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September 16th, 2023|

The Republican party is no longer composed of individuals who respect the rule of law.  Apparently even when completely documented violations occur, the lure of power and control will overcome any pretense of respect for legal norms.  See: Paxton, Ken

September 5th, 2023|

It seems there is no end to the idiocy displayed by some members of the US House of Representative’s Republican caucus, who are opposing renewing the funding for PEPFAR.  This was undoubtedly encouraged by the even greater demonstration of irrational thinking displayed in this Heritage Foundation report. Richard W. Bauer, a Roman Catholic priest who spent 25 years working on the ground in clinics for people with H.I.V. in Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia describes the issue in his NYT opinion piece, It’s Not Pro-Life to Oppose a Program That Has Saved 25 Million Lives. An excerpt:

“Despite the impressive successes of PEPFAR, we still have a way to go in the fight against AIDS. Around the world, someone dies from an AIDS-related illness every minute, and only about half of H.I.V.-positive children who need treatment are receiving it. AIDS persists as a leading cause of death among young women in sub-Saharan Africa. Experts warn that we have fallen off track in the quest to end AIDS by 2030. Weakening PEPFAR would all but guarantee we fail to do so.

I remember the days before PEPFAR. We cannot go back to an era when nearly an entire generation was wiped out across Africa. We have come too far in the effort to end AIDS to abandon the course now. Letting PEPFAR lapse would fail to honor the teaching that all human life is sacred and worthy of protection.”

Recommended:

• Sure, listen to the guy who managed to drive multiple businesses into the ground, doesn’t read, and loves to cut taxes for the rich (perhaps because he’s one of them) when he tells you how to fix your economy and deficit.  Because I’m sure he’s thought things through to the 9th degree…

Matt Yglesias opines in detail in his Slow Boring blog.

• More excellence from David Wallace-Wells, writing in the NYT about how air pollution acts in some ways to mitigate temperature rise. No, he’s not advocating for increased air pollution, but pointing out that some measures to improve pollution and CO2 emissions may contribute to location-specific rising temperatures.   Climate is complicated, lots of work to be done to understand how best to mitigate global warming.

• UCSF’s Bob Wachter along with Abraham Verghese and Eric Topol opine on AI in Medicine on Medscape’s Medicine and the Machine.  Poor Bob is no longer a NOVID, and the three riff about where they see LLMs and AI going in clinical medicine.

Credit: Getty Images

   Molly White riffs on Web3:

    Let’s just say it’s not all rosy in Web3’s not-so-meta world; caveat emptor…

   Howard Oakley’s Eclectic Light Mac Feed:

    Always lots of good Mac OS insights here…