Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 3h

Oh wow, you love Hitler? Stop the presses. Call everyone. Should we throw a parade? Should we open up a new undersecretary position?

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 5h

POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

@politico.com
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

1

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 4h

Who cares if he takes your questions when he's just going to lie (or make stuff up if he really has dementia), anyway? That's not a loss.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 4h

Trump: "I don't take questions from ABC fake news after what you did with Stephanopoulos to the vice president of the United States."

1

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 5h

Look I don't love their heavy-handed tactics, but you can see the sincere concerns about antisemitism on college campuses from Republicans.

Sam Adams @samadams.bsky.social · 5h

"If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked fr fr"

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

www.politico.com

3

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 5h

Unless you have a chemistry lab to test this stuff yourself it is insane to take any supplement, from gas station horny goat weed all the way up to vitamin D from a pharmacy. None of this stuff is independently regulated! You're trusting the company (or someone they paid) to tell you what's in it!

2 11

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 5h

Is this a good time to remind everyone (as the article covers at length) that there is effectively no regulation by the FDA or any other government body of any supplement? And that the definition of "supplement" is very, very wide?

paris martineau @paris.nyc · 6h

my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements

we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵)

www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...

Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead - Consumer Reports

CR tests of 23 popular protein powders and shakes found that most contain high levels of lead.

www.consumerreports.org

8 55 160

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 6h

They certainly could not point to anything in the reviews that reduced their esteem of the paper. And that's the only reason you should reject a paper after sending it out for review IMO.

2

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 7h

I chose my words deliberately.

1

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 7h

I mean I'm a biased party obviously, but no. IIRC their argument was about it not being a high enough priority which is something you should have decided before you ever sent it out for review, period.

2 1

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 7h

This is why I continue to bring my son to every protest where there's not a preexisting threat of regime violence.

It's really hard to make people scared of a crowd full of toddlers.

Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 11h

one of the reasons they're so mad at "no kings" is that they thought they were going to get a different kind of protest. they *want* the black bloc to be out there fighting with the cops. those are the images they've been trying to generate from "go." instead--

newrepublic.com/article/2016...

MAGA Rage at “No Kings” Boils Over—and It Quickly Backfires on Trump

As Trump allies smear the coming protests, a good writer on MAGA skewers the absurdity of these attacks on large swaths of Americans—and explains why our best recourse will be to turn out in force.

newrepublic.com

1 9

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 8h

I sent that paper to JOSPT instead where it won the best paper of the year award, so Neurology and the editors that spiked it can take that in their pipes and smoke it.

4

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 8h

Like if you're gonna desk reject it, desk reject it! That's fine! No problem! But to get multiple rounds of positive, constructive reviews and THEN kill it is maybe the most unprofessional thing I've seen in science, ever.

2 2

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 8h

My worst experience by a mile was when I had a paper at Neurology that made it through 3 rounds of review, all positive, and then got axed by the EIC (or maybe the AE then backed up by the EIC) at the last second. Unbelievably unprofessional. I told them so and never submitted to them again.

2 1 4

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 10h

That's just the FDA. Same can be said for Bhattacharya at NIH and Kulldorff at ACIP. They put themselves up as critical scientists willing to buck conventional wisdom when it conflicts with the truth.

Watch how often they do - or don't - do that with respect to RFK.

1

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 10h

Once they leave their positions and return to academia, it is probably worth remembering articles like this when considering how to interpret the work of Makary, Prasad, and their ilk. It sounds very much like they're operating as commissars for RFK Jr. rather than sober scientists.

Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 10h

Reshma Ramachandran “said the sequence of events is the antithesis of how the FDA is supposed to function.

“What we’re seeing here is, ‘We believe this and we’re going to find the evidence to support that’ …That’s just inherently wrong in terms of how a scientific agency like the FDA operates.”

Inside FDA, career staffers describe how political pressure is influencing their work

Current and former FDA staff said the level of involvement of political officials in nitty-gritty regulatory matters is unprecedented.

www.statnews.com

2 10 38

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 11h

Jesus?

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 1d

This is a genuine surprise to me but I guess "AOC wants to outlaw hamburgers" was ALSO a confession of an accusation?

George Pearkes @peark.es · 1d

Beef is just crazy expensive rn, especially compared to other commodities

Chart showing beef prices relative to the Bloomberg Commodity Index since 1965

2

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 1d

Truth, reconciliation, things of that nature.

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 2d

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

31
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

1 2

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 2d

"This statistics class is about resistance and anti-fascism" would have made me roll my eyes out of my head a year ago, and now I don't know what else I could say! The entity I'm trying to protect you against the most isn't advertisers or lawyers but our own government.

1

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 2d

"Both Democrats and Republicans lie."

OK, stipulated. But there is one party that sees truth purely as an inconvenience and is working to annihilate it.

If I'm teaching you to think and be able to identify lies better, you're going to apply those skills more often on one side than the other.

1 2

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 2d

This is also why I now tell students on day 1 of my statistical thinking class that the course is now political. It's not my choice. There's no way around it.

Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 2d

Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Pope Leo calls for news agencies to stand as bulwark against "post-truths," lies and manipulation

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the "ancient art of lying" and manipulation.

www.cbsnews.com

1 5

Reposted by Zach Binney

Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 2d

Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Pope Leo calls for news agencies to stand as bulwark against "post-truths," lies and manipulation

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the "ancient art of lying" and manipulation.

www.cbsnews.com

170 3.1K 9.4K

Reposted by Zach Binney

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

Thankfully, some of yesterday's CDC firings have been rescinded.

But this should be a major scandal, not business as usual in this shitshow of an administration. It's either spectacular incompetence or an effort to make even politically untouchable positions feel precarious to those in them.

Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 @helenbranswell.bsky.social · 2d

100s of #CDC employees were notified Friday they were being fired — RIF'd. The firings cross multiple parts of the agency, endangering its core mission of keeping Americans safe.
Saturday, some were informed they were RIF'd in error.
Hard to imagine how this happens www.statnews.com/2025/10/11/c...

CDC battered by government shutdown firings, while some are rescinded

The White House’s mass firing of CDC staff on Friday has decimated offices related to injury prevention, respiratory disease surveillance, and chronic disease, according to four people familiar with t...

www.statnews.com

15 210 790

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 2d

Very little you can tell me to make me think less of you at this point than that you work anywhere on the business or financial side in Silicon Valley.

2

Zach Binney @binneyz.bsky.social · 2d

For those keeping score at home this would the second time the private sector business geniuses and Silicon Valley wizards have fired a bunch of CDC's EIS officers only to say "whoopsie doodle."

This must be what they mean when they tell folks to go to get more productive private sector jobs.

Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 3d

New reporting: many apparently fired at CDC in 'error'. This is a failure by design given that the admin does not care about fulfilling agency missions. This is the kind of error that should have political consequences.

Unserious people cause real-world harm.

🎁
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/h...

Trump Administration Will Rehire Scores of Experts Fired in Error

www.nytimes.com

1 4

Reposted by Zach Binney

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3d

an incontestable fact of the second trump administration is it is actively trying to sicken and kill as many americans as it can

Lena Sun @lenasun.bsky.social · 3d

NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd:
—leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases;
—leadership of global health center
—leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4

150 1.6K 5.6K