coder | 👁️ 💚 bits, hominids, life, & the multiverses | 🐍 💚💛🧡❤️💜💙 🐍 pythonista | ML for the common good | 🌹 DSA | pronouns: xe xem xyr
The Empire State
Joined June 2010
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alex | all r equal retweeted
As we are hit with yet another Covid wave, I want to reflect on the promises of herd immunity by infection, with special consideration of claims that pre-existing cross-reactive T cell immunity to other coronaviruses was aiding in achieving the herd-immunity threshold
alex | all r equal retweeted
🚨 The NYPD has backed away from a $750,000 no-bid contract with Israeli surveillance firm Cognyte after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced backlash over the deal, the New York Daily News reported.
The department confirmed it is restarting the procurement process and will accept competing bids for the technology, a cell-site simulator that mimics a cell tower to locate and track phones.
The three-year deal was for Cognyte's FalcoNet, an AI-driven tracker that can be mounted on police cars and drones or hidden in a backpack. Mamdani's office had said it was "reviewing the proposed contract."
The move reopens the contract to other bidders but doesn't drop the technology itself. Full story linked in reply.
⚡️ Mayor Zohran Mamdani's NYPD is poised to sign a three-year, $750,500 no-bid contract with Israeli surveillance firm Cognyte for FalcoNet, an AI-driven device that mimics a cell tower to track phones and can be mounted on police cars and drones or hidden in a backpack, the New York Daily News reported.
Cognyte won a tender to sell intercept spyware to Myanmar's state telecom weeks before the 2021 military coup, Reuters previously reported. Meta banned the firm the same year, saying its customers used fake accounts to target journalists and politicians in Kenya, Mexico and Indonesia.
The firm is part of an Israeli surveillance industry that grew big as a result of the military's monitoring of Palestinians, whose phone calls Israel's Unit 8200 has intercepted and stored by the millions, including to carry out genocide in Gaza and enforce a brutal illegal occupation in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
alex | all r equal retweeted
Long Covid peeps are bloodied, weary, and often barely hanging on, but if we want to live we will have to fight a system that is trying to bury us (while blaming us).
This isn't going to be won in a month or a year, but if allies step up it can be won. Lives in the balance.
Why We Must Fight for Blood-Brain Barrier Testing in Long COVID 🧠💥
When my partner looked into getting a CSF/albumin ratio (Q_{Alb}) test to evaluate my blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity, we hit a wall: insurance labels it "investigational" or "not medically necessary" for Long COVID. What the actual f*ck!!
Here is why we must push to change this standard of care:
👉 🚫 The "Investigational" Trap:
Insurance policies refuse coverage for Q_{Alb} testing because formal specialty guidelines haven't updated to include Long COVID. This leaves patients trapped without access to objective diagnostic proof of barrier leakage.
👉 ⚠️ Real Medical Dangers:
When doctors don't know a patient's barrier is leaking, they prescribe peripheral medications like alpha-1 agonists assuming they will stay in the body. When these drugs cross a broken BBB, they trigger severe, preventable central nervous system storms.
👉 🏛️ Bridging Science to Practice:
Peer-reviewed studies (Nature Neuroscience, AJNR) repeatedly demonstrate BBB disruption, microvascular damage, and tight-junction breakdown in LC.
🤔We know it's happening.
Many of you are experiencing it everyday and are given inappropriate medications and made worse because they are missing this piece of the Covid picture.
💥We must demand that medical societies, health systems, and insurance payers align their diagnostic policies with current research.
We cannot treat what we refuse to measure! 📢
#LongCOVID #BloodBrainBarrier #Dysautonomia #TestsTreatmentsNow #PatientAdvocacy #MMP9
Coming soon:
The fight for proper diagnostics!! This will be my fight and I want you to join me. We need this now. Our children need this now. It's adding a devastating layer on our illnesses from this disease.
alex | all r equal retweeted
Why We Must Fight for Blood-Brain Barrier Testing in Long COVID 🧠💥
When my partner looked into getting a CSF/albumin ratio (Q_{Alb}) test to evaluate my blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity, we hit a wall: insurance labels it "investigational" or "not medically necessary" for Long COVID. What the actual f*ck!!
Here is why we must push to change this standard of care:
👉 🚫 The "Investigational" Trap:
Insurance policies refuse coverage for Q_{Alb} testing because formal specialty guidelines haven't updated to include Long COVID. This leaves patients trapped without access to objective diagnostic proof of barrier leakage.
👉 ⚠️ Real Medical Dangers:
When doctors don't know a patient's barrier is leaking, they prescribe peripheral medications like alpha-1 agonists assuming they will stay in the body. When these drugs cross a broken BBB, they trigger severe, preventable central nervous system storms.
👉 🏛️ Bridging Science to Practice:
Peer-reviewed studies (Nature Neuroscience, AJNR) repeatedly demonstrate BBB disruption, microvascular damage, and tight-junction breakdown in LC.
🤔We know it's happening.
Many of you are experiencing it everyday and are given inappropriate medications and made worse because they are missing this piece of the Covid picture.
💥We must demand that medical societies, health systems, and insurance payers align their diagnostic policies with current research.
We cannot treat what we refuse to measure! 📢
#LongCOVID #BloodBrainBarrier #Dysautonomia #TestsTreatmentsNow #PatientAdvocacy #MMP9
Coming soon:
The fight for proper diagnostics!! This will be my fight and I want you to join me. We need this now. Our children need this now. It's adding a devastating layer on our illnesses from this disease.
alex | all r equal retweeted
What you guys keep saying for coronavirus immunity versus what keeps happening
alex | all r equal retweeted
“Republicans are bad” can't be what Democrats run on. We need Democrats with a real vision for healthcare, childcare, and housing.
alex | all r equal retweeted
👋😷👋
I would ask “who is still masking” every six months.
I stopped.
Maybe I’m afraid that our group is getting smaller…
Today I ask again - where is the #MaskUp & #ThirstMasking crew?
ALT Thirst Masker sitting in a train with her eyes closed, behind her you see snippets of the blue sky and a red brick building.
alex | all r equal retweeted
"I wear a mask to keep myself and others safe from illnesses such as COVID and the flu. I'm immune compromised.” Behind the 💜KN95 is Claudia, who super-modeled for #MaskTogetherAmerica.
📸 @MsJulieSLam (It’s a great idea to dress up with a mask on to stay healthy 💜😷)
ALT Claudia, wearing a purple wig, matching purple KN95 respirator, glasses, yellow floral necktie, powder blue shirt, white vest, black leather gloves with holes for thumbs and pinkie, dressed up in Purple girl-failure anime style, posed for MaskTogetherAmerica to support prevention awareness at New York Comic Con.
alex | all r equal retweeted
Hearing back from the post-covid clinic has stirred up emotions & feelings I forgot I had about healthcare. I've realized that I have severe medical trauma that I'm not sure how to work through or heal from. The thought of travelling 2.5-3 hours to go there & not be treated... 🧵
alex | all r equal retweeted
Still masking! I haven't had a repeat Covid infection in 3.25 years 😷
I would ask “who is still masking” every six months.
I stopped.
Maybe I’m afraid that our group is getting smaller…
Today I ask again - where is the #MaskUp & #ThirstMasking crew?
ALT Thirst Masker sitting in a train with her eyes closed, behind her you see snippets of the blue sky and a red brick building.
alex | all r equal retweeted
!! NYPD backing away from its no-bid contract with an Israeli surveillance firm after pushback.
Mamdani admin now backing away from a $750k no-bid contract w/ Israeli surveillance firm (after a Daily News report).
“It did not meet the criteria for a sole source procurement, so we are moving to an open, competitive procurement process” PD spox sez
nydailynews.com/2026/10/27/n…
alex | all r equal retweeted
Today in Turmus’ayya: Soldiers briefly allowed farmers access to a fraction of their trees, though snipers kept a close watch from occupied building. Then local settler leader Amishav Melet arrived with a military escort and yelled at soldiers to evict the farmers. The soldiers obeyed “Captain Amishav,” as locals call him, rounding up the farmers and expelling them from their own land.
Full video coming soon.
alex | all r equal retweeted
🚨 ONE WEEK TO GO. We’re going all in to elect up to 22 new progressives to the House and six to the Senate.
Our Revolution is already three-quarters of the way toward our goal of 5 MILLION voter contacts. Now we’re mobilizing voters for the final stretch.
Every call, every conversation and every vote counts. Let’s make this movement too powerful to ignore.
Chip in to power the final push: secure.actblue.com/donate/or…
alex | all r equal retweeted
“Conclusions: COVID-19 reinfections are associated with higher likelihood of #LongCovid
#CleanAir4Kids
#CleanAir
xitter.cf/fitterhappierAJ/status…
thelancet.com/journals/lanin…
xitter.cf/i/status/1998825534482…
“Conclusions: COVID-19 reinfections are associated with higher likelihood of #LongCovid
These findings underscore the need for robust public health measures for COVID-19 prevention & the importance of considering reinfections in Long COVID research & clinical practice.”