I’m 100% sure that Trump shares Jeffrey Epstein’s “love of young, nubile girls,” but not at all sure about Epstein’s purported suicide note, saying so. It was postmarked in the wrong state, three days after Epstein died. Smells like BS to me, and also, I’m skeptical that Epstein died by suicide.

Excerpt: There are reasons for optimism: vaccines and antivirals should be effective against avian influenza, and the world is far better prepared thanks to lessons learned from COVID, particularly in diagnostics and global surveillance.

Me again: Whatever lessons might’ve been learned, in America at least, are busily being un-learned.

This is good news for a lucky half-million Arizonans, and I don’t want to poo-poo it, but “medical debt” remains a concept unknown to most of the civilized world. The answer is universal health care, not random acts of kindness.

Excerpt: Preliminarily, police said the agents approached a white van, but the vehicle attempted to run them over.

Me again: Time after time, such statements from ICE turn out to be bullshit. It’s wise to assume they’re lying this time, too, unless there’s video showing the driver attempting to run over ICE agents. If there was video, though, ICE would’ve released it to the media immediately.

Excerpt: Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has vowed to make New York City more affordable, but his most well-known plans will take time — and in some cases the cooperation of state legislators.

So he has already begun considering more than a dozen potential executive and regulatory actions aimed at lowering costs and protecting workers without having to worry about the sluggish pace and political calculations of lawmakers in Albany.

The list of options was provided in recent days by a team led by Lina Khan, a leading progressive legal scholar, that has spent weeks scouring New York City’s laws to find dormant or underused mayoral authority that could allow Mr. Mamdani to take action in a hurry…

Excerpt: “I watched a man leave his house in the morning in New York…. watched a woman jogging alone on a forest trail in Georgia. This trail had multiple cameras, and I could watch a man rollerblade and then take a break to watch rollerblading videos on his phone. How? Because the camera’s AI automatically zoomed in on it — just like it zoomed in on a couple arguing at a street market in Atlanta.”​

This is ‘journalism’, sidestepping the facts to push the right-wing agenda. Here’s a fact: Medicaid spending is a smidgen past $909-billion per year. If $207-million was paid in error, that amounts to 0.02277% of the Medicaid budget. This strikes me as something not worth too much worrying.

Excerpt: … [the dead man was] reportedly not in a crosswalk, according to police.

Me again: Here’s some context which oddly didn’t appear in the newspaper: Along that stretch of roadway, crosswalks are at least a mile apart, and generally, folks tend to jaywalk when crossing the street legally means a two-mile walk.