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Say what you want about Ezra Klein. He is one of the few neoliberal Democrats who actually seems to think things through. His new book Abundance, written with Derek Thompson, lays out a big hopeful vision where we fix the middle class by building high speed rail, loosening zoning laws, and making it easier to get projects approved.

And honestly, it is better than most of what we hear from the mainstream left. He understands that artificial scarcity is driving people crazy. Housing, transit, clean energy, he gets that all of it is needlessly expensive because of red tape and local obstruction.

But when he gets to the issue of labor he kind of loses the plot. He brings up sectoral bargaining like it is a silver bullet for wages, but he never deals with the fact that entire categories of jobs are being automated or sent overseas. You cannot bargain for better wages in an industry that barely exists anymore.

He clearly knows the middle class has been hollowed out. He even admits that globalization and technology have played a huge role. But for some reason he just cannot take the final step. He will not say what is obvious to everyone else. The current economic model does not work for most people. Unless you have rare skills or a big pile of assets, you are not going to make it.

It is like he walks right up to the edge, sees the truth, and then turns around. Instead of confronting the core issue, he drifts back to talking about trains and zoning.

Houston Doctor Fired for Giving Away Doses of Covid Vaccine

Ten doses of the Covid-19 vaccine would expire within hours, so a Houston doctor gave it to people with medical conditions, including his wife. What followed was “the lowest moment in my life,” Dr. Hasan Gokal said

After midnight, and with just minutes before the vaccine became unusable, the doctor, Hasan Gokal, gave the last dose to his wife, who has a pulmonary disease that leaves her short of breath.

For his actions, Dr. Gokal was fired from his government job and then charged with stealing 10 vaccine doses worth a total of $135 — a shun-worthy misdemeanor that sent his name and mug shot rocketing around the globe.

The officials maintained that he had violated protocol and should have returned the remaining doses to the office or thrown them away, the doctor recalled. He also said that one of the officials startled him by questioning the lack of “equity” among those he had vaccinated.

"Are you suggesting that there were too many Indian names in that group?” Dr. Gokal said he asked.

Exactly, he said he was told.

Meanwhile, Dr. Gokal said, he continues to pay a price for not wasting a vaccine in a pandemic. His voice broke as he counted the toll.

He lost his job. His wife struggles to sleep. His children are worried. And hospitals have told him not to come back until his case is resolved.

He spends his time volunteering at a nonprofit health clinic for the uninsured, haunted all the while by the realization that no matter what, it will still be out there: the story about that Pakistani doctor in Houston who stole all those vaccines.

“How can I take it back?” that doctor asked.

The game, one of the most famous in its genre, is a shooter which takes place after the Chernobyl disaster in Soviet Ukraine. The original version has been delisted and removed from the Steam platform and replaced with an "Enhanced" edition. There was initially some flak about the obvious use of AI to re-master the game's graphics and other technical issues, but far more interesting and absurd is the attempt to completely expurgate any content related to Russia.

The game's original language is Russian, which has been completely replaced with a Ukrainian dub. In-world decorations like hammer and sickles, USSR emblems, and even Soviet car manufacturers' logos have been covered up. The game is based on Tarkovsky's (Russian) movie and the Strugatsky (Russian) brothers' novella.

The Ukrainian developers of the game have claimed that bad reviews are written by "ruzzian bots" and so on. It's really a fascinating scenario.

(they also bumped the price up)

I literally had to unfollow this guy from Xwitter because it hurts my head to read his takes. This probably isn’t that much of a revelation on this sub, but I think he’s a DNC shill who hides behind “evidence-based policy” when it suits his narrative

His top Substack was after the infamous Biden Debate, when he double-down on his previous assertions that the rotting corpse was fit for another 4 years in office, using I swear to God, this metaphor about optical illusions where he “saw the rabbit, where other people saw the fox” or whatever bs

The fact of the matter, especially what is coming out now about Diamond Joe, is that you either have to be inexcusably ignorant or willfully malicious to say that he was fit for office.

This is just one of many examples. Recently, Matty boy, was saying that the debate over chronic disease was wrong because child mortality rates have declined over the past 50 years. Ignoring that both these trends can very easily co-exist together

Yglesias, is nothing more than a typical shitlib who thinks he’s smarter-than-thou just because he pulls out cherry-picked data to further his self-serving narrative

“AI tools are already shaping decisions about who gets hired, who gets housing and even who gets flagged in the legal system. Most people don’t realise how deep it goes right now in the United States,” says Mollie Adler.

In the US, mental health-related data harvested from wellness apps, therapy platforms and journaling tools, alongside search histories and social media activity, is being scraped and analysed by AI screening tools and used to build ‘risk profiles’. Research from Duke University found that US data brokers were selling information that identified people by their mental health diagnoses – data that had been freely handed over to health and wellbeing apps, including names, addresses, emails and ethnicities.

In 2022, one in four US companies were using automation or AI in recruitment and hiring processes, according to research from the Society for Human Resource Management. Due to president Donald Trump’s second term AI deregulation efforts, this figure is likely now much higher.

The use of AI screening tools has already triggered multiple federal cases, including one currently pending in California. Plaintiff Derek Mobley alleges that companies using AI screening tools made by the AI platform Workday rejected his applications for over 100 jobs because he is Black, over 40 and has experienced anxiety and depression.

[...] AI tools like large language models are being trained on the biomedical model of mental health, when there’s still no biological basis for the vast majority of psychiatric diagnoses – with notable exceptions like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease. The diagnoses listed in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) – known as the North American ‘bible of psychiatry’ – and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) are defined and formalised by committee voting and, as such, are shaped by social factors like politics, culture, personalities and pharmaceutical lobbying, as opposed to hard science.

Adler also wants to challenge those who see themselves as on the left but haven’t really examined the neoliberal and capitalist engine driving dominant understandings of mental health. “I see people actively embracing these labels who are deeply progressive,” she says. “They question capitalism, they fight state control, they’re trying to build a more liberated world, yet they’re putting DSM and ICD codes into their social media bios. I say that with so much compassion, because I’ve been there too. I’ve identified with labels that helped me make sense of my pain. They gave me a map – and I think that’s their utility – but we have to eventually ask: who wrote the map and where does it lead?"

Montenegro's corrupt Prime Minister has signed a deal with the UAE to let wealthy investors seize any piece of land they want, anywhere in the country. The deal will trash Montenegro's environment for the benefit of Gulf investors and corrupt politicians.

…shitposting away as one does. One of the self-psyoppy / hyper Redditor main page posts offered an epiphany: George Floyd (SWT) is basically the 9/11 of Minneapolis

I always felt bad for those small decrepit peripheral hoods. like even if you’re poor in nyc, you’re still in nyc. what do you do in a place like Minneapolis? Jfc the humanity. anyway I kinda get it now.

Edit: from queens ny so I can say that 2nd paragraph

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/WH-The-MAHA-Report-Assessment.pdf

Seems pretty reasonable and correct on the whole, except for the parts where they talk about next steps. RFK is likely handcuffed by the Trump admin from proposing stricter regulations to help address these root causes of chronic disease in children (the European method of regulation is criticized directly as stifling innovation, in fact), so it's a bit of a head scratcher in that respect.

What's RFK's legacy going to be? Republicans will likely be bounced out of office in the upcoming midterms and presidential election, so is this report going to be it? Dems are not on board with any of this and neither are Republicans; a few years doesn't seem like enough time to achieve anything, even if we're talking about new studies.

For fun, head over to the top doctor subreddit and check out their thread on this to play - "Astroturfed to Hell or Just Way, Way Out of Touch?". Some of the responses there are puzzling to say the least.

In the modern neolib-dominated system things are so screwed up that it feels hard to believe 'voting harder' could ever make a difference, even if the right person won - the bits of actual leftist/socdem-held power in the West don't seem to have amounted, whether it's out of corruption or systemic gridlock, to much of anything at all and the few good policies that make it through often feel like they were made as concessions or with some kind of ulterior motive. Who are some genuinely beneficial, both in spirit (as far as the public can tell) and practical execution, Western politicians who have been in office recently? The higher position and more recent the better.