Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Not all heroes wear capes.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Everybody saw this coming.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

An almost top 10,000 blog!

He really is that stupid.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it’s a trap.

How stupid are these people?

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Grim Grey Dawn Open Thread: What the F*ck Is A Vaccine Skeptic?

Grim Grey Dawn Open Thread: What the F*ck Is A Vaccine Skeptic?

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just thrilled that a drug addict with brain worms, a face that looks like a 1978 Rawlings catcher's mitt, and a voice that sounds like he has been sucking on the muffler of a 1947 Jeep Willys for three decades "getting me healthy."

— John Cole (@johngcole.bsky.social) February 13, 2025 at 11:26 PM

Albert Burneko, at Defector:

At darker moments, contesting this kind of stuff in the wake of the 2024 election—and all the shameless, shameful, unforgivable work the American media did to produce that election’s outcome—feels as absurd as demanding the cannibal presently eating your legs use a knife and fork. In less dark moments, that contestation feels like just about the only form hope can take. The language still exists. Maybe someone will need it, someday, to accomplish some good in the world, while the world still exists. If that’s ever to be possible, then our language has to retain some usefulness, too. It has to be tended…

What is skepticism? In my lifetime as a word-nerd, I have known “skepticism” to refer to a sort of stubborn insistence upon rigor and evidence in place of things like dogma and “common sense.” A skeptic, by those terms, is someone who questions what they are told. Crucially, a skeptic actually questions, as in seeks answers. A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter. A person who rejects empirical knowledge, who refuses the answers that exist while requesting ones more to their liking that flatter their preference for unfounded contrarian gibberish and conspiratorial paranoia, is not a skeptic. They’re the exact opposite of that: a mark. A sucker. A credulous boob…

How does a shit-for-brains like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. come to be described as a “vaccine skeptic” in the New York Times, in 2024, when he absolutely is not one, and when there is also no such thing as one? As a copy matter, “skeptic” certainly costs less column space than engaging with the question of whether Kennedy’s anti-vax fear-mongering reflects the cynical calculus of a scumbag grifter or the sweaty but sincere raving of a dumb guy with grave mental illness, or both, or what. On the other hand, “skeptic” is one character longer than “denier,” which is without question the more factually upstanding term here, as it merely describes what Kennedy does—he denies the efficacy of vaccines—and makes no claims about the basis of that denial.

Surely the incurable politeness of America’s boneless legacy press plays a role in this. “Vaccine denier” simply is not flattering to Kennedy; “vaccine skeptic” makes him seem … well, like the kind of person that antivaxxers like to think they are: serious, flinty-eyed question-askers, rather than stubborn assholes stamping their feet and refusing to learn what can be fully known because they want some special hidden truth of their own. At any rate, “vaccine skeptic” certainly is nicer and less contentious than calling Kennedy a motivated bullshitter, a peddler of antiscientific garbage, the type of dogshit-brained imbecile who will stiff-arm all that can be learned from centuries of medical research and practice because he preferred what he learned from a 25-second TikTok video made by a spiral-eyed homeschool casualty who’ll be hospitalized next month with an illness that hasn’t sickened a human being since the Bronze Age. That laundering does him a favor he doesn’t remotely deserve, but it is especially egregious now that Kennedy seems very likely to end up holding a powerful position in national government. It’s that last bit, as much as his famous name, that wins Kennedy that favor; if this clammy lummox is going to be in charge of something important, then the Times must do its customary job of dressing him for the part…

Reader Interactions

159Comments

  3. 3.

    Suzanne

    drug addict with brain worms, a face that looks like a 1978 Rawlings catcher’s mitt, and a voice that sounds like he has been sucking on the muffler of a 1947 Jeep Willys for three decades

    Don’t forget “jacked up on steroids”.

  4. 4.

    VeniceRiley

    Cutting edge science will be done: ELSEWHERE. And you’ll be lucky if you can buy in US at all; You know they’ll be banning these products.

  5. 5.

    Tony Jay

    I’ve been on/off lurking since 12 to 14 million ‘not now, darling, I’m reading the newspaper’ American voters decided they’d rather go into an induced coma than tick the box for a black chick, and so ushered in the Klickbait Klan’s version of Year Zero, but I just had to stop by for a second and announce that the above excerpt and I will be tying the knot in a small ceremony at a chapel around the back of Duluth’s second largest Adult Entertainment Metroplex before heading off to Banff for a week of skiing and staring into each other’s eyes over a continental breakfast. I love it that much.

    Stay strong, good people. Pace your rage.

    And now I’m off. The excerpt wants waffles before we attach our electrodes and try out the love-seat.

  6. 6.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Suzanne:

    I watched one of his confirmation hearings a couple of weeks ago, and I have never seen anyone’s eyes blink as fast as his did. Don’t know whether it was drugs, or stress, or that he was lying through his teeth, or — trying to be open-spirited here — a symptom of his illness, but it was really something to watch, both deeply disturbing and mesmerising. Would love to read a body-language expert’s take on that. I try not to think about RFKJr any more than I have to, but I’ve not been able to get his machine-gun blinking out of my mind.

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Tony Jay:

    It is good to see you, TJ. I can’t blame you at all for doing the necessary self-care, but please ease your way back in. You’re a valued voice in these parts, and we’ve missed you.

    And huge gratters to you and the excerpt!

  9. 9.

    Rusty

    @Tony Jay: If you really are tying the knot, then congratulations!  Otherwise it’s good to see you dropping by, hopefully you will feel inspired to comment more as the year of a thousand cuts progresses.

  14. 14.

    Ksmiami

    Electing Trump again was an act of national and individual suicide. Save yourselves from MAGA insanity

  15. 15.

    Tony Jay

    I mailed Watergirl a countdown clock so she could keep track of my hiatus schedule, but then the follically-challenged felon let Tsar Shitalas put a twelve year old coder with Mommy issues in charge of the US Postal Service, so that explains the confusion.

    Eventually I’ll be back with a 20,000 word distraction about the sad spectacle that is British politics, but for now I just wanted to pinch everyone’s bums and disappear back into the crowd.

    Four years of this shit. Lots of water breaks.

  17. 17.

    Suzanne

    @SiubhanDuinne: A Google search tells me that fast blinking can be a sign of “cognitive load or excessive thinking”. Don’t think that’s it!

    I wonder if any of the 800 drugs he’s on causes dry eyes.

  19. 19.

    David_C

    We were all invited to his welcome reception on Tuesday. Needless to say, I have other plans. Apparently, yesterday was a bloodbath at the NIH (and elsewhere) as employees who were hired within the last year or so were let go, having not completed their “probationary” periods.

    The political press has a difficult time covering science that informal the public sphere. They are so used to presenting two sides that, when added to their general science illiteracy, causes them to miss what is second knowledge in the scientific community. They are drawn to conflict and controversy and rely on presenting views that have long been discredited, but given serious weight.

    Then there’s their basic misunderstanding on how the scientific enterprise works.

  20. 20.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Tony Jay: Great to see you back! Look forward to your long in words but short in experience (because they are so fun to read) polemics against the reactionaries on both sides of the Pond, as well as the opposition when they are being feckless.

  21. 21.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @SiubhanDuinne: there are some interesting body language experts that do videos on YouTube, it might take them a day or two, but I’m guessing there will be body language folks weighing in.

    Meanwhile, everyone, I’ve got two fascinating pro elon anti vax people on my Facebook, and I surmise they are getting entirely different information streams. Totally buying in. It’s weird. If I’m quiet, I can be undercover and hear what those strange people think, what they repost. I used to like and respect them. Thankfully, their stuff doesn’t come up much. According to them elon really is actually cleaning up fraud and waste. Caramba!

    up late reading “the black pill.” It’s daunting, the layers of build up that goes into that kind of thinking; I’m only 1/4 of the way thru. Elle is a very good writer. Heavy stuff, but it build gradually, and she tells a good tale, brings you in through the human angle on people, but with no bs. It’s an art, to get over heavy ground with such lightness and acceptance.

    I forgot what time the zoom will be.

  23. 23.

    TBone

    My parents made absolutely certain to cultivate my natural born skepticism in a healthy way. In all areas of life, critical thinking is key. Always get a second opinion for any major medical endeavors, TBone!  That did NOT, however, include vaccines – Mom is how I found out about Lymerix and received that jab, for which she later apologized profusely.  It almost made ME into a vaccine skeptic!

  25. 25.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @David_C: a friend of mine, a professor and science researcher  at du says the cuts are hitting them. A grant writer, and a dean whose research title I did not understand but one word in it was hetero- something. Synthesis, cyclical.. chemistry stuff. Way over my head.

    and, autocorrect didn’t like hetero as a prefix, finishing my words for me. I had to fix it. that’s their guess for why they don’t want his research to go on. Must be DEI stuff, cuz of hetero- whatever.

  30. 30.

    VeniceRiley

    @Tony Jay: My new visa came through, so I’m grateful to be here! I licked that excerpt. Enjoy my sloppy seconds and don’t tell my wife.

  33. 33.

    Betty

    @Tony Jay: I was just wondering how you were. I saw your favorite politician, Bo Jo, praising Musk’s efforts to destroy the US government. He looks goofier than ever.

  35. 35.

    TBone

    I am considering a daring trip into the ether to read my other usual suspects this morning.  Am filled with trepidation.  Not sure I should ruin the first good night’s sleep I’ve had in 2025.

    I think I’ll do some music first.  See where that leads before I venture a toe into the icy waters…

  37. 37.

    Tony Jay

    @VeniceRiley:

    Thanks for the freebie, but we normally pay good money for that particular service. If it wasn’t you in the otter-shaped furry costume last night then you’ve missed out on a tidy sum. You live in England now, do as the monarch does and shamelessly suck up every available penny!

    Though, yeah, if I saw that excerpt sitting coyly at a taxi rank dressed in mystery and gauze I couldn’t control myself either. Absolute tongue-honey.

  40. 40.

    Suzanne

    @TBone:

    Always get a second opinion for any major medical endeavors, TBone!

    This is a thing I think about a lot. As much of my job is working with health systems that are trying to expand their care offerings, it is stark to see the gulf between rural and urban areas and what kind of healthcare you can conveniently access in those places. Before he passed, SuzFIL was diagnosed with cancer. They have a regional general medical center nearby that is, by all accounts, pretty competent. I was encouraging him to get a second or third opinion from one of the specialized cancer centers…. and it would have been a minimum of eight hours of travel each way.

    People don’t really think about advanced medical care, or level 1 trauma care, or abortion care, etc etc etc, as amenities, per se….. but damn.

    ETA: If you or a loved one has a stroke or a STEMI and you’re like, fifty miles from a heart and vascular hospital….. those odds are not great.

  41. 41.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @TBone: I originally read it somewhere, a Scot referencing “those mad Sassenach bastards” and it’s stuck with me since.

    Heh, that kinda describes our own Tony Jay, don’t it, the mad Sassenach?

  43. 43.

    Princess

    According to his cousin Caroline, all his kids are vaccinated. I’m sure he’s vaccinated against Covid and shingles too, like Trump and Vance and the rest of their people. He’s not a vaccine skeptic or denier or anything — he’s a vaccine hypocrite. These people want you and your children to die. That’s the only thing I can figure, with their ending medical research and firing epidemiologists and leaving the WHO. They’re imagining a much smaller population and fast tracking to get there.

  44. 44.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Suzanne: Mrs. B loves those “cold ass Alaska survival” shows; and I’m like “yep, y’all enjoy y’selves. I’m gonna stick close to my Level II Trauma Center (it’s about 2 blocks away).

    Take that rugged individualism bullshit elsewhere, we humans survive because we create communities.

  47. 47.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Baud: Dumbasses don’t understand history AT ALL.

    Just ask the shades of the Haitian slavers; or the French aristocracy.

    They will fuck around and get their children killed.

    Push humans hard enough, and Luigi will suddenly be everywhere.

  49. 49.

    VeniceRiley

    For those Americans researching emigration options, one of my friends posted this:

    Before we go further, if you’re just looking to move to Europe, the DAFT treaty with the Netherlands is one of the best options for Americans, or working as a freelancer in Germany. Those are two of the easiest paths. If you have an Italian or Irish grandparent, that is another option.

    If your heart is set on Spain, here are the options available:

    NON-LUCRATIVE VISA. For this visa, you must have 29k in a bank account, and not work during your time on this visa. After one year, you can change to a work visa. https://www.exteriores.gob.es/Consulados/losangeles/en/ServiciosConsulares/Paginas/Consular/Visado-de-residencia-no-lucrativa.aspx

    LATIN AMERICAN CONNECTIONS: if you are Filipino, Mexican, Cuban, Venezuelan, etc. you will be able to qualify for Spanish citizenship in 2 years instead of the usual ten.

    DIGITAL NOMAD VISA. For this visa, you must have an online job that does not originate in Spain. This also has an income requirement, 200% of Spanish national minimum wage, so at the time of writing, 33,130. Children, spouses, and dependent relatives in the ascending line can join, although the income requirement increases for each individual. https://www.exteriores.gob.es/Consulados/londres/en/ServiciosConsulares/Paginas/Consular/Digital-Nomad-Visa.aspx

    EDUCATION. You can attend university in Spain, even a year’s language tuition. However, this will not count toward residency, nor is it easily changeable afterwards. If looking for a shorter term option, however, this is one. Spouse and children are included, but extended family members are NOT included in these visas. https://www.exteriores.gob.es/Consulados/losangeles/en/ServiciosConsulares/Paginas/Consular/Visado-de-estudios.aspx

    AUXILIARES PROGRAM. NALCAP is through the Spanish government. It pays very little but they place individuals in different schools to teach English. Many people also tutor privately for extra money. NALCAP is opening soon. Here is a link: https://www.educacionfpydeportes.gob.es/eeuu/convocatorias-programas/convocatorias-eeuu/nalcap/applying-program.html

    There are 17 autonomous communities in Spain. If you are looking for the most affordable options, consider places such as Extremadura or La Rioja, instead of focusing on the large cities.

    The autonomous communities are as follows:

    Andalusia – Aragon – Asturias – Balearic Islands – Basque Country – Canary Islands – Cantabria – Castile and Leon – Castilla-La Mancha – Catalonia – Extremadura – Galicia – La Rioja – Madrid – Murcia – Navarre – Valencia

  50. 50.

    lowtechcyclist

    @satby: ​
     

    After reading something that great, I need a cigarette. And I never smoked.

    Me either, but reading that makes me wish I could light two cigarettes and pass one to the author.

    What is skepticism? In my lifetime as a word-nerd, I have known “skepticism” to refer to a sort of stubborn insistence upon rigor and evidence in place of things like dogma and “common sense.” A skeptic, by those terms, is someone who questions what they are told. Crucially, a skeptic actually questions, as in seeks answers. A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter. A person who rejects empirical knowledge, who refuses the answers that exist while requesting ones more to their liking that flatter their preference for unfounded contrarian gibberish and conspiratorial paranoia, is not a skeptic. They’re the exact opposite of that: a mark. A sucker. A credulous boob…

    Just wanted to see that again.

  53. 53.

    Suzanne

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    Take that rugged individualism bullshit elsewhere, we humans survive because we create communities.

    Yeah.

    Not just survival, either. As humans have evolved from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to subsistence farming and agriculture and then to industry and on to the modern economy of computing and services….. this is only possible due to specialization. So we become more interdependent, not less. And of settlement patterns are reflecting that, and we are urbanizing at a staggering rate. In 2009–ish, for the first time in human history, over half of the world’s population lived in cities. And we’re apparently going to hit the 75% threshold roughly around 2050. The specialized economy requires urbanization, because it requires more workers with specialized education and training, and each of those workers has to depend on other specialized workers, so we agglomerate.

  54. 54.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Have to say it’s a small, meaningless thing, but I’m old enough to remember the tempest in a teapot that occurred when Obama was photographed in the oval office in, I think it was a suit, but he’d taken the jacket off so was in his shirt sleeves, or maybe it was he was in a tan suit, or maybe tan suit sans jacket.

    Flash forward and Musk shows up in a frickin ball cap and T shirt and I haven’t paid enough attention to figure out what he’s wearing on his lower half but maybe black jeans? The casual sport coat doesn’t exactly save the look from grossly violating the rules of decorum but nobody said shit about it.

    Dude looked like a circa 2005 hipster on the way to a Shins concert and I mean no disrespect to either The Shins or hipsters by associating them with this douchebag.

  57. 57.

    Princess

    @YY_Sima Qian: I’m the only person in North America who thinks maybe RFK sr wasn’t so great either. He was expelled from boarding school for holding a kid out a top floor window by his ankles. That’s a sadism I see in his son. He was a great rhetoritician who caught a particular political moment. So was John Edward’s. *Shrugs* Maybe I’m wrong; maybe he was all that. We’ll never know.

    Anyway, as one of a zillion children, I doubt jr had much contact with his busy father.

  59. 59.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @VeniceRiley:

    And these streets
    Quiet as a sleeping army
    Send their battered dreams to heaven, to heaven
    For the mother’s restless son
    Who is a witness to, who is a warrior
    Who denies his urge to break and run

    Who said ‘hard times’?
    I’m used to them
    The speeding planet burns
    I’m used to that
    My life’s so common it disappears
    And sometimes even music
    Cannot substitute for tears*

    We, whose ancestors were dragged to these shores, worked literally to death, whose humanity is denied and whose citizenship is considered illegitimate, will stay and fucking fight.

    *Paul Simon, The Cool, Cool River 

  60. 60.

    Princess

    @VeniceRiley: the Netherlands has a far right government, so beware of that. Also, I don’t think nice Americans are prepared for how unpopular all Americans are going to become internationally over the next few years.

  62. 62.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Princess: Huh, did not know that detail about RFK, Sr.

    I am more familiar with/ his work as JFK’s AG, & his advocacy for civil rights, focus against organized crime, & push back against Curtis LeMay during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s a lot in his favor, perhaps more deserved than his older brother.

    There may a little bit of the psychopathic megalomaniac in every person who seriously thinks he/she can be President.

  64. 64.

    Suzanne

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    There may a little bit of the psychopathic megalomaniac in every person who seriously thinks he/she can be President.

    Yes. And a pretty big streak of narcissism.

  65. 65.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Baud: I think you have to be. Even if you’re armed with good intentions, who in hell would want what is the most difficult job in the world?

  67. 67.

    TBone

    @Suzanne: excellent good eye – and the reason that hubby and I make damn sure we keep our urban friendships cultivated for the day we’ll have to downsize from a single family home next to a rural hospital and find a senior condo in a much better medical options location.  We have friends who won’t hesitate to put us up for a while during sale/purchase trauma.

  69. 69.

    Onion Soup

    I’m going to jump in again as a lurker.  Again I was uniformed.  I’m a civilian now and on a different path.  However I know a ton of USAID, CIA, STATE types that I worked with who are now desperately seeking other jobs.  Most of them are silent about why.  A few bold, usually with a spouse who makes enough to pay the bills, are speaking out and calling out the GOP but that is risky now.  They are doing it.  They need an income, they need a job, and they need help.  These people were either GS types making pennies on the dollar or consultant types who made good money.  Neither of which is relevant now.  They range from overly educated types to vets who still served after.  That doesn’t matter either now.

    If you are in a position to employ people please look over linkedin and other sites and see if you can help.  Some are single young men, others are mothers with kids, others just lost their shot at retirement.  The situation is dire.  I wish I was making this up.  I am done caring about the institutional knowledge lost that impact will come down the road and yet all to soon.  People need an income now.

    This is not political but shit is fucked.  At this point lock me in a room with Musk for ten seconds and I’d end it.  This is not right and people are in situations I never thought I’d see.  I’ve cried over the phone a few times in the past 48 hours.  If you can help.  Help. Personally I’m fine and I’m working with my firm to scoop up what I can even if the offers aren’t great.  I cannot express how fucked things are.  Again.  Help them.  If you can.

  71. 71.

    Scout211

    Has this been posted yet? Apologies if it has, I am trying to limit my exposure to these disasters.

    Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

    Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.

    . . .

    The agency began rescinding the terminations Friday morning.

    Some of the fired employees included NNSA staff who are on the ground at facilities where nuclear weapons are built. These staff oversee the contractors who build nuclear weapons, and they inspect these weapons.

    It also included employees at NNSA headquarters who write requirements and guidelines for contractors who build nuclear weapons. A source told CNN they believe these individuals were fired because “no one has taken anytime to understand what we do and the importance of our work to the nation’s national security.”

    Members of Congress made their concerns about the NNSA firings known to the Energy Department, a Hill staffer told CNN. A person with knowledge of the matter told CNN that senators visited Energy Sec. Chris Wright to express concern about the NNSA cuts.

    Incompetence or evil? No question, both, of course.

    Also too, MOC with concerns?

  74. 74.

    TBone

    @Onion Soup: how I dearly wish I were a job creator right now.  In what other ways can we help these real people?  Can we do a BJ go fund me for them, or send money directly, or please I’m flailing around feeling helpless aarrrggghhh

  76. 76.

    Onion Soup

    @TBone:

    You cannot.  I am only asking if you have any sort of contacts and have linkedin to please take note of all the “looking for work”s up now for members of all sides of our foreign services.  They are in dire straights.  That’s all I ask.

  77. 77.

    Princess

    @YY_Sima Qian: There is definitely (in my view) a bit of megalomaniac psychopath in everyone who runs for president. It’s one reason I find it misguided for us to get so personally attached to them. We’d be better off being more transactional I think.

    I think the expulsion story wasn’t well known outside the school that expelled him, which was my source.

  79. 79.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Vaccine Skeptic is a white person who leaned Vaccines were invented by Muslims and introduced to America by black slaves.

  81. 81.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @The Thin Black Duke: House is one of the most iconic (not to mention iconoclastic) & enjoyable character in the history of television!

    But one line in the clip was a little jarring. I thought most of the important vaccines for children are free in the US, as part of the VFC program (until RFK, Jr. gets around to abolish it)?

  83. 83.

    sentient ai from the future

    So I guess my question is which countries are going to be the first to make hay of the brain drain that is going to occur more or less immediately? Because I am ready to go wherever and pitch my advanced degrees and training (even though circumstances are such that I haven’t used them formally since the last shitbird admin)

    it really is notable how the muskjugend have targeted the most-significant organizational bureaucracies, the ones that so few people understand or hype in the media, which is itself stunningly malign in it’s incompetence at digesting complicated information for public consumption.

    If Putin were directing things himself I don’t think he could do a better job of destroying the country’s global advantages.

  85. 85.

    Suzanne

    @mrmoshpotato: I believe he has admitted to heroin addiction in the past, as well as recreational cocaine use. And he appears to be freakishly roided up for a man in his 70s. I think he said he was taking supplemental testosterone prescribed by his doctor….. but the video of him that went viral, in which he was lifting weights while wearing jeans (WTF)….. I think roids.

  86. 86.

    sentient ai from the future

    @mrmoshpotato: undoubtedly both. Polydrug users/abusers (and I was one myself) are notable mainly for when they don’t succumb to the siren song of a particular brain mode. (or an accident). I am sure this antivax nitwit has consumed plenty of both opioids and addictive psycho stimulants like cocaine

  87. 87.

    karensky

    @Suzanne: Could be cataracts.  When I was diagnosed as having cataracts the Opthamologist gave me a short list of recommended eye drops to help with discomfort and clarity. (the drops work)  He also noted the importance of blinking when my eyes felt “sandy.”

  88. 88.

    sentient ai from the future

    @Suzanne: “prescribed by his doctor” is the easiest of deflections for a wealthy, connected white man in his eighth decade

  89. 89.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Yesterday Tom Watson reposted former FDA Commisioner Scottlieb:

        Confirmed case of measles in New Jersey, may have lead to additional exposures.

    Gottlieb had a screenshot of the alert put out by the New Jersey Department of Health. It references the Texas outbreak:

    ….Measles cases continue to be identified across the country with five jurisdictions reporting cases in 2025, including Alaska, Georgia, New York City, Rhode Island and Texas. Texas is currently experiencing an outbreak in Gaines County. All these cases are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status.

    The responses to Gottlieb were striking. Some expressed respect for Gottlieb and his work, but most expressed angry and irrational anti-vaccine sentiment  I’m not how many of these people there are, but they are fanatics.

  92. 92.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Suzanne: Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for these assclowns, it’s subterranean.

  98. 98.

    JMG

    @sentient ai from the future: For medical researchers, I’d assume they’d get recruited by countries with significant pharmaceutical industries, northern Europe mostly. Geopolitically, our neighbors to the north and south have the most incentive to recruit American academics, scientists, etc. of all stripes.

  99. 99.

    Suzanne

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational.

    I know. One of the cultural changes that happened in the last few years that I think hurt us electorally is that the fat acceptance movement became linked to liberal women “in the public imagination” and a specific kind of masculine-strength-as-health became associated with more conservative-ish men.

    Another weird turn I have seen in the last week or so is flowering praise for JD Vance and Elon Musk for “normalizing children in public spaces”. There is definitely this whole swirling vortex of male anxieties about musculature, virility, food, etc.

  101. 101.

    cmorenc

    @YY_Sima Qian: Painful to contemplate how differently US history post-1968 would have turned out if RFK (SR) had not been assassinated by a madman.  RFK would likely have beaten Nixon and cut off the rightward drift of American politics since then.

  102. 102.

    Another Scott

    @Princess: +1

    The ’50s and ’60s were a weird time politically in the USA.  Just about every ambitious politician was a virulent anti-communist.  JFK and Nixon were personal friends.

    JFKLibrary.org:

    […]

    So I want to take you back to a scene in 1957. It’s a scene of a funeral. There was a big funeral happening in Wisconsin. I don’t know if anybody here remembers who was buried in 1957 in Appleton, Wisconsin, that might have made a big furor in terms of the context of what we’re talking about, but it was a guy named Joe McCarthy. And at this funeral, the nearest airport was Green Bay, Wisconsin, and that day in 1957, of the funeral, that morning a big military jet from Washington flies in. And out of that jet, it was like a scene from Monty Python, 19 US Senators pour out of it, seven Congressman, and a whole collection of other celebrities. And they did what celebrities and Congresspeople do when they go out to visit faraway places like Appleton, Wisconsin. They get out of the plane. They pour into big, black stretch limousines and they take off for Appleton.

    And the airport goes quiet. And it looks like the plane’s about to shut down, nobody else is going to get off, when suddenly a relatively short, thin Congressional staffer named Robert F. Kennedy gets off the plane. And he gets off it just the moment he wants to, when the airport is quiet. Nobody there to give him a ride in a stretch limousine, not even any yellow cabs there. And thankfully for him, there was a reporter there from the Milwaukee newspaper, who gives him a ride to Appleton. And it was the perfect kind of a Kennedy ride in a convertible car that was going really fast, wind blowing his hair.

    When he gets to the church in Appleton, all the celebrities are out there in the church pews, and Bobby Kennedy goes up to the choir loft where nobody can see him. When he gets to the gravesite service, all the celebrities are over here and Bobby Kennedy goes over here where nobody can see him.

    After the funeral, when all the reporters are there– and in those days, when reporters covered a funeral, they wrote very boring stories that made sure of putting into the story every name of every celebrity who was there. And he goes up to all the reporters and he says, “Would you mind leaving my name out?”

    Now, in those days, when a politician asks you that, you often oblige. When the politician was named Kennedy, you always obliged. And his name showed up in none of the

    stories. And luckily for me, the reporter who had given him a ride from the airport to the funeral wanted to purge his soul 50 years later, the fact that he had left out the one name he had left out of his story because Bobby Kennedy had asked him. And he told the story of what Bobby Kennedy did that day.

    And I tell that story now in answer to your question because I think it says who Bobby Kennedy was back in 1957. And half of what it says is that he was a very loyal guy, that four years before, when he didn’t have a job, he was a recent law school graduate, Joe McCarthy gave him a job. And Bobby Kennedy believed back then that Joe McCarthy was the one guy in Washington who was standing up to the communist threat, not just in the Soviet Union, but in the State Department and other government offices.

    And so, he went to work for him because McCarthy offered him a job, because Joe Kennedy had given money to Joe McCarthy, and he would give him anything he wanted, but also because he believed. He was a cold warrior back then and he believed very much in what Joe McCarthy stood for. And so, he went to work for him willingly. So that was not our Bobby Kennedy, the liberal icon that he’d become at the end.

    So one piece of what it said, that he went to McCarthy’s funeral, even though his brother Jack said stay away, is that he was loyal to McCarthy. And that’s something that I think it says nice about who Bobby Kennedy was. McCarthy had given him a job when he needed one.

    The other piece of what it said of the way he did things in 1957 was, he made sure that even though he was going to be loyal and go to the funeral, nobody would ever know that he was at the funeral, and nobody would hold it against his brother who wanted to be President in three years.

    EILEEN MCNAMARA: And who managed to skip the vote when it came time to censure McCarthy.

    LARRY TYE: Absolutely, did that. He had a health issue and he used that health issue to let him skip the vote. But the other piece of who Bobby Kennedy was, if he was loyal to Joe McCarthy in showing up there, he was even more loyal to his brother Jack Kennedy. So he was going to make sure that what he did in showing up there wasn’t going to come back and bite Jack Kennedy.

    So he had it both ways in a perfect way. And that was who Bobby Kennedy was. He was a loyal guy. He had actually– I don’t know how many of you know that the report that censured Joe McCarthy was a Republican report, because the Republicans controlled the Senate then, but 80% of the report was based on the Democratic report that was written by Bobby Kennedy.

    So he was loyal to Joe McCarthy, but he was loyal to what his honest role required, for him to tell the truth about what Joe McCarthy had done. So he played it three different ways – loyal to Joe McCarthy, loyal to his role in the Senate telling the truth about the bad guy that Joe McCarthy had become in the Army-McCarthy hearings, and loyal most of all, as he was throughout his life, to the Kennedy family and to ensuring that his brother would become President in 1960.

    […]

    People are complicated. Politicians, moreso. Famous politicians much, much moreso. We need to be willing to give ourselves space to disagree with our heroes and see the bad in them as well as the good. Everyone, everyone can do better.

    Thanks.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  103. 103.

    VeniceRiley

    @Onion Soup: I hope they consider emigrating and/or working for (former) friendly countries that need their skill sets.

    Same goes for virologists and researchers in the CDC and such.

    If countries elsewhere are smart, they’ll be looking to poach all this thrown out talent.  They should toot their horns globally to stable democracies. Hope you can help them or at least guide them. Unless they voted for Mango Mussolini – then they can get F***ed.

  106. 106.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Suzanne: As you know, there’s a big difference between mothers would bring their children to work because they can’t afford daycare, and the strutting peacocks who do it because their spin doctors tell them it “humanizes” them.

  107. 107.

    The Thin Black Duke

    a specific kind of masculine-strength-as-health became associated with more conservative-ish men.

    It’s easier for lazy, testosterone-poisoned men to work on their biceps than a relationship with their partners.

  108. 108.

    Betty

    OT: I need some help. I just read a post on Bluesky scolding people for using the Reply button when they should use the Quote Reply button. I have no idea what she means. I only see a Reply button. What am I missing?

  113. 113.

    Kay

    @Suzanne:

    Vance and Musk think children are property. They’re accessorizing with their children because they own the children so therefore can do that.

  114. 114.

    Scout211

    @Onion Soup: This.

    This is one of the many, many things right now that keeps me constantly worried. We know that the Musk/Trump administration doesn’t see these federal workers as people with families and bills to pay.  I hope the lawsuits in the courts prevail but they need our help now.

    Just one example:  One of my family members was hired in the Biden expansion of the IRS staff.  She was up for a promotion that is now rescinded.  She may or may not have a job after May.  Several of her coworkers recently were promoted and transferred. They moved to another location, leased apartments and then their jobs were rescinded.  They are in total limbo right now with bills to pay and no idea if they can go back to their previous job.  And we know there are thousands (tens of thousands?) of similar stories.

    So many workers were laid off in the Bush Ii recession but many private companies offered help to their laid off employees to find work or to prepare them for their job search.  And long time employees were offered actual money for their buyouts.  And these are real people who have real lives and families and bills to pay.

    Firing all these federal workers is illegal and a disaster.  But I repeat myself (every day).

  116. 116.

    Suzanne

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    As you know, there’s a big difference between mothers would bring their children to work because they can’t afford daycare, and the strutting peacocks who do it because their spin doctors tell them it “humanizes” them.

    Or, in Elon’s case, uses his children simultaneously as human shields and to flex his dominance over his children’s mothers.

    But yes. Any woman — including me — who attempts to have a career in male-dominated business has learned a lot about motherhood being viewed as a lack of commitment in the workplace. We learn all those lessons about appearing at work with “the mom chop”, and only having one photo of our kids (and it has to be in a nice frame).

    Ask me about how one of my (female) coworkers tried to schedule an early meeting recently. I said I would only be available to call in at that time, since I would be dropping off Spawn to school. She told me, “You know, I used to pay someone to take my kids to school”. I held my tongue that time.

  117. 117.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    From vaccines to voting, conservatives have no practical knowledge of how anything works.

    Remember in 2020 when they looked at Arizona election process and were shrieking that it was fraud, and the Sec of State kept responding with simple explanations of how voting process works?

    RFK Jr is a voting conspiracist too – he invented the rumor that the GOP rigged OH in 2004. His essay in Rolling Stone was all wrong – he doesn’t know how votes are collected and counted.

    Theyre all theorists – Big Egos, Big Ideas – none of them know how to do anything.

  120. 120.

    snoey

    @Kay: I remember thinking that Ohio 2004 was possibly hacked, and then waiting for the RS story. Learned nothing from the story about the election, did learn that RFKjr can’ t think.

  121. 121.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Scout211: ​
     

    A source told CNN they believe these individuals were fired because “no one has taken anytime to understand what we do and the importance of our work to the nation’s national security.”

    For the Federal firings in general, they could just leave it at “no one has taken anytime to understand what we do.” Because they don’t care. They don’t believe that any of it matters, so they’re out to break things.

    Whether it matters or not, this is still Civics 101. These agencies, these programs, exist because Congress established them. The Executive Branch is supposed to carry out the work that enacted legislation has assigned it. If they don’t want that work done, the GOP has full control of Congress, and they’re free to repeal legislation willy-nilly if they choose. But until then, they’re supposed to do the work, not make it difficult or impossible for it to get done.

  122. 122.

    Kay

    @sentient ai from the future:

    As you know, Its really hard to tamp down the MY in raising children – to recognize that they’re not you.
    It’s too hard so conservatives don’t try. It’s easier to treat children like you hold title to them.

  124. 124.

    BritinChicago

    “What’s a vaccine skeptic?” is a good question, but I think it has a good answer. A vaccine skeptic is someone who requires a high level of evidence before being willing to accept that vaccines are safe and effective. How high? Well let’s say significantly more than would convince any reasonable person who was walked through it at an appropriate pace. (Glacial, in the case of some.) Given that answer, I think the relevant department of the FDA is full of vaccine skeptics. They are, so to speak, professional vaccine skeptics. We, collectively, have carefully assembled a group of very smart people and asked them to do that job on our behalf, so we no longer have to worry about vaccines being unsafe. So let’s fire them all and substitute random opinions based on almost nothing! Does that sound like a good idea?

  125. 125.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @sentient ai from the future: My two cents: the conventional wisdom would be UK, Canada, & the EU. However, that would depend on the economic situation in these countries, & their ability to continue to fund academic research. My guess is English speaking countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, & more speculatively South Korea & Japan.

    For persons of Chinese or East Asian descent working in STEM fields, I would expect the PRC (including Hong Kong & Macau) to be a top destination. The PRC has already been benefiting from an increasing reverse flow of ethnically Chinese researchers from the US since Trump & Wray launched the “China Initiative”, which Wray continued less overtly even after Biden shut it down. Beyond the huge cuts to the federal agencies & the NSF/NIH funding, ethnic Chinese academics will have targets on their backs in the environment of heightening Great Power Competition & worsening Sinophobia. The PRC will welcome them w/ open arms & shower them w/ resources, funding & stipends, as it has been for the past 2 decades.

    I have posted before ASPI’s 2 decades long Critical Technology Tracker of high impact research (where the PRC is leading in 57 of 64 technologies studied as of 2024 & presents high monopolistic risk in 24) & the Nature Index of leading research institutions (where the PRC accounts for 50% of the top 50 in 2024). Both ranking & the subject they study (high impact research) have their limitations, so shouldn’t be taken as dispositive, but what DOGE is doing will quickly cede the entire field to the PRC. MAGA is working hard to Make China Great Again.

    There is a reason why the nickname for Trump in the PRC, dating from his 1st term, is 川建国 (Chuan Jianguo – “Chuan the Nation Builder”); “Chuan” is the 1st Chinese character in “Chuan Pu”, one of the transliterations of “Trump” into Chinese, as well as a common Chinese surname; “Jianguo” means “nation builder”, a common Mainland Chinese given name from the Mao era, when the national mantra was 超英赶美 (“Overtake the UK & Catch Up to the US”). The joke is that Trump is helping to build the Chinese nation.

  126. 126.

    sab

    RFK Jr is one month older than me. I look at that face that looks older than Trump and think I am supposed to take health advice from him?

  130. 130.

    WaterGirl

    @Tony Jay: So glad to see you here!

    Perhaps we can have a double ceremony, with you marrying the excerpt above, and me marrying your comment?

  131. 131.

    WaterGirl

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    New rotating tag.  I had to edit slightly to shorten it a bit.

    Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

  132. 132.

    Onion Soup

    @Scout211:

    We cannot raise enough money to cover this.  We can all be aware of it and try if it is our power to find them and pick them up.

  134. 134.

    evodevo

    @Professor Bigfoot: ​
      Yes. This. “Primitive” man didn’t live in nuclear family settings…they all lived in small cooperating groups, at the very least. Life was too hard to go it alone. Males had to hunt in groups, in order to drive game or steal carcasses from predators. Women had to have help with the kids, with birthing, with gathering, with building shelters, keeping the fires lit, etc. Mostly your group consisted of relatives and their spouses, but distantly related others were usually welcome. It’s been that way for humans since the beginning, a successful mode of existence, which is why we are currently infesting every corner of the earth, instead of dying out a million years ago…something reich wingers have yet to learn.

  137. 137.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Gloria DryGarden: yeah, the language of hetero- homo- cis- trans- is prevalent throughout organic chemistry which is going to make doing chemistry research in the USA damn difficult, as these prefixes have specific meanings in chemistry and a cis-molecule has a different chemical structure and therefore different properties from the trans-molecule.  And sometimes you can get the molecule to flip structures back and forth between cis and trans, for example shining light of the correct wavelength can be enough to make the molecule flip.

    If I was a young person starting out in science, I’d be learning Mandarin or maybe German or French or Korean, and planning to move out of the USA to study.

    Hell, this attitude is even going to make dealing with AI difficult, as one of the problems in AI is the initial bias of the data set they use to train the AI, as one of the.large IP law firms discussed here: https://ai.bakerlaw.com/policyguide/

  140. 140.

    Geminid

    @sentient ai from the future: In the 1930s, Turkiye took in German Jewish scientists Hitler had made stateless. Hitler had been a fan of Kemal Ataturk, but Ataturk did not respect Hitler and probably was glad to give the “Corporal” a poke in the eye. Also, Ataturk valued the scientists’ knowledge and made sure they found places in Turkish universities.

  141. 141.

    chrome agnomen

    @evodevo: I always wonder how true this old trope is.  we see so often in nature that the females doing a substantial amount of the hunting/gathering while the males sit around waiting to get laid.

     

    impossible to know at a thousand generations removed how it played out then.

  143. 143.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @evodevo: our Neanderthal ancestors did a better job at taking care of the sick, the injured, and the elderly than present day MAGA does.

  146. 146.

    No Nym

    @Suzanne: “flowering praise for JD Vance and Elon Musk for ‘normalizing children in public spaces.'”

    Interesting how different the attitude is toward women managing children in public places.

  148. 148.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Kay:From vaccines to voting, conservatives have no practical knowledge of how anything works.

    Emphasis mine, but this is a fundamental that’s so easy to overlook— they have a lot of theories (like how putting the 10 Commandments in classrooms will improve test scores or something) but absolutely no practical base of knowledge about, well, anything.

    David Brin’s noted the conservative war on expertise for years, now, and Asimov described them as “my ignorance is as good as your expertise.”

    Or, in the case of the Christian supremacists, “my Bible is better than your ‘knowledge.’”

  149. 149.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Kayla Rudbek: Just not their churches.

    There was a fair discussion in an earlier thread about how the Black church was instrumental in organizing for civil rights.

  150. 150.

    Glory b

    @Professor Bigfoot: Yep, next neighborhood over, UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) for the win!

    Lol, my brother said every episode of Honestead Rescue should be a guy driving up to these god-forsaken homesteaders with a U Haul, packing their stuff for them and driving them back to civilization.

  153. 153.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Professor Bigfoot: yes, I was following that discussion (I wound up having an unscheduled stopover overnight in Atlanta last month, Mr. Rudbek wanted to go see the MLK National Park Service site while we had the chance, and it hit home to me there that the Black clergy were the ones who could step up and lead the Civil Rights movement because they didn’t depend on authority or funding from any white people. Black lawyers and doctors, etc. had and still have to be licensed by the state, but the Black clergy were and are independent).

    It’s a very different experience from white Roman Catholicism where the clergy were frequently corrupt on matters of sex and money (the celibate clergy and the monastery being great places to stash incels and other men with weird ideas about sex, too bad they still would write about it and try to make people listen to them), and often in bed with the right wing oppressors (call them aristocracy or call them fascists, the Roman Catholic Church has too often been on that side going back to the Emperor Constantine). And white Protestant experience was also that the clergy took every opportunity to be oppressive once they got the chance to have that power (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Heinlein and Robert Ingersoll  being very anticlerical and raised Protestants for example).

    One of my great-aunts wanted to be a nun when she was young and her father would not let her because he grew up in Austria and he knew that the church was corrupted. She wound up staying single her whole life and she seemed pretty happy with it.

  155. 155.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Kayla Rudbek:She wound up staying single her whole life and she seemed pretty happy with it.She wound up staying single her whole life and she seemed pretty happy with it.

    Good on her!

    I suspect “far better to be alone than put up with some idiot asshole man,” and may her memory be a blessing.

  156. 156.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Professor Bigfoot: yeah, she went and worked for the US government (post-war Japan, I should ask my aunts if she was in the Army or if she was OSS) and she brought home some neat dolls from that time (not to be played with, they were in glass cases). She wound up moving back to her hometown and living with her brother in my great-grandparents house (now passed on to one of my cousins) and she was a champion present-wrapper. Every Christmas season, Auntie would come over to her sister’s (my grandmother’s) house and wrap all the presents because she made them look like a professional did it.

  157. 157.

    Chris Johnson

    Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.

    the FUCK they don’t.

    The FUUUCK they don’t know that. Why do you think they are there? The fuck they don’t.

  158. 158.

    Ruckus

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I go with all of the above.

    It saves time and it’s likely all correct. Or at least worth an A on the test.

    This is a guy who grew up following in the family footsteps, with seemingly none of the necessary tools to understand doodly squat. Or anything past that. Not saying he’s an idiot, but he does play one in public. Now there may be outside influences but he’s the one that put them in his mouth and swallowed, no one forced him to be who he is. Granted, he was born/hatched into a fairly smart and informed family but not everyone in any large family gets all the points, bits and pieces. Or even learns how to pick them up. For some a life of spotlights and public is not a good answer. He may just be one of them. And of course he may feel like he has to play the game, it is possible he just doesn’t understand the nuances.

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