What, the CCP, having already previously used TikTok as a propaganda tool to push narratives that support their interests, proactively supported the side that would help ruin their biggest foreign adversary? WHO coulda thunk it.
They saw Lemmy becoming successful, corporate mistook Lemmy with Lemmings, and decided to go out Lemmings style. …jokes aside, Cory Doctorow has a great text about that, called “Tiktok’s enshittification”. It’s a four-steps process: The platform is good for its users. The platform abuses the users, to be good for its business customers. The platform abuses the business customers, to claw back all value for itself. The platform dies. In my opinion it’s also the result of management being disconnected from the platform that it manages, and not knowing fully the implications of their own decisions.
The only way to stay on top of the new shit is to heavily use tiktok. As soon as tiktok became the main thing I completely fell off the meme culture since I won’t use tiktok
They are all problematic. My disagreement with the removal of TikTok is that it should not stop with TikTok. Meta’s apps are an absolute nightmare. Google, Xitter, Amazon, etc., they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection. Data brokering needs to be made illegal or VERY tightly regulated.
There are factories in China going on tiktok and telling people how to buy stuff directly from them and ways to evade tariffs Its all extremely funny
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The phrase ‘stolen valor’ is usually used to criticize two kinds of people. People who basically pretend to be veterans when they never served, and people who did serve but massively lie about and exaggerate what they actually did (like pretending you were in some spec ops unit when in reality you were a chef). In instances like this, its almost always that people make books or a public presence or persona of some kind that is dependant on their false or greatly exaggerated acts of military service, though sometimes it can be as petty as some schlub getting an improper uniform and a faked veteran id to get military discounts at fucking IHOP. Spouses (almost always wives) of actively serving or veterans of the military who make a huge part of their personality that ‘they are the wife of a veteran!’ and can often be seen being huge karens on social media, having freakouts any time they feel they are disrespected and claiming that this is unacceptable, because my husband is a soldier!, and then going on FB or TikTok or w/e and writing huge posts where they act as if all of the hardships endured by their husband are actually their own hardships. (This is made all the more ironic by the fact that many of these kinds of wives are also cheating on their military husbands) It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever for JD Vance to claim Walz is doing ‘stolen valor’. Walz served, and doesn’t seem to have lied about or massively exaggerated any of his activity. He isn’t pretending to be something he isn’t, he is not pretending to have done things he has not done. Stolen (falsely claimed) valor (acts of heroism, suffering for a dutiful purpose, etc.)
No it does not. Just because some YouTuber/tiktoker (I assume) said it, doesn’t mean it’s true. Probably tested it for a very short duration and also didn’t measure surface-heat at that time. Even we humans can withstand 3000°C for a short time. Sure, it’ll get loud, nasty and painful, but we wouldn’t instantly perish. Steel can withstand much longer. And is probably more willing than a human.
Mariing binabatikos ng rebolusyonaryong kilusan at mamamayan sa Palawan ang katatapos lamang na Balikatan exercises na inilunsad noong Abril 20 hanggang Mayo 8. Noong Abril 27, ginawa sa barangay Aporawan ng bayan ng Aborlan ang counter-landing drills at live fire exercises, kasama ang mga modernong bomba tulad ng High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems ng US o HIMARS, Javelin anti-armor missiles, at modernong fighter jets. Sa mga drill na ito pinagsanayan ng higit 500 armadong pwersa ng AFP, US, Australia at New Zealand ang mabilis na pagharap at pagdepensa ng mga tropa na nasa baybayin laban sa mga sumasalakay mula sa dagat upang pigilan itong makadukdok. Walang ibang inihatid sa mamamayan ng iba’t ibang probinsyang pinaglunsaran nito kundi perwisyo sa kabuhayan ng mga mangingisda, kasabay ng banta, pangamba at ligalig dahil sa presensya ng mga mersenaryong armadong pwersa ng AFP at ng mga imperyalistang bansa at sa kaliwa’t kanang pagpapaputok ng mga sandata nila. Batid ng mamamayan na ang Balikatan ay bahagi ng paghahanda ng imperyalismong US sa niluluto nitong gera sa rehiyong Indo-Pacific laban sa tinukoy nitong pangunahing karibal na imperyalistang bansang China. Pagkaladkad ito sa Pilipinas sa imperyalistang gerang agresyon ng US. Matapos ang serye ng mga panggegera ng US at Israel sa mga bayan sa Kanlurang Asya at ng panghihimasok sa mga bansa sa Latin America at Carribean tulad ng Ecuador at Venezuela, napipinto ring pumutok ang gera sa Indo-Pacific. Walang-renda ang panganganti ng US sa China sa pamamagitan ng mga aktibidad militar na nagpapaigting sa ligalig sa rehiyon upang sa dulo ay ibitag ang China sa mas mataas na antas ng agresyon at ganap na gera sa pagitan ng China at US. Taun-taon inilulunsad sa Palawan ang Balikatan exercises. Malaon nang kinilala ng US ang estratehikong lokasyon ng isla bilang nakaharap sa West Philippine Sea at South China Sea, dahilan upang ituring ng US ang Palawan bilang isa sa mga lunsaran ng mga aktibidad militar, daungan ng mga barko ng US Naval Command at imbakan ng mga armas at kagamitang pandigma, sa layuning palibutan ang China sa pagsasakatuparan ng First Island Chain nito sa Asya-Pasipiko. Pinakamalaki sa kasaysayan ang katatapos lamang na ika-41 Balikatan. Hinigitan nito sa laki ng pwersang imbwelto mula sa AFP at US Armed Forces na mahigit 17,000 tropa, kumpara sa 16,000 noong 2024 at 15,000 noong 2025. Kalahok din sa katatapos na Balikatan ang mga kinatawan mula sa Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand at United Kingdom, dagdag pa ang mga kinatawan sa 13 iba pang alyadong bansa bilang tagamasid sa ilalim ng International Observers Program. Patunay ng higit na lumalaking pwersang pinalalahok ang tumitinding paghahandang-militar ng US at pagsasangkot ng mga alyado, kolonya at malakolonyang bansa sa napipintong gera. Hindi lamang ang bilang ng pwersa ang pinaunlad nila, kundi ginawang palaruan ng US at ng ibang bansa ang Pilipinas para ipamalas ang mga kagamitan at aktibidad militar na gagamitin o gagawin sa pagsasanay. Unang beses na ginamit sa Balikatan ang Type 88 surface-to-ship missile system ng Japan Ground Self-Defense Force at ang pagdeploy ng U.S. Tomahawk Land Attack Missile capability sa panahon ng mga pagsasanay. Mariing binatikos ng mamamayang Pilipino ang pagpapalipad ng Tomahawk missile sa Pilipinas, na ginamit din ng US sa pambobomba sa Minab, Iran na kumitil sa 175 batang estudyante. Presisong atake at hindi aksidente ang pambobombang ito dahil sa lubhang sopistikadong bomba ang Tomahawk, na gumagamit ng mataas na antas ng teknolohiya upang tiyak na mapatamaan ang target nito. Ang mga modernong armas ay patuloy na pinauunlad ng imperyalismong US sa pagpapanatili ng superyoridad sa larangang militar sa daigdig kahit magdulot ito ng kapinsalaan at paghihirap ng mamamayan ng daigdig. At sa sandaling dinala ang mga ito sa Pilipinas, walang-dudang sa mga susunod na panahon ay ihahatid ng US ang milyun-milyong mamamayang Pilipino sa tiyak na pagdurusa at kamatayan dulot ng bangis ng gerang agresyon ng US sa Indo-Pacific! Ekspresyon ng masugid na pagpapatuloy ng Balikatan sa Pilipinas ng pagiging malakolonya nito sa US. Ibinabalewala ng US ang istatus ng Pilipinas bilang isang nagsasariling bansa, habang nagpapatuloy ang pagkatali ng huli sa una sa mga tagibang na kasunduang militar na pabor sa US. Sa katunayan, nakataon ang Balikatan 41-26 sa ika-75 anibersaryo ng US-RP Mutual Defense Treaty; at, kasama ang Visiting Forces Agreement, Maritime Logistics and Support Agreement (MLSA) at Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, ay palatandaan ng tahasang pagyurak sa soberanya ng Pilipinas dahil sa tuwirang armadong panghihimasok ng US sa bansa. Pagpapahigpit ito sa kontrol sa Pilipinas, para sa imperyalistang interes ng US sa lahat ng larangan. Hindi kailanman lulubayan ng imperyalismong US ang kontrol nito sa Palawan at sa buong Pilipinas. Bukod pa sa adyendang militar ng US laban sa China, dahilan din ng pagpapahigpit ng kontrol ng US sa probinsya ang mayamang rekursong likas sa Palawan na dinadambong at pinakikinabangan ng mga imperyalistang bansa. Tampok dito ang pamamayagpag ng mga kumpanya sa mina sa probinsya tulad ng Ipilan Nickel Corporation, Calmia Nickel Inc., Berong Nickel Corporation, Rio Tuba Nickel Mining Corporation at iba pa na nagpapalayas sa mamamayan sa kanilang panirikan at nagwawasak sa kalikasang pinagmumulan ng kabuhayan ng masang magsasaka at pambansang minorya. Makikinabang nang husto ang US sa yamang mineral ng Pilipinas laluna sa panibagong kasunduang Pax Silica na pinasok ng reaksyunaryong rehimeng Marcos Jr. at ng US nitong taon. Ibayong kahirapan, pang-aapi at pagsasamantala ang dinaranas ng masang Palaweño sa ilalim ng malakolonyal at malapyudal na sistema sa Pilipinas. Napakababa ng sahod ng mga manggagawa at manggagawang-bukid sa harap ng napakataas na presyo ng bilihin. Naitala sa Palawan ang mas mataas na mga presyo ng mga bilihin kumpara sa ibang mga probinsya sa rehiyon. Mahigpit na nga ang sinturon, binabayo pa ang sambayanan ng krisis sa labis na pagsirit paitaas ng presyo ng produktong petrolyo. Ngunit sa gitna ng lahat ng ito, binubuhos pa ng rehimeng US-Marcos II ang pondo ng bayan sa modernisasyon ng mga kagamitang pandigma at pagpopondo sa mga ehersisyong militar sa halip na ilaan sa mamamayang hilahod ang kalagayan dahil sa hambalos ng neoliberalismo sa ekonomya na dulot ng imperyalismo. Sa harap ng tumitinding gerang agresyon ng US, tumitindi rin ang panawagan ng bayan na labanan ito. Walang ibang makapagwawakas sa imperyalistang gera kundi ang paglulunsad ng mamamayan ng digmang sibil. Nananawagan ang NDFP-Palawan na ilunsad sa probinsya ang demokratikong rebolusyong bayan na magwawakas sa imperyalistang dominasyon ng US sa bansa. Walang ibang solusyon sa kahirapan ng mamamayan kundi ang pagtangan ng armas at pagsusulong ng digmang bayan. Ang lahat ng pasakit na hatid ng imperyalismo sa ekonomya, pulitika, militar, kultura at relasyong panlabas ng Pilipinas ay mapapatid kapag nagtagumpay ang DRB. Sa pamamagitan ng rebolusyon tiyak na magwawakas ang mga di pantay na tratado sa US, mapapalayas ang mga sundalong Amerikano sa bansa, malalansag ang mga base-militar ng US at matitigil ang mga ehersisyong militar ng US kasabwat ang AFP. Kakamtin ang tunay na pambansang kalayaan at demokrasya. Ang paglayang ito ng sambayanang Pilipino ay magdudulot ng malaking bigwas sa imperyalismo tungong higit na paghina at pagbulusok nito sa buong mundo. The post Balikatan Exercise 41-26: pagpapaigting ng gerang agresyon ng US, banta at perwisyo sa mamamayan! appeared first on PRWC | Philippine Revolution Web Central. From PRWC | Philippine Revolution Web Central via This RSS Feed.
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By Colonel (Ret) Ann Wright, World BEYOND War, May 18, 2026 The largest civilian flotilla in the history of support for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank was intercepted beginning at 10:30am Turkiye time, Monday, May 18, 2026, 250 nautical miles from Gaza. Multiple large Israeli warships disgorged a large number of zodiac boats filled with combat laden Isreali Offensive Forces. At this point, 45 minutes into the interception, the combat Israeli military personnel forcefully boarded many of the 57 ships in the flotilla organized by Global Sumud Flotilla, Freedom Flotilla Coalition and Mavi Marmara Freedom and Solidarity Association. Israeli military is reporting that participants from the flotilla will be put on a large cargo ship that we call the “prison ship” and will be taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod. I will report more on the names of ships taken as the situation develops. The sail of the U.S. Boats to Gaza – sponsored boat—*Adalah—*is a tribute to the Palestinian activist, community leader, and father, Awda Hathaleen, who was shot dead by an Israeli settler in his village of Um il-Kheir in July 2025. Awda was a friend of Bob Suberi, who is crewing the Adalahboat. (Photo by Ann Wright) Solidarity with Gaza Flotilla Needed NOW! By Colonel (Ret) Ann Wright and Huwaida Arraf, U.S. Boats to Gaza The U.S. Boats to Gaza, one of the 18 national campaigns of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla coalition (FFC) urgently requests solidarity and action to help safeguard the current flotilla mission enroute Gaza. There are 25 U.S. citizens among the over 500 participants from 45 countries on the 2026 flotilla to Gaza. As the almost 60 vessels from the FFC, Global Sumud Flotilla, and the Mavi Marmara Freedom and Solidarity Association move closer to Gaza, hostile rhetoric from Israeli media and political circles has intensified significantly. False accusations and inflammatory narratives are already being circulated in what appears to be an effort to delegitimize the mission and lay the groundwork for not only unlawful aggression against unarmed civilians, but potentially lethal violence against our boats. In this moment, broad public visibility and political pressure are essential. This mission is a lawful, civilian-led initiative challenging the ongoing blockade imposed on Gaza. It is critical that organizations, elected officials, community leaders, and individuals publicly affirm the legitimacy of the flotilla and demand the protection of everyone on board. Recent media coverage connected to the Israeli establishment has insinuated that the flotilla could be treated as a security or “terror” threat. These allegations are entirely unfounded. They follow a familiar pattern in which humanitarian and solidarity efforts are deliberately misrepresented to rationalize state violence before it occurs. We have seen this language used before in relation to attacks on civilian missions, including the deadly assault on the Mavi Marmara, in which 10 of our colleagues were murdered, including one U.S. citizen, 19-year-old Furkan Dǒgan. These threats must be taken seriously. Israel has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to attack civilians, humanitarian workers, journalists, and solidarity activists while facing no meaningful accountability from powerful governments. Silence at this stage only increases the danger. We therefore ask supporters to take the following actions immediately: This flotilla is made up of almost 60 vessels carrying hundreds of people from over 45 countries. LEARN about the participants on the five FFC Boats here: https://freedomflotilla.org/2026-participants/ FOLLOW the flotilla on our tracker: freedomflotilla.org/ffc-gsf-tracker AMPLIFY updates from the flotilla across social media and public platforms, including Instagram content FFCand GSF.You can also follow us on: Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, Bluesky, and LinkedIn and help amplify our content. Find all our channels and important updates here https://linktr.ee/freedomflotillacoalition ORGANIZE: If you represent an NGO, coalition, union, faith institution, or community organization, issue a public statement or press release calling for the flotilla’s protection and the right of civilians to reach Gaza. Organize a local vigil or protest to demand safe passage for the flotilla. CONTACT members of Congress — especially representatives connected to participants aboard the flotilla — and demand that they publicly oppose any attack, interception, detention, or use of force against the mission. Calls should also demand an end to U.S. weapons transfers supporting Israeli military actions. The U.S. Capitol switchboard is: (202) 224-3121. CALL ON local and state officials to publicly support the mission and speak against any violence targeting civilian delegates. As always, if you can, DONATE: http://usboatstogaza.org/donate At its core, this flotilla consists of unarmed civilians attempting to challenge an illegal and deadly blockade that has devastated Gaza for nearly two decades and has been used as a tool of starvation and genocide. Efforts to portray such a mission as “terrorism” reveal the extent to which Palestinian humanity — and even solidarity with Palestinians — is routinely criminalized and dehumanized. On the anniversary of the Nakba, these realities remain impossible to separate from the broader structures of dispossession and violence Palestinians continue to endure. About the Authors: Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years, but resigned from the U.S. government in 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq. She has been on many flotilla missions including with the Mavi Marmara mission in 2010 and the Women’s Boat in 2016. Huwaida Arraf is a human rights lawyer and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) for Palestine. She was on the small boats that succeeded in getting into Gaza in 2008. She was on the Mavi Marmara mission in 2010 and was the boat leader for the Handala and Conscience missions in 2025. The post 2026 Gaza Flotilla Intercepted by Israeli Military appeared first on World BEYOND War. From World BEYOND War via This RSS Feed.
Is the King of the North about to become Prime Minister? Maybe. Will he lead us out of the valley of darkness and into the promised land of milk and honey? I can’t see it. Full disclosure: I know Andy well. He’s genuinely a nice bloke, and he’s a competent administrator. He is by far the best person to lead the Labour Party from amongst the contenders. And that’s the problem. 411 Labour MPs were returned at the General Election. And they’re having to bring back the king over the water to topple Starmer. Can there really be no-one amongst the 400 who can deliver social, economic and environmental justice? A broken party machine In Majority‘s group chat, I proposed a thought experiment. Imagine I somehow became Labour leader tomorrow. Would I be able to deliver a democratic socialist programme? The overwhelming response was no. John McDonnell or Clive Lewis would fare no better. The donors, the directorate, the corporate lobbyists who are now Labour MPs, would not allow it. They got a nosebleed when Jeremy Corbyn proposed ending tuition fees. That was before the Starmer-McSweeney purges. What chance is there for grassroots socialists to organise inside the Labour Party to get socialists selected for Parliament? Or Metro Mayors? Would Andy reverse the expulsions? Change the rules so the NEC can’t block or impose candidates on a factional basis? Neoliberalism is embedded too deeply inside Labour. Which raises the question: will an Andy Burnham-led Labour government, with minister Wes Streeting, tax wealth and not work? Reverse NHS privatisation? Support the prosecution of Israel for genocide? Reintroduce sectoral collective bargaining? Create a publicly owned zero-carbon energy system? Break up the investment banks from the retail banks? End – not mitigate – child poverty? Will he choose to take on the billionaires? Make Meta, Twitter and TikTok responsible for their content? Implement the Leveson recommendations? If not, it’s tinkering around the edges with better comms and a more charismatic front man. Public control or public ownership? Andy brought the buses under public control in Manchester. Note: control, not ownership. It was the Cameron government that brought in the 2017 Bus Services Act that enables franchising. It’s better than unregulated buses, for sure. But like rail nationalisation, the establishment are happy for rundown, unprofitable sectors to be taxpayer funded on risk-free contracts. In his recent interview, he said he wanted water and energy under public control. Good. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say he meant public ownership. But what route to public ownership of water? Bail out the shareholders, hand over £100 billion, and make the state take on the debts? Or do it without compensation – strict enforcement of Ofwat standards, force the share price to zero, and use the legal powers to hive off the assets into a debt-free public company? After all, nationalisation is not always progressive. The National Coal Board was publicly owned throughout the miners’ strike. An alternative to neoliberalism I hear people say that stopping Reform is all that matters, and the Greens should stand aside. I have no problem being pragmatic. I worked cross-party for the good of the people of the North East. I worked closely with Andy on transport, devolution and standing up for the North during Covid. He was one of the few Labour politicians who publicly stood by me when the NEC stitched me up. On a personal level, I’d be delighted for him if he becomes Prime Minster. I don’t believe a Reform government is nailed on in 2029. They’ve have passed their high water mark, and are losing vote share. Personal scandals, bringing in Tories, and incompetence in local government is accumulating. Restore UK is likely to split their vote, too. Trying to game the electoral system does not cut it for me. The problem’s not Andy. It’s Labour. A party that still has illegal war-starter Tony Blair as a member. Labour Together has not gone – it has simply been rebranded Think Labour. What is needed is a credible alternative to neoliberalism. The Greens are not there quite yet, at least in the eyes of the public. But they are the closest we’ve got. And they’re winning. The Green Party My preferred option is the Green Party become more professional, more serious. Let’s fight and win on the economic arguments. That taxing wealth instead of work would increase public investment. Reversing wealth extraction from utility owners and private equity funds will lower bills. Making the case loud and clear that keeping kids in poverty and adults too ill to work is both a moral and an economic failure. That’s the direction of travel, and it’s starting to work. It’s where I’ll be putting my energies over coming months. I’ve seen deep inside the Labour Party. There is no one in that cabinet who has any intention of challenging neoliberalism. Half of them are bought and paid for. Labour MPs are saying the quiet part out loud. It’s not Starmer’s policies. It’s their poll ratings. They voted through Winter Fuel cuts. Voted to arrest peaceful anti-genocide protestors as terrorists. They only acted when their jobs were on the line. Keep out Reform? They’ve aped Reform! We must abandon the mythology. Andy is not the King of the North who stands between us and the horde of white walkers. He’s one man operating within the confines of a hostile system. There’s no doubt he’s preferable to Starmer or Streeting. But limping centrism on life support is not enough. It’s time to run Britain in the interests of the people who do the work. Featured image via the Canary By Jamie Driscoll From Canary via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8519075 cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/49477 “Tell you what,” Drew Maciel told his Instagram followers in April, “I’m sick of finding dead moose.” He zoomed in on a dead bull moose lying prone on the ground, running the camera over clusters of ticks nestled within every crevice of the corpse. Maciel is a shed hunter, meaning he collects antlers that have been naturally “shed” by wildlife. But a winter tick feeding frenzy in Maine, driven by rising temperatures, means that this year he kept finding dead animals. Up to 90 percent of the moose calves tracked by scientists in recent years have been bled to death by ticks — an ongoing crisis in a state that prizes these largest of all deer species. But where scientists see the hand of climate change at work — average temperatures in Maine have risen 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1985 — others see the designs of a global cabal. “Human engineered biological warfare,” read a comment on Maciel’s video posted by Dries Van Langenhove, a far-right former member of the Belgian government who was recently convicted of violating the country’s Holocaust denial laws. The comment got 32,000 likes. “It’s Bill Gates,” someone else posted. Chuck Lubelczyk, a vector-borne ecologist with Maine Medical Center, collects ticks at a site in Cape Elizabeth. John Ewing / Portland Press Herald / Getty Images These posts are part of a wave of tick-related conspiracy theories garnering millions of views online. In April, a self-proclaimed holistic doctor on Instagram claimed to have spoken with multiple farmers in the Midwest who told her that they were finding boxes of ticks dumped on their properties. “Something is happening with ticks right now, and farmers are starting to talk,” she posted alongside a video that got 10 million views across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The MAHA Moms Coalition, a nationwide group inspired by the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, reposted the claim asking affected farmers to come forward. The theory dates back to 2023, with viral claims that Pfizer and Valneva, pharmaceutical companies developing a vaccine for Lyme disease, were planting boxes of ticks on farms to drum up demand for their product. A separate theory that gained traction around the same time linked a British research program to genetically modify cattle ticks, funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to rising cases of red meat allergies in the U.S. The biggest problem with that theory is that the allergy, Alpha-gal syndrome, is caused by the bite of a Lone Star tick — a completely different species from the cattle ticks in the research program. While all these conspiracies involve different ticks, different diseases, and different alleged culprits, they are often treated as interchangeable evidence of the same broader claim: that rising tick encounters are a part of a nefarious human plot. The theories are right about one thing: Ticks are getting worse. Some of the same ecological changes fueling Maine’s winter tick boom are also making tick encounters more common in broad swaths of the U.S. The arachnids are showing up earlier in the year, expanding into new terrain, and biting people more often than they used to. But the force driving those shifts is not a clandestine bioweapons program, a vaccine plot, or Bill Gates — it’s climate change. A screenshot of an Instagram post furthering the unproven claim that Midwestern farmers are finding boxes of ticks left behind on their properties. Instagram Richard Ostfeld, an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, said a warming world is “bringing ticks out earlier in the year” in states like New York, where he lives. “It used to be we were pretty safe in the month of May,” he said. “Now, not so much.” Tick season is off to an unusually early start across most of the U.S. this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, said in an alert published late last month. Emergency room visits for tick bites in four of the five geographic regions the agency tracks are the highest they’ve been for this time of year since the CDC started keeping tabs on tick-borne illness rates in 2017. While the CDC hasn’t said what’s behind the uptick in bites this spring, ample snow cover earlier in the year helped insulate adult ticks from the cold of winter, and an early spring bloom across much of the U.S. likely brought those hungry adults out of the leaf litter earlier than normal. But regardless of the specific dynamics at play this year, rising average temperatures will lead to more robust tick exposure on balance. That’s because warmer temperatures both coax ticks north into territory that was once too cold to host them and also extend the length of time that ticks are active every year. More tick bites mean more opportunities for infection — and the list of infections doctors are watching for is getting longer. Positive tests for alpha-gal syndrome have increased 100-fold since 2013; nearly half a million people in the U.S. now carry an allergy to red meat. Cases of anaplasmosis, a disease carried by black-legged ticks that hospitalizes roughly 30 percent of the people who contract it, increased 16-fold between 2000 and 2017. Babesiosis, a malaria-like illness also carried by black-legged ticks, has risen roughly 10 percent year-over-year since 2015. It’s not uncommon now for a single tick to carry two or more diseases. Ecologists who study ticks see an interwoven mix of factors driving these increases. Land-use and wildlife changes are increasing contact between humans and ticks, invasive and expanding tick species are bringing different disease risks to new parts of the country, and better testing and reporting of tick-borne illnesses is making diseases more visible. But there is widespread agreement in the scientific community that those trends are unfolding against the backdrop of climate change. Ostfeld worries that the complexity of the factors that lead to higher rates of tick-borne disease, paired with the allure of online conspiracies, will make it harder for people to understand why backyards in some parts of the country are getting more dangerous. “The more I read about people actually believing some of these conspiracy theories, the more I worry that even moderately complex explanations or phenomena we care about — like how likely we are to get bitten by a tick — might be too much,” he said. Scientists collect Lone Star ticks, which can cause an allergic reaction to red meat, for research. Ben McCanna / Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images It doesn’t help that conspiracies about ticks have now been legitimized by federal government officials. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has at various times in his career opined that Lyme disease, which now affects an estimated half a million Americans every year, was created as a byproduct of vaccine research and originally used as a military bioweapon. (This flies in the face of genomic evidence that the bacteria causing Lyme has existed in North America for at least 60,000 years.) Both Kennedy and Tucker Carlson, one of America’s most prominent Republican-aligned media figures, have hosted the writer Kris Newby on their podcasts in recent years. In both cases, Newby espoused debunked claims about the military origins of Lyme. The idea that Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses were created by a U.S. military bioweapons program is so pervasive that a formal initiative to investigate the origin has twice been introduced by lawmakers in the House of Representatives. Chris Smith, a Republican representative from New Jersey who spearheaded those efforts, was successful on his second attempt. A directive in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, signed by President Donald Trump last December, includes a provision requiring the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, to investigate whether the military used ticks as biological warfare agents in the middle of the twentieth century. “GAO will be fully empowered to leave no stone unturned, and now it’ll have a congressional mandate to get to the bottom of it, because they were weaponizing ticks,” Smith said at a Lyme disease roundtable convened by Secretary Kennedy last year. But away from the congressional roundtables and viral videos, the plot begins to lose some of its drama. Even in the Midwest, where millions of social media viewers have been told that boxes of ticks are being dumped on unsuspecting farmers, evidence of foul play is hard to find. Terry Hoerbert and her husband Bob own Little Brown Cow Dairy, a small dairy farm in Delavan, Illinois. The lane down to the farm is short, Terry said, so she would have seen someone dropping off packages of ticks. Had the Hoerberts heard of any other farms in the area receiving packages of live ticks? “We have not,” Terry told me. “You are the first to enlighten us.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As tick bites surge, conspiracy theories follow on May 14, 2026. From Grist via This RSS Feed.
Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.
Incredible how they’re hollowing out what little remains of the Democratic Party base. Like banning TikTok ffs. In 10 years they’ll all be talking about how they were against Israel from the start.
I really don’t think the average Lemmy user has TikTok.
Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable It’s their own fault. They didn’t have to take hundred of millions of venture capital and hire thousands of people. They didn’t have to go try to become a XX billion dollars company fighting with Facebook and Tiktok. They could be profitable with a hundred engineers, a hundred support staff and reasonable ads. They could make delivering ads part of their API and have 3rd party apps serve them for them. They could let those 3rd party app handle the mobile markets since those solo devs are creating better apps than the hundreds of engineers at Reddit. I’m really annoyed that they are changing a winning formula to build something that nobody wants