There's actually some good news this week! First vaccine targeting SARS virus family enters human trials! Four EU orgs form international federation Long COVID Rise Up! Metformin helps prevent Long Covid! And check out that sweet neon green mask fit. Click, share!
gregg r
My coat is black and the moon is yellow
Here is where I get off
Boomer into #cycling, sysadmin from the early days, hardcore #SteelyDan fan. #MaskUp #CovidIsNotOver #ITMFA #ProtectTransKids #LGBTQ #Enshittification #FYYFF
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." -- H.L. Mencken, 1916.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John F. Kennedy
This is one of the best pieces @pluralistic has written. He rightly reminds us: "The question isn't merely 'How do we elect better leaders?' It's 'How do we make our leaders follow us?'"
Such are the days that shall be!
But what are the deeds of to-day,
In the days of the years we dwell in,
that wear our lives away?
Why, then, and for what are we waiting?
There are three words to speak;
WE WILL IT
--William Morris, "The Day is Coming", 1891
Things change.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/05/contingency/#this-too-shall-pass
gregg r boosted:
Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: All laws are local; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/05/contingency/
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gregg r boosted:
Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Justin Key's "The Hospital at the End Of the World"; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/04/slice-bees/
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gregg r boosted:
New: Epstein’s obsession with DEF CON and his pet “personal hacker” (who held senior position at CrowdStrike), Pentagon demands Anthropic remove AI safeguards so they can do awful things, a paper on evaluating anti-facial recognition tools, and more.
Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-3-149811720
"… if you’re in a bar, and a dude comes in shouting racial slurs and sieg-heiling, you understand that that dude poses an urgent threat in need of confronting. I think a lot of Americans in that situation would tell that Nazi to leave, and if he refused, *physically force* him to leave. … They always pose an urgent threat."
Name them, shame them, shun them, run them out. Not a moment's peace. Ever.
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/can-fascists-still-be-shamed
@pluralistic writes the CliffsNotes of Capitalism: "America is not great. It has been gutted by the Epstein class, who robbed us blind, raped our kids, and are now selling us shitcoins and chatbots and the spectacle of protesters being shot in the streets. But it's not enough to know that the system is rigged. Everybody knows the system is rigged. To build a movement and save our future, we have to know how it is rigged and who rigged it."
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/02/corprophagia/#that-makes-me-smart
gregg r boosted:
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@evacide/116003453964958203
OMG, YES, THANK YOU
In two sentences, a torpedo through the heart of both DHS as a racist secret police •and• AI as an accountability sink.
gregg r boosted:
Stock swindles: A buyback is not just a dividend by another name.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116001748863545707
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gregg r boosted:
There have been exactly two innovations in web browsers in the last 16 years:
1. "Show Reader Automatically" in 2010;
2. "Hide Distracting Items" in 2024.
Everything else has either been a waste of goddamned time, or actively malicious. Mostly the latter.
@fitzscott @pluralistic Agreed -- Garry Trudeau's take on tRump's thinning thatch is chef's kiss.
gregg r boosted:
Love how the collage for tomorrow's blog post turned out.
gregg r boosted:
Today I wrote about the Epstein files, the abusiveness intrinsic to the billionaire mindset, and our culture's enabling instinct to permit depravity as a privilege of power.
"Where does it all end?" That's what's often asked. Rarely asked is "how do we end it?"
gregg r boosted:
RE: https://fediscience.org/@petergleick/115840252024405576
I'm repeating this. The whole fascist, corrupt, MAGA enterprise would grind to a halt if literally half a dozen Republicans in the House and Senate would find a backbone.
gregg r boosted:
New: nearly half of CDC’s disease and outbreak databases/surveillance systems have “gone dark" under Trump, the US marinates in its 12th Covid surge amid worsening cognitive damage data, mRNA cancer vax shows 5-year protection, Phil Collins caught Covid in hospital & now needs live-in nurse, more:
Link to the full brief: https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-january-29-149392047
gregg r boosted:
Catherine O'Hara, Dr. John, John Candy... it's SCTV Polynesiantown. RIP to the glorious Catherine O'Hara.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsVQI3D8rGc
gregg r boosted:
OG App is the coolest app you never heard of. Back in 2022, two teenagers unilaterally disenshittified Instagram by making an "alt-client" that restored all the parts of Insta that made it a success and blocked all the antifeatures that Meta crammed down users' throats after they had them locked in.
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/30/zucksauce/#gandersauce
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The Boss writes the anthem.
"We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis"
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