jwood718

[jwood718]

"For the record, I was exposed to a lot of heterosexuality in my public school upbringing. So much. Incessant. Relentless."

NPR's Glen Weldon back when he was on Xwitter.

Also:

"As a gay kid I felt I was carrying around a secret that could come bursting out of my chest at any moment. That's why this Pride month I'm partnering with the good folks at Weyland-Yutani to ---- "

Ha.

[jwood718]

Ha!

[jwood718]

How many of these categories can you count yourself into? I got 5 myself.

[jwood718]

Elsewhere: a giant hole in the ground in front of our building (the DANGER sign specifically notes that it's "DEEP EXCAVATION." How deep? Probably not to China but, y'know, close.

Meanwhile, the street is closed

while a twin-level parking area gets chewed up

(arty shot!)

all in preparation for a multi-million dollar business school building maybe

A church and a low-rise business school building use to occupy this corner, the principal site of a two year-long project to erect the Mitchell E. Daniels Jr School of Business building (I think that's what it's called anyway); the excavators are chewing concrete in the far-center, just below the aqua colored glass-structure.

What strikes me as ironic or apt (or both) just now is that a church and a business school building were once side-by-side, and that both small buildings were razed for a much bigger business school building could be put up. There may be some social commentary there I think.

R. Jake Wood, 2024

[jwood718]

Inadvertent ARt: Where the Water Fountain Was.

Some time ago, a water fountain was removed from the wall, and after weeks, it has yet to be replaced, or even for the gap in the wall to be covered temporarily. Instead, walking past, I often glance over at the gap and the exposed "guts of the building" thinking it's some weird artwork; other artworks, and monitors for video, are along the halls, so I might be forgiven -- despite it being the same mistake I make a couple times a week.

But it should be art, right?

R. Jake Wood, 2024.

[jwood718]

Aw shit, really?

[jwood718]

Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots

Rosemary Westwood at WWNO for NPR reports.

Just highlighting here.

A group of high-level managers at the Louisiana Department of Health walked into a Nov. 14 meeting in Baton Rouge expecting to talk about outreach and community events.

Instead, they were told by an assistant secretary in the department and another official that department leadership had a new policy: Advertising or otherwise promoting the COVID, influenza or mpox vaccines, an established practice there — and at most other public health entities in the U.S. — must stop.

This will not be a written policy, and there are apparently no official minutes of the meeting.

"I mean, do they want to dismantle public health?" one employee at the health department said.

"We're really talking about deaths," said another. "Even a reduction in flu and COVID vaccines can lead to increased deaths."

In a statement, the Louisiana Department of Health told NPR it has been "reevaluating both the state's public health priorities as well as our messaging around vaccine promotion, especially for COVID-19 and influenza."

The statement described the move as a shift "away from one-size-fits-all paternalistic guidance" to a stance in which "immunization for any vaccine, along with practices like mask wearing and social distancing, are an individual's personal choice."

The state's new Governor, and the two top people at the head of the state's health agency, all promote mis- and disinformation concerning vaccine efficacy, including the discredited autism story.

...the Louisiana Department of Health told NPR it has been "reevaluating both the state's public health priorities as well as our messaging around vaccine promotion...[and] falsely claimed "the flu vaccine does not prevent one from getting the influenza virus."

The policy rises to the level of "absurdity," said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "It's gotten to the point of parody, where a public health agency doesn't promote the public's health."

"It's a dangerous, dangerous thing," Offit said. "It's the most vulnerable among us who suffer this, and it will be our children who suffer this. And my question will be, will they be held accountable?"

"You cannot ask people, 'Hey, we have flu shots. Would you like one?'" at a community event, according to the staff member with knowledge of the meeting. "But if they come up to us, knowing we are the health department and say, 'Hey, we hear y'all might have flu shots,' we can say, 'Yes, would you like one?'"

The medical directors were told that because the health department is a government agency, staff are not allowed to "coerce people" by promoting vaccinations, especially for COVID, flu and mpox. "They have definitely made it clear that we are not supposed to be pushing vaccines at all," the staff member added.

Full story with audio.

[jwood718]

Hmm, an interesting analogy that at the top.

[jwood718]

A family look at the sparkling lights on the Christmas tree at St. Paul's Cathedral, London, 16th November 1938.

(via: vintage.es) posted by peerintothepast

and

Barbara Klemm. On the wall, West Berlin, Germany, 1977.

Posted by paolo-streito-1264

[jwood718]

"If I don't see Johnny Caspar cold and stiff in a couple of days: I start eating in restaurants."

Bernie Bernbaum

[jwood718]

From Edward Helmore's story in The Guardian's story today:

"The 15-year-old girl who police say killed a teacher and a student and wounded six others before dying by suicide at a school in Madison, Wisconsin, reportedly left a manifesto that investigators are now reviewing.

Police identified Natalie Rupnow – who also went by the name Samantha – as the shooter late on Monday...

... A manifesto, which is not confirmed as genuine by authorities, was published on social media.

'A document about this shooting is circulating at this time on social media, but we have not verified its authenticity,' the Madison police chief, Shon Barnes, said at a news conference...

The police chief was asked about comments online that suggested the shooter may have been transgender.

'I don’t know whether Natalie was transgender or not,' Barnes said.

'I don’t think that whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may have wanted to identify,' he added. 'And I wish people would kind of leave their own personal biases out of this.'" [Emphasis added, though I can imagine the chief adding some emphasis to that sentence.]

Full story with contribution from Associated Press.

TERFs and various transphobes are scapegoating trans men and testosterone, even though the shooter was not trans. In fact she seems to have been one of their own someone who self ID'd as a radical feminist and wanted to kill all men. Absolutely disgusting behavior.

[jwood718]

Oh I wish.

[jwood718]

kinda' gets ya' right there in the old ticker.

[jwood718]

'cause why not?

[jwood718]

Well, that wasn't the graphic image I was expecting to see as the still frame!

[jwood718]

According to covidstandardtime.com:

"Today is Monday, March 1751st, 2020."

[jwood718]

"...as it was never about water fountains." Takei

So today I want to talk about puberty blockers for transgender kids, because despite being cisgender, this is a subject I’m actually well-versed in. Specifically, I want to talk about how far backwards things have gone.

This story starts almost 20 years ago, and it’s kind of long, but I think it’s important to give you the full history. At the time, I was working as an administrative assistant for a pediatric endocrinologist in a red state. Not a deep deep red state like Alabama, we had a little bit of a purple trend, but still very much red. (I don’t want to say the state at the risk of doxxing myself.) And I took a phone call from a woman who said, “My son is transgender. Does your doctor do hormone therapy?��

I said, “Good question! Let me find out.”

I went into the back and found the doctor playing Solitaire on his computer and said, “Do you do hormone therapy for transgender kids?” It had literally never come up before. He had opened his practice there in the early 2000s. This was roughly 2006, and the first time someone asked. Without looking up from his game of Solitaire, the doctor said, “I’ve never done it before, but I know how it works, so sure.”

I got back on the phone and told the mom, who was overjoyed, and scheduled an appointment for her son. He was the first transgender child we treated with puberty blockers. But not, by far, the first child we treated with puberty blockers, period. Because puberty blockers are used very commonly for children with precocious puberty (early-onset puberty). I would say about twenty percent of the kids our doctor treated were for precocious puberty and were on puberty blockers. They have been well studied and are widely used, safe, and effective.

Well. It turned out, the doctor I worked for was the only doctor in the state who was willing to do this. And word spread pretty fast in the tight-knit community of ‘parents of transgender children in a red state’. We started seeing more kids. A better drug came out. We saw some kids who were at the age where they were past puberty, and prescribed them estrogen or testosterone. Our doctor became, I’m fairly sure, a small folk hero to this community. 

Insurance coverage was a struggle. I remember copying articles and pages out of the Endocrine Society Manual to submit with prior authorization requests for the medications. Insurance coverage was a struggle for a lot of what we did, though. Growth hormone for kids with severe idiopathic short stature. Insulin pumps, which weren’t as common at the time, and then continuous glucose monitoring, when that came out. Insurance struggles were just part and parcel of the job.

I remember vividly when CVS Caremark, a pharmaceutical management company, changed their criteria and included gender dysphoria as a covered diagnosis for puberty blockers. I thought they had put the option on the questionnaire to trigger an automatic denial. But no - it triggered an approval. Medicaid started to cover it. I got so good at getting approvals with my by then tidy packet of articles and documentation that I actually had people in other states calling me to see what I was submitting (the pharmaceutical rep gave them my number because they wanted more people on their drug, which, shady, but sure. He did ask me if it was okay first).

And here’s the key point of this story:

At no point, during any of this, did it ever even occur to any of us that we might have to worry about whether or not what we were doing was legal.

It just never even came up. It was the medically recommended treatment so we did it. And seeing what’s happening in the UK and certain states in America is both terrifying and genuinely shocking to me, as someone who did this for almost fifteen years, without ever even wondering about the legality of it.

The doctor retired some years ago, at which point there were two other doctors in the state who were willing to prescribe the medications for transgender kids. I truly think that he would still be working if nobody else had been willing to take those kids on as patients. He was, by the way, a white cisgender heterosexual Boomer. I remember when he was introduced to the concept of ‘genderfluid’ because one of our patients on HRT wanted to go off. He said ‘that’s so interesting!’ and immediately went to Google to learn more about it. 

I watched these kids transform. I saw them come into the office the first time, sometimes anxious and uncertain, sometimes sullen and angry. I saw them come in the subsequent times, once they were on hormone therapy, how they gradually became happy and confident in themselves. I saw the smiles on their faces when I gave them a gender marker letter for the DMV. I heard them cheer when I called to tell them I’d gotten HRT approved by insurance and we were calling in a prescription. It was honestly amazing and I will always consider the work I did in that red state with those kids to be something I am incredibly proud of. I was honored to be a part of it.

When I see all this transgender backlash, it’s horrifying, because it was well on the way to become standard and accepted treatment. Insurances started to cover it. Other doctors were learning to prescribe it. And now … it’s fucking illegal? Like what the actual fuck. We have gone so far backwards that it makes me want to cry. I don’t know how to stop this slide. But I wrote this so people would understand exactly how steep the slide is.