More US states are reporting measles cases as deadly anti-vax lies spread

Melody Schreiber / The Guardian: Measles deaths include a 6-year-old girl, whose parents appeared on a video spreading deadly anti-vaccine lies soon after her death. They appeared in a video with Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organiation previously headed by RFK Jr.

“We would absolutely not take the MMR,” said the girl’s mother, referring to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. “The measles wasn’t that bad. They got over it,” she said of her four other children.

“It’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be,” the father said through a translator. Both parents fought back tears throughout the interview.

“The measles wasn’t that bad” — but all four of their kids got it and one died. Heartbreaking.

Every time I empty my computer bag to search for something small I feel like a cartoon character pulling out progressively more ridiculous objects: a horseshoe, concertina, capuchin monkey riding a unicycle.

The Underlying Problem (Hamilton Nolan) — “This is happening because some people are too rich.”

The significant thing about the way that Elon Musk is presently dismantling our government is not the existence of his own political delusions, or his own self-interested quest to privatize public functions, or his own misreading of economics; it is the fact that he is able to do it. And he is able to do it because he has several hundred billion dollars. If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience.

And it’s not just Musk:

We have allowed too few people to accumulate too much wealth. The imbalance has grown so severe that a tiny number of individuals with twelve-figure net worths have the means to purchase so much political power that they can effectively make the federal government’s decisions.

How did Snow White become the year’s most cursed movie? (Adrian Horton / The Guardian) — The anti-woke brigades are triggered that Disney cast an American actor of Colombian descent as Snow White. Pro-Palestinian advocates hate the casting of Gal Godot. Peter Dinklage hates the whole seven-dwarfs thing. And more.

I remember seeing the 1937 movie when I was a little kid, more than 55 years ago, and even then it seemed corny and old-fashioned.

I wanted to hate the 2025 update but the trailer looks pretty good.

Every read-it-later app I see plus my RSS reader is adding AI summarization features. I don’t need an app to read for me; I have been reading since I was six years old.