Issues You May Know, 17 October 2025.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
Cutting Medicaid will cost lives and the health of Americans.
Medicaid Expansion Linked to Better Cancer Survival at 5 Years — Residents of rural, high-poverty areas derived greatest benefit versus non-expansion states by Charles Bankhead, Senior Editor, MedPage Today October 8, 2025 Survival also improved for multiple cancers associated with high mortality risk, reported Elizabeth J. Schafer, MPH, of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, and coauthors in Cancer Discovery. “The evidence supporting Medicaid expansion in improving outcomes for cancer patients is clear,” Schafer said in a statement. “Research has shown that Medicaid expansion can increase cancer screening prevalence, early-stage diagnosis, short-term survival, and now -- according to our own analysis -- 5-year survival. These findings underscore the importance of protecting and expanding Medicaid in the remaining 10 non-expansion states to improve outcomes for all individuals.” “Improvements in health insurance coverage following Medicaid expansion likely contributed to greater improvements in 5-year survival in expansion states compared to non-expansion states,” she told MedPage Today. “Insurance coverage plays a crucial role in enhancing cancer outcomes by enabling timely access to diagnostic and treatment services.”
My letter to reps:
Cutting Medicaid will cost lives and the health of Americans, this is clear from the fact that better cancer survival is linked to Medicaid expansion with ACA.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
What was upstream of these data centers and the destruction of democracy.
This is an interview with the journalist and author Jacob Silverman with the new book “Gilded Rage Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley”, and I think there are quite a few things discussed that I’m quite sure that most people are unaware of if you haven’t been up to your eyeballs in this for so many years.
Tech Won’t Save Us 25 10 09 #297 The Gilded Rage of Tech Billionaires Jacob Silverman
Tech tycoons have been festering for quite some time.
Deloitte provided shoddy AI chatbot derived “research” report to Australian government with fake citations.
Here’s a tip, if you are at all knowledgeable about a subject, and you should be at least somewhat knowledgeable if you’re writing about it to inform other people; then you already know of citations that you would refer to, because you’ve already read those sources you put in the footnotes, because you’ve been learning about the subject from such research materials. The whole point of writing about stuff is to impart the information. Someone nearly clueless about something shouldn’t be the one relied upon to communicate anything on it. And that’s what’s going on if someone is just letting AI chatbots write something, and then not even “fact checking chatbot fake citations” which is really bad. Also doesn’t seem like it could possibly save time in the long run. And it certainly won’t save face! This whole gaffe is especially damning when it comes to an outfit like Deloitte which is supposed to be so fancy and superior in providing quality information and analysis. I’ve always thought that reverence wasn’t deserved when it comes to these companies. But what a way for these companies to finally shit the bed for all the public to see.
My letter to reps from March 2024:
Lying AI should not be doing the people’s business or science. Lives are at stake and the U.S. government and scientific scholars are buying into tech hype boondoggles. Is it corruption, incompetence, or sabotage? Chloe Humbert Mar 22, 2024 I don’t pay taxes to have “AI” making grave bad decisions that impact people’s lives. I’m supposed to have representation as a human in government and lawmakers and government agencies are supposed to actually have people doing the people’s business. We know that these LLMs and chatbots are NOTORIOUS for giving bad information and creating disinformation. Why would FEMA, DHS or any other agency tasked with protecting human lives use this crap technology at all. Is someone getting kickbacks? I want an investigation into this, with advice from experts who are not receiving money to hype this stuff all over the place.
Revisionist history in America.
Thanks Ken Burns. Good gravy this is insane level revisionist history.
Is PBS Okay?: “Masterpiece History” Might Be Erasing Slavery From The American Revolution Tad Stoermer Oct 8, 2025 From a PBS Tiktok, Question: “Is there a little known fact about Thomas Jefferson that more people should know?” Answer from Jane Kamensky (president of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello): “An important thing to remember when we think about Jefferson and the second continental congress is it was a gathering of young and rather ordinary people. Um so at the time of the writing of the declaration, Jefferson was in his early 30s. Um he was uh still relatively newly married and uh and the life of his wife and growing family here was foremost in his mind. um as he was thinking with a group of like-minded men and all of the women and laborers, enslaved and free who made up their worlds about the kind of world they wanted to build.”
This historian literally is trying to tell us that Thomas Jefferson, owner of more than 600 human slaves over his lifetime who came from money and also married an heiress, was an “ordinary person” and that the other rich landowners and well to do people with time to involve themselves in politics were supposedly “young ordinary people”, and even more spectacularly, to try to assert that women, and even humans kept as property and exploited in the most horrifying ways, were somehow allowed to be involved in the thinking about building a government. We’re supposed to believe that? I really hope that most people listening to this would immediately scoff and ridicule this historian and any historic documentarian that would put this bunk forward or endorse it, but I don’t know. I don’t know what the latest generations have been being taught in school about the American Revolution and the early United States.
No confidence in the CDC as commandeered by MAGA-MAHA.
CIDRAP New poll: Public confidence in CDC for vaccine advice tumbles Stephanie Soucheray, MA October 9, 2025 Support for RFK Jr and MAHA low. The poll also shows low support for both Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and his MAHA, or “Make America Health Again” movement. Of those polled, 62% disapprove of how Kennedy handles vaccine policy, while only 37% approve. Only 41% “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of how he is handling his job, while 59% disapprove of his job performance. Forty-three percent of those polled say they support MAHA. Support varies widely by political affiliation, with 74% of Republicans favoring the movement, compared with only 22% of Democrats.
There’s really no wonder why. They’re jerking federal workers around bandying about partisan political attacks on people or agencies that Donald Trump personally considers might be his political opposition.
CNN - ‘The damage is beyond repair’: The CDC is facing another round of deep staff cuts By Brenda Goodman The notices were emailed shortly after 9 p.m. on a holiday weekend, following a pattern favored by the Trump administration of carrying out layoffs of federal workers outside of normal business hours. Impacted employees said the move was especially cruel during a government shutdown, which made severance information even harder to get, since many federal workers are not in their offices or able to answer emails. President Donald Trump said late Friday afternoon that he plans to fire “a lot” of federal workers in retaliation for the government shutdown, vowing to target those deemed to be aligned with the Democratic Party. “We figure they started this thing, so they should be Democrat-oriented,” Trump said, placing blame for the shutdown on Democratic lawmakers. Trump did not provide details on what qualified the affected workers as “Democrat-oriented.”
People were fired, and then those firings were reported as rescinded to The New York Times 24 hours later. This is not a way to operate a health agency, clearly.
The New York Times - Trump Administration Is Bringing Back Scores of C.D.C. Experts Fired in Error Friday’s layoffs swept up scientists involved in responding to disease outbreaks and running an influential journal. Officials said the mistaken dismissals were being rescinded. By Apoorva Mandavilli and Sheryl Gay Stolberg - Oct. 11, 2025 Updated 9:01 p.m. ET The Trump administration on Saturday raced to rescind layoffs of hundreds of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who were mistakenly fired on Friday night in what appeared to be a substantial procedural lapse. Among those wrongly dismissed were the top two leaders of the federal measles response team, those working to contain Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and the team that assembles the C.D.C.’s vaunted scientific journal, The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. After The New York Times reported the dismissals, two federal health officials said on Saturday that many of those workers were being brought back. The officials spoke anonymously in order to disclose internal discussions. The mistakes rocked an agency already in tumult, and which has been a particular target of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The C.D.C. lost about a third of its staff in April; many were rehired weeks later.
Trump got his covid vaccine update and flu shot at his second annual doctor’s exam of the year.
CNN - Trump received Covid vaccine and flu shot during second physical of the year By Samantha Waldenberg Updated Oct 10, 2025 President Donald Trump received a Covid vaccine and flu shot during his visit to Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday, his physician said in a memo released by the White House. “In preparation for upcoming international travel, President Trump also received preventive health screenings and immunizations, including annual influenza and updated COVID-19 booster vaccinations,” the president’s physician, Dr. Sean Barbabella, wrote.
Bad Astronomy guy got the bad virus for the first time. I hope it’ll be the last, but the risks won’t stop for any of us.
It’s only getting worse with the slashing of public health.
Bad Astronomy Newsletter - I got COVID, and a fast radio burst progenitor found? So, some good and bad news. Philip Plait October 14, 2025 Welp, I finally got COVID Dangit As y’all might know, I’ve been a strong advocate for vaccinations since forever, and also for masking since the pandemic started in 2000 (sic). I’ve made sure I get the booster every time it’s offered, and I always wear a mask when I’m out in the world (with very few exceptions, like restaurants with adequate ventilation and the like). This has stood me well; I have been a NOVID — someone who never got COVID — for five years now, despite being in situations where people around me got infected. That ended last week. The story is complicated, but the bottom line is my wife was on travel to support an ill family member, and got it from being around another family member who had it without knowing (who almost assuredly got it while visiting the hospital). She didn’t show symptoms until two days after getting back home here, and by then it was too late. I got it.
Every person I know or know of, locally, online, in podcasts I listen to, from newsletters I read, everyone who has gotten covid this year, there has been travel involved. Either the person who gets covid was traveling, or they were around someone who’d recently traveled. Or in this case, even though Phil Plait is sure the family member who gave his wife covid got it from the hospital (not a bad guess since that’s where a lot of sick people are!) – even so, it’s still a case that someone who travelled got it off someone who’d traveled.
Yet on several of my recent road trips across the state, me and my spouse were the only people I saw masking at the highway travel rest stop restrooms. And I keep hearing people talk about how airports are a petri dish of viruses, but they’re not talking about masking on airplanes.
Get your covid and flu vaccines ahead of travel and the holidays. The covid vaccines are most effective within the first few months after receipt. And then at least at a minimum, mask on the train, on buses, at airports, and especially when you go to public restrooms. (Listen, don’t you want to avoid fecal aerosols anyway?) This really isn’t a big ask when you consider it’s not just your own trip that might be saved from misery, but someone’s grandma will live to be seen at dinner during the upcoming holidays. It’s worth it unless you’ve got hangups about masks, and if you do have hangups about masks, I suggest you get over it, because we’re going to see a lot more risk going forward.
National and Wisconsin specific covid & flu vaccine information from Doctor Kaitlin Sundling.
Harassment and assault accusations are serious, especially if it’s someone with a great deal of power.
The New Republica - Robert McCoy / October 15, 2025/1:40 p.m. ET Mike Johnson Says Restraining Order Against GOP Rep Isn’t “Serious” The House speaker isn’t too worried that Representative Cory Mills was accused of beating his girlfriend. House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that harassment, assault, and stolen valor allegations against Republican Representative Cory Mills are not “serious” matters of discussion at a Wednesday press conference. A Florida judge on Tuesday issued a restraining order against Mills, after his ex-girlfriend alleged that he had threatened to blackmail her using sexually explicit images of her and to commit violence against her future romantic partners.
My letter to reps:
Harassment and assault allegations and a restraining order are most certainly serious things that should be viewed seriously regarding this Rep. Cory Mills. Anyone brushing something like that aside like it’s not serious should be scrutinized because it’s suspicious to say that’s not serious.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Don’t do voter suppression, even by accident.
If you decide you don’t want to vote, that’s your decision, I think to obey in advance, but whatever the case, it’s your business if you decide to reject whatever civic engagement for yourself. But if you’re out there messaging to other people that they shouldn’t bother voting, or parroting that kind of messaging out on social media, or in forums, or in group chats, or one on one to your friends or family, then you’re doing voter suppression. Do you really want to be the bad guy telling someone they shouldn’t attempt to exercise their rights?
There’s a pivotal PA Supreme Court retention election here in Pennsylvania and so I’m also receiving ridiculous amounts of pamphlets in the mail trying to trick me in various ways into thinking I should vote against retaining the PA Supreme Court judges or maybe not vote at all. I’m starting to see a LOT of “don’t bother voting” propaganda on social media from left-coded accounts, as the election approaches. It’s one thing to propagandize about why other people should vote one way or another, but trying weirdly to shame people to try to make them feel foolish to try, or stupid to hope, in order to deceive them into not exercising the rights they have — that’s bad guy shit. Nobody decent should be talking down to anyone else like that.
The people caught in the Mount Everest blizzard were not on Mount Everest.
What the Heck Is Going On with the Mount Everest Blizzard Rescue? Amid the exaggerated headlines, our articles editor provides a handy explainer for the rescue mission to save 800 people near the world’s highest peak - OUTSIDE - Frederick Dreier Updated October 8, 2025 05:00PM The high elevation in the Himalayas, when matched with the punishing terrain, prevalence of avalanches, landslides, and floods, means that even somewhat minor weather events can put people into grave danger. According to multiple reports, not everyone on these trekking trips had the correct gear or clothing. The snow was so heavy that people’s tents collapsed. So yeah, these people were in grave danger, even if they weren’t trapped in the Death Zone. So why do some of these media reports say that hundreds of climbers were rescued on Mount Everest? Those stories got you to click on them, right?
My first thought was: I’m sure there was tons of AI generated stuff on facebook.
And of course there’s a fake AI slop video about a dog dying on Mount Everest that never happened.
Also, for future reference, climbing season is in the spring.
The The, Heartland, 1986
Let the poor drink the milk while the rich eat the honey
Let the bums count their blessings while they count their moneySo many people can’t express what’s on their minds
Nobody knows them and nobody ever will
Until their backs are broken and their dreams are stolen
And they can’t get what they want, then they’re gonna get angry!
Well it ain’t written in the papers, but it’s written on the walls
The way this country is divided to fall
Campfire.
Cook Forest State Park, Pennsylvania. September 2025. Photo By Chloe Kaczenski Humbert.