Notices by Matthew Loxton (mloxton@med-mastodon.com)

"Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham had ordered his staff to stop engaging in media campaigns and community health fairs to encourage vaccinations"

https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-vaccination-surgeon-general-8e2eecde047648e6fb62c4b44edd6566

@luckytran
With a ton of material vanishing off PubMed and government sites, I wanted to give you some alternatives to find research materials, reports, and data.

Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/
MedRXiv: https://www.medrxiv.org/
Wayback Machine: https://archive.org/

The future in perspectives.

My furry friends from Kollectiva and I agree on many things, but not on what a future would be like if there was a revolution that overturned Capitalism.

Their view: Happy people living free and using barter and cryptocurrencies for getting their eggs and avocados. Everyone is smiling, and lives a long and fruitful life
My view: Miserable people eking out a bare existence in the ruins, and selling body parts to rich people to buy basics. Everyone is sick and dying

Senator Britt: yeah, cut that bloated federal government. Cut all that woke stuff! Cut it all! Woohoo, we rule! Yay us!
Admin cuts NIH funding, including billions to Alabama
Senator Britt: no! no! not MY funding! Cut in targeted ways so only THOSE people get hurt

@paninid
The ones that dislike him most.
He would sell CA to Russia or China in a heartbeat

@StillIRise1963

Who are you betting on for the Superb Owl?

I have this expectation that Musk's Boy Wonders are going to heave tons of really sensitive data into an unsecured LLM, and then ask it to suggest things to cut. They will neither know nor care that the LLM will make shit up and has zero ability to do that kind of analysis.

I would put money on a bet that says this is the extent of Elon's skill at actual cost-cutting

@Jain
Thanks

"I don't really care how the process went, it's not about how the process went, but rather about whether the security clearance is in place or not."

Here we differ. Process is actually more important, because process is the repeatable and documented way things work. If Trump just handed them clearance, that is something worth digging into, but isn't the point. The point is that the process of getting clearance is a risk-reduction mechanism. These LostBoys are risks

@Jain
Thanks for the explanation

Fundamentalism - The law still partially works under total fascism, and we are not yet at a complete fascist takeover. So mechanisms are still in place, still operating, and I am pointing out that the DOGE crowd are circumventing it and people are complying in a way that is outside law. There is still time to point that out, make people realize that this is breaking rules, and to mobilize against it getting worse. People often assume that things are lawful.
...

@Jain
Security: I point it out for two reasons. One, is that the lack of security vetting highlights the risk and the abnormality of the situation, and secondly, that if Trump himself granted security clearance, that in itself is noteworthy and signals where we are headed. People need to be reminded that this is abnormal, breaks precedent and practice, and that good practice is being skirted.

"maybe you like them having power"
That makes fuckall sense. I suggest you reconsider

...

@Jain
"I linked a trustworthy article"

My dude, I am following reputable infosec sources, I get security briefings, I have lived in places where authoritarianism was a feature, I know how the gov security vetting works. So again, I have not seen anything that suggested that they "went through the government security vetting". Trump simply granting clearance is not going though "government security vetting", nor is getting an email account from some compliant local IT guy.

@Jain
"fundamentalist ideological wishful thinking"

Sorry what now?
Explain how doubting that these guys went through the right channels and had normal security vetting is "fundamentalist ideological wishful thinking".
Fundamentalist with what?
What ideology?
Wishful, how?

@Jain
Nothing I have seen suggests that any of them went through the government security vetting

@Chief
Ok, but besides the weird analogy about women (?!), this is not about Congress, but institutions whose staff just acquiesced to a brazen infosec intrusion that defies belief. Like how in fuck does it happen that some external bunch of youngsters can just lay their sticky hands on secure systems and servers?

If I have a GFE PC, and accidentally plug a USB drive into it, the whole fucking thing sounds an alarm and locks up and I would get a call from IT asking just WTAF I was doing

Just to be clear, DOGE is not a government department, and has not been formed by Congress according to ArtII.S2.C2.3.6 "Creation of Federal Offices"
His employees have no government contract
The people he is sending in to just access government servers have no security clearance, are not operating under a contract, and have no oversight

The "Department of government efficiency" is not a government department any more than if you or I created a "office of internal nut cracking" (OINC)

@dana @Remittancegirl
btw, some writers do stuff that pokes at social justice

e.g. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/23380742.Humphrey_Archer/blog

Some Soviet-style revisionist stuff going on in the USA

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/faustfiles/114043

So how did the security of this work.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-workers-out-computer-systems-us-agency-sources-say-2025-01-31/

@sun
The meme was dumb

It equivocated on the use of "masculinity" and its argument was illogical.
It used descriptive stats incorrectly to infer causation, and even then still didn't address the original statement by the supposed feminist.
Yeah, toxic-masculinity IS bad. It's bad for everyone
High rates of single-mother offspring in jails is an irrelevant response

Also, the image was shitty artwork

The whole thing is a leaky pot of shit on stilts
You should run away from it

@ageha

@sun
Oh sure.
I am not going to bother researching this topic beyond what I have already seen in peer reviewed journals and by experts in this field. I will stick to research in my own field, but I am certainly able to set *you* straight.

Once more, the research showed that it was not the presence of a male that made the difference, but the income level that having two parents could deliver.

I suggest you abandon this notion, and find something more worthwhile - like vaccination rates