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Rebecca Johnson Bista

@rebeccaji.bsky.social
276 followers 200 following 89 posts

Writer, artist, researcher, editor, carer, cat lover, slug slaughterer, bird whisperer, coast-dweller, Islamophile, lost soul and many other things. Interested in narratives of illness, especially ME/CFS, Covid and other traumas. Fascism-free zone.

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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
Something to look up
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
it’s all I know about Girl Scouts in the USA. Girl Scouts AKA Girl Guides here, are UK-based, invented by Lord Baden Powell and his sister Agnes in the early 1900s, then spread around the world. so I know a bit about Guiding in the UK, and was one once. Bake sales are not a major part of UK Guides.
world.so
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Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
WHAT THE F**K!
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Billy Hanlon @bhanlon15.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
Global News: 'Vancouver rally raising awareness around long COVID' 'A small demonstration in Downtown Vancouver shedding light on a condition that is not yet fully understood. Millions of Canadians suffer from symptoms of long COVID..that can be debilitating' globalnews.ca/video/110839...
globalnews.ca
Vancouver rally raising awareness around long COVID | Watch News Videos Online
Watch Vancouver rally raising awareness around long COVID Video Online, on GlobalNews.ca
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Open Culture @openculture.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
"We’re in the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.... Our problem in part is a failure of imagination. We cannot get ourselves to see how this is going to unfold in its most frightening versions." --Lee Bollinger, former president of Columbia University.
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Billy Hanlon @bhanlon15.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
KSDK: “COVID-19 turns 5 this year, but it's far from being gone” "Right now we think that there are more people living with long covid than realize it," Cheng said www.ksdk.com/article/news...
ksdk.com
COVID-19 turns 5 this year, but it's far from being gone
For some, it's not much different than dealing with a cold or flu. But for others, COVID completely upended their lives.
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
stoptrump.org.uk/petition-can...
stoptrump.org.uk
Petition: Cancel Trump’s state visit
Stop Trump Coalition
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 15/02/2025
Good journalism, unlike academic writing, “often emerges from the convergence of disagreement and befuddlement,” Joshua Rothman writes. In a new Weekend Essay, he reflects on his turn to reporting.
newyorker.com
An Academic’s Journey Toward Reporting
I was used to a disembodied way of working: identify a philosophical problem, then study it. What could spending time with a philosopher teach me about his ideas?
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Chaos being unleashed
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Beware of flu
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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
They are gutting NIH like a fish. www.splinter.com/the-unhinged...
splinter.com
The Unhinged Axe Falls on the National Cancer Institute and the Rest of NIH
Splinter is your home for news and opinions that challenge power in our political and economic system that's becoming more unhinged each and every day.
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Rebecca Gethin @rgethin.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Betrayal is betrayal. I always thought better of America.
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simonworrallauthor.bsky.social @simonworrallauthor.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
“Love is a great privilege. Real #love, which is very rare, enriches the lives of the men and women who experience it.” —Simone de Beauvoir #simonedebeauvoir #lovers #paris #france
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Jorie Graham @joriegraham.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
More than 1,100 dead sea turtles washed up along southern India’s coastline
The mass death of once-endangered olive ridley turtles in January has prompted an increase in wildlife patrols and a crackdown on fishing boats
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ex-Lethality Jane @lethalityjane.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.
Excerpt from a public letter Roald Dahl wrote encouraging people to vaccinate their children.

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.

On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunized against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.
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Jorie Graham @joriegraham.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
theguardian.com
US Forest Service and National Park Service to fire thousands of workers
Wildfire-management groups say Trump’s latest push to trim government could impede firefighting efforts
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Billy Hanlon @bhanlon15.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
NBC Washington: '‘Taking away years of experience': NIH probationary employees fired Friday' 'Scientists and medical researchers being let go by President Trump’s administration walked out of the gates of the NIH..appearing shaken, some in tears..' www.nbcwashington.com/news/preside...
nbcwashington.com
‘Taking away years of experience': NIH probationary employees fired Friday
Scientists and medical researchers being let go by President Donald Trump’s administration walked out of the gates of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, Friday afternoon appearin...
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Jorie Graham @joriegraham.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
This!!! Thank you @tribelaw.bsky.social ! Pass it on. Read the comments.
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AnthropoceneMPG 🌊 @anthropocenempg.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
#GlobalHeatingImpossibleToSlowDown
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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 08/02/2025
Call your R reps. If you have a regional accent, make the most of it. Tell them you didn't vote for CANCER and ask them what the hell they're gonna do to stop Musk and Trump. reps.fyi
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
Think we’re immune?
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Christophe Veltsos @drinfosec.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
👀 posted by @jlerollblues.bsky.social on Twitter 30mins ago: "From SARS-CoV-2 on substack: H5N1 Bird Flu Is About to Go Global. The D1.1 strain of H5N1 in Nevada has acquired the PB2 D701N mutation, allowing it to adapt to mammals." OP: x.com/jlerollblues...
Screenshot of Joe's post on Twitter:
"From SARS-CoV-2 on substack: H5N1 Bird Flu Is About to Go Global.

The D1.1 strain of H5N1 in Nevada has acquired the PB2 D701N mutation, allowing it to adapt to mammals."

The embedded substack message:
"H5N1 Bird Flu Is About to Go Global.
The D1.1 strain of H5N1 in Nevada has acquired the PB2 D701N mutation, allowing it to adapt to mammals.
This mutation is driving a much faster spread in Nevada dairy herds than the B3.13 strain in California, marking a major shift in the virus's evolution.
Migrating birds will spread the D1.1 (D701N) strain worldwide, increasing the risk of multiple mammalian outbreaks.
This is no longer just a U.S. cattle issue it is a growing global threat."
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Nicole Chung @nicolechung.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Trials abandoned due to the stop-work order on USAID-funded research:
The Times identified more than 30 frozen studies that had volunteers already in the care of researchers, including trials of:

malaria treatment in children under age 5 in Mozambique

treatment for cholera in Bangladesh

a screen-and-treat method for cervical cancer in Malawi

tuberculosis treatment for children and teenagers in Peru and South Africa

nutritional support for children in Ethiopia

early-childhood-development interventions in Cambodia

ways to support pregnant and breastfeeding women to reduce malnutrition in Jordan

an mRNA vaccine technology for H.I.V. in South Africa
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
USAID friends… what’s happening to you?
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Great plan. What could possibly go wrong?
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Denis - The COVID Info Guy @thecovidinfoguy.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
AUSTRALIA weekly COVID update: 31 January 2025 #COVID19Australia #COVIDisntOVER #COVIDisAIRBORNE
AUSTRALIA Weekly COVID Update: 31 January 2025

States and Territories	Trend	% Change	Reporting Notes
WA	⬆️ UP	+17.4%	Positivity rate: 8.1%
SA	⬆️ UP	+4.4%	Positivity rate: 11.2%
QLD	⬇️ DOWN	-16.6%	7x more COVID hospitalised (179) than flu (24)
NSW	⬇️ DOWN	-13.1%	Positivity rate: 8.5%
VIC	—	—	Fortnightly update, next: 7 Feb 2025
TAS	—	—	Monthly update, next: 21 Feb 2025
ACT	—	—	COVID data paused until autumn/winter
NT	—	—	COVID data no longer published
Aged Care	⬇️ DOWN	-13.2%	6 deaths reported
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Just maybe they thinks take a look at the research on ME/CFS before declaring - yet again - that this condition is new to the world? Why doesn’t the penny drop?
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Denis - The COVID Info Guy @thecovidinfoguy.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
New Zealand: Covid-19 ‘brain fog’ likely factor in near-miss train crash in South Island. "A KiwiRail engineer experiencing after-effects of Covid-19 failed to stop at a red signal nearly causing a train collision last year." Source: archive.md/6GI2m
Covid-19 ‘brain fog’ likely factor in near head-on train crash.

30 Jan 09:57 AM

The experienced engineer recently returned to work following an absence due to the virus.
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The Paris Review @parisreview.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
“Isn’t life like that? We live it, only half-knowing what it is, aware of possibilities all along but often mistaken as to their full meaning. Then time may change it all, throw it in a new perspective.” —Elizabeth Spencer www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2...
theparisreview.org
Elizabeth Spencer, The Art of Fiction No. 110
A portrait of Elizabeth Spencer from the film Landscapes of the Heart.   Elizabeth Spencer has published a large body of work, yet she became famous for a novella she wrote in a month. The i...
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It's ME(Jaime) @exceedhergrasp1.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) a funder of biomedical research particularly as it applies to military readiness, appears to be entirely gone. cdmrp.health.mil
A screenshot of CDMRP (Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs) on a search engine.  It says, "CDMRP is a DoD program that funds biomedical research in response to the needs of the public, the military, and Congress.  It supports various research programs and funding opportunities in..." Then it lists several pages, including Funding Opportunities, Consumers, Research Programs, Alcohol and Substance Abuse, Search Awards, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, About Us, Arthritis, Home current, Autism...has the URL for CDMRP (cdmrp.health.mil)

Says Not Found

HTTP Error 303: The requested resource is not found.
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It's ME(Jaime) @exceedhergrasp1.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
A good thread about what's missing from where, and a place to report what's gone.
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Wonder Mutt @wondermutt.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
I am grateful to the NIH for publications that were critical in helping me develop a treatment regime that is finally working against my own Long COVID. I won’t have that resource during the next pandemic. #RIPNIH #RIPUSA RIP—me?
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
A mask ban is a form of eugenics. State sponsored manslaughter. It is surely a human and constitutional right to choose how to protect oneself as an individual.
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Chantzy @chantzy.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Study finds acute Covid associated with a 50% ⬆️ in car crashes, vaccination was not protective "The odds ratio of car crashes associated with COVID-19 was comparable to driving under the influence of alcohol at legal limits or driving with a seizure disorder"
Neurology journal headline from October 2024: Driving under the cognitive influence of Covid-19: exploring the impact of acute SARS-CoV-2 infection on road safety
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Billy Hanlon @bhanlon15.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
ScienceBlog: 'Scientists Discover ‘Blood Fingerprint’ of Long COVID in Children, Paving Way for First Diagnostic Test' 'Using advanced protein analysis and artificial intelligence, the research team examined blood samples from 112 children...' scienceblog.com/553371/scien...
scienceblog.com
Scientists Discover 'Blood Fingerprint' of Long COVID in Children, Paving Way for First Diagnostic Test
In a discovery that could transform how doctors diagnose and treat Long COVID in young patients, Italian researchers have identified a distinct molecular
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Billy Hanlon @bhanlon15.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Forbes: 'Higher Risk Of Long COVID In Women, Link Between SARS-CoV-2 And ME/CFS' As Dr. Horwitz remarked, “For the millions of people suffering from long COVID worldwide, finding effective treatments is an urgent priority." www.forbes.com/sites/davewe...
forbes.com
Higher Risk Of Long COVID In Women, Link Between SARS-CoV-2 And ME/CFS
Risk of long COVID is higher in women and a link between SARS-CoV-2 infection and development of ME/CFS is shown, according to new studies.
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Billy Hanlon @bhanlon15.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Live Science: '1 in 22 COVID survivors develop debilitating chronic syndrome' 'A study suggests that catching COVID-19 significantly raises the risk of developing ME/CFS..' "This study's findings underscore the urgent need for treatments," Pollack said www.livescience.com/health/coron...
livescience.com
1 in 22 COVID survivors develop debilitating chronic syndrome
A study suggests that catching COVID-19 significantly raises the risk of developing ME/CFS (formerly called "chronic fatigue syndrome"), a typically lifelong condition that can be debilitating.
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Open Culture @openculture.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Umberto Eco’s List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism #3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
openculture.com
Umberto Eco’s List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism
Creative Commons image by Rob Bogaerts, via the National Archives in Holland One of the key questions facing both journalists and loyal oppositions these days is how do we stay honest as euphemisms an...
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Denmark clearly floundering in a mire of Covid/infection misinformation. How can anyone be so ignorant of how disease spreads? A) it’s in the air; b) you need more masks, less focus on the hand washing; c) distance distance distance, or better still, stay at home if you are symptomatic. Humans eh?
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Sally Witcher @salwitcher.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Whatever your views on assisted dying - this is NOT what democracy looks like.
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Rachel Pope @prehistorian.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
My piece is out! A history of archaeological scholarship on the potential for matrilineal societies in Iron Age Europe.
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Shocking. Like Ireland used to be with removing ads from women’s magazines. And stupid, because people will have prepared and word will pass round anyway, just like it used to before 1973 RvW. All it means is later, less safe abortions.
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
"God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone; He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-bone." William Butler Yeats
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ThereForME @thereforme.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
We saw some requests for transparency re: who is involved in the Task & Finish group for the new Delivery Plan for ME/CFS. We raised this with DHSC who have kindly given us permission to share the list. On our new Delivery Plan explainer here 👇 www.thereforme.uk/p/about-the-...
thereforme.uk
About the Delivery Plan for ME/CFS
In March 2025 the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) will publish a cross-government delivery plan for ME/CFS, aiming to improve attitudes, bolster research and better lives.
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Rebecca Johnson Bista @rebeccaji.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Please sign and share this petition against forced psychiatric hospitalisation of a young Danish woman with ME. How can Denmark not know yet that ME is not a psychiatric disorder? Such treatment is dangerously inhumane.
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Ian Duhig @ianduhig.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
RIP Michael Longley. I'd known him for over 40 years when he taught an Arvon with Paul Muldoon. I always said Paul supplied the genius, but Michael the magic: how else would a classicist write 'Ceasefire', an intervention into a vicious war admired by both sides? Ave atque vale.
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Tom Kindlon @tomkindlon.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
New free audio piece: "Caroline Kingdon | From Stigma to Support: A New Approach to ME/CFS Treatment in the UK" www.scipod.global/caroline-kin... A sympathetic description of some information in the 2021 NICE ME/CFS guidelines. #MEcfs #CFS #PwME
Caroline Kingdon | From Stigma to Support: A New Approach to ME/CFS Treatment in the UK
Jan 22, 2025 | health and medicine

Photo of a woman lying down looking ill

About this episode
Imagine living with an illness that can sap your energy levels so completely that even day-to-day tasks, such as doing laundry, walking the dog, or even getting out of bed can be insurmountable challenges. To make matters worse, this illness is not well understood either by the public or by medical staff, and is often dismissed and stigmatised, making it difficult to find understanding or treatment. This is the unfortunate lived experience of many people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (or ME/CFS for short). In a recent Communication article, researcher Caroline Kingdon of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues, discuss this misunderstood condition through the prism of the 2021 guideline for the treatment of those with ME/CFS, which have been published by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (or NICE for short). Their article aims to inform primary caregivers about the NICE guideline, and, happily, reveals that the new guideline prioritises an overdue shift toward compassionate and patient-focused care for ME/CFS. More
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Rabih Alameddine @rabihalameddine.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
A photo I posted of graffiti in Syria in 2014. "One day the war will be over and I will return to my poem" I hope they will return to their poem
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