#Admission 2018-19

[medievalandfantasymelee]

COME ONE, COME ALL to the MOSTE ILLUSTRIOUS TOURNAMENT of the FINEST, the MOSTE PUISSANT and HOTTEST MEN MEDIEVAL MEDIA HAS TO ITS CREDIT.

Be it known that we shall accept submissions of the hottest men OF THE PEOPLES’ CHOOSING from any live-action* TV or movie media property set between the years AD 500 – 1550 (Tudors WELCOME!!), and any fantasy properties which emulate said period!

KNOW ALSO that we, by the grace of this fine hellsite and with the counsel of the moste honorable and illustrious @hotvintagepoll (many thanks), have made

THESE GUIDELINES here given:

ANY HOT GUY who appears in any movie or TV show released in ANY YEAR, from ANY COUNTRY, shall be deemed eligible for entry. Below are listed examples of eligible properties. If YE BE NOT CERTAIN whether your hot guy is eligible, submit him anyway!

Examples of Eligible Properties: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-03), Game of Thrones (2011-19) House of the Dragon (2022), Wolf Hall (2015-2024), The Tudors (2007-2010), Ladyhawke (1985), The Princess Bride (1987), The White Queen (2013), Rise of Empires: Ottoman (2020-2022), Vikings (2013-2020), The Last Kingdom (2015-2022), Diriliş: Ertuğrul (2014), A Knight’s Tale (2001), BBC’s Robin Hood (2006-3009), The Last Duel (2021), The Story of Minglan (2018), The Borgias (2013), Robin Hood (1939), Outlaw King (2018), Pilgrimage (2017), Legend (1985), Braveheart (1995), The Green Knight (2021), Excalibur (1981), Beowulf & Grendel (2005), The Lion in Winter (1968), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), The Black Adder (Blackadder Series 1, 1982), Rashomon (1950)

Remember: This is just a list of examples—WOW ME!

These following titles are examples of properties that do not fall within or emulate the stated time period and therefore DO NOT QUALIFY: The Three Musketeers (Any Version), Pirates of the Caribbean (2004), Barbarians (2020), Gladiator (2000), Ben Hur (1959), Shogun (2024), Elizabeth (1999), 300 (2006), Troy (2004), Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001), Disney's Robin Hood (1973)**, Yojimbo (1961), Shakespeare in Love (1998), King Arthur (2004)***

For the purposes of this tournament, "Man" and "Guy" are defined as any bi-pedal humanoid male character played by a man. As such, characters belonging to non-human races such as Hobbits, Orcs, Elves, Demons, Fauns, Werewolves etc. ARE admissible, and, indeed, encouraged.

If you have propaganda you forgot to include in your submission, just hold onto it and send it in an ask after the Tournament begins.

You may submit as many hot men as you like but please submit only ONE ENTRANT per submission.

Do not hesitate to submit ANY hot guy you think may qualify, no matter how popular he is. There is no such thing as a shoo-in with these tournaments. If you think "Someone MUST have submitted him already!" Everyone else is probably thinking that too and then he may well NEVER get submitted and we don't want that.

Do not worry about how many submissions your hot guy might have had already--I need to get a sense of who the strongest contenders are in order to fairly seed the draws, and the best way to do that is volume of submissions.

We are voting on the hotness of the characters. While the actors who portray them are of course a major factor in this, we are not voting on the actors themselves, therefore propaganda pertaining to the actors real lives (aside from anecdotes relating to their portrayal of the character) is not admissible.

By that same token, in the case of historical figures (e.g. Henry VIII) we are judging hotness based on the fictionalized portrayals of them in these properties, not on historical fact.

Regarding immortal/time-travelling/dimension-hopping/extremely long-lived characters, regardless of when the character was born, the main action**** of the story must take place within the Medieval Period (see dates listed at the top of this post) or Medieval-esque fantasy fantasy realm in order for them to be eligible for submission. As such, characters like the Pevensie brothers (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Ash Williams (Army of Darkness) are admissible, but Asgardians (the MCU Thor films) are not.

I, as the Administrator and Master of Revels of this tournament, am exercising discretion in the admittance of characters from works by Shakespeare, since many of them have no set date.

Re: characters adapted from books/written works - Book quotes by/ about your character are not admissible as Propaganda for their tv/ movie counterparts unless said quotes were also written into the show/movie.

Book illustrations and fanart are not admissible Propaganda

SUBMISSIONS SHALL REMAIN OPEN UNTIL MIDNIGHT, JULY 1st

The Tourney shall begin at a date yet to be determined with the Melee (Qualifying Rounds), wherein the entrants with the fewest submissions and least propaganda will duke it out in a free for all brawl to determine who will enter the Lists.

SUBMIT YOUR ENTRANTS HERE TODAY!!!

-- Master of Revels

*The "live-action" qualification does have a caveat: exception may be made for those CGI films which were all the rage in the mid-00's that used the motion-capture and likeness of the actors; for example characters from, Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf (2007) are admissible.

** this one doesn't qualify, not because it isn't the right time period, but because it falls solidly under the "Animated" category.

***Yes, sadly we are deprived of the beautiful countenances of Clive Owen, Mads Mikkelsen, Ioan Gruffudd et al because the producers of this film in their infinite wisdom and in an attempt to seem "more historically accurate" chose to set it during the Roman withdrawal from Britain, which occurred in the 5th Century (About a CENTURY earlier than Authurian tradition) and is generally agreed to have ended by AD 410. It therefore does not fall under the Medieval umbrella and is not eligible for submission.

**** "Main Action" here defined as "More than half an hour of a movie and more than two episodes of a series"

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

by Elana Gotkine

COVID-19 is associated with long-term risk for autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders, according to a study published online Nov. 6 in JAMA Dermatology.

Yeon-Woo Heo, M.D., from the Yonsei University Wonju College of Medicine in South Korea, and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study to examine the long-term risk for autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases after COVID-19. The analysis included individuals with confirmed COVID-19 from Oct. 8, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2022 (3,145,388 patients) and controls who participated in the general health examination in 2018 (3,767,039 controls) with an observation period of more than 180 days.

The researchers found that COVID-19 was significantly associated with an increased risk for alopecia areata, alopecia totalis, vitiligo, Behçet disease, Crohn disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren syndrome, ankylosing spondylitis, and bullous pemphigoid (adjusted hazard ratios, 1.11, 1.24, 1.11, 1.45, 1.35, 1.15, 1.09, 1.14, 1.13, 1.11, and 1.62, respectively). Demographic factors, including male and female sex, age younger than 40 years, and age 40 years and older, showed diverse associations with the risk for autoimmune and autoinflammatory outcomes in subgroup analyses. Higher risk was also seen in association with severe COVID-19 infection requiring intensive care unit admission, the delta period, and not being vaccinated.

"Understanding the specific vulnerabilities and disease patterns among different subgroups is crucial for mitigating the long-term impact of the pandemic on global health," the authors write.

More information: Yeon-Woo Heo et al, Long-Term Risk of Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Connective Tissue Disorders Following COVID-19, JAMA Dermatology (2024). DOI: 10.1001/jamadermatol.2024.4233 jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/article-abstract/2825849 (PAYWALLED)

Lisa M. Arkin et al, COVID-19 as a Risk Factor For Autoimmune Skin Disease, JAMA Dermatology (2024). DOI: 10.1001/jamadermatol.2024.4222 jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/article-abstract/2825853 (PAYWALLED)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Adam Zivo

Published: Nov 19, 2024

Let’s be real: many of the people who’ve begun identifying as “non-binary” over the past decade are simply chasing social and professional clout. While the worst offenders are “spicy straights,” who want to feel special and oppressed, this charade is also employed by some gays and lesbians who yearn for more moral capital within progressive circles where homosexuality is no longer in vogue.

This doesn’t mean that all non-binary self-identification is just attention-seeking behaviour. There are, of course, some people who struggle with genuine gender dysphoria and for whom the thought of being either a man or woman is unbearably distressing. This subpopulation should be treated with compassion and given reasonable accommodations that alleviate dysphoria while recognizing the realities of biological sex. The same goes for intersex people, however rare they may be.

Yet, these two groups only represent a minority of the non-binary movement. Though some queer-friendly organizations claim that 1.7 per cent of the worldwide population is intersex, a 2002 article published in The Journal of Sex Research placed the true prevalence at around 0.02 per cent — almost 100 times lower than suggested.

In the 2021 Canadian census, which was the first to gather this type of data, approximately 59,000 of Canadians (0.15 per cent) identified as transgender while another 41,000 (0.11 per cent) identified as non-binary. When broken down by age, the data told an interesting story: individuals in their twenties were more than ten times more likely than older Canadians (age 50+) to self-identify as non-binary, and did so at such high frequencies that, in this cohort, there were actually more “non-binary” respondents than transgender ones.

Meanwhile, a 2021 report published by the Williams Institute, relying on survey data gathered between 2016 to 2018, found that only 19 per cent of non-binary US adults identified as homosexual — almost a third vaguely defined their orientation as “queer,” while another third claimed to be “bisexual” or “pansexual.” Notably, 51 per cent of the survey’s non-binary respondents self-reported struggling with serious mental illness, with 93.8 per cent having considered attempting suicide.

These figures suggest that the struggles of gender dysphoric and intersex individuals, while legitimate and complicated, are apparently being diluted by a flood of pretenders, who are neither gender dysphoric nor intersex, for whom being non-binary is an expedient fad.

The underlying problem here is that queer theorists have adopted an expanded definition of what it means to be “non-binary,” wherein one does not need to experience dysphoria or demonstrate any particular gender expressions (or lack thereof). “Since there’s no one way to be nonbinary, this identity can match all kinds of bodies,” wrote Susan Weiss, a “non-binary” writer who also identifies as a heterosexual woman, in a 2022 article for Teen Vogue. Mirroring popular internet discourse, she went on to assert that it is possible to have multiple gender identities at once, so that one can simultaneously claim to be non-binary and a woman (or man) —  even though these categories are, by definition, mutually exclusive.

In the world of contemporary gender theory, you are non-binary simply if you say so, with no need to prove anything to anyone. Yet, this produces a meaningless and circular definition: “A non-binary person is someone who says they are non-binary, and there is nothing more to being non-binary than identifying as such.”

Uncoupled from dysphoria, behavioural expectations, and intersex biology, the “non-binary” identity becomes little more than an invisible badge: cheaply acquired, cheaply discarded. Despite its vacuity, the badge grants easy admission into the LGBT community. Those who wear it can lay claim to a special layer of oppression and accrue the associated cachet.

This system is, of course, wildly vulnerable to abuse.

For decades, there has been a subset of straight people who have wanted to identify as LGBT because they think that it makes them more interesting. Veteran lesbian activist Julie Bindel, for example, has written about how this phenomenon emerged in the 1990s and was, at first, dominated by young women kissing each other at bars and then claiming to be bisexual. The problem only worsened as social acceptance of the LGBT community expanded and queer people, in compensation for decades of persecution, were showered with praise and, in some contexts, given preferential treatment. We became trendy. Fetishized, really. As early as the 2000s, celebrities noticed that faux-lesbianism could be exploited for publicity — the infamous 2003 kiss between Madonna and Britney Spears stands out as a seminal example.

As the perks of being LGBT exploded throughout the 2010s and the associated social costs further receded, the number of straight pretenders appears to have commensurately grown. This should’ve been unsurprising because their behaviour, though irritating, was perfectly rational. It is simply human nature to chase new incentives. Anyone who has followed the surge in Canadian “Pretendians” (people who fake Indigenous heritage to access special privileges) can see that pilfering minority identities is no barrier to the pursuit of self-interest.

But just as Pretendians were, until recently, constrained by clear regulations governing Indigenous identification, so, too, did spicy straights face their own hurdles: gay sex and gender dysphoria.

When the LGBT community was predominantly concerned with same-sex attraction and old-school transexuals, admission into the club was not easy. One had to actually have gay sex or undergo a substantive, often medicalized, gender transition to get in. Most interlopers were unprepared to do these things, which could not be convincingly faked, so they remained outsiders.

The expanded definition of “non-binary” upended that. Suddenly, poseurs could claim to be LGBT while doing absolutely nothing. They did not have to have homosexual sex. They did not have to act or dress a certain way. They did not even have to give up their original gender identities. Some of them, like Weiss (the aforementioned Teen Vogue writer), openly declared that being non-binary led to no discernible changes in how they lived their lives.

It was ingenious: attention-seeking heterosexuals had discovered a way to insert themselves into the LGBT community by fiat. Worse yet, their solution allowed them to demolish critics, who questioned these intrusions, with accusations of prejudice and discrimination. Though many lesbians, transsexuals and gay men, like me, mock some aspects of the non-binary movement behind closed doors, publicly expressing these beliefs remains grounds for cancellation in many spaces.

Upon infiltrating the community, the spicy straights ornamented themselves with our traumas and appropriated the valour of our painful struggle for equal rights. They have since pretended that their mild, self-inflicted inconveniences are equivalent to our historical hardships, and, in doing so, have trivialized the suffering experienced by homosexuals and transsexuals throughout the world, where beatings, imprisonment and lynchings remain a risk for many. By demanding that the public indulge their inane theatrics, they have discredited the LGBT community and made us seem frivolous, overbearing and unreasonable.

There are “non-binary” people who claim, with great seriousness, that their relationships with their opposite-sex partners are “queer.” Seeing this makes me want to roll my eyes out of their sockets. The integrity of the LGBT community should not be compromised because some milquetoast straight couples, who feel insecure about their own conventionality, want to cosplay as oppressed. Their presence is unwelcome, and I shudder to think that my existence is now associated with them.

Worst of all, some of these tourists have even had the audacity to lecture homosexuals about their own rights. From what I’ve seen in my own life (I was a deeply-involved LGBT activist in the late 2010s and still orbit that scene), they feel entitled to do this because they typically move within radically progressive circles that look down upon simple gays and lesbians. We are too vanilla for them. Too disobedient in our relative moderateness (unlike them, we have nothing to prove). Our oppression is insufficient, apparently. The woke homophobia festering within the far left, which denigrates gays as a politically unreliable fifth column, finds new life in their mouths.

And so they berate us about our “privilege” and the necessity of “radical queerness,” blissfully unencumbered by any self-awareness. We bite our tongues and listen to these enlightened teachers, whose expertise on our lives is reminiscent of Rachel Dolezal, and in those moments the world turns upside down.

Some sympathy should be extended to them, though, because they are only copying what they see elsewhere. As alluded to earlier, some gays and lesbians play the non-binary game, too. Like their heterosexual counterparts, they are, for the most part, radically progressive, suffocatingly bourgeois and haunted by their own moral insecurities.

As they see themselves as insufficiently oppressed (aka: cisgender, and often white and university-educated), they eagerly seek pathways to sanctimonious victimhood. Unable to opt out of their own socioeconomic status or race (“non-racial” is not a recognized identity yet, thankfully), they purge themselves of gender, instead. Through this rebirth, they imagine that their moral authority has been restored.

Unbeknownst to them, many of us within the LGBT community recognize that the emperor has no clothes. We quietly groan when certain “non-binary” homosexuals, who showed no signs of gender discomfort until it became trendy, disparage the evil of “cis gays.” When the press adulates same-sex attracted celebrities —  like Sam Smith and Demi Lovato — for coming out as non-binary, we see careerism.

We fought for decades to be taken seriously, and now we have to deal with this farce.

==

In any other period, these people would be goths, emos, mods or beatniks.

Reminder that Julie Bindel is herself a Pretendian, as she's a self-described "political lesbian" who has literally encouraged other women to do likewise; that is, you can just will yourself into being a lesbian. So much for "born this way," I guess...

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♂️

[thankyouforthememoriesworld]

🔎I'm now finding myself revisiting if they overlapped in Summer Jam. Goes back to my curiosity if they knew about each other beforehand. This is the one tournament they were both at for sure every single year because it was in Minnesota.

2016 9th North Tartan Summer Jam (June 17-19, 2016)

Write up: https://bluestarmedia.org/9th-annual-north-tartan-summer-jam-2016/

Presumably didn't know each other and played in different groups but they were in the same high school gym so who knows, maybe they did watch each other play and we wouldn't even know it.

Paige played for North Tartan 8th: https://tourneymachine.com/Public/Results/Team.aspx?IDTournament=h201510192243367598877fa9d1c264f&IDDivision=h2016060913164319278d903dffb0f4b&IDTeam=h20160404181544577d6f4d77b9cf04b

Azzi played for 15U Fairfax Stars: https://tourneymachine.com/Public/Results/Division.aspx?IDTournament=h201510192243367598877fa9d1c264f&IDDivision=h20160609131643192b6faa6c1558d4b

2017 10th North Tartan Summer Jam (June 16-18, 2017)

Write up: https://bluestarmedia.org/10th-annual-north-tartan-summer-jam/

They had just won gold together with U16 on June 11, 2017 so they definitely knew each other but played in different groups. I think that first birthday post is probably from this tournament.

Paige played for North Tartan 9th and won her group: https://www.tourneymachine.com/Public/Results/Division.aspx?IDTournament=h201611041654077600663e2c3be0243&IDDivision=h20170603204648840c709f94df61d4b

Azzi played for 15 U Fairfax Stars and won her group: https://www.tourneymachine.com/Public/Results/Division.aspx?IDTournament=h201611041654077600663e2c3be0243&IDDivision=h201706032043504714ffc182843844f

2018 11th North Tartan Summer Jam (June 15-17, 2018)

Write up: https://bluestarmedia.org/summer-jam-2018/

"And if that wasn’t enough reason to be courtside, a head to head matchup between USA U17 National Team members Azzi Fudd and Paige Bueckers Saturday evening was worth the price of admission alone."

https://tourneymachine.com/Public/Results/Division.aspx?IDTournament=h201711150340558176fe6def4d8a440&IDDivision=h20180527130838394bc7cf7b161d340

Played against each other with Paige's team beating Azzi's 79-66. I'm still searching for the full game. Highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKYqMjAf6nk

Azzi's team also played Caitlin Clark's team, beating them 63-47

Paige's team was runner up in the group. Azzi's team was 5th.

I already sent footage where Azzi was at the championship game supporting Paige. I have to imagine Paige went to Azzi's games when she could. I know I remember finding footage of Paige watching Azzi's AAU game and just can't remember where lol. I don't know if it was this tournament or another one. I think Overtime probably posted it lmao.

North Tartan Summer Jam

Has Azzi ever lost to Caitlin 🤔?

Paige watched Azzi in the AAU but I don't think it was in a tournament as old as this.

[kodiescove]

How did you come to Islam?

I am glad you asked!

So the year is 2018/2019, there abouts.

I made my first Muslim friend!

I found this out by asking the most terrible question I've ever asked anyone ever "hey since you have x name, does that mean you're Muslim.?"

He said yes. He was SUPER chill about me being like innocently racist. I still cringe about this exchange. I am currently cringing typing this all out.

But I was like 19/20, and racial etiquette was new to me.

Now, I knew nothing, and I mean NOTHING about Islam.

For quite a few years, it was just something my super cool "got me through my abusive relationship" online best friend practiced.

Iiiiiinnnnnnn 2022? Around there.

I was at Michael's, the crafts store, and there were these GORGEOUS stickers for Ramadan. I immediately sent a picture of them to him talking about how beautiful they were, lamenting about how I'd love to get them, but that would be cultural appropriation. I think he said it would be fine if I got them, but I still didn't get them, it didn't feel right because at the time I wasn't Muslim(obviously.)

Sometime later, it's Christmas and I'm in one of my "I need to start a business or else I'm always going to be in poverty" moods. Don't ask me why this was a thing, because I very clearly cannot produce enough of anything to run a business. Anyways. I'm thinking about making Christmas cards and then my brain goes "Well what if I make something for Muslims? I don't want to leave them out of things."

So I message my friend, asking if that would be okay.

He explains that Islam doesn't have a winter holiday like Christmas, that Muslims go off a lunar calendar and he tells me about Ramadan.

And I'm like "mhm. Okay. What's Ramadan?"

And so I spent the literal rest of the night (literally HOURS) researching Ramadan and Eid. I read THE ENTIRE wiki page for both /including/ the parts that explain the different ways different countries and regions celebrate Ramadan and Eid.

Fall 2023 I find out that what I thought was an Indian take out restaurant (because I get curry there don't hate me I was told it was an Indian place) was acting, specifically, a HALAL restaurant and I'm like "mhm. Okay. So what does that mean?"

And again, I spend hours on Google with those drop down "similar questions" just learning a little bit about Islam.

And like through these experiences I learn a basic principle that I have embodied since becoming Muslim "Islam is a religion of love and peace"

Come to 2024.

I think February. Really wanna say February. My sense of time and time keeping is really bad.

But it's the beginning of the year. I'm having a real ROUGH time of it. I'm having intrusive thoughts of self harm. I'm constantly being triggered by Tumblr because of the I/P conflict. I'm constantly triggered by trumblr because of talks of transphobia of kinds. I'm triggered by Tumblr because of the porn. My best friend is increasingly becoming a bad friend. IM NOT COPING. To the point I was hospitalized twice, and should have been a third time (thanks Brylin for never calling me back for that admission)

And through it all, I'm praying to the universe. I'm like, I'm lost, I'm suffering, I need some guidance. Please someone, anyone, give me a sign.

And there was this feeling.... this VERY distinct feeling. It was in my chest and in my belly. I can't really describe it other than light and energy radiating. Like a pulling feeling. It felt like a calling. And something inside me kept saying "turn to Islam. Turn to Allah."

I was apprehensive at first. Yknow, being a pagan witch at the time and all. It felt... well, why would Allah be calling to me.? I'm a pagan witch!

But I don't know. I won't lie and say I never found comfort in being pagan. But there's something.... different in Islam. I can sit and listen to the Quran and crochet and I just feel... at peace. I can watch videos discussing Islam and the thoughts usually racing in my head just... stop. I'm fascinated by Islamic history in a way that other periods in history haven't fascinated, /and I say this as someone who loves history/.

I will admit, there's part of me that doesn't feel good enough for Allah, for Islam. But then I remember how many times the Quran says "Allah is the most forgiving, the most merciful" and that's... that's what I need. Someone to forgive the parts of me that can't keep up because of my disability, and is understanding (see, merciful) for all the things I am not.

So tldr: basically I had a friend who started my interested and then Allah answered my prayers.

[mariacallous]

As I noted yesterday, the Alexander Smirnov news is either confirmation of what we already knew or else spurs a kind of mass outburst of incredulity about how it is we’re still as a country, as a media, as a national political conversation getting led around by the nose by these same transparent scams?

Let’s stipulate that these are rhetorical questions.

But let me note a tendency I’m already seeing in a lot of coverage. House Republicans seems surprisingly candid that their holy grail of Biden impeachment isn’t going to happen. Quite a few press reports are taking a different tack. Some are playing this as “the Smirnov news may undermine the whole Biden investigation.” (Who’s gonna tell ’em?) To others it’s like a hot start up that failed. It just didn’t pan out. Oh well.

Neither of these is remotely adequate.

Rising like a phoenix from the ashes of what was always a bogus story is now one that is actually real. Notwithstanding 2015–16 and 2018–19, we now see that almost all of 2023 was dominated by a legal/political story that was not only bogus but — according to prosecutors’ filings and the discredited source’s own admission to federal authorities — was a plant by the Russian intelligence services. That’s real. That requires an explanation as to how that was ever allowed to happen. It requires some effort to prevent it from happening again.

Donald Trump and his MAGA legions have spent years shock-training reporters not to bring up anything else about Russian disinformation programs aimed at helping Donald Trump. But they’re real. They’re continuing. They’re actually working. And that remains the case no matter how many times Donald Trump says “RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA” on Truth Social. Reporters have been conditioned to ignore the clear implications of what we’re learning.

This is even more the case if Hunter Biden’s lawyers are right that the younger Biden’s plea deal fell apart because of Smirnov dangling more goodies in front of David Weiss and his prosecutors at just the right moment. Looking at everything else we’ve learned about this, I suspect they’re right. But we should also be clear that so far it’s just their claims. They’re asking a judge to require Weiss’s office to cough up more documents they hope will prove their case. We’ll have to wait to see what they come up with.

The story here isn’t that the “Biden Crime Family” nonsense didn’t pan out. That was always transparently bogus. The story here is how the U.S. again got bamboozled by transparent foreign manipulation and how the U.S. political press bought into it pretty much whole hog. That doesn’t mean they accepted all the claims. But they treated it as reasonable, worthy of a presumption of seriousness, a serious story to be covered as such. Even with the veritable forest of red flags. Maybe that’s why there’s so little appetite to say what just happened.

[offender42085]

Post 1036

Christopher Ponce, Florida inmate T96991, born 1990, incarceration intake February 2018 at age 27, scheduled for release August 2029

DUI Manslaughter

Many of William Angel's family and friends were willing to forgive Christopher Ponce for taking his life in a wrong-way drunken driving crash in July 2012 that killed him.

But in 2013, Ponce cut off a court-ordered electronic monitor and fled from the United States. For the victims, that made a difference.

Captured in Spain in 2016, Ponce was returned to the United States and he was back in a Hillsborough County courtroom where Circuit Judge Nick Nazaretian sentenced him to 15 years in prison for DUI manslaughter.

Ponce initially pleaded no contest to the charges against him. But in the midst of an afternoon that saw a dozen of Angel's friends and family members accuse him of not taking responsibility, he requested to plead guilty instead.

He addressed Angel's family with tears in his eyes at the end of an emotional four-hour sentencing hearing.

His admission of guilt could potentially affect the outcome of a set of lawsuits that have been filed against Ponce for the 2012 crash. That prompted words of caution from Nazaretian before he accepted Ponce's plea.

Ponce was drunk in the early morning of July 19, 2012, when he drove a 2012 Ford Fusion south in the northbound lanes of Interstate 275, near the I-4 interchange. He slammed head-on into a 2000 Ford Mustang carrying three friends.

The driver, 20-year-old Angel, was killed. Jay Davis, then 20, was hurled through the Ford's windshield, landing atop the hot engine. Robert Newberry, then 22, was also severely injured.

Ponce was hospitalized, then arrested on a charge of DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide. He was later released from jail after agreeing to wear an electronic GPS ankle monitor. A year later, he cut it off and fled.

An international manhunt began. Angel's family staged protests outside the north Tampa dental office where Ponce's mother worked, hoping to draw the fugitive out of hiding.

Spanish police arrested Ponce in 2016 as he tried to board a bus in the city of Almería, on the Mediterranean coast. He was carrying a fake Mexican passport.

Upon his release from prison, Ponce will serve 10 years' probation. He will be barred from driving for life.

3s

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Tomorrow (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. And on Friday (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

#15yrsago You’ll need a passport to buy a mobile phone in the UK https://web.archive.org/web/20081121071114/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4969312.ece

#15yrsago Photos of facepalming financiers https://web.archive.org/web/20081011031721/http://brokershandsontheirfacesblog.tumblr.com/

#10yrsago Venn diagram of anticonventional objects https://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/64469207921/prettier-versions-of-an-earlier-sketch-of-mine

#10yrsago Snowden’s CIA career taught him that going through channels achieved nothing https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/world/snowden-says-he-took-no-secret-files-to-russia.html

#5yrsago RIP, Little Free Library founder Todd H. Bol https://www.startribune.com/after-cancer-diagnosis-little-free-library-founder-todd-bol-feels-like-most-successful-person-i-know/497826391/

#5yrsago Apple’s new parental control: Daily Stormer is in, sex-ed is out https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xj3bx/new-iphone-parental-controls-block-searches-for-sex-education

#5yrsago An interactive map of China’s wildcat strikes https://maps.clb.org.hk/

#5yrsago California tenants receive rent-hike threats that will only be rescinded if rent-control initiative fails https://newrepublic.com/article/151783/deceptive-shameful-lucratively-funded-war-rent-control

#5yrsago Wanna get into Harvard? Just ask your parents to donate a building https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/18/day-three-harvard-admissions-trial/

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[longwindedbore]

Trump’s Dominos

According to allegations by the New York State, Attorney General, Trump has been engaged in serial fraud for decades.

But neither the Feds nor any State agency had the beginnings of an understanding of what was criminally amiss.

Until Trump ripped open the curtain for them.

These appear to be the dominoes lead to his catastrophic reversal of fortune.

Domino #1 October 2016. Trump has Michael Cohen set up a corporation with the purposes of paying hush money to cover up his adult ties

Parenthetically in 2016 he could simply have “a gentleman doesn’t comment on such matters”. If he’d not made the Stormy Daniel payment.

Instead Trump himself knocked over the domino.

Domino #2 October 2016.: Cohen makes an apparently aborted offer to pay hush money to Karen McDougal. The story of Trump with McDougal subsequently appears in the Wall Street Journal prior to the election of 2016.

Domino #3 October 2016: Stormy Daniels retains Karen McDougal’s attorney. Michael Cohen does make a hush money payment of $130,000 to Ms. Daniels.

Domino #4 January 2018: The Stormy Daniels story breaks in the Wall Street Journal.

Domino #5 April 2018: Paying hush money payment is apparently a violation of federal election laws regarding interference. Accordingly, the FBI executed a search warrant for Michael Collins records.

Domino #6 March 2019: Michael Cohen trial opens for charges of tax fraud for unreported income from the Trump organization, as well as election interference.

Domino #7 March 2019: federal prosecutors serve a subpoena on Trump CFO Alan Weisselberg who testifies under a grant of partial immunity from federal prosecution.

Domino #8 August 2019: Michael Cohen pleads guilty to tax fraud and election interference. CONVICTION #1 (Criminal Tax fraud resulting from payments by Trump Organization.

Domino #9 2019: based on testimony by Weisselberg, the state of New York, seeks the Trump organization financial records

Domino #10 July 2020: the Supreme Court ruled the trump organization tax records to be handed over to the Manhattan district attorney.

Domino #11 2020. NY State District of Manhattan opens criminal investigation into the Trump organization. Subpoenas bank records.

Domino #12 mid-2021: NY State Attorney General opens civil executive law case for fraudulent activities.

Domino # 13 August 2022: Alan Weisselberg pleads guilty to 15 counts of criminal tax fraud. As part of his plea agreement agree to testify against the trump organization. CONVICTION #2 (Criminal Tax Fraud)

Domino #14 December, 2022: Two Trump companies convicted of criminal fraud. CONVICTION #3 (Criminal Tax Fraud).

Domino #15 January 2023: Further criminal proceedings set in Manhattan District.

Domino #16. September 2023: Judge rules for the State in a Motion for Summary Judgment for the seizure and disgorgement of Trump business assets due to systemic fraud FOUND LIABLE #1. (Fraud).

SCORECARD:

Trump Losses:

Involvement by the Trump Organization in the three criminal fraud convictions noted above.

Being found Liable for Fraud in the civil Executive Law case.

PLUS the dissolution of the Trump Charity and the 19 Admissions of Wrongdoing as part of that resolution.

Innumerable appeals rebuffed I ncluding to the US Supreme Court.

Trump Wins: ZERO

[fragileizywriting]

I posted 2,008 times in 2022

That's 1,269 more posts than 2021!

1,634 posts created (81%)

374 posts reblogged (19%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@fragileizy

@fragileizywriting

I tagged 1,812 of my posts in 2022

Only 10% of my posts had no tags

#speakizys - 1,645 posts

#demon lovin - 779 posts

#fire lily petals - 510 posts

#sharks and sugar - 319 posts

#locker talk - 139 posts

#izycrossover - 105 posts

#the ot3 server is bullying me - 25 posts

#talking about [redacted] - 15 posts

#izydraws - 14 posts

#anyway - 9 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#‘i don’t even know your name. i don’t even know when your birthday is. i don’t know how your eyes light up when someone you love calls you’

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

“Why did you give me this, Adrien?” she asks, rather small.

“Oh. Oh, uhm. Do you not like it?” He turns to her, finally looking away from the tank, his gaze meeting hers. His eyes look almost brown, so dark, yet so readable. She can’t even look away. “I thought you’d like this. I thought, you know, since you always talk about how much you want to see sharks all the time, I thought maybe we could—”

“You’re right, I do—”

“—see the sharks together?—”

“Correct. Adrien, this is— holy hell. This is perfect—” she bites her lip so that a cry can’t get out, pinching her eyes tight. Her eyelids squeeze, strong enough for color to blur and blend into nothing but white, tears streaking down her hexleather and touching her bare skin. She hiccups when there’s a thumb on her jaw, warm, wiping right where the seam of the hexleather meets skin.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s all that perfect when you’re crying,” he murmurs.

He has no idea. He has no idea that she’s paralyzed. In fear, in desperation, wanting to tell him every single little thing and knowing not to— she’ll ruin everything— she’ll ruin their entire friendship— if she tells him that she loves him so much that it hurts to breathe. 

She loves him so much that it hurts to breathe.

Oh, oh, and the thought of that admission is what gets her to sob, watching his outline haze into nothing but yellows and dark greens as she gasps out, something sharp and something desperate, clinging to breath on its edges with nothing but serrated claws.

“It is perfect,” she sobs. “This is the greatest thing anyone’s ever given me.”

“Then what’s wrong, Kitty?” he asks her as she leans into his hand, cupping him by the wrist. Wishing so hard to be able to feel his hand without the hexleather in the way. “Why are you crying?”

“B-because I—” she shudders again. No. Don’t. Don’t ruin it. Don’t ruin the only thing left in life that makes sense. That makes everything worthwhile. “Because y-you make me so happy, Sunshine. I can’t believe you got us to have the aquarium all to ourselves tonight— I can’t believe you did this for me. I can’t believe that you’d do this for me.”

“Of course I would.” He gives her a little smile. Just brief. Just enough for her to see it through her swimming vision. “You’re my best friend, and I love you.”

21 notes - Posted May 8, 2022

#4

ALL OF THAT WRITING FOR FLP AND STILL ONLY 233 PAGES? JESUS >:(

23 notes - Posted December 7, 2022

#3

blanche is my sweet little darling and i love her. she's allowed to maim as a treat and deserves kisses from one (1) adrien (and maybe one (1) luka if she's vulnerable enough)

30 notes - Posted November 13, 2022

#2

"who, him? no, my familiar is harmless!"

(he is very much not harmless!)

Want to know more of this AU? Click Here

someone in the ot3 server asked what chat looked like and i don't have any art because drawing men makes me miserable (more than drawing in general, honestly, because of my problems with holding pencils). HOWEVER.

i had art from 2018/19 from when this au was first conceptualized, but it was only a shitty png version of it as the psd file had gotten corrupted... i redrew parts of this to fit the au as it is now. it's not perfect, and i wanted to change some more things, but my hand... ough. i cannot draw more. my hand is on fire... but i wanted to show you what i have at the moment before i forget.

i wish i could change marinette's hair to black in this, but since chat is already void, it would just look messy. i'm sure if i were more talented i'd figure something out, but for now, let's just all pretend that her hair is black in this. not as dark as The Void that is Chat. also, i don't think anyone noticed this in the original story, but marinette's eye color is never talked about. i wanted to give her blue eyes only when she's using magic, because it would make her look cooler, but i got lazy super quickly when drawing this. i guess that's fine. i had a lot of people question why i changed a marinette's eye color the last time i tried it, so...

anyway, i need to take a nap ToT

40 notes - Posted April 25, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

she just slathers herself in it, up until it starts to hurt, hissing to herself as she uses her knuckles to roll tightened flesh. maybe 'slather' is too harsh of a word, but butters herself is definitely applicable-- gah! no! no thinking about butter! no food, not yet, not until she's taken care of herself the way she needs to.

shower? done.

wash hair? done.

exfoliate? done.

deodorant? done.

pajamas? done.

she still has a skin-care routine to go through, all six steps to make sure she's hydrated but not enough to where she's breaking out into hives and reddened skin. it's a delicate balance, one that she's spent so long trying to fix, and if this ruins her night she's about to crash and burn and start kicking and screaming into her pillow.

dinner be damned.

breathe. breathe. it's okay. things are fine. just a long day, that's all, there's no need for the knots to form in her shoulders. she's tired, she's hungry, she's aching for luka's attention, and she wants to smooth out the knots in her thighs before he's back upstairs.

"do you want some help, mousey?"

she blinks tears out of her eyes. "no, no-- i-- i can do this, it's fine, everything's... fine."

breathe. breathe. things are fine. everything is fine. her parents are thankful that she helped out in the bakery today, her grades in school are fine, her boyfriend isn't upset with her, all the kwamis are full and mullo is flying around with a basket of blueberries right behind her, gorging out on a meal before her parents go watch a movie together...

why is she so stressed out?

"i know you can," luka approaches cautiously. she looks up at him with a huff, eyes tired, pouting before she can even stop herself. he sits in front of her, right at the foot of her bed on the cat-shaped floor cushion. "but that doesn't look comfortable. you're hurting yourself like that."

"luka..."

"breathe." she inhales on command, exhaling to the side so she doesn't accidentally move his bangs with her breath. "again."

she does.

"good?"

"good."

"lightheaded?"

"no."

"feeling weird?"

"i don't think so. aside from... i don't know. this." she points to everything about her.

"tell me what's wrong, beautiful."

"i'm tired," marinette sighs out, like it's a justification for the way she's been treating herself. her hands are ringing from how much friction she's used against it, even with all the lotion, she's completely and totally overstimulated. "everything is so much right now."

"i know."

"a long shift on my poor feet--"

he lifts her leg up to place in his lap. "yeah."

"and, and-- and school."

"mmm."

See the full post

47 notes - Posted January 25, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

Pinta was built 16 years later to accompany the Nina. Both ships were built in Valenca, Brazil, by eighth-generation Portuguese shipwrights. It took a 20-person crew 32 months to build the Nina and 36 months to build the Pinta. It is a larger version of the archetypal caravel. Historians consider the caravel the Space Shuttle of the fifteenth century.

The Nina and Pinta set sail in 1492 with crews of 24 and 26 people, respectively. Today, each ship usually has crews of at least 10.

While in port, the general public is invited to visit the ships for a walk-aboard, self-guided tour. Admission charges are $8.50 for adults, $7.50 for seniors and $6.50 for students 5–16. Children 4 and under are Free. The ships are open every day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. No reservations necessary. 

Teachers or organizations wishing to schedule a 30 minute guided tour with a crew member should call 787-672-2152 or visit our website www.ninapinta.org, click on ‘Take a Tour’ and fill out online form. Minimum of 15. $5 per person. No Maximum. Email ninapintatour@gmail.com 

Historic replicas of Columbus' ships, The Nina and Pinta sailing Ohio River this fall

By DAVE LAVENDER The Herald-Dispatch lavender@herald-dispatch.com

Sep 19, 2018

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — You can step aboard a bit of maritime history starting this weekend as replicas of The Nina and Pinta — two of three ships Christopher Columbus guided from Spain to The Bahamas in 1492 — will be docked at Point Park, 113 Ann St., Parkersburg from Friday, Sept. 21 until their departure early Wednesday, morning Sept. 26.

The ships open to the general public from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21 through Tuesday, Sept. 25. The boats will also be making seven other Ohio River port city stops this fall through mid November.

The closest it will be to Huntington is a Friday, Nov. 9 through Monday, Nov. 18 stay at Ashland Port & Riverfront Park 50 15th St., Ashland. Other stops are: Sept. 28 through Oct. 2, at Heritage Port in Wheeling, W.Va., Oct. 4-16 at Station Square in Pittsburgh, Pa., Oct. 19-23 at Marietta Harbor, Marietta, Ohio, Oct. 26-31 at Haddad Riverfront Park in Charleston, W.Va., Nov. 2-7 at City Park Dock in Gallipolis, Ohio, Nov. 9-18 at Ashland Port and Riverfront Park, and then Nov. 20-22 at Limestone Landing Park in Maysville, Ky.

This is the first stop in Ashland since 2015. The boats were last in Huntington in 2012.

The Nina replica was built first when American engineer and maritime historian John Patrick Sarsfield was hired by the Virgin Islands-based Columbus Foundation to design and construct the 15th Century Caravel in 1988. The Nina was built by hand and without the use of power tools and is considered to be the most historically correct Columbus Replica ever built.

Co-designer Jonathon Nance, a British maritime historian and lead project researcher, produced the Nina's 1,919 square foot sail plan.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Reference archived on our website (daily updates!)

Key Points Question Is COVID-19 infection associated with an increased long-term risk of autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders?

Findings This cohort study analyzing 6 912 427 participants in South Korea, including 3 145 388 with COVID-19 and 3 767 039 controls observed for more than 180 days, revealed significantly increased risks of various autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders following COVID-19, especially among individuals with severe COVID-19 infection, those infected with the Delta variant, and unvaccinated individuals.

Meaning These findings suggest that long-term monitoring and management of patients is crucial after COVID-19, considering demographic factors, disease severity, and vaccination status, to mitigate these risks.

Abstract Importance Few studies have investigated the association between COVID-19 and autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders; however, research with long-term observation remains insufficient.

Objective To investigate the long-term risk of autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases after COVID-19 over an extended observation period.

Design, Setting, and Participants This retrospective nationwide population-based study investigated the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency–COVID-19–National Health Insurance Service (K-COV-N) cohort. Individuals with confirmed COVID-19 from October 8, 2020, to December 31, 2022, and controls identified among individuals who participated in the general health examination in 2018 were included in the analysis.

Exposures Confirmed COVID-19.

Main Outcomes and Measures Incidence and risk of autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders in patients after COVID-19. Various covariates, such as demographic characteristics, general health data, socioeconomic status, and comorbidity profiles, were balanced using inverse probability weighting.

Results A total of 6 912 427 participants (53.6% male; mean [SD] age, 53.39 [20.13] years) consisting of 3 145 388 with COVID-19 and 3 767 039 controls with an observational period of more than 180 days were included. Alopecia areata (adjusted hazard ratio [AHR], 1.11 [95% CI, 1.07-1.15]), alopecia totalis (AHR, 1.24 [95% CI, 1.09-1.42]), vitiligo (AHR, 1.11 [95% CI, 1.04-1.19]), Behçet disease (AHR, 1.45 [95% CI, 1.20-1.74]), Crohn disease (AHR, 1.35 [95% CI, 1.14-1.60]), ulcerative colitis (AHR, 1.15 [95% CI, 1.04-1.28]), rheumatoid arthritis (AHR, 1.09 [95% CI, 1.06-1.12]), systemic lupus erythematosus (AHR, 1.14 [95% CI, 1.01-1.28]), Sjögren syndrome (AHR, 1.13 [95% CI, 1.03-1.25]), ankylosing spondylitis (AHR, 1.11 [95% CI, 1.02-1.20]), and bullous pemphigoid (AHR, 1.62 [95% CI, 1.07-2.45]) were associated with higher risk in the COVID-19 group. Subgroup analyses revealed that demographic factors, including male and female sex, age younger than 40 years, and age 40 years and older, exhibited diverse associations with the risk of autoimmune and autoinflammatory outcomes. In addition, severe COVID-19 infection requiring intensive care unit admission, the Delta period, and not being vaccinated were associated with higher risk.

Conclusions and Relevance This retrospective cohort study with an extended follow-up period found associations between COVID-19 and the long-term risk of various autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders. Long-term monitoring and care of patients is crucial after COVID-19, considering demographic factors, disease severity, and vaccination status, to mitigate these risks.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

The case for helping boys and men in education

By: Richard Reeves

Published: Apr 8, 2024

When feminist scholars cite a “gendered injustice,” it was once a safe bet that they would be referring to inequities disfavoring girls or women. No longer. The feminist philosopher Cordelia Fine, for example, now uses the term to describe the wide gaps in U.S. education where, as a group, boys and men are lagging behind their female peers (Fine, 2023).

To say that the male–female education differences amount to an injustice is a strong claim, and one that can safely be left to scholars of justice like Fine. But it is clear that these gaps are at the very least a serious problem which demands a stronger response from policymakers (Reeves, 2022a). In what follows, I:

Describe some of the gender gaps in educational outcomes in the U.S.

Distinguish between three different policy approaches to tackling them: gender-neutral, gender-sensitive or gender-based policies.

Describe examples of policies in each of the three categories.

Propose and defend both gender-sensitive and gender-based policies to help boys and men.

GENDER GAPS IN EDUCATION

There are wide gender gaps favoring girls and women at every stage in the education system. But the ones getting the most attention are in higher education. On college campuses, the educational underperformance of men becomes suddenly obvious: they aren't there. There is a bigger gender gap in higher education today than in 1972, when Title IX was passed. Back then, 57% of bachelor's degrees went to men. Within a decade the gap had closed. In 2021, 58% of degrees went to women.1 We have Title IX–level gender gaps, just the other way around.

This gap is the result of both lower rates of college enrollment and lower rates of completion. In 2021, 51% of women graduating high school enrolled in a 4-year college, compared to 36% of men. Immediate enrollment rates into a 2-year college had no gender gap, at 18% for women and 19% for men. Having enrolled, women are more likely to complete their degree, and especially to do so quickly. Among women matriculating at a 4-year public college, 47% will have graduated 4 years later; for men the equivalent graduation rate is 37%.

These gaps reflect disparities that have emerged much earlier in the education system. There is a small and shrinking gender gap on the SAT and no gender gap on the ACT.2 (This is one reason why colleges and universities which go test-optional in admissions see an increase of 4 percentage points in the female share of students.) But there are wide gender gaps on most other measures, most importantly on GPA. The most common high school grade for girls is now an A; for boys, it is a B (Fortin et al., 2013). Girls now account for two-thirds of high schoolers in the top decile of students ranked by GPA, while the proportions are reversed on the bottom rung. Girls are also much more likely to be taking Advanced Placement, Honors, and International Baccalaureate classes (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012).

“There is now wide consensus that gender inequalities are unfair, and lead to wasted human potential,” says Francisco Ferreira (2018), Amartya Sen Chair in Inequality Studies at the London School of economics, commenting on education gaps. He adds, echoing Fine: “That remains true when the disadvantaged are boys, as well as girls.”

Narrowing gender gaps in educational outcomes is an important goal for policy; and today, that means concentrating on boys and men.

GENDER-NEUTRAL, GENDER-SENSITIVE OR GENDER-BASED POLICIES?

There are three broad policy approaches to tackling these challenges: gender-neutral, gender-sensitive, and gender-based.

Gender-neutral policies aim at improving overall educational outcomes, without any explicit consideration of gender in their design or implementation. Of course, gender differences might be considered in any evaluation, along with factors such as race or ethnicity, or socio-economic background. But they might not, especially if there is no specific intention to narrow gender gaps. At the extreme, gender-neutrality veers into gender-blind approach: some school districts, for example, do not even routinely track differences in outcomes by gender. But improving schools overall would of course benefit boys (and in the lower-performing schools may help them the most, as an unintended byproduct of the policy).

Gender-sensitive policies are not restricted to males or females, but are implemented with the explicit goal of offering greater help to one or the other. Policymakers identify programs or initiatives that, on average, disproportionately benefit females or males.

Gender-based policies are restricted to one gender or another, with the stated goal of helping either women or men, typically in the spirit of attempting to level the playing field where it is tilted one way or the other, or in domains where equality of outcomes is seen as intrinsically important for social welfare reasons (such as political representation).

These categories are similar to those used by Klein (1987). She distinguished between “intentional” educational policies with regard to gender gaps and “general” ones, which have “no specific intentions related to gender, but with unintended effects on females.” The key difference is that I add a middle category: in my framework, gender-sensitive policies are “general” in the sense that they are not restricted to only one gender, but are “intentional” in the sense that they will have a bigger effect on one or the other.

EXAMPLES OF POLICY APPROACHES

This typology could be applied across policy areas. In politics, quotas for women or women-only candidate shortlists are examples of gender-based reforms, which I have argued for elsewhere (see Reeves, 2021). In employment, increasing access to flexible working or to paid leave are gender-sensitive policies, with the explicit goal of improving outcomes for women, especially those with caring responsibilities, without restricting access for men.

In health policy there are a number of provisions made exclusively for girls and women, especially in terms of prevention. These include obvious examples, such as screening for breast cancer. But they extend to some less obvious cases, too, such as screening for adolescent anxiety, which is covered without cost under the Affordable Care Act for girls and women, but not for boys and men. But I'll focus here on education policy, providing examples of existing policies or programs under each heading.

Gender-neutral policies

The list of gender-neutral education policies is of course a very long one. The vast majority of programs and initiatives are aimed at improving outcomes for all students, regardless of gender. As a general proposition, this is just as it should be. The case for focusing resources to help one gender more than the other, or even to the exclusion of the other, requires strong evidence that a) there is a significant gender gap to be addressed; and b) that there are programs that will help to address that gap, by helping whichever group is at a disadvantage. So investments in Head Start, School Improvement Grants, or the Teacher Incentive Program (TIP), or broader policy fronts such as raising teacher pay, expanding charter schools, or widening school choice are not aimed at helping female students or male students, but all students, and should be judged against that goal. To take a more specific example, the well-known ASAP program, for example, was not aimed at helping men or women, but students in general. And it does, pretty much equally well for women and men.

There are some complexities here, however. Like all classifications, my three-fold typology does not capture some of these nuances. In particular, policymakers have to be, or should be, alert to unintended gender differences in the impact of gender-neutral policies. There are a surprising number of policy reforms that generate positive results for girls or women, but not boys and men. Perhaps the most striking is the Kalamazoo Promise, a full-dollar free college program in the Michigan town. According to the evaluation team, “women experience very large gains,” in terms of college completion (increasing by almost 50%), “while men seem to experience zero benefit” (as cited in Reeves, 2022a). There are many other similar cases (for a fuller account, see Reeves, 2022a, 2022c).

There are also some evaluation studies where the opposite proved true, with boys benefiting more than girls. This includes Boston's expanded pre-K program. But at least in mainstream education (vocational training is a very different story, as we'll see), these are the exceptions to the pro-female rule. Josh Angrist and co-authors (2009) wrote, “These gender differences in the response to incentives and services constitute an important area for further study” (p. 17). They do indeed. But as far as I can see, nobody has heeded this call. At the very least, these results suggest that policymakers and scholars need to be much more sensitive to differential effects by gender and their potential implications for program design.

Most scholars are puzzled by the gender difference in impact of some of these programs, which were unexpected, and definitely not intended. These programs were gender-neutral in theory, but turned out to be gender-sensitive in practice. Whether that is a feature or a bug depends on how far you think male or female educational outcomes are most in need of a boost—and there are good arguments for each.

It is easy to imagine the opposite result from a gender-neutral policy reform happening, too. For example, there is good evidence that boys fare even worse in poor-performing schools than girls do: this is one reason why gender gaps in education are almost always widest in poorer families and communities. Let's assume that Policy X, which is gender-neutral in intent, significantly lifts up the weakest schools. This would likely have an even more positive impact on boys, than on girls. Again, while not the goal of Policy X, this gender difference in impact might reasonably be seen as a feature, rather than a bug.

Gender-sensitive policies

These are policies that aim to help one gender or the other, without restricting the benefits of the policy to that gender. Current investments in increasing the share of school-based mental health professionals, for example, are being explicitly linked to the alarming evidence of growing mental health problems among adolescent girls in particular. But of course boys will have access to these extra resources too. (Especially if some of the counselors and psychologists are male, but that's an issue for another day.) Likewise initiatives to improve campus safety will benefit all students, but particularly women, and women's safety is, correctly, the main goal of such initiatives.

Changes to assessment mechanisms, aimed at improving relative outcomes for women or girls, as well as for other demographic groups, are another example of a gender-sensitive policy. A high-profile example is Thomas Jefferson High School, a highly-ranked, STEM-focused school in Virginia. In 2020 the school dropped its admission test, switching to a lottery system among 8th graders with high enough grades. In the first year alone, the female share of entering students rose from 42% to 46% (Fairfax County Public Schools, 2021). (At the time of writing, the new policy has been struck down by a federal judge because of its disproportionately negative impact on Asian American students, one example of a battle playing out at educational institutions around the nation.)

Similarly, changes to college admissions policies downgrading the role of standardized tests, are aimed at increasing diversity in general on college campuses, but are also supported for being of particular benefit to women. That's because, as noted above, there is a big gender gap in GPA, and a small gap on the SAT and ACT. Indeed, the main effect of colleges going “test optional” in their admissions policy is to significantly increase the female share of students—by about 4 percentage points—according to Bennett (2021).

Of course, there are also boys who do not perform as well on tests as on other measures, and who will benefit from these changes in policy. But overall the impact will be to favor girls and women.

Gender-based policies

Certain policies are aimed solely at one gender. The scholarships available to women studying STEM subjects are an obvious example in the education field. Likewise, the Women's Resource Centers available on most college campuses. The provisions of the Women's Educational Equity Act (WEEA) of 1974, which was effectively defunded in the 1980s but reauthorized in 2001, are explicitly channeled towards programs and initiatives to support girls and women in the education system.

Perhaps the most obvious example of gender-based policy in education is the creation of single-sex schools and colleges. Single-sex colleges were once the norm, but now are relatively few in numbers, especially for men. There are only 26 women-only colleges remaining, and three all-male colleges (excluding institutions for religious training).

But the trend has been strongly in the other direction. Since 2006, public schools have been exempted from the sex discrimination laws that prevented the creation of single-sex schools. This was one result of the 2002 No Child Left Behind legislation, with Senator Hillary Clinton being a crucial vote for this provision, citing her own educational experience at Wellesley, an elite women's college. By 2014, there were 850 single sex public schools (including charter schools), up from 34 in 2008 (Rich, 2014). The evidence on their effectiveness, for either boys or girls, is mixed.

THE CASE FOR GENDERED EDUCATIONAL POLICY

Many of the gaps in educational outcomes described above justify policies with the explicit intent of improving outcomes for male students, both in absolute terms and relative to female students. Gender neutrality won't cut it when gender gaps are this wide, in either direction.

Here I'll argue for some policies that range from gender sensitive (such as more vocational educational opportunities) to gender-based (such as starting boys in school later) to those that are arguable a mix (such as incentives for men to enter the teaching profession).

Such policies are only justified when the evidence for both the scale of the problem and the efficacy of the solution are strong. This is not only a matter of good policy but of good jurisprudence. In United States v. Virginia (1996), Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that, among other requirements, the state must provide justifications showing the need for policies separating students by sex that are “genuine, not hypothesized or invented post-hoc in response to litigation. And [they] must not rely on overly broad generalizations about the talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females.” This suggests, as Lettie Rose et al. (2023) wrote in the Georgetown Law Review, that “claims must have concrete empirical evidence behind them to succeed” (p. 807). This was in reference specifically to single-sex schooling in higher education, but the same legal test may apply more broadly.

Against that backdrop, I argue for:

Expansion of technical high schools (gender-sensitive)

A recruitment drive of male teachers (mixed)

Starting boys in school a year later (gender-based)

More technical high schools

There is strong evidence that vocationally-oriented learning benefits boys and men more than girls and women—on average, of course. For example:

A 2023 MDRC evaluation of the seven founding P-TECH programs in New York City, for example, which are vocationally-oriented 9–14 initiatives based on a three-way partnership between high schools, employers, and community colleges. Male students were 9.9 percentage points more likely to obtain a postsecondary degree within 7 years of entering high school. There were no statistically significant gains for female students (Rosen et al., 2023).

An earlier evaluation, also by MDRC, of Career Academies, small, vocationally oriented high schools, which generated a 17% earnings boost, equivalent to an extra $30,000, over the 8 years of the follow-up study, for male students. There were no statistically significant gains for female students (Kemple & Willner, 2008).

A study of Connecticut's statewide system of 17 technical (CTE) high schools in Connecticut, which collectively educate around 11,000 students, or 7% of those in the school system, showed a 10 percentage-point higher graduation rate for male students than for those in traditional schools. Their wages were 33% to 35% higher by the age of 23 and there were no apparent gains for female students (Brunner et al., 2021).

There are currently around 1,350 vocational secondary and high schools in the U.S., accounting for about 6% of all public high schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 2022). Of the 98% of school districts that offer CTE programs, only 12% have a full-time, CTE-focused high school (Gray & Lewis, 2018). We should aim to add at least 1,000 new CTE secondary schools across the nation by 2030. Assuming an additional cost of $5,000 per student for these schools (the Connecticut level of extra funding), this goal could be achieved for around $4 billion a year.3

Given the results of the evaluation studies, only showing benefits for boys overall, should these be single-sex schools? No. Even if, in general, girls derive less benefit from attending these schools, some girls will, and they should not be denied access to this opportunity, just as young men in Kalamazoo should not be denied the Promise Program. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, requiring the Virginia Military Institute to become coed, differences on average between male and female learners do not as a rule justify separation. VMI might be a better learning environment for the average boy compared to the average girl, Justice Ginsberg conceded, but this did not provide a justification for excluding girls “whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description” (United States v. Virginia, 1996). (Today, around 12% of students at VMI are women.4)

But the expansion of technical high school I propose does have the explicit intention of helping boys and young men. Success would be judged primarily against that metric. If the schools skew heavily male, that should be considered good news, not bad news. At the margin, it would make sense to market these schools primarily to male students. It would, in other words, be a gender-sensitive policy.

More male teachers

The male share of K–12 teachers is now 23%, down from 33% at the beginning of the 1980s (Ingersoll et al., 2018). Male teachers are especially scarce in elementary and middle schools. There is some limited evidence that male teachers can help boys learn more effectively. Thomas Dee (2006) estimated that if half the English teachers from sixth to eighth grade were male, “the achievement gap in reading [between girls and boys] would fall by approximately a third by the end of middle school.”5 On the other hand, work by Michael Hansen and Diana Quintero (2018) found no strong evidence that male teachers are associated with better outcomes for either girls or boys, though points to “suggestive evidence” that male teachers of color might be. And a recent Danish study finds no positive impacts from male teachers in the last year of primary school (if anything, female teachers seem to generate better outcomes for both boys and girls; Kjaer & Jakobsen, 2023).

I think it's fair to say that we don't know for sure what the benefits of more male teachers would be, certainly in terms of narrow educational outcomes. But there are of course broader cultural and social factors here too which are necessarily harder to measure. For sure more work on this question is needed. But assuming that one way to help boys is to recruit more male teachers, or at least to stem the downward trend in male share, how?

I propose the provision of scholarships for men training as K–12 teachers, in particular, but not exclusively, men of color and men intended to teach English, where men are even more underrepresented than in most other subjects. These would be akin to the ones available to women pursuing STEM subjects and careers. Since the main goal of such scholarships would be to help boys, it should be seen as a gender-sensitive policy. But in implementation it would be a gender-based policy, since only men would be eligible.

Redshirt boys by default: Gender-based

Boys develop, on average, a little later than girls. The gap is mostly in the development of non-cognitive skills, which are important for school success especially in adolescence. This fact should influence education policy. Specifically, by default, boys should start school a year later than girls, completing an extra year of pre-K. This is already fairly common practice in more educated and affluent families. Among summer-born boys with BA-educated parents, the redshirting rate was 20%, according to an analysis of 2010/2011 data by Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, my counterpoint partner here, and Stephanie Howard Larson (Schanzenbach & Larson, 2017). In one DC private K–12 school (who shared their data with me on condition of anonymity), 30% of senior boys were older than the cut off dates for school entry for their cohort, compared to 7% of girls (Reeves, 2022b).

There's some evidence that being a year older helps boys, especially those from lower-income backgrounds:

In a predominantly low-income and racially diverse sample, Cascio and Schanzenbach (2016) found that being a year older had a positive impact on test scores in eighth grade, reduced the risks of repeating a grade before high school, and improved the chances of taking the SAT or ACT at the end of high school. But the benefits for boys were at least twice as big as for girls on all the outcome measures through 8th grade, and by high school only boys were seeing any gains.

A study by Cook and Kang (2018), using data from North Carolina, found that redshirted children are doing significantly better in both reading and math by the end of third grade, especially boys. Looking at gender gaps within racial groups, they found that the 10% redshirting rate among White boys reduced the overall gender gap among White students in third grade reading by 11%.

A Norwegian study (Flatø et al., 2023) exploits a sharp change in policy away from redshirting, introduced at different times in different regions, and finds that the option of a later start increased adult earnings by 4% for redshirted boys from the younger end of the cohort. The positive effects of a later school start were greatest for boys from lower-income families, who were also most likely to be redshirted under the previous policy regime.

The idea here is not to force children of either sex to start at a certain age, but to change the “default setting” so that boys start school somewhat later. I have previously argued that the default should be set a year older for boys. But the evidence suggests much bigger benefits for the younger boys. So I would now argue for setting the default entry birth date for boys at 6 months later than for girls. Parents would be at liberty to override the default, to either hold back their daughter or accelerate their son, just as they are in the current system (except in Chicago and New York where redshirting is prohibited). The point here is that on average boys develop a little later and could benefit from the “gift of time,” not that all boys will, nor that many girls would not also benefit.

An obvious objection to such a blunt policy intervention is that all such systems are blunt tools. There is a good deal of overlap in the development of boys and girls, at any chosen age, with the degree of overlap depending on what yardsticks are selected. But the same is true of children in one grade and those in the grade above or below, separated only by the blunt tool of an age cut-off for school entry.

A key plank of this proposal is that the students who do start school later get a longer dose of pre-K. And most of these will be boys: that's the point of the policy. Whether these extra resources are justified will depend on how the long-run educational and economic outcomes of boys change as a result, which is an empirical question, and possibly a legal one too. So some careful evaluation of pilot studies is essential. But the key point is that such a gender-based policy should not be ruled out tout court, given the gender gaps we now see in education.

A much more robust policy response to the educational challenges of boys and men is needed. These should include both gender-sensitive interventions, such as vocational learning and recruiting more male teachers, and gender-based interventions, such as a later school start for boys.

[decentralvaccine]

Data Reveals Severe Hospitalizations Required Before Availability Of RSV Vaccine

w study published today in JAMA Network Open shows that respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was associated with a substantial burden of hospitalizations, intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, and in-hospital deaths in adults in the years before vaccination was approved for use in the United States.

RSV is the leading cause of hospitalization for US infants, but it also causes severe and serious illnesses in adults, especially those 75 and older.

The group used data from the RSV Hospitalization Surveillance Network (RSV-NET), which captures RSV-associated hospitalizations in 58 counties in 12 states — approximately 8% of the US population. The authors estimated the burden of RSV across seven seasons, 2016-2017 through 2022-2023.

In total during the seven seasons, there were 16,575 RSV-associated hospitalizations in adults (median age, 70). Fifty-eight percent of those hospitalized for RSV were women.

After removing the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 seasons, which were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors found hospitalizations ranged from 48.9 (95% confidence interval [CI] 33.4 to 91.5) per 100,000 adults in 2016 to 2017 to 76.2 (95% CI, 55.2 to 122.7) per 100,000 adults in 2017 to 2018.

[industrynewsupdates]

Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy Market Segmentation and Competitive Analysis Report, 2030

The global continuous renal replacement therapy market size was valued at USD 1,356.7 million in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6% from 2023 to 2030. 

Rising incidence of acute kidney injury (AKI), increasing incidence of sepsis, rapid increase in the volume of hospitals and urgent care centers, growing hospital admissions rate, and constant product launches by prominent market players are a few factors driving the demand for CRRT, thereby propelling the market growth. According to the American Kidney Fund, 37 million U.S. citizens are living with kidney disease and 807,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with kidney failure.

In the pre-COVID-19 era, the burden of COVID-19-associated AKI climbed to almost 4 million cases per year. CRRT was utilized to treat roughly 23,105 AKI patients per year prior to COVID-19. The need for CRRT appeared to be 5 times higher in COVID-19 patients, i.e., 4.9 percent, than in historical populations (0.9 percent). In community cohort datasets, 5%–15% of people hospitalized with COVID-19 needed dialysis. Moreover, in some North America regions, the number of people utilizing CRRT jumped by 370 percent over normal levels due to which the demand for the product increased during the pandemic. For instance, Fresenius Medical Care North America's Renal Therapies Group (FMCNA) released the first batch of multiBic dialysate solutions to U.S. hospitals in May 2020, according to an FDA emergency use authorization. These medicines were intended to provide CRRT to COVID-19-related individuals with acute renal failure.

Gather more insights about the market drivers, restrains and growth of the Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy Market

Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy Market Report Highlights

• By product, the consumables segment held the largest revenue share of 60.6% in 2022. Although these products are low-priced, it is used repeatedly purchased; hence the market for consumables is the largest as compared to other segments

• Based on the modality, the Continuous Veno-venous Hemofiltration (CVVH) segment held the largest revenue share of 31.6% in 2022. Fluid overload situations, which are common in acute kidney injury patients in critical care units, are expected to increase, boosting the CVVH market's growth

• Asia Pacific was the fastest growing market for continuous renal replacement therapy with a growth rate of 9.8%. Various factors are responsible for the region growth such as technological advancement, growing healthcare infrastructure development as well as and presence of such a huge patient base in this region

Browse through Grand View Research's Medical Devices Industry Research Reports.

• The global sentinel node biopsy market size was estimated at USD 717.8 million in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 7.0% from 2024 to 2030.

• The global market for endoscopy operative devices reached a value of USD 10.34 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.3% from 2024 to 2030. 

Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy Market Segmentation

Grand View Research has segmented the global continuous renal replacement therapy market on the basis of product, modality, and region:

Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

• System

• Consumables

Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy Modality Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

• Slow Continuous Ultra-Filtration (SCUF)

• Continuous Venovenous Hemofiltration (CVVH)

• Continuous Venovenous Hemodialysis (CVVHD)

• Continuous Venovenous Hemodiafiltration (CVVHDF)

Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

• North America

o U.S.

o Canada

• Europe

o UK

o Germany

o France

o Italy

o Spain

o Sweden

o Norway

o Denmark

• Asia Pacific

o China

o Japan

o India

o Australia

o Thailand

o South Korea

• Latin America

o Brazil

o Mexico

o Argentina

• Middle East and Africa

o Saudi Arabia

o South Africa

o UAE

o Kuwait

Order a free sample PDF of the Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy Market Intelligence Study, published by Grand View Research.