A fun part of interviewing prospective students as my alma mater gets more and more competitive is that I just had an extremely in-depth conversation with a teenager about diplomatic approaches low-income countries can take to mitigate exploitation in cobalt mining

I just bookmarked the Cheetah Cub Cam, this is the fucking cutest

I got so mad at the fake hepatitis vaccination campaign to confirm Bin Laden's presence in Pakistan that I decided I needed to be in whichever future sub-IPCs would prevent anything like that in the future

In other Austin Politics News, my extremely offline private sector boyfriend apparently hung out with our local millennial congressman at the climbing gym for a solid half hour today without realizing it lmao

BREAKING: Sen. Elissa Slotkin says police responded to her home tonight in response to a bomb threat. Slotkin wasn't at home at the time. This is two days after Trump said Slotkin and other Democrats committed "seditious conspiracy, punishable by death."

They are staying at Austin Proper Hotel. Protest @ 7pm Saturday

Austin, surely we can figure out which bars and hotels are posting the DOGE reunion this weekend.

🚨 NEW: Texas has filed its request to have SCOTUS stay Tuesday’s ruling striking down the state’s new congressional map. The state’s filing here: www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/defaul...

big bugs bunny getting elmer fudd to marry him vibes in the white house currently i see

It is actually very useful for Dems that Mamdani *cannot* be part of "Dems in 2028" fray. Unlike Obama, he was for-real born in East Africa. Therefore the skills he shows, and example he sets, in the special circumstance of NYC, can be un-threatening examples and lessons for other Dems elsewhere.

That Mamdani pulled this off in, what, under an hour makes you wonder if other Dem leaders have tried and failed at the same, or if flattery is just not a tool in the arsenal.

Folks we have a teenager in the house

RFK Jr. literally doesn’t believe in germ theory. Basically any American learning about science and medicine in a post-MAHA environment is starting in the 19th century.

Really appreciate an adult in the Senate elevating this (while of course also mourning the decimated capacity of the United States government to do a damn thing about it in practice)

I sat in on a completely fascinating briefing from the Young Men Research Project yesterday. Excerpt attached, but I highly recommend at least skimming the whole thing www.ymrp.org/polling

I sat in on a completely fascinating briefing from the Young Men Research Project yesterday. Excerpt attached, but I highly recommend at least skimming the whole thing www.ymrp.org/polling

Spoke with @tombatemandc.bsky.social for the BBC about US maritime strikes and the law. US legal arguments are "completely unconvincingly." "You're left with a situation which involves premeditated killing outside of armed conflict, and we refer to that as murder." www.bbc.com/news/article...

This feels like a prelude to pledging investigations/prosecutions as the midterms kick off.

This is why I talk about sheriffs a lot when it to comes to immigration: they decide (in most states) on whether to hold people for ICE at all!

This is an interesting case of a patient from Chad infected with a novel arenavirus species/variant/strain, presenting with meningoencephalitis. IMO, could be classified as a highly divergent Lassa virus strain in a new country (similar to what Togo has observed). www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/...

A tribunal in Dhaka sentenced Sheikh Hasina to death for her involvement in the use of deadly force against protesters last year. She fled to India and was sentenced in absentia. n.pr/48hOSYB

I am really struggling to fathom the possibility of losing one's mind over any fucked up man in his 70s who isn't, like, Anthony Bourdain

The outbreak in Ethiopia is #Marburg virus, the first such outbreak for this country. 9 cases so far, including some health workers. x.com/drtedros/sta...

The Project 2029 effort is nice because it keeps everyone who should be banned forever from influential policy positions in the democratic party together

Look, if you're taking out loans for a DrPH program, you are getting bamboozled. And I say that as someone applying to one (1) this cycle

There's a sci-fi short story in here somewhere about the causal agent being CRISPR'd into measles by a vegan extremist group, causing a scylla/charybdis situation for a certain type of person

One of my insane early-career memories was, several months after the fact, learning that a man I occasionally chatted with in the lunch line & definitely had a crush on was SitRoom director. Hope he is doing well and, for his own sake, remains extremely offline!!!

Clearer than ever that these dudes are all obsessed w LLMs because none of them are capable of writing a coherent email

Amazing how many criminals get together and decide the first order of business is emailing each other about the crimes every three minutes

Important to understand the Epstein stuff and the fascism and the corruption are, in a lot of ways, really all the same story from different angles: powerful men who can and do abuse vulnerable people around them because they can, and because systems of elite accountability catastrophically failed

The number one thing I am going to miss about being unemployed in Austin is the ability to waltz into @kutx.bsky.social studio recording sessions with, for example, Jeff Tweedy whenever I want.

Looking into what megachurch in Houston is egging Ted Cruz on re: his severe misconceptions about conflict in Nigeria would be a great investigative journalism project

If I had an ego this fragile I would simply never leave the house www.cnn.com/2025/11/11/p...

Just learned my bottom-tier marketplace insurance - which would increase to $800/mo in January - won't cover a flu shot, in case anyone has any doubt as to whether anyone healthy under 40 is going to willingly remain insured

“The filings for the proposed campaign explain that the messages will reach their audience through ‘the largest geofencing campaign in U.S. history’—a pitch to map the physical perimeters of every major church and Christian college in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado during worship hours”

As expected, Canada has lost its measles-free status because of the long-running outbreak there. With it goes the #measles elimination status of the entire zone of the Americas, the only division of the #WHO to ever have achieved measles elimination. www.statnews.com/2025/11/10/m...

i don’t play pundit and try to guess how stuff will play to voters whose politics generally make no sense to me, but if ending the shutdown was about the important business of getting SNAP benefits and air travel back online, it also rewards hostage taking in a way that seems pretty ominous to me

Also, mass layoffs are happening across a growing number of industries, and the job market is BRUTAL. Anyone who thinks they won't need a marketplace plan in 2026 just because they have employer-sponsored healthcare right now needs a serious reality check

I'm sympathetic to arguments about pay for federal employees but thousands of RIF'd feds & laid off contractors on the ACA Marketplace are about to get doubly fucked over. If I hadn't finally been offered a random job, my monthly premium would have shot up 981% just as unemployment ran out.

Much like 2024, Democrats seem to think there’s a binary choice in the 2026 election between voting for Republicans (evil) and voting for Democrats (feckless). They rarely acknowledge the third option which inevitably harms them the most: staying home.

I'm sympathetic to arguments about pay for federal employees but thousands of RIF'd feds & laid off contractors on the ACA Marketplace are about to get doubly fucked over. If I hadn't finally been offered a random job, my monthly premium would have shot up 981% just as unemployment ran out.

"Dems cannot successfully cave because John Cornyn got trapped in a broom closet" would be easily the funniest way for tonight to end

"Austin isn't weird anymore" they said

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

Haven’t seen a block this smooth since Dkembe Motumbo was active

Failed country.

congrats to everyone for thinking this through before signing very big contracts to put it on every student’s device at the school or university you run

Very much enjoying www.trumpcancelledmyflight.com

For months, I’ve been following a Canadian ostrich farm ordered to cull its flock after a bird flu outbreak. It was a cause célèbre for MAHA activists, a MAGA billionaire, and, of course, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The trucker convoy with birds ended last night. They lost. www.msnbc.com/news/news-an...

NEW: Talarico leads Allred by 6 points, 48% to 42%, despite facing a 28 point name ID deficit. Without going up on air, Talarico was still able to surge 36 points in just 2 months, a feat attributable to a massive earned and social media presence.