Top health officials resign over Kennedy’s misinformation and lies

[UPDATE: ProPublica reports that “Leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered staff this week not to release their experts’ assessment that found the risk of catching measles is high in areas near outbreaks where vaccination rates are lagging”. That has all the signs of Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism.]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent years peddling crank theories about vaccines and yet the Republicans in the Senate approved of his nomination to be the head of the department of Health and Human Services, the cabinet office that oversees almost all the agencies that deal with public health, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

During his hearings he claimed that he was not a vaccine skeptic but anyone who has followed his career knows that he was being disingenuous at best, if not outright lying. And sure enough, top career people in those agencies are quitting, with one of them Dr. Peter Marks, pointing to Kennedy’s misinformation and lies as the reason.
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Tesla cybertruck looks like a piece of junk

It is astonishing how shoddy is the construction of Elon Musk’s Tesla Cybertruck, with parts of the body falling off especially at higher speeds, because they had been pasted on with glue and the adhesive failed after some time, especially in colder weather.

That is not the only part that is falling off. The A-shaped piece of trim along the top at the two sides over the window also has been falling off for the same reason.This is dangerous for other users of the road, since flying metal parts can cause serious injury and damage. How long before Tesla gets sued?

Tesla has stopped all Cybertruck deliveries but isn’t saying it’s because of the glue used on the Cybertruck. Tesla is only saying Cybertrucks are on a “containment hold,” which is a vague designation by design. A containment hold is a proactive stopgap used by auto manufacturers to address quality issues or defects on vehicles before they reach customers. This is a serious measure that indicates significant problems with the vehicle’s construction. Automakers don’t have to explain why a vehicle or vehicles are in a containment hold, and companies aren’t limited to the time they can be in containment holds, either. For now, Tesla is simply keeping Cybertrucks away from dealerships without acknowledging any issues.

Now, the automaker has issued another recall, the eighth one since the truck was released, involving over 46,000 Cybertrucks produced between November 13, 2023, and February 27, 2025. The NHSTA notes that the warning is for the aforementioned cant panel separation and that fixing it will require extra reinforcements and an adhesive that is not susceptible to “environmental embrittlement.”

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Science? We don’t need no stinking science!

The latest global rankings on university research by the journal Nature has been released and China has vaulted into the lead, with US universities sliding rapidly down.

In the last decade, a profound shift has taken place in global academia that has fundamentally altered the hierarchy of scientific research. China, once considered a peripheral player in cutting-edge science, has now ascended to the forefront of academic excellence. The latest Nature Index rankings reveal an astonishing trend: nine of the world’s top 10 research institutions are now Chinese, with Harvard University being the sole Western presence in the upper echelon.

This seismic transformation, while the Trump administration is instituting deep cuts in funding for research and shutting down the Department of Education, underscores not only China’s scientific prowess but also its strategic vision for global leadership in innovation and technology. To fully appreciate China’s meteoric rise, one must look back at the academic landscape a decade ago. When the Nature Index Global rankings were first released in 2014, only eight Chinese universities made it into the top 100. Today, that number has more than quintupled, with 42 Chinese institutions now ranking among the world’s best, surpassing the 36 American and four British universities in the list.
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Israeli snipers targeting Palestinian children?

Israel has started bombing Gaza again and there are horrifying reports that their snipers are deliberately targeting children.

On August 24, four-year-old Mira Al-Darini had just woken up to a hot summer morning in a crowded displacement camp, located between a local prison and the mediterranean sea in Khan Younis, when the sound of Israeli military tanks and gunfire erupted. Panic ensued. Mira was standing outside her family’s tent, clutching a sandwich her mother made for breakfast when a bullet struck her in the head.
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Suddenly, Mira’s entire face was covered in blood, and we knew our daughter was shot in the head.” Witnesses said Mira was fired at by an Israeli military drone armed with a gun.
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This is what a police state looks like

You are walking along a public street in daylight when suddenly you are surrounded by people dressed in black with masks on their faces who then handcuff you and take you away in unmarked vehicles to an unknown destination and not allowed to contact anyone. This is what happens routinely in authoritarian countries where the rule of law has broken down and death squads operate with impunity.

But this happened on Tuesday on the streets of a Boston suburb to a Fulbright graduate student from Turkey attending Tufts University.

Dramatic footage had emerged on Wednesday evening of the moment US immigration officials, wearing masks and hoodies, detained the Tufts University doctoral student in Massachusetts in the street, handcuffed her and bustled her into an unmarked car.

Ozturk was detained on Tuesday by federal immigration agents, and on Wednesday was being held at the South Louisiana Ice processing center, according to the government’s Ice detainee locator page.

The video, taken from a security camera on a building, shows Ozturk walking along the street when she is approached by several masked figures, who forcibly take her phone and backpack and place her in handcuffs. The officials, some with badges around their neck, all have their faces covered.

After she screams, an unseen onlooker can be heard responding.

“Is this a kidnapping?” asks the bystander, who appeared to be recording the arrest, footage that later circulated on social media.

In separate security-camera footage, the agents can be heard responding: “We’re the police.”

The bystander replies: “You don’t look like it. Why are you hiding your faces?”

Here is video of the event.

What the newly released JFK files reveal

Trump has ordered the release of a whole trove, over 80,000 pages, of formerly classified CIA and FBI documents purportedly dealing with the assassination of president Kennedy in 1963. The killing has been the source of endless conspiracy theories about who was responsible, throwing doubt on the official Warren Commission finding that it was the work of Lee Harvey Oswald working alone.

David Price has done a quick sampling of the documents and estimates that less than 20% of them deal with the actual events leading up to that day and those who are expecting bombshell revelations are going to be disappointed. However, he says that there is a lot on interesting information that is revealed about how the CIA (and FBI) operates because Trump has released information that is usually redacted.
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Choosing to rent instead of buying a home

In the US, owning one’s own home has always been portrayed as the ultimate dream and people strive to do so as soon as they have some kind of stability in terms of jobs and location. The equity in one’s home was portrayed as the best way to save for financial security and indeed for most people, the value of their home is their most substantial asset.

An owned home is typically the most valuable asset for U.S. homeowners. Black and Hispanic homeowners typically derive a higher share of their wealth from owned homes than White and Asian households.
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In 2021, 62% of U.S. households lived in homes they owned as their primary residence. But homeownership is less common among Black, Hispanic and multiracial households. In 2021, 40% of Black households, 47% of Hispanic households and 45% of multiracial households owned their primary residence. In the same year, 70% of White households and 58% of Asian households lived in homes they owned.

But as the prices of homes have increased along with mortgage rates, that dream of homeownership has become increasingly elusive for many. Now people are beginning to question whether buying a home is even desirable.
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Successful immigrants seemingly always arrive with just $10

Former congresswoman Mia Love has died at the age of 49 of a brain tumor. She was the first Black Republican congresswoman elected to the House of Representatives.

She was the daughter of Haitian immigrants. In the story about her, this passage struck me.

Love said her parents immigrated to the US with $10 in their pocket and a belief that hard work would lead to success. She said she was raised to believe passionately in the “American dream” and “to love this country, warts and all”. America at its roots is respectful, resilient, giving and grounded in gritty determination, she said.

I see this trope of “my ancestors arrived in the US with just $10 in their pockets” in many stories about immigrants who later became successful. $10 seems to be the magic number, not more, not less.

TV review of Adolescence (2025) and incels and the manosphere

I just watched the four-part TV series Adolescence that has created quite a media splash. The show tells the story of a 13-year old boy Jamie who would come home from school and then spend all his time online on the computer in his room. The parents did not worry too much about this, seeing it as somewhat normal behavior, until he is charged with the knifing death of a classmate Katie. They are incredulous that he could have done this but, as the show unfolds, they discover that his world of peers in school and online has taken him down some dark roads. The parents, ordinary people who live ordinary lives and try to do their best to bring up their children well, wonder where and how they went wrong and how they could have missed all the signs that their son was being influenced by others who were feeding them ideas that led to dangerous feelings of inadequacy and grievance.

The show makes a point of noting how adults are oblivious to what is going on in the world of adolescents and even when they know, misread the signals. This is shown in a scene where the detective’s son tells the father that he is blundering ineffectively because he does not understand the nuances of emojis, and that those emojis that he thought showed a liking by Katie for Jamie were actually sarcastic.

It is Mascombe’s own son, Adam, (Amari Jayden Bacchus), a recalcitrant kid, Fredo’s favorite target, who gets his father to understand his own ignorance. “It’s not going well because you’re not getting it,” Adam explains. “You’re not reading what they’re doing, what’s happening.” He shows his father a comment that Katie posted on Jamie’s Instagram. “Looks like she’s being nice?” Actually, the boy explains, the emojis she uses are coded ways of denigrating Jamie, of calling him an incel. “Adolescence” lives in the paranoid world that Andrew Tate made.

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