Fix Your Hearts or Die.

A record-breaking COVID-19 lull has continued in the U.S. through late May. The latest national estimates for SARS-CoV-2 spread are the lowest they have been since spring 2021. Read this week's full COVID-19 trends report: bit.ly/4uPeuVy

I worked hard on this story, it's important, & I want to share it. I'm also finding it difficult to put it out there without this context: Just as I wrapped up final edits last week, I got word that a friend vacationing in Arizona had died after overheating on a hike. www.eenews.net/articles/dea...

ICYMI (I did): #FDA has accepted the recommendation of its expert panel, #VRBPAC & recommended that Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers make a monovalent targeting the JN.1 lineage XFG variant. How will #CDC handle the change? It would normally go to #ACIP but it's in limbo. www.fda.gov/vaccines-blo...

PMC Update (Jun 1, 2026) COVlD levels are "very low" relative to other time periods. 1 in 277 US residents are estimated actively infectious. However, there active hot spots in the Central Appalachia Region, Guam, Franklin County (WA), & Morgan County (AL). 🧵1/5

Evening view

“When you tell people they aren’t worth protecting, you are telling them they aren’t worthy of love.” This. This is it. This is the thing.

🤞

Portland

Morning view

Fact:

🥳🥳

I've seen some folks chatting about Morris Day and the Time — who dropped out of the Freedom 250 concert, thank god — like they are a joke, like Milli Vanilli. Shut your mouth! The opening scene in "Purple Rain" is one of the greatest moments in music history. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAxZ...

Be you Be what you're like Be like yourself

This thread is fascinating. Even if you’re isolating white sick it’s in your best interest to improve ventilation and filtration. Your own exhaled breath should not be re-inhaled.

“(The) segment of the society that is more likely to have long Covid because they didn’t get vaccinated is probably least likely to identify themselves as having long Covid or go to the doctor complaining about long Covid,” he said.

Asking for a friend: Does anyone have a recommendation for a Long Covid specialist in the Washington DC area? Friend’s symptoms are a lot like ME/CFS, so any recommendations for those providers is also appreciated!

More parents nationwide are getting nonmedical exemptions for required school vaccines for their kindergarteners. But this is especially true in Oregon.

One in five of those most commonly listed employers on SNAP income verification forms in Oregon last year was a major grocer and retailer, with Safeway and its parent company Albertsons the most listed, followed by Walmart and online retail giant Amazon.

Water outage in Whitstable. No water again today. This sign one of many I spotted when I went out to get bottled water this morning. South East Water is an absolute disgrace. No warning given. Nobody answering the phones. The simple truth is they don't care.

Asking for a friend: Does anyone have a recommendation for a Long Covid specialist in the Washington DC area? Friend’s symptoms are a lot like ME/CFS, so any recommendations for those providers is also appreciated!

“One notable hit came in 2025 when Providence Health & Services itself chose a different company, Aetna, to manage health benefits for its own employees. The exception was employees of Providence Health Plan, who continued to be insured through Providence Health Plan.”

“Is this a done deal? What will be the price structure? What are we going to lose?… We don’t know whether to be bummed out or happy.” Having a public tennis facility was such a surprise when I moved to Portland in 1999. Even though life means I don’t play now, I would hate to see court access lost

(A tiny minority of) Portlanders (w a direct financial stake or acting on behalf of those who do) think shelling out millions of public dollars for a billionaire will improve the Blazers but what NYC shows us is that we just need to elect a socialist mayor & our wildest basketball dreams come true.

In case you missed it, I made a map of places participating in this event that have outdoor seating. www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/e...

On 5/20, OHA reported 1 new COVID death in Oregon; the total is now 10,969. Hospitalizations are at 0.1 per 100,000, the same as the national average. We're in a lull period. Wastewater detections are low statewide. At the end of May, stocks of the Novavax vaccine expire. Now ...

My fellow cis folks, The FCC is asking Americans to submit comments about whether the TV Oversight Management Board (TVOMB) should create new TV ratings to alert viewers to trans/gender content. Time to be an ally and tell the FCC absolutely the fuck not. It takes five minutes to do.

Craving something sweet, but don’t have anything in the house to satisfy it. How many ashwagandha gummies can I eat for it to be considered dessert?

This is as good and funny as everyone says it is.

I’ve seen 4 of these in the last 24 hours - 1 on SE Hawthorne, 1 in the Pearl and 2 in the parking lot at our doctor in Tualatin - and this video offers compelling evidence of why we steer clear of these vehicles and don’t make eye contact with their drivers.

It would be bad enough if this was all she voted for, but the bill literally also has a provision to strip school funding from any school that has books with trans characters, has policies protecting trans students, performs shakespeare’s 12th night, or even has a trans teacher.

and ideally, for this the captain is wearing booty shorts at some point

"Over the past month, The Western Edge has conducted extensive interviews, analyzed hundreds of pages of public safety records, worker’s compensation cases, injury logs and some of Amazon’s own data" to answer a nagging question: What actually happened to Jim Wetmore?

Any Still Coviding folks have a spare $2 million? It would be a real dream to see this place as an outdoor event space and retreat for folks like us.

Earnest requests for clarification and scripts are absolutely legitimate ways to respond to horrible policies. Plus they can really show up how shitty those policies are, AND GET IT ALL IN WRITING. "Ok, and what do I say when they say....?" IN WRITING. Little bits of gravel can be trouble.

Met a hummingbird this morning, while watering the yard. It flew around me, landed within arms length and we looked at each other for a moment. It was magic.

"These colleges... pushed the bounds of what education is, who it is for + how it should be taught. These institutions have been the [R&D] labs for the Ivy League + beyond. They helped develop + legitimize interdisciplinary fields, such as environmental science, Indigenous studies + media studies."

Extremely this. I masked for a long time. Now, a weird symptom of my current disease mash up means... I really can't mask most of the time. Clean air inside would be so much easier, would protect all of us, and just makes sense.

we're closing fire stations but throwing money at this asshole???

This has been especially difficult for the disabled and chronically ill in a world full of Covid. The betrayal by abled friends that won’t make accommodations or simply stopped reaching out has been devastating across the whole community.

Years ago I went to a 5th bday party in Marin County. It was a hot day. The kids mostly ran around the yard. And a set of vegan parents were shocked to learn they could give their kid water to quench her thirst. No matter how much money they have, some people truly don’t know what they are doing.

The thing with Cassidy — who is a gastroenterologist — is he has proven he knows better. His past statements on vaccines were grounded in science. But he voted to confirm RFK Jr in a cynical move to help save his own political career. Trump didn’t give a sh*t.

What if we told you there’s a way to score some deals AND support the Mask Bloc in our first ever in-person fundraiser?? Hope to see you next Saturday for a yard sale! 😷♥️

“We hear that California has one of the five largest economies in the whole world,” Strahan told me. “There’s just no way that this state truly lacks the revenue to ensure that the needs of the most vulnerable Californians are met.”

My family got this notice, as well as an email from an advocacy group telling us to hire a lawyer. So when I tell you I'm done voting Blue No Matter Who, PLEASE believe me. We need proactive, explicit political protection, not "of course there should be fairness in sports" bullshit.

saw this on an ACT UP poster from 1988 at the Poster House museum today. the more things change :)

For my newsletter, I wrote about the killing of Juniper Blessing and ruminated on who the media thinks deserves attention in death. Friday newsletters are usually paywalled, but I have made the mini-essay portion of this post free to all: www.burnsnotice.com/her-name-was...

Seattle, Portland, SF etc all ought to be havens for trans people, immigrants, anyone threatened by fascism But we can’t protect our neighbors if we don’t have enough affordable homes for them to live in Building more housing is not optional