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David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
And yet more major media normalization of an erratic and internally incoherent speech full of lies.
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