I did end this post with…this will never happen. But this vision of a better post-pandemic society in the US is so wildly divergent from life today that all you can do is laugh. Or maybe cry.

https://odonnellweb.com/pelican/coronavirus-april-21.html

#blog #pandemic #covid #COVID19

If the market drops 5% then rises 5% the next day, you are not back to breakeven. You are still down .25%. Don't believe me, do some simple math.

Day 1 - Market tanks 50%, your $1000 nest egg is worth $500.

Day 2. The market goes back up 50%. 50% of $500 is $250, so your nest egg is worth $500 + $250, or $750.

You are down 25% still.

This is not investment advice. But is a note to be careful of the news claiming the market bounced back.

Edited to correct math error in opening paragraph.

I wrote this 2 years ago, and it's held up quite well.

https://odonnellweb.com/pelican/mastodon-is-not-doomed.html

Good news ahead! I just spoke with my CDC sources:

RFK Jr. has ordered bird flu testing for both symptomatic and asymptomatic workers following my expose.

CDC staff thanked me for exposing the truth.

Now, we must raise our voices against why the FDA has suspended milk quality testing and the proposed budget cuts that would shift routine food inspections to states.

Public health and food safety must come first.

I just need your support. Please Follow my page and help spread the truth.

Ok. So. Um. As somebody who's had some experiences with prison labor, I want to talk about what we're seeing here with CECOT's "work off your sentence" program.

(I had multiple manual labor farm jobs where I got to work & found out most of my coworkers were inmates. Long stories for a different day.)

The National Science Foundation is a major source of science funding in the US. Yesterday the director of the NSF resigned. He didn't say why, but:

Staffers from DOGE moved into the NSF on April 14th. Two days later, the NSF announced it was halting all new grants. Two days after that, it announced it was terminating about $1 billion in grants already awarded. And now it's been ordered to accept a 55% cut to its $9 billion budget next year and fire half its 1700-person staff!

This will crush science research in the US. If you're a scientist in the US, you should think about leaving. Or stay and fight.

The news is here:

https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-director-resign-amid-grant-terminations-job-cuts-and-controversy

The comic strip here is called Bananaman, and these days his archenemy General Blight is leading the Department of Pure Evil, or DOPE. I think this strip is now written by Ned Hartley and drawn by Wayne Thompson.

We literally told everyone that if Trump got elected again, we’d be living in a police state. But a lot of people thought it wasn’t the biggest issue we faced, accused us of being hyperbolic, or fell for and spread pro-fascist propaganda.

Congress erupts over FBI arrest of Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan:
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/25/fbi-arrest-judge-hannah-dugan-wisconsin-congress