Amy Cook

I was interviewed for this article. Another bill not covered by insurance came from UCI Long COVID Clinic since. “Others may not be so lucky and may be forced to pay for most of their care out of pocket. That's what happened to Amy Cook, 51, of Orange County, California.”

Khanna: "If we can chase Hillary Clinton, who hasn't been in office for 20 years, certainly we can get Pam Bondi to explain why she covered up documents, why we haven't had prosecutions"

@Microinteracti1 Add moving away from US Tech. cnbc.com/2026/02/18/eur…

I am not sure the American military establishment has fully grasped what Trump has actually done here. So let me spell it out in language even a Pentagon procurement officer can understand. Europe has been buying American weapons at a staggering rate. In 2024 alone, US foreign military sales notifications to European countries hit $76 billion. Four times the European average since 2008.  F-35s, missile systems, air defence, ammunition. All of it American. All of it coming with decades of service contracts, maintenance agreements, spare parts, software updates and training programmes worth hundreds of billions more over their operational lifetimes. Between 2020 and 2024, the United States supplied 64 percent of all European weapons imports.  That is now over. Europe has an $860 billion defence plan, and American contractors are being frozen out. The goal is 80 percent of all military purchases from European factories by 2030.  Airbus. Rheinmetall. KNDS. Saab. Leonardo. BAE Systems. They are about to receive the largest order book in the history of European defence industry. Because Trump made it politically impossible for any European government to keep writing cheques to Washington. Some European governments have discussed worries that the Pentagon could remotely disable American F-35 fighters or impose restrictions on how US weapons can be used.  When your supplier is also threatening to annex your allies, that is not paranoia. That is basic procurement logic. Trump set out to make America great again. He has succeeded magnificently. For Rheinmetall. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

The Secretary of State’s voter purge in Louisiana is way worse than anyone imagined because they have already purged over 500,000 voters & put them on the inactive list so the deadline is April 15th therefore you need to go get it fixed before then at your Parish in person only.

“one of 46 who have died since President Trump took office last year and began his mass deportation campaign”

Right then. Let me explain something very slowly, because it appears some basic logic has gone missing somewhere over the Atlantic. No serious nation in the history of warfare has spent fourteen months insulting its allies, threatening to annex their territory, siding with their common enemy, and then knocked on their door expecting them to come running to rescue a catastrophe of its own making. That is not how alliances work. That is not how anything works. You abused the UK. You threatened Canada. You tried to grab Greenland. You called the EU an adversary. You praised Putin, the one man every serious NATO ally has spent decades preparing to fight. You hosted Kremlin officials in the Capitol. You undermined European elections. You abandoned Ukraine. You imposed tariffs on your closest partners. You did all of this loudly, proudly, and on camera. And now you are surprised that nobody is returning your calls. Here is a question worth sitting with. Why do you think that is? Is it possible, just possible, that when you treat your allies like enemies for over a year while cuddling up to their actual enemy, those allies might update their opinion of you? Is that concept too complicated? Does that require more working memory than is currently available? You did not plan this war with your allies. You did not consult them. You did not build a coalition. You started a conflict, watched it go sideways, and then got on your knees asking for help from people you spent fourteen months calling weak, corrupt and irrelevant. NATO is not what it was. Not because Europe changed. Because Washington made crystal clear which side it is on. And it is not ours. You want European boots on the ground? Start by explaining why America is more aligned with Moscow than with Brussels. Take your time. We will wait. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

Tens of thousands of crew are stuck on commercial ships in the Gulf, in increasingly dire conditions: "Freshwater is running out on many ships, so the sailors are using social media and very-high-frequency marine radios to share survival tips and tactics. Some Chinese crew members have filmed themselves collecting condensate from air-conditioning units to shower and wash laundry. Others have taken to fishing over the side of their tankers." "Restocking supplies has become difficult—and expensive.... the going rate for mangos is now $31 for a kilogram, and oranges are $15 a kilogram for about three large pieces of fruit." wsj.com/world/middle-e…

“Scientists at the research facilities study how forests change over time, including how they recover following fires. “

“a former special education teacher, he taught students for a decade at Woodbridge High School in Irvine and had a concentration in autism specifics” Orange County coffee shop hires workers with disabilities in Fullerton ktla.com/news/orange-co…

Applebaum's piece is worth reading slowly because the specific details are doing work that the summary can't. Danish military commanders - inside a NATO alliance the United States founded - had to sit in a room and war-game whether their forces would shoot down American planes and kill American soldiers. Some of them still haven't fully recovered from running that exercise. The most popular app in Denmark during Applebaum's visit was one that identifies American products so users know not to buy them. NATO has invoked Article 5 exactly once in its history. On behalf of the United States. After September 11th. Allied troops went to Afghanistan and some of them died there. Trump told reporters those allies "stayed a little back, a little off the front lines." The families of soldiers who didn't come back heard that. Now Trump is in the middle of a war in the Persian Gulf with the Strait of Hormuz locked, oil prices spiking, and he's telling NATO allies - the same ones he insulted and tariffed and threatened - that he's "demanding" they come help solve a problem his own decisions helped create. Applebaum's conclusion is precise: he doesn't connect what he does on one day to what happens weeks later. Allied leaders have drawn their conclusions. The rupture, as Mark Carney called it, isn't coming. It already happened.

@cwebbonline Bone spurs help find lost troops, secret power of his

The first time Trump gives a flying f*ck about the troop’s lives is to take credit for the rescue of one of them.

When an insurance company is deciding whether to pay for your medical treatment, it generates a file, which should contain all records associated with your case, including documents explaining why the claim was denied. You have a right to see this file. propublica.org/article/find-o…

@theliamnissan youtu.be/mw521gtYtiE?si…

Any church that spends money on elaborate drone shows instead of feeding the poor is no church of Christ

A BBC Verify investigation revealed last week that a new generation US Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) was likely used in a deadly strike that hit a residential area and sports hall in the Iranian town of Lamerd on the first day of the conflict, killing 21 people, including four children. @CENTCOM then said in a statement that the US wasn't responsible for the strike, and that the missile seen in CCTV footage we verified was not a PrSM, but an Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile. So, this time we asked six weapons experts about the statement by Centcom. They all told us that visual evidence does not support Centcom's claim that an Iranian Hoveyzeh missile was used in the attack, citing the missile's visual features, the way it exploded, its trajectory and the number of strikes in the area as the basis for their analysis. Weapons experts maintain that evidence from dozens of photos and videos of the strike and its aftermath is consistent with their initial analysis that the US was likely responsible for the deadly strike on Lamerd.

Never ask: A woman her age A man his salary The White House why the president is getting a secret medical procedure that makes him unable to do public appearances for the first 2-4 days of almost every month since September 2025.

One day, "It" will happen, by which I mean sudden and unexpected news that you want to celebrate. In such cases, you will want the right outfit. 🧵

Rotherham, England replaced 8 miles of mowed grass with wildflowers. They saved £25,000 in mowing costs a year and bees, butterflies, and birds showed up almost immediately. You don’t need to wait for your city to act. Start small in your own patch: 🏡 Let your front verge or sidewalk strip go wild this spring 🌻 Toss a few native wildflower seed balls into neglected spots 🌱 Stop mowing one strip and see what shows up 📧 Contact your city government. One email from one person has started initiatives like this before One person. One small patch. Real habitat. Your street could be next.

The contradiction between the crisis of American universities (including my own) and the need to have experts in history (and humanities & social sciences) cannot be greater and it is hard not see it as part of the current anti-enlightenment and authoritarian contexts.

“The paradigm that was initially aimed at Al Qaeda is now being directed towards mainstream Americans, mainstream ideas, and mainstream political parties.” An Anarchist’s Conviction Offers a Grim Foreshadowing of Trump’s War on the ‘Left’ | WIRED wired.com/story/an-anarc…

“Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is privately lobbying colleagues to preserve the FBI’s power to conduct warrantless searches of Americans’ communications” A Top Democrat Is Urging Colleagues to Support Trump’s Spy wired.com/story/a-top-de…

Russia bombed A market….in daylight…where families buy food….on a sacred holiday…..😔that’s why we must support Ukraine…..