Notices by Brian Vastag (brianvastag@sciencemastodon.com)

I get so incensed at all of the security theater for fucking banks, medical providers and the like when these monopolistic corporations are constantly hemorrhaging our data.

Oh, the burden is on me to jump through these hoops..make new passwords... type in fucking 12 digit 2-factor codes...endless catpchas....& when THEIR TERRIBLE FUCKING SECURITY leads to terabytes of personal data getting posted for LULZ & profit, I will get $22, which was my share of the Equifax settlement.

#rant

@atomicpoet In Nov. '22 I saw many people on the fediverse tell journalists to leave and several servers de-federated from journo.host. Journalists who tried it here took the hint and most did leave as far as I can tell.

Physicians may be surprised to learn that there have been *dozens* of potential biomarkers (blood tests, saliva tests, etc, basically) identified for ME/CFS and #LongCovid. These never get turned into working, widely-available tests because no one funds the studies needed to validate them in large cohorts. Here's a new story from The Sick Times & a page from MEPedia that lists many potential biomarkers.

#medicine #ChronicIllness

https://thesicktimes.org/2025/01/21/finding-an-accepted-long-covid-biomarker-will-be-complicated-this-blood-test-could-give-us-answers/

https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_biomarker

Interent search has become so useless...try googling "The X-Files season 12" and see what you get. It's impossible to tell from the first few pages of results if there will be a season 12 or not.

#TV #search #Google

If your company tries to disinvest its retirement plans from oil & gas, a GOP judge will tell you that's illegal.

#climate

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/american-airlines-held-liable-for-esg-investing-in-401k-plan?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Cartoonist Ann Telnaes leaves WaPo after someone above her killed a cartoon - the first that's happened in 16 years, she says.

The cartoon shows a bunch of oligarchs kneeling before and handing sacks of money to #Trump

#news #media

https://anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-quitting-the-washington-post

This looks like an interesting alternative hypothesis to dark energy to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe we observe.

The 'timescape' model posits that what we're really seeing is time moving faster in empty space vs inside galaxies. This would mean the cosmic voids are spreading apart more rapidly.

Theorists in New Zealand who came up with it say current and future space telescopes can test their idea.

#physics #cosmology

https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/research-highlights/dark-energy-doesnt-exist-so-cant-be-pushing-lumpy-universe-apart

Thank goodness for Ted Goia, who suspected Spotify was spiking playlists with musak, essentially, and now an investigation has proven him correct. Fake artists who produce cheap tracks and give up all rights to it are now proliferating. He calls it war on the music biz.

#music

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-ugly-truth-about-spotify-is-finally

I want to highlight this interview with the lawyer who won my #disability case against Prudential. Barbara Comerford has been taking on the insurance industry for a long time. @tomkindlon brought to my attention this interview by Betsy Ladyzhets for The Sick Times.

Excerpts: "And I can tell you that 38 years ago, these [disability claims] were not problem cases. I used to do them for free for my litigation clients…"

https://thesicktimes.org/2024/12/03/we-talked-to-a-veteran-lawyer-about-applying-for-disability-insurance-with-long-covid-and-me

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Here's my experience with Medicare, which is single-payer health insurance in the US for seniors and disabled people: I got diagnosed with a condition that has expensive immunotherapy on the Medicare formulary as the first-line treatment.

My doc prescribed it and Medicare pays for it.

That's it.

The propaganda against Medicare is so strong because UHC and the like make tens of billions of dollars denying care like mine.

#healthcare #insurance #UHC

@hannu_ikonen That was/is such an important article. It should've gotten so much more attention.

Two days ago I planted this endangered hibiscus (species Hibiscus clayi) for Beth, my partner who died last December. The species is part of a 'genetic lifeboat' program run by the university & some federal agencies & nonprofits.

Today it is showing its first blossom.

Being a green thumb in Hawaii is like level 1 stuff 😂.

#bloomscrolling

Disabled people have been relying on each for a long, long time. In the chronic illness spaces, all we have is each other huddling against a largely hostile world. It is true mutual aid, bi- and omnidirectional, not just one-way requests for donations (which is fine but I don't consider that mutual aid because what part of it is mutual?).

Example from @meactnet is the Canary Corps. https://www.meaction.net/canary-corps/

Learn from us.

#disability #ChronicIllness

Just looked at granular #Wisconsin data.

30,000 votes. Trump won the state by less than half of Lambeau Field's capacity.

Fucking hell.

#USpol #election2024

Seen on Kauai.

@onan

This news was broken by people who follow the #UAP issue months ago and now the WSJ has decided that DOD not being able to ID objects flying over a big Air Force facility is a story.

I think it is too...I'd like our military to know who or what is evading air defenses and buzzing bases.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/drones-military-pentagon-defense-331871f4

Nothing's shocking anymore except this chart.

#healthcare #medicine

A Trumper just yelled at me to go back to California, which I find endlessly funny as #Hawaii went for Biden at 64% and we are far more liberal than California on just about every policy. We have universal healthcare, for crissakes.

#USpol

Some people who describe themselves as pro-Palenstinian took down and breached the Internet Archive because....it's in the United States and the U.S. is responsible for genocide donchta know.

Absolute brain worms.

https://gizmodo.com/hacktivists-claim-responsibility-for-taking-down-the-internet-archive-2000510339

Vance's idea to group chronically ill people into high-risk pools so insurers can shun & gouge us was something that used to happen pre-ACA. So yes, he wants to go backwards. Fuck this guy and his terrible ideas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/09/20/vance-health-care-affordable-care-act/