It was the deepest honor to announce February 12 as DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS DAY in Athens and honor the band from the stage of the Fabulous 40 Watt Club. LET THERE BE ROCK!

This is a wallpaper sample for the bathroom. That’s supposedly a fire hydrant. 🤔

Emergency puppy repost.

Have you ever smooshed a 7 week old Cairn Terrier against your face? It’s incredibly therapeutic.

That’s some strong Tapetum game right there.

A PhD candidate at Harvard Nutrition steps forward, head bowed. Walter Willett, dressed in full regalia, solemnly reaches into two fishbowls. One is full of slips of paper with nutrients/foods on them. The other, diseases. The random pair he withdraws is their dissertation topic. *Trumpets sound*

NEW: The FDA just shot down Moderna's new flu shot. From me: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Here’s a reporter who can’t tell the difference between “important details” and “unsupported allegations.” I wonder what several months of uncrontrolled spread of a virus with R0~3 and a 0.5% CFR would have looked like in a city of 13 million people 🤔

TrumpRx so far seems all sizzle, no steak. It only lists *43* medications, more than half of which are available in generic form at significantly cheaper prices elsewhere. My latest: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

By executive order, in response to last night’s shameful display of Multiculturalism, Taco Tuesday is now being replaced by Tunafish Sandwich on White Bread Tuesday effective immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

If “the urgency of normal” is a child development principle, it should apply universally. I’d welcome links if I missed it, but I haven’t seen David Leonhardt, Lucy McBride, TracyBeth Hoeg, Vinay Prasad, David Zweig, or Emily Oster say anything abt kids being denied their right to a public education

Is Shaggy running comms for Trump?

For those of you who aren’t public health nerds, what the Bandim project researchers are doing is an epidemiological shell game. Claiming to study one thing, only to hide the ball if their outcomes don’t meet their expectations. It’s scientific malpractice on top of a horrific lack of ethics.

Not really a surprise, but it's still surprising to me that some chose to believe his lie

I’m sure there’s an Impressionist painting that looks like this. Dog with Moosehead.

Jaw dropping research ethics violations and scientific malfeasance.

Not only the most corrupt admin (regime) in American history, but also the dumbest bunch of fucks imaginable.

ICE at the polls! Bannon is basically yelling “fire” in a crowded theater here. His objective is to cause chaos (and suppress votes on the left). And it’s already working. This threat works on multiple levels and doesn’t have to be “real” to serve its purpose. Let me explain & offer some advice.

The results of HCA greed “An 88-year-old woman recovering from hip surgery…died after going 13 hours without receiving a needed blood transfusion. Another patient’s heart stopped for 15 minutes leading to brain damage after staff didn’t respond to an urgent request for heart monitoring.” #Asheville

Reporting this story in Cameroon, I met people who were blind because larval worms died in their eyeballs: NTDs cause immense suffering and disability. But they're preventable! And treatable! And eliminatable!

Blocking every person who criticizes you for being chummy with Epstein is going to make Bluesky a very lonely place for you. You’ll be better off on X Nick.

Only 10 cases of Guinea worm disease were recorded *globally* last year. It may become the second human disease we eradicate, after smallpox.

There should be a dog show where they don’t have to be purebred or meet any breed or behavior standards, and everyone just admires how cute they are, then everyone gets a prize cause they’re all perfect.

I mentioned that NC cited our hospital in “immediate jeopardy” for the fourth time since HCA took it over 5 years ago and slashed staff to pay for executive pay packages. This time the failure to isolate symptomatic measles cases with a known exposure to the SC outbreak for 2 hours played a role.

I mean, just look at the picture. Obviously the poor thing can’t breathe.

#Blackhistorymonth fact of the day: Vaccine science was introduced to the US by an enslaved man named Onesimus. He knew how to prevent smallpox thru variolation, an African prevention technique, taught it to his enslaver & saved hundreds of people. www.history.com/articles/sma... #VaccinesWork

Here ya go! www.kickstarter.com/projects/rif...

Are recent rabies reports cause for concern? https://news.vin.com/doc/?id=13112369

Interesting because there are several studies showing modest increases in antibody responses to vaccines given in the morning vs later in the day.

Some very interesting context (and wild tales!) about the mushrooms that cause “Lilliputian hallucinations” in some people. Includes a more general discussion of “being encounters” Long known in association with psychedelics like DMT (predating McKenna’s popularization of the drug).

Far In by Helado Negro. Damn this is far out.

See? I’m getting a flamethrower because I care about it public health.

This album, and Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, are my two favorite Stevie albums

Part of Stevie’s peerless run of 70s masterpieces (although I agree with @gavinyamey.bsky.social that Herbie Hancock’s run was similarly legendary). Stevie played most of the instruments. Background vocals include Paul Anka, Minnie Riperton, the Jackson 5, Shirley Brewer, the Persuasions. Holy cow.

Part of what I’m saying is that university presidents and finance apparatuses knew and supported these relationships We can and should blame the individuals named in the files but they represent a larger structural phenomenon and it’s not just rape culture

Academia’s clusterfuck of a funding environment might induce people to beg for money from the world’s worst people, but it doesn’t excuse anyone who begged for money from the world’s worst people.

These “counts of mentions in the files” are a real Erdös number for the pedophile set.

HCA has absolutely ruined what used to be a point of pride for our region. All for corporate greed. What an embarrassment. “The finding, which means that deficiencies at the hospital endanger patients’ lives and safety, is one of the most serious sanctions a hospital can face.”

P Values and Replicability “The actual probability of reaching the same result in a repeated experiment is conditional on truth… which we do not know.” From Cayetano & Mantero (2021): “Conditional Uncertainty: Misinterpretations of ‘Significant’ p Values”: doi.org/10.1111/jocs...

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Watched the first four episodes of Wonderman last night. It’s fantastic. You don’t have to know anything about Marvel to enjoy it. You can be a Marvel hater and enjoy it.

Today's @nytimes.com dialogue with Ross Douthat & Jay Bhattacharya is tough sledding. I wrote a book on how silent transmission made COVID harder to stop and drove misleading narratives. The interview continues to mislead as a means to seize more power. a 🧵 www.amazon.com/Asymptomatic...

New paper! "Infectious disease outbreak controllability: biological, social and public health factors" - we provide a modelling-informed discussion of what 'controllability' means for an infectious disease outbreak. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

These are my favorite kind of modeling studies. A lot of people want models to precisely predict the future, but the best models help give us a framework for understanding what we are observing in real time, which in turn can inform expectations about potential future outcomes.

Timeline cleanse. Penny wondering if her Giraffe will make for a good scarf when the ice storm hits.

Ivermectin CRI is his only hope.

This is wild. Nature is amazing.

In case anyone is wondering how apeshit people get in the south when there’s winter weather in the forecast, this photo from our local Harris Teeter today has been making the rounds. And this is Asheville where we are at least somewhat prepared plow and salt-wise. Thoughts and prayers to Charlotte!

Here’s hoping ICE learns nothing from Napoleon.