- A paralysed man can stand on his own after receiving an injection of neural stem cells to treat his spinal cord injury.
- From the Department of NSS: Media Use Is Linked to Lower Psychological Well-Being “The more time spent on screens, the greater the negative effects—especially among young people. The study suggests excessive media consumption disrupts essential psychological needs, such as real-world social interaction, physical activity, and sleep quality.” – via Arnold’s Pump Club, which is a surprisingly informative daily newsletter
- Lionel Messi trading card controversy: Who is signing his autographs? (See also: Why do companies buy memorabilia like the Ohtani ball and Skenes card? It goes back to Babe Ruth.)
- Tesla Is Dying, and Polestar Wants to Kill It
- The nightmare scenario for Hollywood has arrived: Viewers are choosing free creator content over premium subscriptions. Nielsen data for February 2025 show YouTube now dominates nearly 12% of total TV viewing time—more than Disney and about equal to Netflix and Amazon combined. And this doesn’t even count viewership on phones and tablets, where creators dominate even more. – via The Dailies
- Good news: Kentucky governor vetoes GOP abortion bill, says it undermines doctors and endangers pregnant women.
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad opened at the Magic Kingdom in 1980 and I still think of it as one of the newer rides.
Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
- I don’t understand why the AP bent over backwards to avoid mentioning the political party affiliation of an ex-North Dakota lawmaker sentenced to ten years in prison for going to Europe with intent to pay for sex with a minor.
- Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of [the Current Administration’s] Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes
- “DOGE” claims it’s not an agency that has to comply with FOIA requests, so The Intercept is suing them.
- POTUS nominates Republican once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds as HHS watchdog
- For Fascists, Hypocrisy Is a Virtue
Posts tagged “abortion”
- In the new documentary Secret Mall Apartment, a group of artists recount how they turned a hidden nook in a Providence shopping center into a living space for four years. – via my dad
- If you’re ever in Los Angeles, check out The Nicolosi Estate. The long-abandoned 8700-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 5-bath home is encircled by an amazing 300-foot-long serpentine swimming pool, complete with rock bridges and grotto-style hot tubs, which is visible from the road. The estate was commissioned by Johnny Weissmuller, who won five gold Olympic medals in swimming (and a bronze in water polo!) and portrayed Tarzan in a dozen films from 1932 to 1948.
- Apple is losing a billion dollars per year on Apple TV+ and that’s just fine. – via @TrungTPhan
- I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used these CSS drop-shadow snippets.
- Technofossils: How humanity’s eternal testament will be plastic bags, cheap clothes, and chicken bones. – via kottke
This Is Exhausting:
- “Under the previous administration, we looked like fools. Not anymore.” – Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shortly before accidentally texting war plans to a journalist.
- A federal judge temporarily blocked the Environmental Protection Agency‘s attempt to recoup $20 billion in Biden-era climate grants, dealing the latest judicial setback for [the current administration]’s attempt to assert unilateral control over spending.
- There Is No Method to [the President]’s Madness. He’s Simply Insane.
- The corporation behind Roundup herbicide has paid out nearly $11 billion in lawsuits. Now it’s backing an EPA rule that would stop the bleeding.
- An Austin attorney is suing the Department of Education after seeing her student loan payments skyrocket.
- A Coast Guard Commander Miscarried. She Nearly Died After Being Denied Care.
- Oh, boy. This is just a fantastic response to being told you can’t teach DEI at a private university. – via @mjsdc.bsky.social
- If you grew up watching Schoolhouse Rock, you likely need a measles booster.
- I am irrationally upset that The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is ending its 54-year run. – via kottke
- The Last of Us returns for season 2 on April 13.
- I have always loved making paper airplanes.
- Some good news: From 2008-2022, cervical precancer rates dropped by a whopping 80% among women aged 20-24. – via YLE
- Sex, Drinking and Dementia: 25 Lawmakers Spill on What Congress Is Really Like is nowhere near as wild and crazy as the headline would have you believe. If anything, the whole piece reads more like, “Aw, shucks! These people are just plain old good regular folks like you n’ me!” Don’t bother.
In other news:
- This is how you become a Nazi bar.
- After Georgia banned abortion, its maternal mortality committee detailed the “preventable” deaths of two women, which led to the state… dismissing all thirty-four members.
- Democrats who censured Al Green are as clueless as they are feckless. Right now there’s too much appeasement and not enough fighting.
- I will jump on the Last Week Tonight bandwagon and spread the word about how to change your settings to make yourself less valuable to Meta. (And, yes, that’s the correct link.)
- The surprisingly hopeful What Felt Impossible Became Possible is an excellent essay about the downfall of the Ku Klux Klan and how it relates to our current American crisis. The key takeaway — as many others have noted — is that fascism always fails. “It is destructive and it is awful and not everyone lives to see the other side, but it always, always fails.”
- A “super pod” of thousands of dolphins was spotted off the California coast.
- Disney’s Star Wars Succession Problem: Who Will Replace Kathleen Kennedy? – via The Dailies
- What happens when you pull a wildly valuable Jayden Daniels rookie card? For “Dr. Moist Muffins”, it literally changed his life.
- Scientists have found that eating more fiber could help reduce microplastic absorption and minimize its harmful effects on your body.
- Neither vaccines nor the virus prompted an increase in the number of cardiac arrests in athletes, contrary to misinformation that continues to circulate repeatedly.
- Annoying News:
- Starlink gets FAA contract, raising new conflict of interest concerns. – via @joshtpm.bsky.social
- The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., declined to sign an arrest warrant sent to them by local police for Republican congressman Cory Mills who happens to be an ally of the President.
- Trump Administration Litigation Tracker
- An analysis by ProPublica showed that dozens more pregnant and postpartum women have died in Texas hospitals since the state banned abortion. And while the national maternal mortality rate dropped, it rose in Texas by 33%. – via @joncooper-us.bsky.social
- Here’s a handy list of sixteen Democrats who simply aren’t doing enough. If your rep is on that list, get on the phone.
- I can’t speak or read Spanish, but used Google to translate this article about a tiger being captured in a Mexican taco shop. That this is the third time this has happened in the last two months seems like a big deal!
Anyone still holding out hope for a ‘compromise’ on abortion rights needs to give it up. When the state oppresses women, more babies die. This isn’t rocket science. The best quote, I think, applies to so much more than just this one issue: “You don’t ask the guy with the boot on your neck to wear a softer shoe. You rip his fucking foot off.”- How the Hims & Hers Super Bowl Ad Exposed the Dangerous World of Unregulated Weight Loss Drugs
- This is from 2+ years ago, but still pretty amazing: A paralyzed man with a severed spinal cord has been able to walk again, thanks to an implant developed by a team of Swiss researchers.
- Good news for people who like bad news: The Texas measles outbreak doubled in size to 48 cases, including 13 hospitalizations mostly among kids. (None were vaccinated.) Another measles case was reported in New Mexico in a county that shares a western border with Texas. And on the other side, the Louisiana Department of Health stopped promoting routine vaccinations by banning vaccine events and ordering staff not to promote vaccinations. – via @yourlocalepidemiologist
- I used to use scotch tape to splice together 8-tracks to expand the available “memory” on my first computer. Being able to copy something on my iPhone and then paste it over the air to my laptop is pretty mind-blowing. And, yes, I remember punch cards and being excited about BASIC. The things is, I know how all this stuff works – even today – which is why I think I appreciate these little conveniences so much. (Yet it’s still amazing to me that we’ve come this far so quickly.) But maybe that’s also why I get so angry about incompetent inexperienced incel “DOGE” choads gleefully doing the bidding of their faux-evangelical Smaug-like Nazi masters. When I was a kid I was certain we’d have jetpacks and R2-D2s by now and instead a few dozen truly evil Montgomery Burns are deplorably clawing us back to the 1400s.