“In many cases we were requiring 72 jabs for our beautiful, healthy, lovely, delicate little children“ — DT, 10 Aug. 2026
“[Autism] is many, many times what it used to be years ago, and it gets progressively worse. And we had progressively more and more vaccines” — DT, 10 Aug. 2026
“A vaccination looks like the size of the bottle of soda poured into a little child’s body“ — DT, 10 Aug. 2026
“Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today. In those times, people were much [healthier], and of course, the high rates of autism now observed did not exist” — DT, 10 Aug. 2026
“When you and I were kids, everybody got measles, and measles gave you … lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that. The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for many people, it wanes” — Robert F Kennedy, March 2026
“Those agencies are going to do everything in their power to make the Amish vaccinate. Because they cannot stand the fact that you are healthy.” — Robert F Kennedy, 10 Aug. 2021
“The communities that are suffering from measles are almost all religious communities that just don’t vaccinate” — Robert F Kennedy, 2 Aug. 2026
Archive for antivaxers
and it is getting worse… [verbatim]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags Agent Orange, Amish communities, antivaxers, autism, baby Trump, BBC, cliffs, Derailed Trump, Donald Trump, measles, populism, quotes, religious communities, US politics, vaccines, WHO on August 19, 2026 by xi'anNature tags & snippets [19 Feb 2026]
Posted in Books, pictures, University life with tags antivaxers, artificial general intelligence, book review, Chinese Government, ERC Advanced Grant, ERC Consolidator Grant, ERC Starting Grant, Indonesia, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeffrey Epstein, large language models, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, measles, Nature, perspective, rock art, snippet, Sulawesi Island, Trump administration, UKRI, US Government, US politics on March 24, 2026 by xi'an
A tribune on UKRI cutting whole branches of medical, biological and physical research in the UK, to “focus and do fewer things better¨. Impacting for instance the Medical Research Council (MRC). At least until 2028, with longer range consequences.
And an entry on Epstein, whose files have now contaminated even Nature itself. (When is Andrews MW going to make an appearance there as well?!) The connection (of interest) with science is that the sex offender and financier supported research institutions, incl. the mathematical biologist Martin Nowak, whose work Epstein reviewed (despite a total absence of credentials!). Along another entry on the Chinese Government (MOST) instituting penalties on universities failing to act on scientific misconduct by some of their staff.
And a frightful graph on the exploding number of measles cases in the US, this year, related to the drop in the proportion of vaccinated children. Correlated with the next article on regulation moves by the Trump administration to make firing government scientists much easier. And with the surge in US applicants to the major European grants, namely ERC starting, consolidator and advanced grants and Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowships.
A book review of Michael Pollan’s A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, a New York Times bestseller and more importantly an exploration of the physical nature of consciousness. Followed by a long comment by N. Sanders (Harvard) and B. Schneier (Toronto) on the pernicious effect of high salaries in AI companies on academic research, in particular by negating the scientific worth of collaborating. Plus a regular one-column comment that “Statistical approximation is not general intelligence”..! Albeit with reasonable arguments about the unlikely emergence of an artificial general intelligence.
Last but not least, a Perspective article on the moral competence of large language models. which requires defining first moral competence and moral performances. Involving a long-term acquaintance of mine’s, Kristian Lum (now at DeepMind NY) as one of the authors.
and it got worse & worse & … [verbatim]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Agent Orange, America, antivaxers, autoritarian, baby Trump, Christopher Columbus, cliffs, colonialism, Columbus Day, conspiracy theories, Donald Trump, far-right ideology, Italy, Ministry of War, nationalism, populism, quotes, The Guardian, The New York Times, theocracy, US Constitution, US elections 2024, US politics on October 19, 2025 by xi'an
“[The 13 grant recipients assessing an alleged link between vaccines and autism] have to move quickly. They, they – when the alternative is that nothing bad can happen, let’s do it now. I was just saying to Bobby [Kennedy] and the group, let’s do it now. Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.” – DT, 22 Sept 2025
“Some of the highest quality 24 Karat Gold used in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room of the White House. Foreign Leaders, and everyone else, ‘freak out’ when they see the quality and beauty. Best Oval Office ever, in terms of success and look!!! President DJT” – DT, 28 Sept 2025
“I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous [U.S.] cities as training grounds for our military … the ones that are run by the radical-left Democrats … And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.” – DT, 30 Sept 2025
“No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit. “ – Peter Hogseth, 230 Sept 2025
“Columbus Day — we’re back, Italians (…) Under my leadership, those days [of exposing the tragic consequences of Columbus’ arrival] are finally over — and our Nation will now abide by a simple truth: Christopher Columbus was a true American hero, and every citizen is eternally indebted to his relentless determination.” DT – 8 Oct 2025
Nature tidbits [28 Aug 25]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel, University life with tags AI, antivaxers, Basse-Terre, biobank, chocolate, climate modelling, cocoa, Congo, drainage, forcing dataset, generative models, image generator, Jules Verne, Mars, moon, Nature, Parc National de la Guadeloupe, quantum physics, rainforest, Svalbarði, theories of cognition, urban gullies, variational autoencoders, Vincent Van Gogh, volcanoes on September 24, 2025 by xi'an
- an editorial call for “hazardous” research, namely the relevance of studies on urban gullies that endanger surrounding populations and have unpredictable dynamics, albeit scientists alone cannot provide solutions.
- a Columbian study on how the microbial communities acting during the fermentation of cocoa and could be controlled towards finer chocolat).
- the alas now usual articles on the impacts of Trump.2.0 on science and academia, with US Minister of Health Kennedy launching a call for finding the environmental cause of autism. When most researchers blame primarily genetics and associate the rise in cases with a rise in detection and awareness. And pointed out at the earlier drop in NIH funds for autism research, the overall balance being negative.
- plus a useful debunking of five quantum theory myths! Along with the story of a 2020 Science paper by Vaitiekėnas et al. on Majoranas that raised enough questions for Science to publish an expression of concern, now lifted after the publication of a long correction.
- (a video of) rappelling robots diving into a lava tube!!
- a Verne-esque proposal to create a lunar biodepository, a (dubious imho) mix between Noah’s Ark and the (unscientific) faith in cryogeny
- a more sobering call for more frequent data inputs (forcing datasets) to calibrate climate models, with no mention made of statistics or machine learning…
- an operative “mind-reading” device… with a protection password (and a 74% efficiency)!
- two research articles on AI unification of cognitive theories.
- Another one on the (revolutionary) construction of an optical encoder-decoder network towards generating images.
back to the Dark Ages
Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel with tags anti-scientism, antivaxers, Florida, measles, Newspeak, populism, rationalism, slavery, The Guardian, Trump administration, US politics, USA, vaccination, vaccines on September 10, 2025 by xi'an
