Home sweet home

The rise of larger vehicles like SUVs and pickup trucks, with their taller hoods and larger blind zones, has contributed to a 75% increase in pedestrian and cyclist deaths since 2009. Until we design better streets and ban these vehicles, people outside these vehicles will keep dying.

tfw you stumble across someone online you’re ~90% sure was a long lost friend circa 6th grade (palm crest) but also has a super common name so don’t want to be weird about asking

Long shot, but does anyone have favorite spots to visit in Sarajevo? We have a few more days in this amazing city than anticipated. (Relatedly: *strongly* recommend marrying someone with whom misadventures elevate the travel experience rather than detract from it. Best 20th anniversary trip ever.)

ngl our new pet sitter raised the bar for pic updates

Sara is being modest — this history article is wildly relevant to wide ranging discussions about public health, data-as-politics, and labor impacts of new technology.

To be painfully sincere for just a moment: this is still so surreal, and means the world to me in a very hard year. Also, the whole team that put this issue together was really wonderful. ❤️ Most importantly, I got to hear the world's largest Van de Graaff generator play the Ghostbusters theme 🎸

Dylan, on life in your 80’s, is incredible. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/o...

Sometimes I think, But decorum, or, but civility, And then I think, But USAID. Or really, a billion other things.

tfw you forget you’re wearing your favorite “vaccines cause adults” t-shirt while running errands until you notice the double takes

Just splurged at my neighborhood bookstore. But which should I pack for a Balkans roadtrip? (Other recommendations also welcome!)

It is disturbing that the head of the NIH thinks that babies get vaccinated against HPV. Could he have mean HBV, shorthand for the hepatitis B vaccine? Babies need that one at birth. Together, those two vaccines prevent SEVEN types of cancer, including ones that predominantly hit men.

So this is bad for obvious reasons, but even more concerning if you know how many companies already provide access to anonymized claims / EHR data for health outcomes research. I.e., there are plenty of lower hanging opportunities for spurious analysis unless identifying individuals *is* the point.

It's not just measles: Doctors are seeing more of a number of vaccine-preventable illnesses. And it's not just childhood vaccines: They're seeing more adults refuse tetanus shots after injuries, and even blood transfusions bc the blood might come from a vaccinated donor. From me and Dani Blum:

I am BEYOND thrilled to share my article for Public Health mag: Baltimore has cut its homicide rate by almost 60% (!!!!) by supporting those most at risk of suffering from or committing gun violence. Other cities, take note: magazine.publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/baltimo...

Sitting in an @academyhealth.bsky.social ARM26 research talk: 🚨 A standard PCP work week of 36 hours of patient-facing time requires 60 (!!!) total work hours per week 🚨 And we wonder why PCPs are burning out and leaving clinical care 🤔

Historian partner pulled his nose out of the archives long enough to wander obliviously around London this afternoon, Marcus Brody style

Can mosquitoes learn to love DEET? 🦟 Research published yesterday suggests that mosquitoes may learn to associate the smell of DEET with dinner—and start gravitating toward it instead of away from it. Read more: ow.ly/jFzP50Z5JPH

Opus 4.8 just one-shot an Excel cost effectiveness model for a hypothetical vaccine — including plausible assumptions with citation, upside / downside scenarios, and sensitivity analyses. ~15 minutes from scratch to functional prototype at “medium” effort during a video meeting.

Today's VRBPAC felt straight out of an alternate reality where the government still valued expert scientific deliberation in the face of complexity & uncertainty

just accidentally typed the word "philoslopical," I think maybe I need to write an essay about that word now

We've launched In Development! It is aiming to be the New Yorker for global development. We want to promote discourse on development without dogma - stories doing deep-dives into pressing development issues, backed up by evidence, argument, and experience. Subscribe here: indevelopmentmag.com

“Jens Kuhn, a virologist who serves on the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, said that the recent outbreaks point to yawning gaps in our understanding of the so-called virosphere, the millions — perhaps even trillions — of virus species thriving around us.”

Pretty wild how much our current AI landscape hinges on the 2003 Harvard housing lottery

“Our most urgent challenges, whether the governance of artificial intelligence, the erosion of democratic norms, or the challenge of building shared meaning across fractured communities, are not engineering problems with determinable solutions.”

2026: did you see Anthropic's rebuttal to the Pope on consciousness? Chris Olah made some strong points. 2027: did you see Claude's rebuttal to the Pope on consciousness?

Today, Coefficient Giving is launching the Strep A Vaccine Fund, a multi-donor initiative to accelerate vaccine development against one of the world's most neglected infectious diseases relative to its scale. Strep A kills ~639,000 people a year. There is no vaccine. I think that can change 🧵

Must-read reporting by @propublica.org. EMTALA is supposed to safeguard access to emergency stabilizing treatment, but red states’ vague abortion laws leave patients and their physicians unclear on what care is permissible. Not hard to see why OB-GYN residency apps tumbled in restrictive states.

US dengue cases jumped 359% in 2024 amid global surge. 🦟 Most infections were acquired abroad, but the mosquitos that spread the virus are present across broad swaths of the US. Read more: ow.ly/w0UN50Z4fbp

DINKmobile

Here are the questions, they’re not about median/average real wages

Can’t see any problems this is going to create.

I was so disheartened to hear from WHO about a family whose loved one died from Bundibugyo virus on 5 May, but their body was returned to the family in an unacceptable coffin. As a result, they had high risk exposure changing it to bury them with dignity. Safe & dignified burial is critical.

"RFKJr's continued attacks on vaccines are more apparent when one considers his financial disclosures" and other Friday musings brought to you by D3 @drdemetre.bsky.social @dbj63.bsky.social www.ms.now/opinion/rfk-... @msnowcomms.bsky.social

I have seen this shared and people have asked me if it means that ACIP is going back to its new charter or if it's just incompetence. The short answer is that we do not know, as yet, what ACIP's charter will look like. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20... 1/3

Our new brief describes the history of and current policy context for federal vaccine injury compensation programs. Learn about the two programs, including the vaccines covered, compensation rates, and other factors: https://on.kff.org/49nXWvt

Hospital Prices Have Risen Much Faster for Private Insurance Than Medicare Since 2019 www.kff.org/health-costs...

This just gives me the ick. IMHO naked lobbying would be far better than dressing up jingoistic propaganda as “research.” When powerful companies uncritically invoke the rhetoric of US democracy they are tacitly enabling the rise of authoritarianism here, too — and embed it in future LLM training.

this is because the only two ideological factions that take this seriously are broadly the paypal mafia/thieliete faction and the effective altruist faction, and they conduct most of this conflict in sort of an occult corporate-technocratic way

Bill Cassidy didn’t just enable, but actively empowered RFK Jr. (and the other dangerous actors in our public health bureaucracy) who he knew would be dangerous to public health and erode vaccine trust & access, not because he thought they were good, but because he didn’t want to be primaried. Well…

Pretty cool! (In anticipation of inevitable complaint that “we knew this” it’s good to bring data and research design to important ideas)

for NYT op-ed, i construct a theory of the “expertise gap” that keeps people like Dawkins falling for the idea that A.I. is conscious. the gap is in the machine: complex statistical/linear-algebraic kludge —> cultural output. a new kind of reading results www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/o...

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.

A more accurate title would be "Kennedy is wasting taxpayer dollars on a confirmation bias-fueled witch hunt in an attempt to drive the return of vaccine-preventable diseases."

We could do a lot worse.

My colleague @stephseifertphd.bsky.social just published new groundbreaking work on hantaviruses in the United States as part of our shut down @viralemergence.org project. Want to prevent hantavirus outbreaks here? Fund her work. wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/...

NEW - Trump has signed off on a plan to fire his FDA Commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary. www.wsj.com/health/healt...