Public health advice if you're in the greater DC area: 1) avoid the entire national mall area — risks include heat stroke and getting blown up 2) run all of the air purifiers you have

Not safe to be anywhere near the national mall tomorrow, friends. The name of the company Trump picked for the fireworks, Pyrotecnico, sounded familiar. www.nbcboston.com/news/local/i...

Amazing that it was a question that really needed to be asked. I'm glad they asked it.

This will only matter if you go to your institutions and organizations and tell them "get in the game"

Sooo... "Dr. Acton said she agrees with the law prohibiting transgender women and girls from participating in women's and girls' sports. 'I do not support boys playing in girls sports. This is already settled law in Ohio, and as governor I will enforce and uphold the law,' Dr. Acton said."

wut, you don't consider phrenology to be a science?

🧪 Members of the scientific community: the comment window is still open.

Pleasantly surprised, ngl.

🧪 Do voters want the scientific community to have a say (i.e. via notice and comment) about OMB's proposed rule giving White House officials final control over scientific grant funding? 🧪

🧪 Do voters want the scientific community to have a say (i.e. via notice and comment) about OMB's proposed rule giving White House officials final control over scientific grant funding? 🧪

🧪 New from @dataforprogress.org: Federal research grants are awarded on scientific merit judged by panels of scientists and outside experts. Trump has moved to change that. Voters don't approve. www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2026/7/...

Highly recommended read. I've become pretty extreme in my views and concerns about "AI". This distills a very large amount of experience and wisdom to provide an excellent guide for making hard decisions about its use, when last resorts are all you may have. #AIResist #AIDefeat

I'm a healthcare lawyer. The AI threat I actually worry about isn't Skynet launching nukes, it's the algorithm your insurer uses to deny your care. Here's the honest — and deeply fraught — case for fighting it with AI of your own. www.patreon.com/mattbc/posts...

the one turtle i would NEVER help

ableds are wild.

Never give up, never surrender. Keep going

This fails to understand what 'preferentially killing disabled people' means. It means that despite knowing the death toll (doi.org/10.1136/bmj....) No 10 (& 11 for that matter), with the confidence of a majority of parl, have chosen to underfund the NHS, and the NHS has chosen not to install a/c.

Listen, I understand the danger of false hope — but c'mon!

Hang on and you can outlive this monster

trump is talking about threesomes i really, really, really hate this timeline

So in NYC @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social is deploying mobile air conditioning vans staffed with medical personnel to keep people (disabledpeople!) from dying in the heat. Europeans are still in my replies arguing my people should die.

They’re genuinely trying to kill science

I'm so thankful to Becky and her mom for their trust, generosity, and strength in front of the Supreme Court. No matter what the Court says, Becky is a hero for standing up for herself and trans girls like her. Doing what's right, even when the odds are against you, is the definition of courage.

run.

My replies are full of people who are absolutely fine with preferentially killing disabled people. Who says that this niche social media app is too woke 🙃

And predictably Europeans are justifying why it's fine that only the ICU has A/C. It's not fine. Just like it's not fine that healthcare facilities here don't have mandatory masking and air filtration. The only thing that makes it seem fine is how many are cool with killing the disabled.

active malice is not a requirement for participating in eugenics. a lot of people are 'just' INDIFFERENT about disabled and chronically ill people or find us inconvenient without wanting to slit our throats themselves (which would be more honest).

But it's not health care for everyone. That's very much my point.

europeans preferring to kill chronically ill people instead of installing air conditioning in fucking hospitals is straight up eugenics.

Here’s the way to price this: a scrum team of ~8 people is $2 million a year, at federal contracting rates. So that’s 62 scrum teams per year. As anybody from the software development world knows, that is absurd.

I’m currently doing my #internalmedicine #boards questions that I end up cramming at the end of each quarter, and have to put aside my knowledge that half these meds I need to answer these meds in a hypothetical IM utopia are either not available at all or too expensive for a real #patient

our collapsing health system: rationing cancer chemo therapy meds www.nytimes.com/2026/06/24/h...

Clean indoor air is *the* main answer to the spread of respiratory disease. Just like in the 20th century we agreed potable water and unpolluted outside air were public goods, in the 21st we should be mandating air changes per hour and filtration inside.

Two new pots of money (one private, one public) totaling $650M, targeting clean indoor air. I'm concerned by the private fund's structure, but today I'm choosing to focus on the benefits that could result from new money flowing into efforts to clean our indoor air www.patreon.com/mattbc/posts...

Be annoying. A nag. Obnoxious to them. Stay on their ass like the worst tailgater in traffic.

This is SO good. This stuff took me years to learn. Having it spelled out like this would have been an absolute GIFT. If you have to navigate health insurance stuff, you might reeeally want to read this

Your health insurer is not your partner in your care. It is a company that decided, in advance, that some amount of your suffering is an acceptable cost of doing business. It denies claims because denying is cheap — and because it's betting you won't fight. 🧵 www.patreon.com/mattbc/posts...

Who is "the Democratic Party"? Is it party officials and DNC insiders? Is the Democratic Party the Dem voters who turn out to choose candidates? Can there be a Democratic Party that tells those voters, in fair, open primaries, "no, you're wrong"?

When your health requires you to go to law school, you might be an American.

My worst lawyering, as requested. A bunch of you asked to see the actual letter I sent CareFirst after they "investigated" whether I live in the Maryland they bill every month. Here it is, lightly redacted. 👇 www.patreon.com/mattbc/posts...

Does anyone have advice about measures that capture childhood SES for adults? We won't have information on the neighborhoods where people grew up unfortunately.

🟠 I wonder which 79 year old could have convinced Lilly and FDA to give them retatrutide 🟠

Today is my last day at Scientific American, which has been sold to LabX media group. For three decades I've led the magazine's coverage of human origins, archaeology, paleontology, animal behavior, ecology, BIRDS. End of an era. Anyway this feels weird to say, but I'm now available for assignments!

When this sort of insurance bullshit happens, I write about how I respond in the hope (however slim) that maybe someone else will find reading about it helpful in their own insurance fights. I can’t represent you, but I can show you how a healthcare lawyer fights - and maybe that’s useful

Is "you can't have a carryon, you have to check all of your bags if using a wheelchair" actually a thing?

My surgeon scheduled my next surgery. A week later CareFirst demanded I prove I live in Maryland in 14 days or lose coverage — mailing the letter from TEXAS, so my 14 days was really 6. You shouldn't need to be a lawyer to get healthcare.... www.patreon.com/mattbc/posts...

first, @maysoonzayid is a friend & the person berating them has also publicly attacked me, so i'm not claiming any sort of removed objectivity here. but i am enough of a public health expert to be baffled by this approach — it is not persuasive, it is not successful.