HIV advocates from Brazil have seen the USAID cuts coming for years. They’ve long encouraged other countries to become more independent from foreign aid. In Brazil, universal healthcare means AIDS prevention won’t stop on Trump’s whim. I wrote about it. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Brazil’s HIV advocates say they predicted USAID funding cuts: ‘We would see the trends’

At the Aids 2026 conference, Brazilian advocates said health systems need to be more independent from foreign funding

theguardian.com

I am in Brazil and have just found my new favorite sport it’s called Futevôlei and it’s a version of volleyball where you can’t use your hands. These men are head-butting the ball, chest bumping the ball and flipping into little handstands to kick the ball over the net. It’s amazing.

We have a twice a year shot that makes HIV 99.9% preventable. I can’t believe we’ve seen this in my lifetime. And I can’t fucking believe that we’ve erased so, so much of this progress to just be dick swinging, war mongering assholes of the world.

Hannah Harris Green@whatsitlike.me · 6d ago

We now have the technology to eliminate HIV and AIDS. But cuts to USAID mean it’s not gonna happen any time soon. My latest. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

We now have the technology to eliminate HIV and AIDS. But cuts to USAID mean it’s not gonna happen any time soon. My latest. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

HIV prevention drug could reduce number of cases globally but USAID cuts prevent access, say experts

Injectable PrEP drug holds promise but investment in HIV prevention has declined dramatically worldwide

theguardian.com

A few of us journalists were on a tour of favela health services during the AIDS conference and missed this incredibly embarrassing story about the US State Department fucking up their geography.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 7d ago

A U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a ⁠global conference www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Big pharma doesn’t give out swag the way they used to apparently they’ve updated their ethics codes. Still, at the AIDS conference (in Brazil no less!) the pharma booths are the only place you can get coffee that is both free and fresh (not from a pod.) They stay knowing how to exploit addiction.

I’ve been ruminating about this at the AIDS conference where I’m meeting journalists from around the world. We ask each other how it’s going. Journos I met from Brazil, Argentina and the UK are all concerned, as I am, abt continuing to making ends meet. And about the rise of Far Right Fascism.

Investigative stories are going through an unprecedented amount of heavy editing to avoid litigation. This is bc corporations are richer & media outlets poorer. So outlets don't have the resources to withstand lawsuits, even bogus ones. Feeds into a cycle where the wealthy consolidate power.

An 'illuminating' article! 🧪 "All living things emit a faint glow. Could this light be useful?" -- Ultra-weak ‘biophotons’ might be used to diagnose disease, or could even represent a new signalling mechanism in cells. by Jo Marchant (Nature [News Feature], 2026) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

All living things emit a faint glow. Could this light be useful?

Ultra-weak ‘biophotons’ might be used to diagnose disease, or could even represent a new signalling mechanism in cells.

nature.com

Consider the following: The global death of journalism and renaissance of fascism might be directly related.

Do not trust any reporting from The New York Times about anything vaguely related to science. They blatantly manipulate data. The one statistic about AI’s environmental impact in this op-ed, screenshotted here, has absolutely nothing to do with the impact a data center would have on your town.

Dave Karpf@davekarpf.bsky.social · last wk.

I'm reading the "environmentalists are wrong about data centers" piece from the NYT and ohmygoditssofuckingbad. Apparently, so long as you're punching left, they'll just let you say any goddamn thing you please... www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/o...

Okay, the IV is in and the nurse is REALLY good at it. I complimented her and she complimented me back. “You have great veins!”

Lol the clearly AI generated image in this ad by lawyers going after AI companies for stealing intellectual property.

One thing I’ve learned at the media lounges in conferences is that there are people who call themselves “journalists” who will try to get you to do their work for them. (Especially if you are a woman/socialized to be agreeable.) I don’t get it? If you’re gonna do a scam pick something lucrative?

NEW: I dug into the court documents in the case of Andrea Shaw, the Idaho mother charged with killing her toddlers. Shaw insists they died following a set of vaccinations. I looked at how the anti-vaccine movement insinuated itself into this case and her life. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

She's charged with killing her twins. The anti-vaccine movement made her a martyr.

Andrea Shaw is charged with suffocating her toddlers. Children's Health Defense says it was the vaccines.

motherjones.com

I am very ashamed to live in a country where people will wake up with the terror that the secret police are coming to kidnap them, separate them from their families, and brutalize or even kill them because they are not white.

Mitch McConnell hasn’t been seen or heard from in 6 weeks(!) in the hospital. Yet he still has a job, still getting paid, and getting unlimited world class healthcare. The man who voted against a living wage, against universal healthcare, and against guaranteed paid leave—is now getting all three.

HIV innovations are useless without access for all. More than half of women globally cannot make their own decisions about sexual & reproductive health. Sometimes health workers judge them & turn them away. Sometimes they need their husband’s permission. —Thea Willis, Global Fund #AIDS2026

The people who most need HIV treatment and prevention resources are those least likely to get access. Around the globe, those most vulnerable include: LGBTQ people. Incarcerated people. People who inject drugs. —Skyler Masen Davis, Funders Concerned About AIDS #AIDS2026 in Rio de Janeiro.

It is genuinely bizarre that we’ve become acclimatized to right wingers throwing a tantrum every time a black person (particularly a black woman) is cast in something, but are also supposed to pretend that this is not racism but related to some other substantive concern.

The can never make us forget the true, authentic version of The Odyssey… The Wishbone version.

Does anyone have a better go-to phrase for all the deaths and health issues from illicit drugs? “Overdose crisis” leaves out withdrawal deaths etc. “Opioid crisis” leaves out whole classes of drugs. So I’ve just been saying “drug crisis,” recently but don’t like how War on Drugs-esque it sounds.

People seem mostly unaware of the very racist origins of the term “shrink” to refer to psychiatrists/psychotherapists. (People including me until pretty recently.) But we should all stop saying this I have been much more aware of how much this 1950s slang has stuck around.

I’m at the wild fire. I’m at the Taco Bell. I’m at the combination wild fire and Taco Bell.

Calling the RFK Jr diarrhea strain “MAHA Blast” since it has now evidently infiltrated Taco Bell

feel like taco bell is a scapegoat for a diarrhea outbreak caused by an incompetent government. i guess it could be both. the government. the taco bell. a combination government and taco bell.

Finally got an update on what’s happening to my SciAm reporting post acquisition. The original contract was a lowball offer of $2k for about 3 weeks of work/in depth on the field reporting. My editor was laid off. The new ed asked me to completely change the scope of the story for no extra pay.

Hannah Harris Green@whatsitlike.me · last mo.

Got my first assignment for Scientific American a few weeks ago, which felt huge. The story I pitched is urgent. It's about an adulterant in the drug supply that's killing people—someone I interviewed has since passed away. I don't know if they'll still publish it. We need to save journalism.

Wow. Published in May in The Lancet. Look at those numbers of fabricated references per 10,000 articles in PubMed. The urge to publish is overcoming the urge to, I dunno, discover and learn things? #AI #medsky 🧪 www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers

Scientific literature depends on the integrity of its references. Each reference implicitly asserts that a verifiable source exists and supports the claims being made. When references point to non-exi...

thelancet.com

Happy Fourth, everyone. My latest piece is about how the current US administration is directly threatening babies’ safety. Them have been multiple botulism outbreaks in infants bc of contaminated baby formula since Trump and DOGE took a hatchet to the FDA. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

How baby formula recalls have mounted amid Trump staff cuts to the FDA

Experts say the Food and Drug Administration is not prepared for the health threat of bacterial contamination

theguardian.com

Ezra Klein sitting down for his journalistic interview with Chris Rufo