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The hospital ended up creating a "Jane Doe" account so the *medical equipment* could monitor Lee's contractions etc.
Why should the software that runs medical equipment care about the patient's legal gender? If they have a uterus, they have a uterus, period.

Transphobia isn't always intentional, but it's a pain -- story I heard yesterday.
Lee is a trans man. He and his husband decided to have a baby, as Lee's uterus and ovaries were functioning. At the hospital, the delivery-monitoring systems were unable to work, because legally (and therefore medically) Lee was male and therefore anything to do with obstetrics was right out.
Now why would you design software so that a detail of the patient's lagal ID rules out a whole class of functions?

Originalism is to jurisprudence as fundamentalism is to religion: a pseudo-philosophy that lets you base decisions on a text you've declared susceptible to only one interpretation (no matter the evidence to the contrary), applied and interpreted to produce whatever conclusion is desired.
It's as if physicians insisted practicing medicine according to Galen. "COVID? Ah yes, a derangement of the humors, apply the leeches!"
nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-c

In voting for Joe Biden, I'm not voting for the "lesser of two evils". I'm voting for a genuinely decent, good man who has spent three years trying to wrench the country and the world from the brink of barbarity.

There are plenty of through-lines in the pontifications among pollsters.

One thing, and ONE THING ONLY, has been true since the birth of democracy — if you show up you have a chance at changing the outcome.

That’s it. That’s all that’s promised. You have a chance. Now, you do. This time may be the last time, but you do still have this time.

Show up. Show them we aren’t surprised, intrigued, or intimidated by them. Show them we will always, just as we have for two decades, vote our conscience.

According to the Supreme Court, states’ rights are cool when it comes to oppressing women, but not for keeping traitors off the ballot.

Saw one of these guys the other day -- a Varied Thrush, also known as "what the hell bird is that?" It's a secretive bird that keeps to itself, though with plumage like that you'd think hiding wouldn't be the first thing on it mind.

In a welcome relief in a service that tends toward an excess of decorum, the local Unitarian-Universalist congregation has started kicking off its brief silent meditation with a minute or two of howling like wolves. There are usually some giggles as the howling tapers off.
They're running out of room in the sanctuary, thinking of going from one to two services.

Median wages were essentially unchanged between 1979 and 2017! ($335 and $345 per week respectively, 1982-84 dollars).

During this time frame, real per capita GDP almost doubled, going from $32,322 to $60,00.

This, of course, means that nearly all of the massive productivity gains during these four decades went to capital rather than labor, with the exception of what was siphoned off by employer paid benefits to fund The Best Medical System in the World ™.

lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/

"Here in the corner attic of America, two hours’ drive from a rain forest, a desert, a foreign country, an empty island, a hidden fjord, a raging river, a glacier, and a volcano is a place where the inhabitants sense they can do no better, nor do they want to."

Timothy Egan: The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest

A 34-year-old quote, but evergreen.

Got told a while back, "We don't play minor chords in Old Time music." I mentioned it to my fiddle teacher and she said, "For that matter, nobody played guitar in old time till the 20th century; before that it was just fiddles and banjos."
It reminds me of controversy in Javanese wayang about what's appropriate to the genre. I won't opine about what's appropriate, but I do believe that if people aren't arguing about what's appropriate to a tradition, that tradition is dead.


Republicans are treating immigration just like they treat education: cut funding, harass the people in charge, then demand to know why the system isn't working.

Did I hear someone on NPR say House Republicans are wasting their time on impeaching Mayorkas because they don't have enough votes to get any legislation passed? Because that doesn't make any sense.
OK, it makes a little sense--I can believe House Democrats don't want the Rethugs to be able to take credit for anything come November. But there's this thing called compromise, politicians are supposed to negotiate towards it.

If you're not committed to voting for Biden in November, you're supporting Trump.

There are no other real choices, sorry.

In particular, if you're whimpering that Biden's old, you're supporting Trump, and you ought to stop it.

politico.com/news/magazine/202

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John M Kelly

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