An HIV outbreak in Maine points to a series of poor policy decisions, including ending needle-exchange programs and clearing a homeless encampment. As those policies go national, there is a risk the disease will spread, too: kffhealthnews.org/news/article... @brian-goldstone.bsky.social

Great piece on underreporting of overdose deaths in Nebraska.

This Day in Labor History: September 10, 1897. Luzerne County sheriff deputies slaughtered 19 unarmed immigrant coal miners striking outside of Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Let's talk about the Lattimer Massacre, one of the many uses of state violence against striking workers!

“The rejection is at least the eighth time in the last month a grand jury has declined to charge felonies sought by US Attorney Jeannine Pirro’s office.“ Don’t try to shirk jury duty. We need you now more than ever!

Took advantage of the summer lull to run the final, official tallies of the 2024 US prez election -- including Alaska this time -- through the #AmericanNations model. Bottom line: despite the astronomical stakes, it was very much like two elections before it. www.nationhoodlab.org/the-2024-pre...

Local library had 6/8 of the Le Guin prize nominees for 2025 (they were all excellent), but now I need to figure out where to get the last two. www.ursulakleguin.com/prize25

It’s wild, absolutely wild, how for EVERY. SINGLE. CITY. Trump wants to militarize I can post data showing how crime is plummeting in all of them without any federal invasion… … and the press KEEPS stenographing the naked bad-faith claims about “fighting crime!” in the headlines. Infuriating.

The argument here is that, unlike Right-leaning institutions, Left-leaning institutions have put professional identity and status ahead of values and ideology, and thus failed to socialize and cultivate the next generation of Left-wing political leaders. I see a lot of truth in this, but I'd add...

I spent last week in Sydney, giving a keynote on how to reduce recidivism (that should be online soon!) and then talking with a variety of researchers, practitioners, and lawmakers about what works to improve public safety. I learned a ton and am grateful to everyone who spent time chatting with me!

We just published an excellent commentary in Vaccine by @gavinyamey.bsky.social & Chris Beyrer breaking down how the current regime is laying waste to US vaccination programs & what we can do about it: ✅Congress must withdraw support for RFK Jr ✅Speak up...loudly ✅Study anti-vax movements ✅VOTE

Recent paper basically says intramuscular naloxone is far superior to intranasal (Narcan) by reducing withdrawal symptoms with a lower dose that works faster. Sample size was small but it's in line with previous results. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ok, for each retweet I’ll provide one insight, fact, or opinion on unconventional naval warfare, like submarines, explosive boats, special forces or crazy ideas 0/n 🧵

Very good essay "Encountering a cop on the street might mean you are encountering a criminal and encountering an armed, masked man might mean you are encountering a cop. The line is blurry. This blurriness between real and fake is the defining characteristic of the moment."

By most measures (suicide, depression, anxiety), U.S. mental health is deteriorating. Bad time to demolish our mental health infrastructure. In a new preprint, @albeccia.bsky.social et al survey the damage from recent mental health grant cuts at NIH & SAMHSA. Check it out: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

AAPOR Statement on the Removal of BLS Commissioner McEntarfer aapor.org/statements/a...

PhD students working on topics related to crime & the criminal justice system in the US: Join us for a research workshop this October! We're bringing y'all together so that you can meet each other, and (selfishly) so the Arnold Ventures CJ team can meet you. Sign up by August 11! bit.ly/3GUT0De

Favorite one of these I've seen so far

Time for a quick round of "Why Do These Polls Look Different" Latest Fox has Rs and Ds essentially tied on inflation/economy; WSJ gives Rs a big lead. Think there's a fairly simple explanation that itself highlights a major dynamic. www.foxnews.com/politics/fox... www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

Vought: "We're going through the same programmatic review on the NIH that we did on Education funding" You mean - the Department you are illegally closing? That is what you are doing with NIH?

Let's talk about the risk of secondhand fentanyl smoke...a thread 🧵 First, let’s set this straight. It’s not really "smoking" because if you combust fentanyl you get noxious chemicals without opioid effect. So it's really vaporization (pyrolysis) at low temperatures (direct flame would destroy it).

There's been a spike in law enforcement shootings resulting in death and the biggest source of increased death is rural people getting killed by county sheriffs. @jesspish.bsky.social www.wsj.com/us-news/poli...

Air quality data on the 4th is always striking. Took a mini dive into the annual smokefest: wapo.st/3Gi3b4p

Afternoon read. Individual and srea-level incarceration and mortality. Open access led by Utsha Khatri. In US from 2008-2019, a 10% increase in county jail rates is associated with 4.6 additional all-cause deaths per 100k people. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Morning read today - Designing better drug regulation: lessons from policy design methods. Open access and new, led by Paul Kelaita. Great read. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I did not realize that the AT Proto dev community has already created alternatives to every platform I use for my community. I'm going to create this thread to explain what each one does and what it replaces. Why should you care? No ads. No corporate owner. Open source. Free, no strings attached.

Surprising findings can generate a lot of attention; counterevidence may not.

I've been using Chat GPT on real data sets that I have already analyzed to teach myself how to be a modern pollster. I have created toplines, Xtabs and visualizations, sort of the bread and butter of my work. HOLY SHIT. The mistakes it has made are so shocking that I want to shoot it into the sun

First, those cities MAGA wants you to think are on fire? Seeing murder hit historic lows; NYC heading for lowest *ever recorded.* Second, the decline has happened as the number of cops has FALLEN. Third, Jeff joins @johnkroman.bsky.social and others in pointing to SOCIAL investment as a driver

NEW poll from @kff.org shows that most of the public are worried about the impacts of federal funding cuts to Medicaid on their families and communities, including 54% who are worried that these cuts would impact their family's ability to get/pay for care. More here: www.kff.org/medicaid/pol...

I'm begging people without experience to have even an ounce of imagination. You don't have a phone or computer or even a physical address. How long does it take you to lose track of the date? What time is it, what day? How do you get to your PO's office? How do you keep track of important documents?

Good thread on medical examiners, coroners, and data

TODAY: Introducing BRAND NEW HYDRA, photographer @todseelie.bsky.social, with a photo essay on crashing the Venice Biennale with a bunch of art punks on rafts made of junk flaminghydra.com/p/f071b948-c...

“Lawmakers reversed course with a bill enacted last fall that recriminalized drugs, allowing police to again arrest people for carrying small quantities. However, legislators promised the law would not be a return to “business as usual” of the war on drugs…” Guess what happened next?🙄

Maybe my favorite use of tax dollars? Public radar updated by the minute with great local detail. Essential for hazardous storms.

Not sad about this at all.

I want to talk population panic & understanding demography. New estimates from @ncfmr-bgsu.bsky.social on completed fertility in the US show that, among women 45-50 in 2024, about 15% were childless. Two-thirds of women had 2 or more children. 1/ doi.org/10.25035/ncf...

Prediction: the next couple of months will determine which US states are able to maintain their sovereignty, vs which state governments will be subsumed into national fascism It may be more complicated than red vs blue states 🧵

We are living in one of the few times in human history where you can buy a loaf of bread and if it says it’s made with wheat flour and salt and yeast and water and nothing else, it’s probably made from just those ingredients, and some people want to END this.

***NEW ANALYSIS*** How long before a #China has a submarine edge over US? www.thebroadside.org.uk/p/04-2025-ch...

☢️In learning about patent medicines I always focused on all the opium and cocaine applications and somehow completely missed the radiation-based patent meds. Things you learn in an @askhistorians.bsky.social thread. www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

A question that's apparently never been asked or answered in Alberta: How many kids are forced into withdrawal from drugs under the PChAD Act every year? Data from 2016-2024, showing unique individuals & total admissions (i.e. many are forced in multiple times per year): 1/

A GREAT use of polling right now would be to ask people questions to assess if they could successfully vote under the SAVE act and provide party crosstabs. I would bet that a lot of Republican women both lack of passport and a birth certificate with their married name.

Just neat

I think we can all agree that misinformation is *just a little bit of a problem* 😢😭 Check out this webinar (from good people) that discusses drug exposure misinformation!

The final report for our (anti) war game is out. We held it in Congress a few weeks ago to model how a Trump attack on Mexican cartels might play out. You can read the results here:

Gave a talk to our PhD students today, and feeling appreciative of all the recent methods work on improving common practices. Thanks to all the authors who work to make their work accessible, especially on social media. A few articles we discussed: