Are the workers who will be depopulating these birds being told about the zoonotic risk associated with their work? How are these birds having their lives ended? How much is this costing taxpayers? These are all questions the media should be asking related to these headlines. aninfluenza

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Alex Pretti would have turned 38 today. He was an ICU nurse who spent his life saving others. ICE agents shot him dead in Minneapolis, his death was ruled a homicide, and nine months later no one has been charged and his family still has no answers. Justice for the Prettis. y #press #AlexPretti #Minneapolis #Nurses #Justice

I have a quote in Strongmen about Germans still attached to the Führer cult claiming Hitler could not have known about the messes his officials were causing. And Mao fanatics today claim Mao did not know about mass starvation he caused.

🚨🚨🚨

OMG… ICE IS EVIL

My post about Putin's henchman Kirill Dmitriev exchanging QAnon-coded signals with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth got around half a million views. So chances are you've seen it.

A lot of people in the comments insisted it was “just” a joke, mockery, trolling, shitposting, whatever. You know, not for real.

I couldn't disagree more.

There is no line between serious and pretend here. The point is the exchange itself. The shameless public display of hey, we're on the same wavelength, you and me. A little wink across the geopolitical battlefield.

And how the fuck is that fundamentally different from an actual QAnon “plan”? When the man running the Pentagon is apparently on the same wavelength as a lackey of the bastard who's been trying to rock the entire world order until it capsizes?

You don't need a secret conspiracy when they're practically winking at each other in broad daylight.

A Pentagon chief who engages in this kind of bullshit should be fired. Period.

And Dmitriev's smug, arrogant ass, swaggering around on American soil playing puppet master of Washington, should be kicked the fuck back to Moscow.

Am I wrong?

Time for a healthier America.

Fire RFK Jr.

Hugely useful reporting but “govern” is not the word. Trump’s only constitutional authority is to execute the laws Congress passes or has passed. To try to exercise power otherwise is to “attempt a coup” or more politely “try to rule” or “reign.”
reuters.com/legal/governme…

I am so glad Idaho B3.13 H5N1 is now getting the attention I failed to muster for it June...

Just sorry it survives the winters in Idaho & keeps coming back!

🚨🐄 With growing alarm over the renewed spread of 𝙱𝟹.𝟷𝟹 H5N1 in US dairy herds, the recent spillover into a Utah mink farm, and ongoing human cases, the #1 question remains:

𝗜𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘃𝗶𝗿𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗮 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻-𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲 (α𝟮–𝟲) after 2 years and thousands of mammal-to-mammal infections across cows, cats, mink, and wildlife, the main 𝙱𝟹.𝟷𝟹 lineage still hasn’t budged toward α𝟸–𝟼.

Here’s my current thinking on why — and why 𝙱𝟹.𝟷𝟹’s unprecedented mammalian host breadth might actually be pushing it in the opposite direction, 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗶𝗿𝗱-𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲 (α𝟮–𝟯) 𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴:

────────────────────
🔑 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗿
Flu enters cells by grabbing sialic acid sugars (𝙷𝙰) and exits by cutting them (𝙽𝙰):
• 🦆🐄 α𝟸–𝟹 (𝗯𝗶𝗿𝗱-𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲): Dominant in bird guts/airways, deep human lung, eye — and the 𝗰𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗴𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱.
• 👃🧑 α𝟸–𝟼 (𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻-𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲): Dominant in the human nose & upper throat (where cough/sneeze transmission happens).

Historically, avian flu needed to flip 𝙷𝙰 from α𝟸–𝟹 to α𝟸–𝟼 (often via 𝚀𝟸𝟸𝟼𝙻) to spread between humans. Why hasn’t mammal-to-mammal spread in cattle nudged 𝙱𝟹.𝟷𝟹 toward α𝟸–𝟼?

────────────────────
🔒 𝟭. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗼𝗻-𝗗𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶-𝗛𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁
𝙱𝟹.𝟷𝟹 isn’t evolving in an isolated upper-airway niche. In the tree of >5,600 genomes (thanks @nextstrain):
• 🔀 𝟮𝟳𝟵+ 𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸𝘀 from cattle into wild birds, poultry, barn cats, raccoons, skunks, rodents & mink
• ↩️ 𝟴𝟳 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸-𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀 from birds back into cattle

Across 𝗮𝗹𝗹 of those niches — cow udders, bird guts, poultry, and carnivore/mink lungs — α𝟸–𝟹 is the shared entry receptor!

In lab studies on 𝙱𝟹.𝟷𝟹 𝙷𝙰, forcing in the human-type 𝚀𝟸𝟸𝟼𝙻 mutation collapses α𝟸–𝟹 binding and destabilizes the 𝙷𝙰 trimer. In a virus cycling between cow udders and farm wildlife, any mutant that trades α𝟸–𝟹 for α𝟸–𝟼 immediately loses fitness in the very tissues keeping the chain alive.

🧬 𝟮. 𝗕𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻 α𝟮–𝟯 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿-𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱
Rather than shifting toward α𝟸–𝟼, clade 𝟸.𝟹.𝟺.𝟺𝚋 expanded its host range by making its binding pocket more flexible:
𝙺𝟸𝟸𝟸𝚀 → 𝚃𝟷𝟿𝟿𝙸 → 𝙳𝟷𝟶𝟺𝙶 → 𝚅𝟷𝟺𝟽𝙼
This lets 𝙷𝙰 grab a wider variety of α𝟸–𝟹 sugars (fucosylated, branched, and cattle NeuGc variants) while keeping α𝟸–𝟼 affinity near zero.

✂️ 𝟯. 𝗖𝗼-𝗘𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗸-𝗜𝗻 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗡𝗔
As 𝙱𝟹.𝟷𝟹 𝙷𝙰 tightened its grip on α𝟸–𝟹 sugars in cattle, the viral scissor protein (𝙽𝙰) co-evolved matching mutations:
𝙽𝙰: 𝙺𝟷𝟷𝟷𝚁 | 𝚃𝟽𝟸𝙰 | 𝙽𝟺𝟹𝟺𝚂 | 𝙺𝟺𝟹𝟸𝙴
(𝙽𝟺𝟹𝟺𝚂 & 𝙺𝟺𝟹𝟸𝙴 sit right in 𝙽𝙰’s secondary helper pocket that grabs α𝟸–𝟹 sugars). Once 𝙷𝙰 and 𝙽𝙰 are co-tuned for α𝟸–𝟹, switching 𝙷𝙰 alone to α𝟸–𝟼 breaks their balance.

────────────────────
⚠️ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿-𝗔𝗿𝗴𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗪𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗻’𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘅

Even if the cow–bird–mammal cycle locks the 𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗻𝗸 into α𝟸–𝟹, three things make the resurgence, mink farm outbreak & human cases genuinely concerning:

⚙️ 𝟭. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁:
Two years in cows fixed mammalian polymerase adaptations (𝙿𝙱𝟸:𝙼𝟼𝟹𝟷𝙻, 𝙿𝙰:𝙺𝟺𝟿𝟽𝚁) and a 4-mutation interferon-stealth stack in 𝙽𝚂𝟷 (𝙰𝟼𝟶𝚃 + 𝚀𝟸𝟻𝚁/𝙸𝟻𝟺𝙻/𝙴𝟽𝟶𝙰/𝙼𝟷𝟸𝟺𝚃) — and in Utah mink it immediately stacked 4 more (𝙿𝙱𝟸:𝚀𝟷𝟹𝚁, 𝙿𝙱𝟷:𝙺𝟹𝟾𝟾𝚁, 𝙿𝙰:𝙸𝟷𝟸𝟿𝚃, 𝙼𝟸:𝙶𝟻𝟾𝙳/𝚂𝟼𝟺𝙵). Spillovers no longer start from scratch.

🪜 𝟮. 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴-𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗛𝗔 𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀:
In 𝙱𝟹.𝟷𝟹 𝙷𝙰, 𝚀𝟸𝟸𝟼𝙻 works poorly alone, but gives clean human α𝟸–𝟼 binding when paired with 𝙰𝟷𝟽𝟸𝚃 (𝚃𝟷𝟼𝟶𝙰, which deletes a nearby sugar shield). In cattle, 𝙰𝟷𝟽𝟸𝚃 has already arisen ~𝟭𝟬 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀 (#2 selected site in 𝙷𝙰).

🌿 𝟯. 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗱-𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀 & 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘂𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝘁𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀:
A virus that spills into a human or pig — or reassorts with seasonal/swine flu — is in an α𝟸–𝟼 upper airway and never has to cycle back into a cow udder or a bird.

────────────────────
💡 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆
Expecting the 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗿 𝗶𝘁𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 to gradually drift toward α𝟸–𝟼 probably misreads what selection in cows and farm wildlife rewards — which is locking in α𝟸–𝟹. The real risk isn’t where the main cattle trunk is heading, but that expanding mammal circulation keeps feeding a pre-adapted internal engine + permissive 𝙷𝙰 variants into side-branch exposures.

Key papers in reply 👇

➡️🇬🇧 UK: What happens if all the lights go out? This is the plan for a 'Black Sky' event

- It was a Saturday night in early December when Roger Kemp realised something was very wrong.

- "I was halfway through a Scandi crime drama when everything went off," the professor at Lancaster University told the BBC. "Streetlights were off. The sodium glow that we can see over the horizon from Morecambe was off."

- The next day he went for a walk.

- "[It was] almost like a zombie movie," he said. "People trying to find phone reception, wondering where things were, and there was a huge queue at the one working telephone box."

- At 22:45 on 5 December 2015, the River Lune - which flows directly through Lancaster - had flooded, and the electricity supply to 61,500 people in the city went.

- Households lost light and heat, some water supplies also began to fail because they relied on electric pumps. The railway station closed. So too petrol stations and shops. Most cash machines didn't work. Traffic lights failed.

- The two communication systems that survived were copper wire landline telephones and FM radio. The local commercial radio station The Bay had an emergency generator and one landline and a reporter was sent outside the affected area to ring in with information.

- Three months later, Kemp, a professor of engineering with a specialism in safety and electrical systems, gathered people together to look at everything that had gone wrong.

- "It is perhaps ironic that, in a society with huge commitment to digital infrastructure, the most reliable source of news was a commercial station using technology that would have been familiar to the engineers on the 1960s Radio Caroline pirate radio ship," the subsequent report concluded.

- For Kemp and others in the field of civil contingency, Lancaster was a warning. When a town loses power for several days, our connected world falls apart. This kind of disruption has been given a name: a Black Sky event.

- ⚠️ At a recent summit on UK resilience, the conversation focused on the need for the UK to be able to withstand a Black Sky event for a minimum of 72 hours.

- "We are nine meals from anarchy" is a phrase often heard in the civil contingency world. A brutal reminder of the fear that three days without food would be enough to turn a crisis into chaos. If a Black Sky event takes out electricity, water, shops and communications, there is a good reason the government wants us to have our own supplies.

- The much talked about "Be Ready" campaign is designed to help ready us for all sorts of possible crises, but the government says there is no specific threat to the grid. Regardless, a Black Sky event is definitely at the backs of people's minds.

- In a major emergency, we are being told to hunker down and turn on an FM radio, as thousands did in Lancaster. This is why ⚠️ the BBC has its own Black Sky plan.

- Only a small number of staff know the full details, but from what I have gleaned, ⚠️ about 100 people in the BBC will run a special emergency radio studio.

- It will have secure lines of communication not dependent on the internet, and fuel, water and food to ensure it can operate without resupply for at least three days.

- ⚠️ This emergency service will broadcast pre-arranged government messaging. The scripts have already been published online.

- They include instructions on how much people should be drinking each day and how to dispose of toilet waste without flushing the toilet.

- ⚠️ Other information will be broadcast via satellite vehicles from a select number of journalists at emergency centres around the UK, which ⚠️ will carry on as long as the diesel lasts.

- The BBC's broadcasts will be sent via radio transmission towers, isolated from the internet and equipped with tanks of between five and 40,000 litres (8,800 gallons) of diesel to keep their generators going for three days - FM radio is power hungry. The teams will be using satellite phones to keep in touch and if these stop working there are pre-agreed protocols and meet-up points.

- Why FM? Because it works almost everywhere, even in a blackout or a crippling cyber-attack.

- ⚠️ "It was originally thought we should plan for five to seven days," I was told quietly by one BBC insider. "The latest advice from Neso [National Energy System Operator] is that they will probably be able to get the power back on in two to three days."

- Of course, fears of a grid failure are not new, but recent events such as the mass blackout in Spain, Portugal and south-western France in April 2025 have pushed it up the agenda. And the more it happens, the more it reveals the problems it can create in our networked world.

- People need to know power cuts are about more than just the lights going out, says Lord Harris, chair of the UK's National Preparedness Commission. ''It's likely to stop the water supply because unless you happen to be located neatly downstream of a reservoir, that requires electricity," he told me.

- More importantly, sewage tends to solidify unless water can move through it, he adds, "and that then causes blockages, the whole thing backs up, you get sewage flowing out, flowing back up the system".

- It's common for governments in Europe to regularly advise households to stock up on supplies in case of a national emergency - but the UK is behind in its warnings to the population.

- However, work has begun on some backup systems, such as High Altitude Pseudo-Satellites (HAPS). The government-sponsored Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is spending £70m ⚠️ working on technology that may lead to planes that can circle over the UK and provide at least a week of emergency mobile phone and internet connectivity at times of crisis.

- "When ground networks fail, there are limits to what satellites can provide as a fallback," said Rico Chandra, programme director for ARIA's Enduring Atmospheric Platforms.

- We live in a complex, electrically powered world - but the more connected everything becomes the more catastrophic it is when that fails.

- ⚠️ In the drive towards efficiency over the last five decades, we've lost backup systems, says Lord Harris.

- An example of this is the new communication system being adopted by the emergency services, which will replace radio comms with mobile phone network technology, says Lord Harris, "so ⚠️ if the mobile phone goes down it will also impact on emergency services communications".

- However, the government insists "moving emergency services onto modern 4G and 5G technologies" is "resilient and reliable".

- The Cabinet Office said: "The UK has one of the most resilient electricity systems in the world, and there has never been a complete outage in the grid's 75-year history."

- Government enthusiasm for resilience is nothing new. Oliver Dowden, the then deputy prime minister, launched the last Conservative government's disaster planning initiative in May 2024. The launch was somewhat overshadowed by Sunak announcing an election on the same day but, two years on, calls for at least three days of resilience have only grown stronger.

- At the beginning of researching this article I spoke to an engineer about the UK's TV and radio transmission masts, their lonely isolation from the rest of the digital landscape sounded like a failing. It now feels like an argument in their favour.

- The current urgency for disaster planning is coming at an interesting moment for technology we used to rely on. ⚠️ The UK's copper wire landline system - which would work even in a power cut - will be switched off on 31 January 2027. The future of FM radio is also under government review.

- The response from the government was that while copper landlines had been a useful fallback during power cuts, they were now unreliable and difficult to repair.

- As I ended my call with Kemp, I asked him if his report had helped improve our readiness for a Black Sky. He paused.

- "If anything, we've gone backwards," he said. "Switching off the public switch telephone network, I think shows that there has been really no thought at all about how you communicate when you've no longer got power."

- While writing this piece last Saturday I had to break off for an hour because my street was suddenly plunged into darkness. We had a power cut.

- I found my emergency torch, but the batteries had leaked. My candles had been pushed to the back of a cupboard and I had no idea where I had put my wind-up radio with its emergency torch.

It felt like an omen.

bbc.com/news/articles/…

It’s time to haul Stephen Miller’s ass in front of Congress and make him answer, under oath, for the absolute terror he unleashed on this country.

What Trump did by demolishing the Historic East Wing will go down in history as one of the worst acts by American President. The White House belongs to the American people and not Trump and it’s time that we took it back and the midterms were just a start.

El-Sayed on Trump and Stephen Miller: "He decides to hire the most broken man to continue to run the most dysfunctional White House we've seen. I don't know what Stephen Miller has actually contributed to our culture, our society, in any real way, except to make us more angry and fear and vitriol."

Trump and his allies have hurt our future in a way that none of our enemies could have managed. And all of our enemies rejoice at this.
nytimes.com/2026/10/31/sci…

Our current lifestyle is very young. In 1890 2% of American farms and 5% of city epartments had electricity. Plumbing was a rarity. Almost everything was done manually.

Lifestyles have changed, but I am sure people then were as happy as we are now.

youtu.be/VyFPiaUCsG8?si…

[This isn’t real, but it’s very funny! We deserve the roasting.]

➡️ From Denmark: An Apology to the American People.

Today, an unreserved—and, some might argue, decidedly uncharacteristic—apology is in order from this end, directed squarely at the American public.

We were sitting over here in the old, comfortable part of Northern Europe with our neat little welfare societies, thinking—well, let’s just call a spade a spade—that you had simply gone raving, clinically insane.

We thought you had lost your butter cookies so emphatically that the cookie tin itself was barely recognizable

But with yesterday’s midterm elections, where the Democrats cleaned house, sat heavily on both chambers, and left the infamous orange chocophant in a puddle of his own self-pity, you proved something else entirely.

You proved that you aren't idiots after all.

You simply love pushing boundaries! You are global politics’ answer to a bunch of overconfident arsonists, just needing to see exactly how close you can hold the Zippo to the gas can before the whole damn thing blows up.

You love playing with fire, dragging out the agony, and pushing the nation's survival to the absolute bleeding edge—only to, in the very last, palpitation-inducing second, draw a razor-sharp line in the sand and say: "This far, and no further."

And suddenly, the pieces fall into place. It is precisely that madman mentality that ensures it’s you, and not a bunch of conflict-averse Scandinavians wearing bicycle helmets, who put the first man on the moon.

That is why it's you who smash world records and constantly hurl new, absurd, and innovative inventions at the rest of us.

It requires a people like you; so uninhibited and shamelessly boundary-pushing that you are willing to drive your own nation straight toward the abyss in a flaming clown car, solely to feel the rush in your stomach before yanking the emergency brake.

It isn't political collapse; it is grand-scale avant-garde art.

We bow down in the dust to your completely erratic, yet deeply entertaining, performance art.

You are forgiven, the whole lot of you, because goddamn do we love you

Cheers, sweet friends!

thehummingbirdpost.com/life/to-americ…

Anyone else excited to watch Major @Ojeda4America grill these goons in Congress? 🫡

"Trump’s departure from the will of the American people—including, on some issues, his own electoral base—is now catching up with him. Increasingly, Americans are paying more attention to Trump’s foreign policy decisions—and they do not like what they see. Much of Trump’s foreign policy is not just unpopular abroad; it is also unpopular at home."
open.substack.com/pub/persuasion…