A major federal panel that advises the government on vaccines has stepped back from efforts targeting Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, a change that comes as some Republicans reportedly caution that additional shifts in vaccine policy could hurt the party in the upcoming midterm elections.

Several vaccine advisers selected by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, had been exploring the possibility of ending federal recommendations for mRNA covid shots. That initiative is no longer going forward, according to two sources familiar with the discussions who spoke to the Washington Post.

Members of the health department's vaccine advisory committee (ACIP) in recent months have openly raised concerns about both the safety and production of the vaccines despite widespread research. Some of those comments included repeating a debunked claim that DNA contamination in the shots posed a health risk.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) press secretary, Emily G Hilliard, said in a statement to the Guardian that "the committee has not reconsidered its September 2025 decision to classify COVID vaccines under shared clinical decision-making on the CDC immunization schedules."

. . .

An international team of scientists and clinicians has announced the launch of a new open-access 3D portal that allows users to explore intact human organs in unprecedented detail--from the whole organ down to individual cells locally. The Human Organ Atlas, created using a powerful synchrotron imaging method, brings together some of the most detailed 3D images of human organs ever produced. It enables scientists, doctors, educators, students and the wider public to interactively "fly through" organs such as the brain, heart, lungs, kidney and liver, providing a new way of understanding human anatomy and human diseases.

Building on an initial release, the Human Organ Atlas (HOA) is now available in a greatly expanded form and can be accessed directly through a standard web browser, without specialized software. The technology is published in the journal Science Advances.

The Atlas is powered by an advanced imaging method called Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Tomography (HiP-CT), developed at the European Synchrotron (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, by an international team led by University College London (UCL), UK. HiP-CT uses the ESRF's Extremely Brilliant Source--a new generation of synchrotron source--which is up to 100 billion times brighter than conventional hospital CT scanners.

This allows researchers to scan entire intact ex vivo human organs non-destructively and then zoom in to near-cellular resolution (down to less than one micron, 50 times thinner than the size of a human hair). The technique bridges a century-old gap in medicine between radiology and histology, and represents a major advance in biomedical imaging.

Last Saturday, in the middle of the night (4 a.m. to be exact), Republicans finally hung the January 6th plaque inside the Capitol Building. Except there was one tiny issue: The plaque was hung in a private corridor outside of public view, meaning Republicans are still hiding the plaque and what happened on January 6th.

The plaque was required by law to be installed by March 2023, but Republicans have refused.

Former Capitol police officer, January 6th hero, and The Siren contributor Harry Dunn joins this episode of Big F*ing Deal to discuss this latest coverup of Jan. 6 by Republicans, and shares his thoughts on this new development.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is using Palantir to figure out where its staff should sit, after deciding only the colorful AI company can do the job.

Like other US government agencies, the Department (USDA) has ordered government employees back to the office. According to a contract notice, the return-to-work mandate has created the need for "advanced data integration capabilities to consolidate information from multiple sources, real-time analytics to optimize space utilization and employee seat assignments, and robust security compliance to protect sensitive organizational data"

In a statement to The Register, the USDA ignored our questions about cost and rationale and stated: "This is not a new tool. This tool was deployed last year to support USE IT (building utilization and reporting) and workspace allocation and management."

The contract notice, signed by USDA chief data and artificial intelligence officer Christopher Alvares, acknowledges that other software companies can probably sort out seating plans, but that only Palantir can do the job right.

"While there are several companies that provide data analytics and integration platforms, Databricks, Snowflake, IBM, SAS, Salesforce, and Alteryx, none offer the combination of capabilities, enterprise scale data fusion, real-time analytics, compliance monitoring and integration with existing USDA systems that Palantir provides," Alvares wrote. "Salesforce and similar applications have not demonstrated a product that has advanced data integration capabilities or the agility required to address rapidly changing requirements."

. . .

They raid compost bins, outsmart latches and sometimes look gleeful doing it. A new study in Animal Behaviour suggests raccoons may not just be opportunistic--they may be genuinely curious.

UBC researchers Hannah Griebling and Dr. Sarah Benson-Amram found raccoons continued solving puzzles long after retrieving the only food reward available. This behavior reflects intrinsic motivation rather than hunger and is described as "information foraging," because no additional food was given for continuing.
Nine ways in--and they kept going

Researchers used a custom multi-access puzzle box with mechanisms such as latches, sliding doors or knobs. The box had nine entry points, grouped as easy, medium and hard. In each 20-minute trial, the puzzle box contained a single marshmallow, yet raccoons often continued opening new mechanisms after eating it, a clear sign of information-seeking.

"We weren't expecting them to open all three solutions in a single trial," said Griebling. "They kept problem solving even when there was no marshmallow at the end."

. . .

VIBE CODING

AI assistants like OpenClaw have gained a large following because they make it simple for users to "vibe code," or build fairly complex applications and code projects just by telling it what they want to construct. Probably the best known (and most bizarre) example is Moltbook, where a developer told an AI agent running on OpenClaw to build him a Reddit-like platform for AI agents.

The Moltbook homepage.

Less than a week later, Moltbook had more than 1.5 million registered agents that posted more than 100,000 messages to each other. AI agents on the platform soon built their own porn site for robots, and launched a new religion called Crustafarian with a figurehead modeled after a giant lobster. One bot on the forum reportedly found a bug in Moltbook's code and posted it to an AI agent discussion forum, while other agents came up with and implemented a patch to fix the flaw.

Moltbook's creator Matt Schlict said on social media that he didn't write a single line of code for the project.

"I just had a vision for the technical architecture and AI made it a reality," Schlict said. "We're in the golden ages. How can we not give AI a place to hang out."

The Wall St Journal is doing some incredible work these days. Even their editorial page isn't a obnoxious as it used to be, But the straight journalism is first rate. This multi-media investigation today is a great example. (gift link)It's about the U.S. government going after U.S. citizen protesters and making their lives hell.

Protesters, observers and passersby taken into custody by federal agents were declared terrorists and attackers in hundreds of social-media posts by U.S. officials and departments since the start of the immigration sweeps in cities. This includes Minneapolis, where two citizens were excoriated by officials after they were killed by federal agents in January.

The Wall Street Journal found that the Department of Homeland Security, created in 2002 to protect Americans, has turned its force against citizens.

Of the 279 people accused by officials on X of attacking federal officers in the past year, 181 were U.S. citizens, the Journal found. Close to half of those Americans were never charged with assault. None have been convicted at trial.

Yet names, mug shots and other identifying details posted by the government put a bull's-eye on them. They had to explain the accusations to family, friends and employers. In a few cases, their home and workplace addresses were leaked online, drawing death threats.

Federal prosecutors in cities with high-profile immigration operations said they have been pressured by Justice Department leaders to aggressively pursue assault charges, even in cases undermined by contradictory evidence or ones that fail to appear worthy of prosecution. Some have quit in response. Others say the time spent on flimsy cases takes them away from prosecuting drug cases, public corruption and gun-related crimes.

This is a Stephen Miller program. He's in charge of DHS.

. . .

I came across this on social media and it spoke to me. I think it's right:

I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.

I don't wonder anymore.

I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.

If you're a racist, you found your guy. If you're a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy.

If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you're a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy. If you've never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy.

If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy.

If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.

If he'd only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn't have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it. It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission.

He didn't invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn't create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.

Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there's one sentence that defines his power, it's this: "He says the things I'm thinking." And that's the part that should chill us.

Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?

Maybe we were living in a fool's paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress. Now the mask is off. Now we know. And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand.

- Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.

. . .

"Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity" by Paul Kingsnorth attempts to get at the root of it. (I'm partway through the audiobook.) Kingsnorth suggests that behind Man's increasing alienation from nature and himself is a system, a technological-cultural matrix. Cultured in capitalism over centuries and fueled by money, always money, it is colonizing our own culture, reducing humans to inputs, and leaving people spiritually barren.

From a review last fall, "The Machine, he writes, is the sum of the forces 'controlled by and for technology' that have, since the inception of modernity, been 'uprooting us from nature, culture and God.' " We have raised innovation to a secular faith, "a religious vision for an irreligious society."

Kingsnorth resists categorization. "Some of Kingsnorth's explanations align with Trumpism and the American Christian right," reviewer Alexander Nazaryan notes. And yet he argues that left and right are both being subsumed by the Machine. A Machine in the latter stages of cultural collapse.

"I'm hopeful about the fact that the Machine can't last," he said. "I don't think it is spiritually or ecologically or culturally sustainable."

Over at Anand Giridharadas's The Ink (subscription required), they've begun a series with an overlapping subject, only focused on contemporary issues of power. Downstream of the Epstein class, "millions simply sense that something is amiss, wonder how decisions are made, and grow alienated from the system. Life feels hard, but it's even harder to see upstream through the fog and understand why." The Epstein files provide clues to what's happening, Giridharadas writes in the introduction. "But access does not equal understanding" the underlying operating system. And the network.

. . .

A few days ago I published a piece about Scott Bessent and the gates he controls. I documented his role chairing the committee reviewing the Saudi acquisition of Electronic Arts while Jared Kushner holds equity in the deal, his three refusals of Senate requests for Epstein's financial records, and his fund's appearance as a client of Ehud Barak's intelligence firm Ergo, the entity Epstein's own lawyer designed to control where Epstein's money went. If you have not read that piece, I would start there.

Today I want to go deeper, because the question I kept asking after I published was this: what does the paper trail look like underneath all of that? I wanted to find the documented financial reality that would explain why a man in Bessent's position might have very concrete, personal, monetary reasons to slow-walk certain investigations and fast-track certain approvals. So I pulled his financial disclosure, the document every Cabinet official is legally required to file before taking office, and I spent a significant amount of time going through it line by line.

. . .