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I mean surely we all grew up feeling like there was a wrongness inherently deep inside us that will endure for the rest of our lives

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my brother got covid because he's a college professor and there's not much he can do to mitigate exposure when he has 200+ students per lecture. he's got a baby at home, so he does his best, but.

the governmental website for covid information is now propaganda. not a joke, not hyperbole, not an exaggeration: it's genuinely the definition of propaganda. this is biased misinformation determined to push a political stance. it is being hosted on a government server. it looks like something you'd find in a "top 10 weird internet conspiracy stories (and their origins)" youtube video.

my brother called me when he saw it. he had me type it into google. for a second i legitimately thought that i had typed something wrong. we have both taught college: we have both said "a .gov site is usually a reliable resource." i just stared at my phone for a long, long time.

i thought about how when i was a kid, conspiracy theories were mostly fun and a little spooky. unserious. i remember reading some long, complicated website about how avril lavigne is dead. how bigfoot is real. it used to be funny-and-a-joke.

over seven million people (globally) have died from covid. america has the highest death rate with over 1.2 million people.

the thing is - every time a person dies from something like a mass shooting or poverty or treatable illness - we are told don't make it political. we are told it's just something that can happen. we are told it's sad but what can you do!

the president of the united states is using a government website to try to erase the very-real deaths that he personally caused due to a complete mismanagement of the pandemic. the president of the united states is using a government server to host propaganda, undermine science and medicine, and encourage distrust amongst his followers.

nothing is going to happen. nobody's gonna, like, do anything about it. it's a thursday today, and we are just going to move on from this like we have been moving on from everything else.

yesterday my brother was outside walking his dog, mask included. a guy in a truck pulls up and shouts something about covid and whatever the fuck else. my brother has a good sense of humor, described it to me as enthusiastic! i hadn't ever been catcalled before, this was new and therefore thrilling! i do see why you hate it, though. like. i have actual covid, does he want me to cough on him?

my brother doesn't get extra time off work anymore, because the cdc practically doesn't exist. my brother said i'm not exposing 200 students to covid. his boss shrugged and said: who cares? they're going to get it eventually anyway. like it isn't a pandemic.

like it's just a fucking thursday, and who cares about it.

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Unusual but sympathetic paper:

Language Matters: What Not to Say to Patients with Long COVID, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Other Complex Chronic Disorders

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/22/2/275

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We have come to a point where any insistence on expecting others to care for our needs and vice versa [is seen] as being both unrealistic and burdensome. A lot of people don’t see themselves as individuals worth fighting for, even in their private lives and have allowed that to influence how they view themselves within a larger context. Allowing things to just happen to you or others in your community in the face of unrelenting cruelty or even just small discomfort isn’t a sign of maturity as much as it is a sign of a person stripped of their ability to have full access to their humanity. Rage, anger, sadness, frustration, and disappointment are a part of what keeps us agile, along with rest and joy. An unwillingness to engage with those emotions only leads to a reality where one day you realize the only thing you’ve let them do is turn you into a feeble, rigid thing.

No Actually, We Shouldn't Let Them, Hanna Phifer

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how

Dream a little dream, be free

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world heritage post

Not For Puppies

support me on patreon!

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do not raise a word against those crusty little white dogs in my presence. 1. they are some of the only breeds that were bred to live in a dumpy apartment not like a golden retriever who longs to swim and run and can’t even chill on your dumb couch cuz of the hair 2. You’ll be singing a different tune when the crusty little dog is a tiny little puppy and is the shade of a beautiful jasmine bloom… and you make fun of the old ladies for babying them when they’re crusty and old but someone will be taking care of YOU when you’re old and crusty and you will wish they love you as much as those old ladies love their crusty dogs….

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So I teach college in the U.S. (English), but I often get these dual enrollment classes where I'll go to a high school and teach the supposedly high achieving high school students the college-level class, generally English 101, 102, and 103. It's free for the students and lets them get the GE's out of the way and spend less time in higher ed, which ostensibly helps them save money and makes it more likely that they'll finish their degree. It also makes the high school look good. In practice, most of the kids are just massive balls of anxiety constantly living one lost point away from a mental breakdown, but we vibe because I also did dual enrollment and I'm also Mentally Ill in That Way (tm), and they tend to really warm up to me over time. They are generally sweet and some of my favorite students even if they do some really "my brain is not fully developed yet" bullshit sometimes.

The downside is the high school does not have enough room, so I alway teach in some high school teacher's room. My contract says the high school teacher is supposed to vacate because they're not enrolled in my class, but in practice this is their planning period and their room and they have literally nowhere else to go to do very necessary work, so we all just agree not to interfere with each other and go about our day, and usually it's fine save for the odd high school teacher acting like an enrolled student (it is funny that they want to be the specialist and best English 101 student as an adult with at least a Bachelor's competing with children, and sometimes we have to talk privately). I have had new high school teachers literally break down in tears when I ask how they're doing, so I don't want to make their lives worse. There is a reason I dropped out of the credential program and pursued higher ed teaching.

I was honestly a bit startled by the pledge over the loudspeakers at first because I did independent study and it's been a while since I experienced that, and I didn't have fond memories (sometimes I was a Good Little Girl(?) who stood up and put my hand over my heart but didn't say the "under God" part, and sometimes I didn't say anything, and sometimes I wouldn't put my hand over my heart and would get in trouble—I didn't even hate America yet, it just felt culty). So when my kids asked if they had to stand, I said they didn't but they could if they wanted to, and some did and some didn't, and it was fine aside from occasional weird looks from host teachers.

However, I was placed in a room with this one lady who was just militant about the pledge. Just like, intense. She wasn't there the first day when we had the "you don't have to" conversation, so the next day when she saw me and some kids sitting she just went completely off the fucking rails. I'm telling you this middle aged woman was fucking screaming her face off at 14- and 15-year-old kids about how she is a veteran and what disrespectful trash they were, so I put my body between her and my children and explained that legally they didn't have to and this was my classroom, and she very nearly slapped me but settled for calling me a child and ordering us out of her room. So, me and 40 giggling teenagers trooped out and headed over to the college counselor's room.

First they (admin) tried to tell me I did need to force the kids to stand, so I pulled up v. Barnette on my phone. Then they said they couldn't force me, but I wouldn't be asked back to teach, and I said OK but this semester's class was mine and these kids didn't have to stand if they didn't want to (I was mad at this point and getting over my initial shock). The resolution they offered was that they would speak with the unhinged pledge defender about not interfering with my classroom, and for the next few sessions I would teach in her room while she silently glared daggers at me, slammed drawers, slammed her door, had loud phone conversations, and stormed around throwing paper in the back of her room. Then we came back after spring break, and she started demanding that my kids stand up again, and I told her that it was my classroom during my class period and she needed to leave, and she stormed out and I wrote complaints to the school and my college, and then I was put in a different room with a teacher who thought the whole thing was funny.

I was asked back because I'm the best fucking college English teacher that high school has and basically perfect in every other way (my kids earn fantastic grades and do really well in their later classes because I prepare them to succeed; I'm good at looping the counselor in when they need support I can't offer; I write great letters of rec; my kids get into Berkeley and Stanford; I am honestly just really good at teaching), but I still see that lady on campus and she always mean mugs me. I'll get a new crop of kids and they'll go wide eyed and ask if it's true that I went up against Mrs. Flag Defender like their older siblings said.

I have noticed that the whole high school moved the pledge of allegiance to be at the beginning of second period instead of first period, I suspect because college classes are always first period. This may have just been coincidence, but I always work in "a little trivia" about students' rights, including the right to sit for the pledge, as part of a greater "common misconceptions/critical thinking" module. I do sometimes hear that they've gotten in trouble in other classes, and I do warn them that punishment is a possibility, but I hope they're learning something useful from me besides just MLA and grammar.

dear usamerican high schoolers looking for a way to resist fascism: sit through the pledge of allegiance.

no getting up. no looking at the flag.

everyone will be looking at you. you'll be sweating like a fucking hippopotamus. your teacher will sternly tell you to get up. you'll feel stupid and that maybe its not worth it because you're just a kid in a classroom. but I'm here to remind you that there are no real life consequences to detention. there are however real life consequences to resisting a thoughtless performance of nationalism.

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encountering an inconvenience while cold: damn that sucks, oh well, i’ll figure something else out!!

encountering an inconvenience while hot: we all deserve to die right now, come on everyone, lets all go die

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Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping? (Celeste Davis, Oct 6 2024)

"White flight is a term that describes how white people move out of neighborhoods when more people of color move in.

White flight is especially common when minority populations become the majority. That neighborhood then declines in value.

Male flight describes a similar phenomenon when large numbers of females enter a profession, group, hobby or industry—the men leave. That industry is then devalued.

Take veterinary school for example:

In 1969 almost all veterinary students were male at 89%.

By 1987, male enrollment was equal to female at 50%.

By 2009, male enrollment in veterinary schools had plummeted to 22.4%

A sociologist studying gender in veterinary schools, Dr. Anne Lincoln says that in an attempt to describe this drastic drop in male enrollment, many keep pointing to financial reasons like the debt-to-income ratio or the high cost of schooling.

But Lincoln’s research found that “men and women are equally affected by tuition and salaries.”

Her research shows that the reason fewer men are enrolling in veterinary school boils down to one factor: the number of women in the classroom.

For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied.

One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition! (…)

Since males had dominated these professions for centuries, you would think they would leave slowly, hesitantly or maybe linger at 40%, 35%, 30%, but that’s not what happens.

Once the tipping point reaches majority female- the men flee. And boy do they flee!

It’s a slippery slope. When the number of women hits 60% the men who are there make a swift exit and other men stop joining.

Morty Schapiro, economist and former president of Northwestern University has noticed this trend when studying college enrollment numbers across universities:

“There’s a cliff you fall off once you become 60/40 female/male. It then becomes exponentially more difficult to recruit men.”

Now we’ve reached that 60% point of no return for colleges.

As we’ve seen with teachers, nurses and interior design, once an institution is majority female, the public perception of its value plummets.

Scanning through Reddit and Quora threads, many men seem to be in agreement - college is stupid and unnecessary.

A waste of time and money. You’re much better off going into the trades, a tech boot camp or becoming an entrepreneur. No need for college. (…)

When mostly men went to college? Prestigious. Aspirational. Important.

Now that mostly women go to college? Unnecessary. De-valued. A bad choice. (…)

School is now feminine. College is feminine. And rule #1 if you want to safely navigate this world as a man? Avoid the feminine.

But we don’t seem to want to talk about that."

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Was playing it when I saw this post

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The Cat has its Heart on the Outside

Available as a fanzine in Swedish with a translation note  here.

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let's recap what we've learned about the United States in the last few days.

things that are terrorism:

allegedly shooting a healthcare CEO whose company generated more pure profit (not revenue, profit) in a year than the GDP of 94 countries, exclusively by denying coverage to people who pay for it

a 42-year-old mother of 2 using the wrong combination of 7 words during a heated conversation with a call center employee at a health insurance company who was in the process of denying her health coverage.

things that are not terrorism:

mass shooting in a Black church to incite a race war

going to a BLM protest specifically to kill protestors

a neo-nazi running over a crowd of people, killing a woman

targeting and killing 23 latinos in an el paso, texas walmart

killing 12 people in a theatre, shooting 58 others, rigging your apartment with explosives

a QAnon groyper killing 7 and shooting ~50 at a 4th of July parade

killing 3 people and shooting several others at a Planned Parenthood in defense of the unborn

stalking someone relentlessly and then killing them and their child despite months of the victim making police reports

any one of the 1,200 murders committed by US police yearly, the vast majority being minorities

tightening your border while ~100 immigrants (including children) drown every year in the Rio Grande

United Healthcare killing an unnknowable number of elderly people by using faulty AI to deny medically necessary coverage

Aetna killing a woman by refusing to cover her cancer care

Blue Cross killing a 6-year-old by denying her appendicitis surgery

Cigna killing a 17-year-old child by denying her liver transplant

the pharmaceutical industry killing half a million people with opioids in the name of producing revenues in 2023 that rivaled the GDPs of countries like Spain, Mexico, and Australia.

the United States killing 45,000 people a year because they can't access health coverage

make sure you keep this guide handy the next time you find yourself interacting with your insurance company or any other millionaire, billionaire, or an individual who is part of a protected class such as a CEO or president of a corporation.

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Opinion Here’s how to get free Paxlovid as many times as you need it

When the public health emergency around covid-19 ended, vaccines and treatments became commercial products, meaning companies could charge for them as they do other pharmaceuticals. Paxlovid, the highly effective antiviral pill that can prevent covid from becoming severe, now has a list price of nearly $1,400 for a five-day treatment course.

Thanks to an innovative agreement between the Biden administration and the drug’s manufacturer, Pfizer, Americans can still access the medication free or at very low cost through a program called Paxcess. The problem is that too few people — including pharmacists — are aware of it.

I learned of Paxcess only after readers wrote that pharmacies were charging them hundreds of dollars — or even the full list price — to fill their Paxlovid prescription. This shouldn’t be happening. A representative from Pfizer, which runs the program, explained to me that patients on Medicare and Medicaid or who are uninsured should get free Paxlovid. They need to sign up by going to paxlovid.iassist.com or by calling 877-219-7225. “We wanted to make enrollment as easy and as quick as possible,” the representative said.

Indeed, the process is straightforward. I clicked through the web form myself, and there are only three sets of information required. Patients first enter their name, date of birth and address. They then input their prescriber’s name and address and select their insurance type.

All this should take less than five minutes and can be done at home or at the pharmacy. A physician or pharmacist can fill it out on behalf of the patient, too. Importantly, this form does not ask for medical history, proof of a positive coronavirus test, income verification, citizenship status or other potentially sensitive and time-consuming information.

But there is one key requirement people need to be aware of: Patients must have a prescription for Paxlovid to start the enrollment process. It is not possible to pre-enroll. (Though, in a sense, people on Medicare or Medicaid are already pre-enrolled.)

Once the questionnaire is complete, the website generates a voucher within seconds. People can print it or email it themselves, and then they can exchange it for a free course of Paxlovid at most pharmacies.

Pfizer’s representative tells me that more than 57,000 pharmacies are contracted to participate in this program, including major chain drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens and large retail chains such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco. For those unable to go in person, a mail-order option is available, too.

The program works a little differently for patients with commercial insurance. Some insurance plans already cover Paxlovid without a co-pay. Anyone who is told there will be a charge should sign up for Paxcess, which would further bring down their co-pay and might even cover the entire cost.

Several readers have attested that Paxcess’s process was fast and seamless. I was also glad to learn that there is basically no limit to the number of times someone could use it. A person who contracts the coronavirus three times in a year could access Paxlovid free or at low cost each time.

Unfortunately, readers informed me of one major glitch: Though the Paxcess voucher is honored when presented, some pharmacies are not offering the program proactively. As a result, many patients are still being charged high co-pays even if they could have gotten the medication at no cost.

This is incredibly frustrating. However, after interviewing multiple people involved in the process, including representatives of major pharmacy chains and Biden administration officials, I believe everyone is sincere in trying to make things right. As we saw in the early days of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, it’s hard to get a new program off the ground. Policies that look good on paper run into multiple barriers during implementation.

Those involved are actively identifying and addressing these problems. For instance, a Walgreens representative explained to me that in addition to educating pharmacists and pharmacy techs about the program, the company learned it also had to make system changes to account for a different workflow. Normally, when pharmacists process a prescription, they inform patients of the co-pay and dispense the medication. But with Paxlovid, the system needs to stop them if there is a co-pay, so they can prompt patients to sign up for Paxcess.

Here is where patients and consumers must take a proactive role. That might not feel fair; after all, if someone is ill, people expect that the system will work to help them. But that’s not our reality. While pharmacies work to fix their system glitches, patients need to be their own best advocates. That means signing up for Paxcess as soon as they receive a Paxlovid prescription and helping spread the word so that others can get the antiviral at little or no cost, too.

{source}

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btw while people continue to fight the system don't forget about Undue Medical Debt (formerly RIP Medical Debt), a charity that buys and forgives medical debt. on average a donation of $10 will forgive $1,000 of medical debt.

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the fuck

CHAT CONTROL TO BE VOTED ON THIS THURSDAY

Original tweet

I know americans are busy with fighting KOSA but I urge you to please help us by spreading the word about this, I can't say this enough, if chat control passes, citizen's private messages will be scanned via artifical intelligence,and they must comply,otherwise theyre not allwoed to send pictures,videos,or links anymore. We have a discord server made to organize against it,with emails scripts you can use when contacting your meps : https://discord.com/invite/e7FYdYnMkS

Find your meps and tell them to vote no on this :