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Grifters, cynics, and true believers: The family tree of vaccine opponents

30 May 2026 at 12:00

Stanley Plotkin, 93, was instrumental in developing a number of vaccines over the course of his career. He recently said that he’s “beginning to regret having lived so long—because we’re going downhill.” How could we possibly have gotten here?

Maybe we’ve always been here. It turns out that the anti-vaccine arguments currently flooding the Internet have been around for as long as vaccines have. In his new book A Pox on Fools, Thomas Levenson breaks them down into three categories, as made clear in the book’s subtitle: “The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines.” The accusations these people levy against vaccines can just as easily be used to categorize the arguments themselves: They are wrong, they are bad, and they are intolerable.

Wrong

As Levenson tells it, in the early 18th century, a couple of forward-thinking Westerners learned about inoculations against smallpox from Ottoman women and an enslaved African. At that point, infectious disease was by far the leading cause of death, as it had been forever. In the 19th century, roughly 40 percent of babies died of infection before they turned 5.

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© Penguin Randomhouse

Feeble Little Horse leans into digital weirdness on bitknot

31 May 2026 at 17:00
Cover of Feeble Little Horse’s bitknot
Even the cover revels in a low-bit digital aesthetic. | Image: Saddle Creek / Feeble Little Horse

From the opening moments of bitknot, it's obvious that Feeble Little Horse has found an entirely new gear. Where on Girl with Fish the blown-out textures were more '90s indie rock and shoegaze, on their latest LP, there's a more modern edge to the distortion and the riffs cut cleaner. Similarly, where the digital glitchiness was mostly relegated to window dressing on their sophomore record, on bitknot it's integral to the arrangements and a core part of their emerging, distinct sound.

We got a preview of this new direction on the one-off single, and one of my favorite songs of 2025, "This Is Real." It blended blast beats, Sonic Youth-esque …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Grifters, cynics, and true believers: The family tree of vaccine opponents

30 May 2026 at 12:00

Stanley Plotkin, 93, was instrumental in developing a number of vaccines over the course of his career. He recently said that he’s “beginning to regret having lived so long—because we’re going downhill.” How could we possibly have gotten here?

Maybe we’ve always been here. It turns out that the anti-vaccine arguments currently flooding the Internet have been around for as long as vaccines have. In his new book A Pox on Fools, Thomas Levenson breaks them down into three categories, as made clear in the book’s subtitle: “The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines.” The accusations these people levy against vaccines can just as easily be used to categorize the arguments themselves: They are wrong, they are bad, and they are intolerable.

Wrong

As Levenson tells it, in the early 18th century, a couple of forward-thinking Westerners learned about inoculations against smallpox from Ottoman women and an enslaved African. At that point, infectious disease was by far the leading cause of death, as it had been forever. In the 19th century, roughly 40 percent of babies died of infection before they turned 5.

Read full article

Comments

© Penguin Randomhouse

Grifters, cynics, and true believers: The family tree of vaccine opponents

30 May 2026 at 12:00

Stanley Plotkin, 93, was instrumental in developing a number of vaccines over the course of his career. He recently said that he’s “beginning to regret having lived so long—because we’re going downhill.” How could we possibly have gotten here?

Maybe we’ve always been here. It turns out that the anti-vaccine arguments currently flooding the Internet have been around for as long as vaccines have. In his new book A Pox on Fools, Thomas Levenson breaks them down into three categories, as made clear in the book’s subtitle: “The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines.” The accusations these people levy against vaccines can just as easily be used to categorize the arguments themselves: They are wrong, they are bad, and they are intolerable.

Wrong

As Levenson tells it, in the early 18th century, a couple of forward-thinking Westerners learned about inoculations against smallpox from Ottoman women and an enslaved African. At that point, infectious disease was by far the leading cause of death, as it had been forever. In the 19th century, roughly 40 percent of babies died of infection before they turned 5.

Read full article

Comments

© Penguin Randomhouse

Grifters, cynics, and true believers: The family tree of vaccine opponents

30 May 2026 at 12:00

Stanley Plotkin, 93, was instrumental in developing a number of vaccines over the course of his career. He recently said that he’s “beginning to regret having lived so long—because we’re going downhill.” How could we possibly have gotten here?

Maybe we’ve always been here. It turns out that the anti-vaccine arguments currently flooding the Internet have been around for as long as vaccines have. In his new book A Pox on Fools, Thomas Levenson breaks them down into three categories, as made clear in the book’s subtitle: “The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines.” The accusations these people levy against vaccines can just as easily be used to categorize the arguments themselves: They are wrong, they are bad, and they are intolerable.

Wrong

As Levenson tells it, in the early 18th century, a couple of forward-thinking Westerners learned about inoculations against smallpox from Ottoman women and an enslaved African. At that point, infectious disease was by far the leading cause of death, as it had been forever. In the 19th century, roughly 40 percent of babies died of infection before they turned 5.

Read full article

Comments

© Penguin Randomhouse

Samsung Movingstyle Essential Review: A Screen on Wheels

29 May 2026 at 16:52
Made for those who hate having a TV in the home, Samsung’s Movingstyle monitor-on-wheels brings the entertainment when you need it and hides away in a closet when you don’t.

2027 Audi RS5 first drive: A performance PHEV with split personalities

28 May 2026 at 23:01

SAALFELDEN, Austria—Audi may have built a reputation for technology over the years, either pioneering or early-adopting things like all-wheel drive, direct-injection engines, and so on. But it's also true that along the way it has earned a bit of a reputation for cars that look good inside and out but maybe aren't the most exciting things on four wheels. Not so for the models reworked by Audi Sport, the company's motorsports division, which now also spends its time building the company's new Formula 1 power units.

And like those latest F1 cars, its newest RS5 road car also marries together a turbocharged V6 and an electric motor. How convenient.

The underlying chassis of the new RS5 is shared with the A5 that we first drove last summer, but the only common body panels between the lesser A5 and this car is the hood; everything else is RS5-specific. Aggressive wheel arch blisters add more than 3.5 inches (90 mm) of width compared to the A5, and massive air intakes dominate the front fascia. At the rear, a pair of large oval exhaust pipes are set into a diffuser. Oh, and you don't get those kinds of carbon-fiber accents on a regular A5. Perhaps my favorite styling detail? The rear OLED tail lights have a checkered flag pattern (as do the daylight running lights up front).

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© Tobias Sagmeister/Audi

2027 Audi RS5 first drive: A performance PHEV with split personalities

28 May 2026 at 23:01

SAALFELDEN, Austria—Audi may have built a reputation for technology over the years, either pioneering or early-adopting things like all-wheel drive, direct-injection engines, and so on. But it's also true that along the way it has earned a bit of a reputation for cars that look good inside and out but maybe aren't the most exciting things on four wheels. Not so for the models reworked by Audi Sport, the company's motorsports division, which now also spends its time building the company's new Formula 1 power units.

And like those latest F1 cars, its newest RS5 road car also marries together a turbocharged V6 and an electric motor. How convenient.

The underlying chassis of the new RS5 is shared with the A5 that we first drove last summer, but the only common body panels between the lesser A5 and this car is the hood; everything else is RS5-specific. Aggressive wheel arch blisters add more than 3.5 inches (90 mm) of width compared to the A5, and massive air intakes dominate the front fascia. At the rear, a pair of large oval exhaust pipes are set into a diffuser. Oh, and you don't get those kinds of carbon-fiber accents on a regular A5. Perhaps my favorite styling detail? The rear OLED tail lights have a checkered flag pattern (as do the daylight running lights up front).

Read full article

Comments

© Tobias Sagmeister/Audi

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