InKyDo

Editor, researcher, writer, educator, occasional artist. Cheering for facts, reason, kindness, inclusion, fairness, & life on Earth

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@irkutskplague @JayinKyiv @richgel999 Thank you. Now following.

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@irkutskplague @JayinKyiv @richgel999 Is it okay to republish your map with attribution?

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@maolesen I've likewise read Eric Cline's 1177 and studied Bronze Age epidemics and their economic and societal consequences in some depth. I agree that we are on the verge of cascading systems failures, accelerated by deeply flawed leadership and policy.

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@drseanmullen Been there, done this. Will try again next week. The Nuvaxovid website suggests that the vaccine will be shipped to Walmart and Kroger in our area.

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

Sigh. Best to pay attention.
https://t.co/QdZEcF5daY

[Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA @michael_hoerger]

PMC COVlD Update, Week of Aug 29, 2026

▪️Outbreaks in 29 states/territories (see Alt)
▪️A projected 13th wave is under way
▪️1 in 95 Americans estimated actively infectious
▪️Peak anticipated around Labor Day

THREAD 🧵(1/4)

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@michael_hoerger As usual, a surge has commenced while we wait for the fall rollout of updated COVID vaccines.

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@Polymarket Wait. Breeding farms for venomous snakes?

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@atrupar The administration wants to cut education funding, so they've concocted a pretext for doing so. The pretext enables them to selectively defund.

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@michael_hoerger A hotspot map would be incredibly helpful.

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

I wonder what waste management looks like for people exposed to the Andes hantavirus — because if this virus shows up in wastewater here and there, there are rats in sewer systems. There is more than one means of seeding ANDV in new places. https://t.co/Bu4uoXThb1

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@Globalbiosec @lucasgonzalez @NjbBari3 Saw that study. That’s definitely a concern.

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@lisawhelan @arijitchakrav Can we add that people who catch it are infectious up to 48 hours before they are symptomatic?

[Rebecca Tan @rebtanhs]

Thailand is one of the first ag countries to enter a planting season since the Iran war. We went to document the impact of supply shocks to fuel/fertilizer — It was worse than I anticipated.

Farmers are leaving huge tracts of land barren bc they can’t afford to plant.

[ABC News @ABC]

A CDC official said the federal government doesn't plan to have the repatriated American cruise ship passengers quarantine upon arrival in Nebraska. https://t.co/BJ034SzI4p

[Yasir Ai @AiwithYasir]

🚨BREAKING: Two researchers from UPenn and Boston University just published a paper that should be uncomfortable reading for every CEO automating their workforce right now.

The argument is straightforward. Every company replacing workers with AI is also eliminating its own future customers. Laid off workers stop spending. Enough of them stop spending and nobody can afford to buy anything. The companies that fired everyone end up selling into an economy with no purchasing power left.

Every executive can see this. The math is not complicated. But here is why nobody stops.

If you do not automate, your competitor does. They cut costs, lower prices, take your market share, and you collapse anyway. So every company automates knowing it is collectively destructive because the alternative is dying alone while everyone else survives. The researchers proved this is a Prisoner's Dilemma playing out in real time.

The numbers are already moving. Block cut nearly half its 10,000 employees this year. Jack Dorsey said AI made those roles unnecessary and that within the next year the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion. Salesforce replaced 4,000 customer support agents with AI. Goldman Sachs deployed a coding tool that lets one engineer do the work of five. Over 100,000 tech workers were laid off in 2025 and AI was cited as the primary driver in more than half those cases. 80% of US workers hold jobs with tasks susceptible to AI automation.

The researchers tested every proposed solution. Universal basic income does not change a single company's incentive to automate. Capital income taxes adjust profit levels but not the per-task decision to replace a human. Collective bargaining cannot hold because automating is always the dominant strategy.

They also identified what they call a Red Queen effect. Better AI does not solve the problem, it accelerates it. Every company chases faster automation to gain market share over rivals but at the end everyone has automated equally, the gains cancel out, and the only thing left is more destroyed demand.

The one thing the math says could work is a Pigouvian automation tax. A per-task charge that forces companies to account for the demand they destroy each time they replace a worker.

The conclusion is that this is not a transfer of wealth from workers to owners. Both sides lose. Workers lose income. Companies lose customers. It is a deadweight loss with no market mechanism to stop it on its own.

(Link in the comment)

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@leashless A small farm was the path we chose. Getting old is a bit of an issue, though.

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@leashless Totally agree. And the disregard for the global suffering this war will cause is unconscionable.

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@Badger419256 @BladeoftheS Have you not seen how much the administration plans to allow to be cut?

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@leashless That is the correct question to ask, and it is studiously avoided because people do not want to know the answer.

[InKyDo @InKyDo]

@AmericaFirstCon @leashless The man definitely needs to encounter reality on a far more regular basis.