Pandemic 𓅃. Index

🚨 NEW REVIEW: Pressure (2026) One of the best films of the year is how a scientist stood against powerful men & saved countless lives. A breath of fresh air compared to what we saw with COVID-19 policy debates. 👇 READ, SUB, SHARE: pandemicindex.substack.com/p/review-pre...

Er… dissolved into swear words at this point.

“For most healthy young adults, these viruses don't really pose a threat, unless you're challenged with things like COVID.” I lived my first 46 years believing chronic illness didn’t pose a threat to me. And then COVID came for me. www.npr.org/2026/10/23/n...

seems bad www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBaM...

Once more - people's chief beef with Democrats that we hear consistently in focus groups and see in surveys is too weak, not too woke.

This is absurd. The constant, consistent insistence that democracy persists merely because institutions continue to operate flies in the face of both her own evidence and 250 years of American history. This is how a conservative political culture protects itself.

Correct. They called this “nuance.”

it should be pretty easy for any opposition party to come together and state that this agency must be abolished and prosecuted, and yet...

This post in particular is really telling. It's saying - don't expect Democrats to simply right the wrongs. What Republicans take away in 4 years you must expect to spend 20 years to restore, fighting Democrats the whole way.

So here you go ... Thank you again to my friends at both BioWare and EA. To even dream in your sandbox was a privilege. www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBO8...

The Trump Administration's below-the-radar gutting of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is truly flabbergasting -- and is the kind of thing that will lead to avoidable illness and death down the line, even if we won't be able to trace it discretely. www.washingtonsun.com/health/insid...

I recently created my very first zine, which is about how genAI is terrible for humans and the planet! I offer it in a couple different quantity bundles as well, for those who are equally passionate about spreading the good word of "fuck AI": www.etsy.com/listing/4494...

We “have to” accept it.

Discussed here

Surprising no one given the current state of the CDC.

There's a difference between harvesting roadkill and leaving a dead bear carcass in your car while you go out for steak and then dumping it in central park and trying to frame cyclists for the death. www.cnn.com/2024/08/04/p... Or exposing family to rotting whale meat. After chainsawing off its head

Good health has long been the cornerstone of good economies… so… you tell me what a politician that undermines health protection behaviours is…

There's an interesting and dismaying timeline here, in which the company, the FDA and USDA identified the problem weeks ago but no public recall of the tainted chicken wraps was ordered by the government. The information they've shared appears to be due to excellent reporting by @usatoday.com.

Why do mainstream publications keep trying to help Xbox rehabilitate its image? aftermath.site/aftermath-hour...

If they manage to cram in every feature that the store page promises, this free community-made remaster could be better than 90% of official, professional attempts. Fingers crossed for both this project and Arkane. They're going through it right now.

This also explains why it is that the people you keep seeing shoved in your face as "liberal thought leaders" are always pushing moderate conservatism and placating reactionaries: -Steven Pinker -Matt Yglesias -Noah Smith -Malcolm Gladwell -Jonathan Haidt -Ezra Klein ...

🧵 Matt Yglesias is one of the biggest reasons the Democratic Party leadership is so feckless, cowardly, and lazy. I'm not exaggerating. Yglesias is often a featured speaker at private Democratic Party events, despite almost always being wrong. Let's discuss...

@joho.bsky.social lmao www.youtube.com/watch?v=deAC...

It’s hard to decide what part of this story on Marissa Mayer’s new startup is most loathsome, but this “women need a wife or, in other words, a digital servant” construction makes me want to flip over an actual table www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/s...

Bluesky has three kinds of users

If the real priority was actually protecting girls from actual men who pose a risk to them in sports, it would make much more sense to advocate for banning male coaches and male doctors. And I’ve never, ever ever heard that suggestion, because that’s not really what this is about.

There's a group of Democrats who seem convinced they can only win if they throw away trans people and their supporters, as they were convinced they had to throw away Palestinians and their supporters. I don't know if that venn diagram is a circle, but the commonalities in the rhetoric are striking.

you know how there are literature and journalism prizes? i propose that we introduce a system of literature and journalism demerits. if you do bad gonzo journalism that turns you into a mouthpiece for big tech it should earn your book a demerit that appears on the cover like prize stickers do

Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine, the latest report from a UN Commission of Inquiry has concluded.

now watching www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHy3...

The video games industry works by laying off employees. Any video games produced are only an incidental side-effect

MAGA having a normal one over on the Twitter machine

Most folks won't know how fun Koenig was in Babylon 5. It's hard to recommend given the visuals, but it was an important Sci-Fi show and he played a great asshole on it. RIP.

HHS wants a new Medicare code that pays doctors extra only when they attribute a patient’s symptoms to a vaccine. Vaccine critics say doctors are paid to push vaccines. We aren’t. Under this code, we’d be paid to blame them. My new piece in @cidrap.bsky.social: www.cidrap.umn.edu/childhood-va...

Lula Goes HARD