Photo credit: Robert Kennedy, Jr., Wikimedia Commons
A World I Don’t Recognize
A scowling Robert Kennedy, Jr. halts $500 million in mRNA vaccine research (Guardian, August 5, 2025). It’s most likely that very research allows me to write these words on my computer today.
Some of the anti-science crowd are “screaming” about sunscreens (Guardian, August 6, 2025). An acquaintance died of melanoma a few years ago, and while this is not a woe-is-me post, getting any form of skin cancer is more than a major pain in the ass, but there is life-saving surgery and other treatments to get rid of it.
This morning in the US Northeast, the sun has the sickening red glow of wildfires. Those fires are driven by climate destruction’s effects on the forests in the US West and Canada, among other places around the globe. The US has nearly no commitment to addressing climate change, and Trump and his acolytes support fossil fuels and actively attack climate projects such as a massive commitment to electric cars and trucks, and wind and solar power. I had to rush to put in heat pumps to take advantage of some meager help the government gives for such projects that will end this year.
Genocide rages in the Gaza Strip, and war continues in places like Ukraine. These wars, not solely of US making, with among others (Russia and Israel come to mind), are preventable and could be solved through diplomacy, but instead, the US, at the federal and state levels, makes it a crime to criticize Israel. Look to Trump’s double-teaming of universities in the US to get them to criminalize free speech and protest against genocide.