Something to look up

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.

WHAT THE F**K!

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...

"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.

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...

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.

Chaos being unleashed

Beware of flu

They are gutting NIH like a fish. www.splinter.com/the-unhinged...

Betrayal is betrayal. I always thought better of America.

“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

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.

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...

This!!! Thank you @tribelaw.bsky.social ! Pass it on. Read the comments.

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

Think we’re immune?

👀 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...

Trials abandoned due to the stop-work order on USAID-funded research:

USAID friends… what’s happening to you?

Great plan. What could possibly go wrong?

AUSTRALIA weekly COVID update: 31 January 2025 #COVID19Australia #COVIDisntOVER #COVIDisAIRBORNE

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?

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

“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...

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 good thread about what's missing from where, and a place to report what's gone.

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?

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.

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"

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...

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...

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...

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.”

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?

Whatever your views on assisted dying - this is NOT what democracy looks like.

My piece is out! A history of archaeological scholarship on the potential for matrilineal societies in Iron Age Europe.

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.

"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

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-...

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.

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.

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

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