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redbirdfanfhttps://dotat.at/@/2026-02-24-nsnotifyd-2-4-released.html
The nsnotifyd daemon monitors a set of DNS zones and
runs a command when any of them change. It listens for DNS NOTIFY
messages so it can respond to changes promptly. It also uses each
zone's SOA refresh and retry parameters to poll for updates if
nsnotifyd does not receive NOTIFY messages more frequently. It comes
with a client program nsnotify for sending notify messages.
This nsnotifyd-2.4 release includes a new feature and
some bug fixes:
The new -S option tells nsnotifyd to send all SOA queries to
a specific server.
Previously, in response to a NOTIFY message, it would send a SOA query back to the source of the NOTIFY, as specified by RFC 1996.
(Typically, a NOTIFY will only be accepted from a known authoritative server for the zone. The target of the NOTIFY responds with a SOA refresh query and zone transfer. But it should avoid trying to refresh from one of the other authoritative servers which might not have received the latest version of the zone.)
Mark Felder encountered a situation where it would have
been more convenient to fix the address that nsnotifyd sends SOA
queries to, because the source of the NOTIFY messages wasn't
responding on that address.
Since nsnotifyd is intended to work as glue between disparate
parts of a system, it makes sense for it to work around awkward
interoperability problems.
The nsnotify client program was broken and unable to create
NOTIFY messages. D'oh!
I have adjusted the release process so that it works better with
git archive and web front-ends that offer tarball downloads.
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theatlantic_health_feedOver coffee at a Starbucks just outside Austin, Texas, Del Bigtree told me he wants his teenage son to catch polio. Measles, too. He’s considered driving his unvaccinated family to South Carolina, which is in the midst of a historic outbreak, so that they can all be exposed. He prefers pertussis—whooping cough—to the pertussis vaccine, which he later described to me as a “crime against children.” It’s not the diseases that Americans should be afraid of, Bigtree insists: It’s the shots that stop them.
Spreading that message is Bigtree’s lifework. He produced Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, a 2016 documentary that helped mainstream the modern anti-vaccine movement by alleging—spuriously—that the CDC suppressed evidence of vaccine harms. His weekly internet show, The HighWire With Del Bigtree, mostly targets the pharmaceutical industry and has helped raise millions for his nonprofit, the Informed Consent Action Network, which files lawsuits to overturn school vaccine mandates around the country. He’s been a close adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and served as communications director for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign.
For years, Bigtree and Kennedy echoed each other’s positions, first on childhood vaccination and, later, on COVID. They’ve both argued that vaccines cause autism, that the CDC is corrupt, and that Anthony Fauci has committed crimes. Kennedy—who, like Bigtree, has no formal medical training—has questioned the idea that the polio vaccine wiped out polio in the United States and, in 2024, said that if he had young kids, he wouldn’t give them the MMR vaccine. Such views can be deadly; last year, two unvaccinated children in West Texas died of measles.
These days, Kennedy chooses his words more carefully, whereas Bigtree has remained just as proudly committed to discouraging Americans from getting vaccinated. If Kennedy is the face of the movement, Bigtree is more like its id—loud, unfiltered, and theatrically aggrieved.
He was also, for a while, a fellow dad at my son’s Waldorf school in Austin. Waldorf schools tend to attract parents who don’t want their kids to eat junk food or play Fortnite; they also draw a fair number who skip vaccines. During the pandemic, I began to hear considerable chatter about the anti-vaccine celebrity in our midst. Some parents I knew rolled their eyes at Bigtree’s online antics, which at the time included entertaining the idea that the pandemic was a hoax or perhaps a plot to depopulate the Earth. But when he and his wife pulled their two kids from the school and started a parent-run competitor without COVID restrictions, several families I knew—fed up with remote classes and mask rules—followed suit and enrolled their children. The school, Raphael Springs Academy, still exists, though the Bigtrees no longer run it.
COVID expanded Bigtree’s reach and gave him a new disease to downplay. In June 2020, Bigtree said on his show that everyone except the very sickest Americans should “actually catch what is just a common cold.” COVID had already killed more than 100,000 Americans by then. (Today, the World Health Organization counts more than 7 million COVID-19 deaths globally, which includes more than 1 million Americans.) Another episode purported to prove that masks are toxic for children. He speculated about the origin of the coronavirus, suggesting, variously, that it might be a bioweapon or a vaccine experiment gone awry. His audience more than tripled in just a few months. (In July 2020, YouTube removed Bigtree’s channel for violating its terms of service, so he decamped for the more permissive video platform Rumble, which still hosts his show today.)
I was one of those new viewers. Bigtree’s views were dangerous, particularly in the midst of a pandemic, but I was curious to learn what my friends saw in him. I remember being taken aback by his reckless advice but intrigued by his broadcast persona. Bigtree, who’s in his mid-50s, has swept-back silver hair and a penchant for button-down vests and rolled-up sleeves. On the air, his demeanor veers from folksy and affable to Alex Jones–lite. In May 2020, during a joint television appearance with Kennedy on Daystar, an evangelical Christian network, Bigtree warned that a possible COVID vaccine would be one more step in pharmaceutical companies’ “attempt to take over the governments of the world.” He said he so distrusted the vaccine that, when he became severely anemic in 2021, he flew to a clinic in Cancún so that he could get a transfusion of unvaccinated blood.
Bigtree makes two core claims about vaccination, both of which are demonstrably false. The first is one that other anti-vaxxers, including Kennedy, have been making for decades: that the apparent rise in autism cases in the U.S. since the 1990s can be blamed on immunizations, rather than, as is the consensus among experts, largely on broader diagnostic criteria and better surveillance. Bigtree believes that the dozens of studies that have found no evidence of a connection between autism and vaccines are flawed, and that immunizations have never been properly tested for safety. “Why can’t we find a double-blind placebo trial in any of the childhood vaccines?” he asked me. In fact, many early versions of vaccines, like ones for polio and measles, were tested against unvaccinated groups or a placebo. (Bigtree and others in the anti-vaccine movement object to trials that didn’t use a saline-only placebo, or weren’t double-blind.) New vaccines, however, are usually compared with older vaccines because it’s considered unethical, not to mention unwise, to put children at risk of contracting a vaccine-preventable disease.
That brings us to Bigtree’s second, arguably more outrageous claim: Vaccine-preventable illnesses simply aren’t so bad. He wants children, including his own, to get infected so that they can avoid the dangers of vaccination and develop more robust immunity. They will have, as he put it, the “Ferrari of immunity,” while the rest of us will be driving around in Ford Pintos. He told me he would prefer to live in an entirely unvaccinated country, one where the diseases that sickened millions in the first half of the 20th century could spread freely. That’s a frankly ridiculous notion, as I told him later. But Bigtree is committed to it. “I genuinely am upset that your kids are vaccinated, because it’s keeping my kids from getting chickenpox. It’s keeping my kids from getting measles,” he told me. “I believe their health depends on them catching those live viruses.” I asked him if he wanted his kids to catch all of the illnesses against which American children are routinely vaccinated. “Yes,” he said.
Bigtree no doubt wants what’s best for his kids, and he’s not wrong that, for some viruses, including polio and pertussis, the vaccines given in the United States don’t reliably block transmission. But they do, as I pointed out to him, guard against the worst outcomes of those diseases. And although he’s also right that most infected children have only mild symptoms, others are not so lucky. Pertussis killed about 4,000 people each year in the U.S. prior to the vaccine; during major outbreaks, annual polio deaths numbered in the thousands too.
[Read: His daughter was America’s first measles death in a decade]
I had wondered, before meeting Bigtree, how sincere the bellowing figure on The HighWire really was. He’s not exactly a disinterested observer: Opposing vaccines has become Bigtree’s livelihood. He realizes, as he told me, that he could never return to his mainstream-television career (he spent years as a producer on The Doctors, a syndicated medical-advice show). But after our conversations and lengthy text exchanges, I don’t doubt that Bigtree is genuinely—if incorrectly—convinced that he’s stumbled onto, as he put it, “the biggest cover-up of all times.”
He was even more explicit, and more heated, in our conversations than he is on his show. He insisted, for instance, that he was less worried about disability and death from infectious disease than he was about vaccines causing profound autism. He told me that he would accept the risks of contracting polio “over a one-in-fucking-12.5” chance—the ratio of boys found to have autism in some regions of California, according to a 2025 CDC study—“of my son having an inability to have a marriage, to have children, to potentially even wipe their own ass, okay? That is what drives me now.” (The CDC study included diagnoses across the autism spectrum; most people diagnosed with autism do not have profound impairment.)
That sort of intensity played a role in his exit from the formal leadership of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Bigtree was the original CEO of MAHA Action, the nonprofit started in late 2024 to promote Kennedy’s agenda. But last April, during the dramatic measles outbreak in West Texas, Kennedy posted on X—accurately—that “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.” Bigtree, in a reply, wrote—inaccurately—that the vaccine was “also one of the most effective ways to cause autism.” Although Kennedy didn’t scold him for the public rebuke, Bigtree decided not long after the exchange that he should step down, he told me. (Neither MAHA Action nor the Department of Health and Human Services responded to a request for comment.)
Kennedy has delivered big wins for the anti-vaccine movement, including moving several vaccines off the CDC’s universally recommended list and undermining the agency’s statement on its website that vaccines don’t cause autism. But Bigtree continues to think the health secretary hasn’t gone far enough in his anti-vaccine agenda. He wants him, for instance, to trash the rest of the CDC’s list of recommended vaccines so that schools can’t mandate them. He also wants the federal law that limits pharmaceutical companies’ liability for vaccine injuries changed. And he wants HHS to conduct a study comparing the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated people. If that study doesn’t happen, Bigtree told me, then Kennedy’s tenure will have been mostly a failure.
[Read: The CDC’s website is anti-vaccine now]
But he still has faith. At a recent taping of The HighWire that I attended—a professional operation involving multiple cameras, a control room with a dozen computers, and several producers scurrying around—Bigtree opened by praising Kennedy’s decision to strike several vaccines from the recommended childhood schedule. “We’re obviously bathing in all the success that we’ve had,” he told viewers.
Although the first year of Kennedy’s tenure amounted to a flurry of anti-vaccine changes at HHS, he has in recent weeks emphasized more popular priorities, such as the new protein-heavy food pyramid. (The New York Times has reported that Kennedy is backing away from vaccines, at least for now, in the lead-up to the midterms.) But creating the MAHA movement was fundamentally a joint effort by Bigtree and Kennedy, and there’s been no indication that Kennedy is abandoning the anti-vaccine cause or disavowing longtime allies like Bigtree. The two had dinner together late last year, Bigtree told me. Last fall, Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit Kennedy founded, featured Bigtree as a speaker for its annual meeting. Bigtree, whose father is a minister, used his speech to embrace the anti-vax label, even calling God an anti-vaxxer.
[Read: RFK Jr.’s cheer squad is getting restless]
After getting to know Bigtree and watching his show, I’m not sure that the label fully captures his philosophy. He’s more than anti-vaccine: He’s pro-infection. And even though Kennedy hasn’t come out so strongly on the side of diseases since becoming health secretary, he has done so previously, suggesting, for example, that contracting measles could bolster the immune system later in life. Bigtree, for one, thinks his former boss shares his views. Kennedy “recognizes the same thing I do,” he told me. “We would be healthier if we were catching these illnesses.”
smartbitches_feed
Detective Aunt by Uzma Jalaluddin is $1.99! This is book one in the Detective Aunty Investigates series. Book two in the series is out in May. We’re big fans of Uzma over here!
When her grown daughter is suspected of murder, a charming and tenacious widow digs into the case to unmask the real killer in this twisty, page-turning whodunnit—the first book in a cozy new detective series from the acclaimed author of Ayesha at Last.
After her husband’s unexpected death eighteen months ago, Kausar Khan never thought she’d receive another phone call as heartbreaking—until her thirty-something daughter, Sana, phones to say that she’s been arrested for killing the unpopular landlord of her clothing boutique. Determined to help her child, Kausar heads to Toronto for the first time in nearly twenty years.
Returning to the Golden Crescent suburb where she raised her children and where her daughter still lives, Kausar finds that the thriving neighborhood she remembered has changed. The murder of Sana’s landlord is only the latest in a wave of local crimes which have gone unsolved.
And the facts of the case are Sana found the man dead in her shop at a suspiciously early hour, with a dagger from her windowfront display plunged in his chest. And Kausar—a woman with a keen sense of observation and deep wisdom honed by her years—senses there’s more to the story than her daughter is telling.
With the help of some old friends and her plucky teenage granddaughter, Kausar digs into the investigation to uncover the truth. Because who better to pry answers from unwilling suspects than a meddlesome aunty? But even Kausar can’t predict the secrets, lies, and betrayals she finds along the way…
RECOMMENDED: It Takes Two to Tumble by Cat Sebastian is $1.99! This is book one in the Seducing the Sedgwicks series and Carrie gave it a B:
This is a great romance for readers who want something fairly short, beautifully written, and not too angsty.
Some of Ben Sedgwick’s favorite things:
Helping his poor parishioners
Baby animals
Shamelessly flirting with the handsome Captain Phillip Dacre
After an unconventional upbringing, Ben is perfectly content with the quiet, predictable life of a country vicar, free of strife or turmoil. When he’s asked to look after an absent naval captain’s three wild children, he reluctantly agrees, but instantly falls for the hellions. And when their stern but gloriously handsome father arrives, Ben is tempted in ways that make him doubt everything.
Some of Phillip Dacre’s favorite things:
His ship
People doing precisely as they’re told
Touching the irresistible vicar at every opportunity
Phillip can’t wait to leave England’s shores and be back on his ship, away from the grief that haunts him. But his children have driven off a succession of governesses and tutors and he must set things right. The unexpected presence of the cheerful, adorable vicar sets his world on its head and now he can’t seem to live without Ben’s winning smiles or devastating kisses.
In the midst of runaway children, a plot to blackmail Ben’s family, and torturous nights of pleasure, Ben and Phillip must decide if a safe life is worth losing the one thing that makes them come alive.
Fool Me Once by Ashley Winstead is $1.99! This is a contemporary romance and the first in a series. However, there is a political (in Texas) element. I know I personally don’t love reading about politicians, government officials, and anything tangentially related since about 2016. Funny that.
In this fierce and funny battle of the exes, Ashley Winstead’s Fool Me Once explores the chaos of wanting something you used to have.
Lee Stone is a twenty-first-century woman: she kicks butt at her job as a communications director at a women-run electric car company, and after work she is “Stoner,” drinking guys under the table and never letting any of them get too comfortable in her bed…
That’s because Lee’s learned one big lesson: never trust love. Four major heartbreaks set her straight, from her father cheating on her mom all the way to Ben Laderman in grad school—who wasn’t actually cheating, but she could have sworn he was, so she reciprocated in kind.
Then Ben shows up five years later, working as a policy expert for the most liberal governor in Texas history, just as Lee is trying to get a clean energy bill rolling. Things get complicated—and competitive—as Lee and Ben are forced to work together. Tension builds just as old sparks reignite, fanning the flames for a romantic dustup the size of Texas.
Don’t miss The Boyfriend Candidate, Ashley Winstead’s next laugh-out-loud rom-com about learning to embrace living outside your comfort zone!
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner is $2.99! This one has dual timelines and perhaps some slight magical elements. I remember it was pretty buzzy when it came out. Did any of you read it?
In this addictive and spectacularly imagined debut, a female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them—setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course.
Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.
One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose—selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.
In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders” that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate—and not everyone will survive.
With crackling suspense, unforgettable characters and searing insight, The Lost Apothecary is a subversive and intoxicating exploration of women rebelling against a man’s world, the destructive force of revenge and the remarkable ways that women can save each other despite the barrier of time.
cakewrecks_feed
Thanks to Ellen K., Kathryn E., Julie V., Louise H., Alexander O., Jessica D., and Lauren H. for today's self-confidence booster.
*****
P.S. My "related searches" kind of got away from me today, but I think you'll approve:
"Hiss" Punny Cats Parody T-Shirt
Lots more colors and shirt styles available at the link.
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
smartbitches_feedThis HaBO request was submitted by Dionne, who wants to find this historical romance:
A bit of a long shot I’m trying to find the title and author of a book. I’ve gone through all my books and fear it may have been lost in a house move.
It’s a regency historical that was steamy/open door.
I only have a sketchy memory of it being about a book worm heroine who doesn’t need to look for a husband because she has a substantial inheritance so marriage isn’t anything she wants. She meets the hero at a house party that is being held for a week or two at a country estate. They are both guests. She’s there with an aunt or some relative.
He sees her reading in the gardens, behind a bush I think. She is avoiding socialising at the house party as much as possible to avoid fortune hunters. They converse back and forth.
They begin a secret affair whilst at the house party and he falls in love but she is adamant their time together is only for the duration of the house party. When it is time for him to leave he scoops her up out of bed and attempts to kidnap her after failing to persuade her to either marry or be his mistress. I can’t remember which one, but his sister, who is also in attendance at the house party discovers her in the carriage before he can get away…it’s an extremely funny scene…not sinister at all.
I remember the sister opens the door of the carriage, begins to get in, see’s the heroine gagged, bound and wide eyed in the corner of the carriage, pauses then backs out to speak to her brother.
I hope someone else remembers this book.
Can we HaBO?
mrissaReview copy provided by the publisher.
This is a novella with a whole range of aliens with different language features, wildly different environments, etc. Several of my friends just stopped reading this review to go pre-order or request that their library do so. You are correct, if that is the sort of thing you like, this sure is that thing.
What it does less successfully, I think, is the twist ending. I feel like this is a book that is for people who like science fiction about aliens, but for me, as soon as I knew the premise, I knew the ending, and I was correct. So if you're reading for the aliens, come on in; if you're reading for a clever twist you did not see coming, this is not that novella, that is not where Huang spent time and energy.
theatlantic_health_feedOf every 1,000 people the measles virus infects, it may kill as few as one to three. In a way, this can seem merciful. But the mathematics of measles is also unforgiving. The virus is estimated to infect roughly 90 percent of the unimmunized people it encounters; each infected person may pass the infection on to as many as 12 to 18 others. In large part owing to an ongoing outbreak in South Carolina, the United States is watching those risks unfold in real time. As of last Thursday, the CDC is reporting 982 cases of measles. That count is expected to break 1,000 this week; a tracker run by researchers at Johns Hopkins University that many experts consider more reliable has ticked past 1,000 already. By the numbers alone, another death seems inevitable, and inevitable soon.
Probabilities aren’t guarantees, of course. So far, 2026 may be seeing some improvements over 2025, when the U.S. documented more than 2,200 measles cases—more than in any year since 1991. This year, just 4 percent of measles cases have led to hospitalization, compared with 11 percent last year. Several factors could be contributing to that discrepancy, including how hospitals in South Carolina are reporting measles admissions or of more mild cases being diagnosed to begin with; experts aren’t yet sure.
That 4 percent, however, still represents 40 or so people who have ended up in the hospital with at least one of the conditions that can make measles so devastating—among them, pneumonia, respiratory failure, and brain disease. In South Carolina, multiple people, including children, have been hospitalized with a form of brain swelling called encephalitis, which can lead to permanent intellectual disability or deafness, and in some cases turn fatal.
Outbreaks are brewing elsewhere in the country too—Florida, Utah, Arizona. The nation is on the verge of losing the measles-elimination status it has held for 26 years, which would officially mean that the virus was once again routinely circulating in the United States. The majority of measles cases will remain somewhat mild. But as outbreaks continue, Americans will see where percentages mislead. Even if the rates of death and disabling disease remain roughly the same, as case numbers grow, so too will the absolute amount of suffering.
The calculus of the measles vaccine, meanwhile, should be comforting: A single dose of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine can protect people against measles for decades at rates of 93 percent; two doses can protect at 97 percent. Some vaccines work mostly to keep people from getting very sick, but the measles one is powerful enough to prevent many infections from taking hold at all. Only 150 or so of 2025’s measles cases—7 percent—occurred in people known to have received at least one MMR dose. (The CDC and Johns Hopkins haven’t been reporting on hospitalizations by vaccination status.)
If those numbers still sound uncomfortably high, consider that 90 percent of American kids have gotten at least one MMR dose. The higher the vaccine coverage, the more cases will occur among the vaccinated—but also, the far fewer cases will occur overall. And studies have consistently found that when vaccinated people do contract measles, their cases are much milder and potentially less contagious than unvaccinated cases.
Still, certain factors, including genetics and immunocompromising conditions, can alter the level of protection a person gets from an immunization. Age, too, naturally erodes defenses, especially for people decades out from their most recent measles-vaccine dose. And not all vaccinated people are vaccinated in an optimal way. Some Americans, for instance, are too old to have been vaccinated with both modern MMR doses; children generally don’t receive their second injection until they’re about to begin kindergarten. The more a virus transmits broadly, the more easily it can exploit any vulnerability it finds. During a measles outbreak that began in the Netherlands in 1999, more cases were detected in vaccinated people living in mostly unvaccinated communities than in unvaccinated people in highly vaccinated communities—simply because low-vaccine communities were giving the virus far more chances to spread.
Unvaccinated people living among other unvaccinated people remain at the highest risk, Maia Majumder, an infectious-disease modeler at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, told me. The current statistics reflect that: The large majority of measles infections—93 to 94 percent—are still happening in unvaccinated people. Last year’s largest outbreak, centered on West Texas, killed two school-age children, both of whom were unvaccinated.
Other consequences of measles can take years to become obvious. Because of a quirk in its biology, the virus can erase a person’s preexisting immunity against other pathogens, leaving them more vulnerable to all sorts of illnesses. The more severe the measles infection, the more thorough the damage. Another of measles’ worst and most insidious outcomes is subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), an untreatable neurodegenerative condition that can take nearly a decade to manifest. Alex Cvijanovich, a pediatrician in New Mexico, told me that about two decades ago, she treated a middle schooler who had caught the virus as a seven-month-old, still too young to be vaccinated. The initial illness was tame, seemingly inconsequential. But around the age of 12, the boy—an honor student—“started getting lost between his classes,” Cvijanovich said. A spinal tap eventually showed that the virus had lingered in his neural tissue for more than a decade, causing irreversible brain damage. In the following months, the boy’s nervous system deteriorated until he could no longer control the flow of fluid into his lungs. He asphyxiated on his own body’s secretions just a few years after measles had been declared eliminated in the United States.
“It was the most horrible, devastating death of all my years of training and doing pediatrics,” Cvijanovich said. “I comforted myself by telling myself, I’ll probably never see this again.”
Now she is no longer so sure. SSPE, like many other measles complications, is rare, occurring in perhaps one out of every few thousand infections among the unimmunized. (Cases among the vaccinated are virtually nonexistent.) But children who catch the virus in infancy seem especially vulnerable.
To protect their patients from infection, Cvijanovich and her colleagues keep a “rash phone” outside of their office, for families bringing in children who look especially blotchy and red, so that a nurse can inspect them far away from other vulnerable kids. James Lewis, the health officer for Snohomish County, Washington, which has been battling a smaller measles outbreak for several weeks, told me that his department has been advising any patients with suspicious symptoms and a potential measles exposure to call ahead, so they can wait outside the doctor’s office until they can be seen inside. Some may even be evaluated in their car.
Not every place has the resources for such investments, or for the testing, contact tracing, isolation rooms, vaccine clinics, and other measures necessary to help stop measles outbreaks. And some experts worry that as measles continues to appear in confined environments—such as, recently, an ICE facility in Texas—adequate infection-prevention measures will too frequently fall short.
Measles is one of the most contagious viruses ever documented and requires near-comprehensive levels of vaccination—roughly 95 percent or more—in a community to prevent it from spreading. But uptake of the MMR vaccine has ticked steadily down in recent years. Experts anticipate further drops under the Trump administration, especially as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the Department and Health and Human Services and a longtime anti-vaccine activist, continues to restrict access to vaccines, dismiss vaccine experts, challenge vaccine manufacturers, and question vaccine safety. (HHS did not respond to a request for comment.) One recent modeling study found that a drop in nationwide MMR uptake of just a few more percentage points could lead to millions more measles cases over the next 25 years. And the more measles moves around, the more the risk to everyone will increase.
smartbitches_feed
Happy Tuesday!
We have a decent of new releases this week to close out February! What a month! March is also shaping up to be equally as exciting.
What new releases are on your radar this week? Let us know in the comments!
Author: Shana Abé
Released: February 24, 2026 by Kensington Books
Genre: Historical: European, Literary Fiction
A sumptuously vivid and poignant account of the Lusitania’s fateful last days, drawn from the true story of an extraordinary young actress who survived the unthinkable—for fans of Marie Benedict, Louis Bayard, Fiona Davis, Kate Quinn, and HBO’s The Gilded Age.
In turn of the century England, the Jolivet family lives a charmed existence. Daughter of a wealthy vineyard owner and a French pianist, vivacious Marguerite, the eldest of three, loves spinning stories and entertaining her family’s well-connected friends. No one is surprised when she announces, at 18, that she intends to become an actress. Her sister, Inez, a virtuosa violinist, moves to London with her. Soon the two beauties are being celebrated in the highest social circles.
Marguerite takes the stage name Rita, and quickly draws the attention of legendary theater producer Charles Frohman. From the West End to Broadway, and then in the new medium of silent film, Rita is known for her “sultry eyes, her mystic smile,” and her star burns brighter with every role. While filming in Italy, she’s courted by a charismatic aristocrat and Rita feels on the verge of a life even better than her dreams. Inez, meanwhile, has already found love, and travels the world with her adored husband.
Yet soon, war is raging across Europe. Rita, in New York for the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Unafraid, receives word from Inez that their brother is about to enlist. Hoping to see him before he departs, Rita books a ticket on the fastest steamer the RMS Lusitania. But the ship sails under a British flag, and the German government warns that all such vessels are fair game. Few believe Germany would risk attacking a ship carrying Americans, certainly not one as swift and imposing as the Lusy.
Once aboard, Rita is delighted to discover both Charles and her brother-in-law as fellow passengers.The days pass in a haze of parties and pleasurable pursuits, and the comforts of the luxury ocean liner are almost enough to calm Rita’s ripples of unease. But as the ship nears Liverpool, every assumption will be tested, and Rita, her family, and the world, will be changed forever by the voyage’s infamous and catastrophic end . . .
Amanda: I wouldn’t normally gravitate towards this, but it’s Shana Abe and she wrote one of my favorite historical fantasy romances, The Smoke Thief.
Author: Shain Rose
Released: February 24, 2026 by Kensington Books
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Series: Kept in Paradise #1
In the first standalone of her sizzling new series, bestselling author Shain Rose welcomes you to Paradise Grove, a luxurious, ultra-private billionaire enclave-where the stakes are high, and the secrets are buried deep . . .
He’s the forbidden enigma I wanted to ignore . . . but instead I’ll be forced to share a home with him.
Jameson Knight arrives at precisely the same time every day to pick up his young daughter from school, smiling as she runs into his open arms.
It’s the only time I see him smile.
I don’t ask questions because it’s not my place. I’m just his daughter’s favorite teacher, nothing more. . . . Until the first bullet flies by us at recess.
Suddenly, I’m risking my life to protect her. And then Jameson drags me back to his estate, claiming it’s a matter of life-or-death.
Now I’m in the most beautiful home I’ve ever seen, faced with an offer from a man who’s just as gorgeous: Be the temporary live-in nanny until he can ensure my safety and find a more permanent solution. It’ll be easy, he promises.
Yet, the arrangement is anything but simple.
Not when Jameson’s hungry stare is all consuming and his touch pulse racing.
And definitely not when I find that nothing in this neighborhood is as it seems, including Jameson.
He may be powerful, possessive, and protective. But he’s also dangerous, demanding, and calculating.
As more of his secrets come out, I should run but . . .
How do I escape the enigma of Jameson Knight if he’s already captured my heart?
Get ready for a rollercoaster of love, power, and betrayal in Paradise-where the stakes are high but the secrets are buried bone-chillingly low.
Amanda: I’m still very much on my dark romance kick!
Author: Catherine Coulter
Released: February 24, 2026 by A John Scognamiglio Book
Genre: Gothic, Historical: European, Mystery/Thriller, Romance
A brilliant young innovator with a mysterious past and a boldly sharp-witted Lady uncover deadly secrets in #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter’s thrilling, new Victorian-era romantic mystery filled with daring escapes, exciting twists, witty humor, and characters you won’t soon forget.
When Alex Ivanov was 12, someone tried to kill him. Now, 11 years later, they still want him dead.
England, 1842. Queen Victoria reigns, Buckingham Palace is overrun with rats, and the streets of London are filled with intrigue.
Alex Ivanov is a brilliant young innovator, designing cutting-edge train engines. But Alex has a secret—he isn’t really Alex Ivanov. As a boy, he was pulled from the Thames, presumed drowned, with no memory of who he was. Rescued and raised by the formidable Ryder Sherbrooke, Alex has built a new life, but his past is catching up with him.
Lady Camilla Rohman has problems of her own. Trapped by a scheming stepmother and a family determined to see her married off, she is as clever as she is desperate. When fate throws her into Alex’s path, their connection is undeniable.
But as their whirlwind romance turns into marriage, danger follows. On their honeymoon, a series of deadly attacks make one thing clear—someone wants Alex dead. As they race to uncover the truth, old enemies and long-buried secrets come to light, leading them to a shocking revelation that will change everything…
Elyse: A new Coulter AND a gothic? Yes please!
Author: Amy Spalding
Released: February 24, 2026 by Kensington Books
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Romance
Series: Out in Hollywood #4
For fans of Casey McQuiston, Alexis Hall, and Meryl Wilsner, an actually hilarious, sweetly sexy, gloriously relatable, second chance, sapphic rom-com from the acclaimed author of For Her Consideration, starring a franchise Hollywood actress aims to prove her chops in a theatrical production directed by her ex whose heart she broke a decade earlier.
Hollywood actor Tess Gardner is not the kind of famous she set out to be. She’s ready to show she’s more than Princess Platinum of the Vindicators series, a pretty face with CGI superpowers that literally sparkle. Tess wants to prove herself as an actor and that means theatre—the true calling of her thespian heart. But just when Tess lands a part working with an acclaimed stage director, a brewing scandal forces him out. His replacement? None other than hip, buzzy director Rebecca Frisch. The same Rebecca Frisch whose heart a firmly closeted Tess broke over a decade ago during summer stock . . .
As Tess wrestles with her lingering guilt and attraction to Rebecca, she also finds herself struggling to rein in her superstar status backstage. When things unexpectedly reignite with Rebecca, Tess bristles even more against the walls of her A-list life. Since the industry’s made it clear that girl-next-door superheroes can’t also be gay, coming out isn’t realistic for Tess. And ultimately, Rebecca will head back to New York and likely seek out a less complicated relationship anyway.
Will the curtain close on her chance for happiness or will Tess finally take a leading role in her own life?
Amanda: I’ll be talking to Amy about her latest release tomorrow at All She Wrote Books! Can’t wait!
Author: Sarah K.L. Wilson
Released: February 24, 2026 by Orbit
Genre: Fantasy/Fairy Tale Romance, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Series: The Fisher King #1
A desperate queen makes a deal with the gods to save her land in this spellbinding romantasy debut from Sarah K. L. Wilson.
Queen Coralys rules the Kingdom of the Five Isles, but when disaster strikes, killing her husband and destroying half her nation, she pleads with the gods for salvation. And they do save her, turning back the terrible winds and tide and snatching her islands from the brink of destruction.
But the gods have a wicked sense of justice and they demand an exchange for their Coralys must marry the first man to set foot on her pier. Coralys expects the fleet of a neighboring country to come to rescue her people, led by its prince, a loyal ally. What she gets instead is a fisherman so sunburnt and stinking that her court can barely keep their breakfast down.
Coralys marries the fisherman just as she promised the gods, and sets out with him in his unkempt dinghy, with nothing but hopes of revenge against the gods to keep her from despair. But what she does not know is that the fisherman is actually the god of the sea. And he stepped on her dock for a reason.
His own kingdom besieged, his body terribly wounded, and his place as a god threatened, the fisherman has plans to turn the tides set against him and finally offer a place of refuge for his people. But working the magic he needs will require the help of the one woman bent on his destruction.
Amanda: I’ve started this one already and it’s sooooo good.
Author: Helen Gaskell
Released: February 26, 2026 by HQ Digital
Genre: Historical: European, LGBTQIA, Time Travel, Romance
The Holiday meets Lost in Austen, with a sprinkling of Bridgerton steam… A gloriously witty, escapist and heartwarming romantic comedy about love, finding your people and living life to the full
***
Etta Moore expects nothing more from a Tuesday than another dull day in the office. But when her morning commute ends in Regency England, she is forced to accept the she and her ancestor Miss Henrietta Bainbridge – or ‘Mad Hetty’, as she’s known amongst the ton – have switched bodies.
Suddenly Etta and Hetty must get to grips with the new worlds they find themselves in. For Etta, it’s goodbye to dating apps and the daily commute and hello to the list of things ‘Ladies Do Not’ do. Luckily the dashing Lord Stanhope is on hand to aid her through even the most shocking of faux pas.
Meanwhile Hetty, who has always felt unseen and unknown, finds her truest self blossoming with the help of 21st century medicine and the most welcome attentions of her rather beautiful Adult Learning teacher, Stella.
Two hundred years away from everything they’ve ever known, might Etta and Hetty have actually found a place where they each truly belong?
Elyse: A Freaky Friday switch with an Austen-era ancestor. I’m excited to see how the historical characters manages the present day.
hafniacosmolinguistTonight's knock on the door was a Labour canvasser who asked if I was planning to vote; I said I'd just done my postal vote this afternoon, and "I'm afraid I voted Green," I tried to let him down gently.
He still tried to show me the latest "only Labour can beat Reform" chart which baffled me: from my own time canvassing I can only expect that in such circumstances they have a box to tick for "voted for someone else" and you move on! Arguing with people who've already voted is a waste of time.
I hadn't been going to get in to this but since he wasn't going away I told him that I'm a disabled immigrant and Labour are making life more difficult for all of those so I couldn't vote for them. He said "well Angeliki settled here from Europe..."
It just felt so point-missing. I don't really care about the demographics of a candidate too much. I care how they'll vote, I care about their party's policies and how they'll affect all immigrants! (Or any other group on the wrong side of this power imbalance.)
I appreciate there's a lot of new volunteers on all sides in this by-election. (Seriously dude, I hope they trained you enough that you know there should be a box for you to tick that says I can be done wasting your and all your colleagues' time!) But it's hard not to feel like this is what Labour has been for all twenty of the years I lived here: focus on this exceptional individual, not the boring systemic problems that the party will always shy away from.
The funniest thing was, as I was finally getting this guy to go away, I'd spotted another guy behind him and I'd assumed he was a fellow canvasser with this guy, but as I started to close the door, he caught my attention to say "I'm from the Greens, did you want to put up a sign?" And only then I remembered that D had in fact asked for one the other day, so me and this guy and D eventually ended up out in the rain trying to find something to affix it to before ending up dragging a big tree in a big pot to the edge of the driveway for maximum visibility.
I hope that sends the Labour canvassers a message, for the couple more days until this election finally happens.
cellioToday while driving to meet someone for talmud study, I came to some road construction. The road was reduced to one lane, with flaggers [1] at each end. As is usual, cars accumulate at the "waiting" side until there's a backlog and then they switch directions. Today the traffic seemed to be moving very slowly (even for construction zones).
When I got to the middle of the stretch I saw why: there was a large opening in the middle of the road. Even in my Honda Fit, I went slightly onto the sidewalk to get through. It would have been much worse for larger vehicles.
Naturally, I found myself wondering about the halacha. The torah (Mishpatim, Exodus 21) tells us that if one opens a pit in the public thoroughfare and an animal falls in, the one who dug the pit is liable for the damage. The talmud (Bava Kamma 49b and nearby) has some discussion of this, including the case where the pit is covered which is deemed to be safe. But I saw nothing about pits that have active watchers like the construction workers. And while it might be there somewhere, I didn't see discussion about people falling in, and that might be different because people have more agency than oxen.
I wonder how Jewish law would handle the case where a driver, despite best efforts, took damage while driving around this pit, particularly if traffic behind precludes backing out of the situation. Would the Jewish court rule that the diggers of the pit were insufficiently cautious and are liable for the damage? Perhaps they would argue that the workers could have closed the road entirely for that block to avert the problem. Or would they rule that there was an active warning and the driver is responsible, even though there was no cover? Would it be different if the workers had taken a lunch break and put up a "caution" sign? Does it matter that it was a public-works project (like the wells discussed in the talmud) rather than something for private gain?
As a practical matter, of course, the driver submits an insurance claim and nobody sues the government for damages. But I'm curious about the rabbinic answer, not the modern practical answer. I mentioned it to the rabbi I was studying with at the end of our session but we didn't dig into it. Maybe I'll ask on the Judaism community on Codidact.
[1] Not actually flags, but people holding the signs that say "stop" on one side and "slow" on the other to regulate flow through the zone. Is there a name for that role?
ffutures
sovay
smartbitches_feed
RECOMMENDED: Lucky Bounce by Cait Nary is $2.99 and a KDD! Lara reviewed this hockey romance and gave it a B+:
If you’re looking for a book that will make you swoon from the giddiness of falling in love, then this book will hit the spot. Just don’t be too surprised when it ends abruptly.
“Lucky Bounce is a funny and charming hockey romance that I couldn’t put down.” – Rachel Reid, USA Today Bestselling author of Time to Shine
A single dad pro hockey player falls for his biggest fan—who just happens to be his five-year-old daughter’s teacher—in this fun, flirty romantic comedy from Cait Nary
Ezekiel Boehm is no stranger to teaching kids with famous parents. But when the pro hockey player he’s been thirsting after walks into the Rittenhouse Friends School gym hand in hand with a tiny kindergartener, he figures he must be hallucinating. Spencer McLeod is a lot of things—Zeke’s favorite winger on the Philadelphia Liberty; a menace on the ice; a mumbling, reluctant but somehow captivating-as-hell postgame interview—but he’s not a dad. Except he is. Apparently.
Zeke can be chill about this. He can.
Surprisingly, the more time he spends with Spencer, the easier this becomes. School volunteer events turn into reserved seats at games, turn into…more. And even though Zeke is 100 percent committed to ignoring Spencer’s blush, to ignoring the way he looks in that one pair of gray sweatpants, he can’t take his eyes off him.
This can never work. Can it?
Love Interest by Clare Gilmore is $1.99 and a KDD! Gilmore’s 2025 release was my best book of the year and I rated it 5-stars on Goodreads. I’ll probably pick this one up, just to explore her backlist a bit more!
Casey Maitland has always preferred the reliability of numbers, despite growing up the daughter of two artistic souls. Now a twenty-four-year-old finance expert working in Manhattan, Casey wonders if the project manager opening at her company – magazine powerhouse LC Publications – is a sign from the universe to pursue a career with a little more sparkle. That is, until she’s passed over for the job in favor of the board chairman’s son.
Alex Harrison is handsome, Harvard-educated, and enigmatic. Everybody loves him – except for Casey. But when the two are thrown on the same project, they both have something to prove. For Casey, it’s getting tapped for a transfer to the London office and fulfilling her dreams of travelling. For Alex, it’s successfully launching a brand that will impress his distant father.
As work meetings turn into after hours, Casey and Alex are drawn to each other again and again, but neither can avoid the messy secrets and corporate intrigue threatening to tear them apart. What they discover about their own company might change everything – including the dreams each of them is chasing.
The Re-Write by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn is $1.99 and a KDD! This came out in August and was mentioned on Hide Your Wallet. It’s a second chance romance with some reality TV elements. (Not full one set on a reality TV program, but the hero got the villain edit on a reality TV show.)
In this lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers rom-com, two exes are faced with one deadline. Will they make it to the end?
Temi and Wale meet in London. They flirt, date, meet each other’s friends.
Then they break up. And Wale goes on a reality dating show.
Instead of giving in to heartbreak, Temi throws herself into her writing. She’s within touching distance of a book deal that would solve all her problems. But publishers keep passing on her novel and bills still have to be paid. So, when the opportunity to ghost-write a celebrity memoir arises, Temi accepts.
And, of course, the celebrity turns out to be Wale…
Will Temi and Wale repeat the patterns of their past? Or can they write a whole new story?
Tangled Up in You by Christina Lauren is $1.99! This is the only non-KDD. This is book four in the Meant to Be Disney retellings series. I believe I’ve heard this one has some slightly darker elements than what you’d think, specifically about the heroine’s upbringing.
She has a dream. He has a plan. Together they’ll take a leap of faith.
Ren has never held an iPhone, googled the answer to a question, or followed a crush on social media. What she has done: read a book or two, or three (okay, hundreds). Taught herself to paint. Built a working wind power system from scratch. But for all the books she’s read, Ren has never found one that’s taught a woman raised on a homestead and off the grid for most of her twenty-two years how to live in the real world. So when she finally achieves her lifelong dream of attending Corona College, it feels like her life is finally beginning.
Fitz has the rest of his life mapped out: graduate from Corona at the top of his class, get his criminal record wiped clean, and pass himself off as the rich, handsome player everyone thinks he is. He’s a few months short from checking off step one of his plans when Ren Gylden, with her cascading blonde hair and encyclopedic brain, crashes into his life, and for the first time Fitz’s plan is in jeopardy.
But a simple assignment in their immunology seminar changes the course of both their lives, and suddenly they’re thrown out of the frying pan and into the fire on a road trip that will lead them in the most unexpected directions. Out on the open road, the world somehow shifts, and the unlikely pair realize that, maybe, the key to the dreams they’ve both been chasing have been sitting next to them the whole time.
cakewrecks_feedNOTE: No, really, these are wildly inappropriate. Not safe for kids! (Work should be fine, though.)
And now...
10 Wildly Inappropriate Pick-Up Lines
for International Flirting Week
Looking for love this month? Then why not try baiting your love hook (ew) with cake?
Punny and to the point. Best of all: No horsing around!
Admittedly, this will only work for half of you.
If you don't have access to cake, you could always write up one of those cute "love coupons."
So many jokes, so many relatives reading this blog.
(Hi, Mom!)
Just remember to keep it clean.
Awwww YEAH. Good times, indeed.
Maybe you don't want your cake to do all the talking, though. Maybe you just want it to be more of a conversation starter. You know, like this:
"You down with it?" [eyebrow waggle]
"Who likes oysters?!"
"Welcome... TO THE GUN SHOW."
Or if you really want to impress, try a quick serenade:
[singing]
"Oh let me be... YOUR TEDDY BEAR."
Mrowr.
And as a last resort, remember: sometimes bribery can work wonders.
"FREE MUSTACHE RI.. [noticing children in the room]... er ... slices!"
"And hey, just so you know: I come with free balloons."
o.0
Clean-up on aisle MY MIND, please. [shudder]
Thanks to Allison H., Cortney K., Michelle M., JM, Lauren E., Johnny D., Rosebud, Lara K., Lauren G., & Cat for the pick-me-ups.
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
cosmolinguistToday is a good day because I came downstairs to find that the house was warm enough that the heating hadn't needed to kick in, which is so much more comfortable for me.
First thing I noticed when I went outside yesterday was that it smelled like a rainy spring day instead of a rainy winter day.
I am so ready for fresh air and open windows.
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