Linkage

Assuming a lot more people will need this info soon.

⚠️ DISCLAIMER: THIS WEBSITE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT PROVIDE PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE.

Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before undertaking a new health care regimen.

This website intends to teach transgender people how to safely perform DIY Hormone Replacement Therapy. Share the site with those who need it, but not to transphobes: use common sense!

Whether it's due to cost, familial issues, or a myriad of other reasons, for many trans people HRT is inaccessible. If you or someone you know fit into this category, this site is designed to help.

I for one am eagerly anticipating all the innovations in network-level censorship coming our way:

A US court has rejected the Biden administration's bid to restore "net neutrality" rules, finding that the federal government does not have the authority to regulate internet providers like utilities.

It marks a major defeat for so-called open internet advocates, who have long fought for protections that would require internet providers such as AT&T to treat all legal content equally.

Such rules were first introduced by the Federal Communications Commission under former Democratic president Barack Obama but later repealed during Republican Donald Trump's first term.

[…]

Public Knowledge, a progressive-leaning internet policy group, said the decision had weakened the FCC's power to shape privacy protections, implement public safety measures and take other action.

It said it believed the court had erred in ruling that internet service providers were simply offering an "information service" rather than acting as telecommunications companies.

"The court has created a dangerous regulatory gap that leaves consumers vulnerable and gives broadband providers unchecked power over Americans' internet access," it said.

But USTelecom, an industry group whose members include AT&T and Verizon, said the decision was "a victory for American consumers that will lead to more investment, innovation, and competition in the dynamic digital marketplace."

On November 15, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) into law. The IIJA included a five-year transportation authorization for U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) programs, plus a standalone infrastructure law representing the largest-ever infusion ($643 billion over five years) of federal funding for surface transportation, including highways, roads, and bridges. The White House hailed the IIJA as “a once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s infrastructure and competitiveness,” along with making lofty promises that it would “repair and rebuild our roads and bridges with a focus on climate change mitigation, resilience, equity, and safety for all users.”

[…]

Of the $54.2 billion in National Highway Performance Program funds analyzed in this report, 42 percent of funding has been obligated to projects that expand road capacity and only 36 percent has gone to highway resurfacing projects. In the $35.6 billion analyzed from the Surface Transportation Block Grant—the most flexible formula program that allows states to fund almost any type of transportation project that advances their priorities—23 percent of funds have been spent on expanding roadways, but only 7 percent on projects to make walking and biking safer or more viable options. At the current rate, state DOTs’ usage of federal funds means we will end up falling short of meeting the $435 billion road maintenance deficit that was used to justify the IIJA’s pricetag at passage.

[…]

Investments in emissions reducing strategies, like transit, active transportation, system efficiency, and electrification are not nearly large enough to offset increased emissions from induced driving. Based on analyzed obligations in this dataset, only 35.3 millon cumulative tonnes of CO2e emissions will be decreased compared to baseline levels through 2040. Taking the emissions producing and emissions reducing impact of IIJA project investments altogether, the IIJA will cumulatively increase emissions by a net 42.2 million metric tonnes of CO2e greenhouse gases over baseline levels through 2040.

With about half of the IIJA’s funding remaining, if states continue spending these infrastructure dollars in ways that prioritize expansion over maintenance, safety, improving access to opportunity, or providing other options for travel, there will be dire consequences for the climate.

Unless these patterns change, we extrapolate that states’ federal formula-funded investments made over the course of the IIJA could cumulatively increase emissions by nearly 190 million metric tonnes of emissions over baseline levels through 2040 from added driving. This is the emission equivalent of 500 natural gas-fired power plants or nearly 50 coal-fired power plants running for a year.

The rental vacancy rate across Melbourne rose to 1.7 per cent, up from just one per cent in March 2023 when overseas migration was peaking.

That put rental vacancy rates almost back to the pre-pandemic five year average rate of 1.9 per cent.

Mr Lawless said the rental property sell-off was likely due to a combination of high taxes, low yields, poor capital gains and serviceability challenges from high interest rates.

He said investors tended to chase capital gains rather than rental returns.

"With Melbourne home values down 3 per cent over the calendar year and 6.4 per cent below the market peak in March 2022, it seems that investors have been attracted to the better capital growth opportunities in markets like WA and Queensland."

[…]

Property Investors Council of Australia chair Ben Kingsley said the fall was driven by four main factors — investors selling up due to high interest rates, increased land taxes put in place by the state government to help fund the COVID recovery, tenancy reforms that ended no-fault evictions, and investors who had been in the market for a long time who were now cashing out.

He said the fall in rental bonds was "further evidence that the Labor government has made the lives of tenants in Victoria a lot harder" by causing an "exodus of investors providing private rental accommodation in Victoria".

Mr Kingsley said Victorian renters had only been spared rent rises because of the government's capping of international student numbers.

However, if that cap was removed post-election, he expected rents to rapidly rise.

"I would be very, very worried as a tenant that I'm going to be paying higher rent in Victoria over the near-term," he said.

TL;DR: Yes.

Being a law-abiding protester in Australia has become more difficult with each passing year, experts say, and some fear the right to protest is being slowly eroded.

Over the past two decades, at least 49 laws affecting protest have been introduced in federal, state and territory parliaments.

Most recently, Victoria announced a raft of proposed protest restrictions on 17 December, following a series of antisemitic attacks in Melbourne.

David Mejia-Canales, a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, said the public should be "very, very, very critical" about such legislation. 

[…]

Ohad Kozminsky, executive member of the Jewish Council of Australia — a group formed in the last year by progressive Jewish academics, activists and lawyers — said the laws were counterproductive.

"There are laws against hate speech. There are laws against firebombing and the destruction of property. We don't need additional laws to fight that," Kozminsky said.

The proposed measures also include banning protests outside of places of worship, something that Kozminsky also thinks is misguided.

"Religious institutions, irrespective of their denomination or their faith are legitimate sites of protest. We saw that perhaps most strikingly in the protests that took place in response to revelations about institutional, historic and contemporary sexual abuse of young people, of children," he said.

Mejia-Canales said: "If the premier thinks that these measures criminalising peaceful protest is going to fix antisemitism and other forms of racism, then she's deluded.

"This will not do that." 

Some fantastic advice here:

I have lost count of the hours I have spent trying to implement standard time-management tools, only to ignore countless reminders to take a break while debugging code or staring at the screen, feeling nauseous, trying to ‘eat the frog’ — that is, do the hardest task first.

Instead of managing time, I now manage my motivation by setting daily and weekly goals. On Monday, I add to my planner goals for each day of the week — no more than one big task per day, as well as smaller tasks, and mark the urgent ones. I avoid adding tasks that will require focus on days I know I’ll be prone to distraction. I switch non-urgent tasks between days if I’m just not in the mood to tackle them.

I start my day early so that I can have some distraction-free time, during which I can hyperfocus on tasks I find most motivating, such as writing or analysing data, or cross urgent tasks off my list. The positive kick then helps to keep me going through the day.

[…]

It is not always easy to identify the sources of stress, let alone determine what changes in behaviour or perceptions might help in adjusting to new situations. I try to be kind to myself when everything feels overwhelming or when I fail to keep up with expectations. I know that by patiently embracing this path, I will eventually, but slowly, regain my balance.

I realize now that a career in science can be a great option for naturally curious, creative, observant, tenacious and highly energetic minds. But accommodating these individuals requires acknowledging diverse ways of thinking, working and communicating, and promoting inclusive working environments. All would benefit from this approach, neurotypical and neurodivergent alike.

“By and large, the education system is not designed for people like me,” says the researcher. She says that sitting still for hours on end, following a set timetable and learning things in a more or less predetermined way that she couldn’t prioritise herself was terrible for her. “It made me so angry that I had panic attacks, was afraid to go to class and had to repeat a year of school.” She ended up skipping classes and instead studied subjects she enjoyed in a café. Since her teachers were worried about her, they let her carry on. “But it didn’t occur to anyone at the time that I might have ADHD,” says Bastos. She now knows that her brain “simply works differently to other people. I can accept myself as I am,” she says. It took her a long time to get to this point.

[…]

“People with ADHD notice many things at the same time,” she explains: “You’re easily distracted if you’re doing something you’re not motivated to do. But if I am very interested in a task, I can spend days on it non-stop, even forgetting to eat and drink,” says the scientist. “If you can’t learn to set your own boundaries, you won’t get anywhere.” Feelings also play a major role: “I am impulsive and get excited, but then I also fall hard,” she admits frankly.

When she was finally diagnosed with ADHD in 2022, “it was a turning point for me,” she says. “On the one hand, I was able to better understand and communicate my own needs, which also made it easier for those around me to understand me,” she says. “I also want to emphasise that medication is very helpful,” she adds. 

[…]

To raise awareness of ADHD and develop resources, she has contacted the Office for Equality, Diversity and Family Affairs. She is also involved in a national initiative to reduce the stigma around mental illness in science.

But that’s not all: ultimately, the aim is to bring greater inclusion and diversity – including neurodiversity – into academic institutions. “Research clearly shows that diverse teams are more creative and deliver better results because they bring in more perspectives,” she says. “In climate and environmental research in particular, we need solutions to problems that are complex and affect everyone. We still have a lot to change.”

In May 2023, Newsweek interviewed researcher and medical physicist Joanna Harper, and asked her to estimate the number of transgender athletes competing in US sports.

“While we don’t know the exact number of trans women competing in NCAA sports, I would be very surprised if there were more than 100 of them in the women’s category,” Harper replied.

That number is even smaller when it comes to middle school and high school athletes. Newsweek also spoke to Gillian Branstetter, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who told Newsweek that Save Women’s Sports, a leading voice in the bid to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports, identified only five transgender athletes competing on girls’ teams in school sports for grades K through 12.

Yes, that’s right. Not 5000, not 500, not even 50 – just five trans student-athletes. All of this legislation, work, lobbying and anger – is aimed at preventing a tiny handful of young people from playing school sports. 

The NZBA is a voluntary network of global banks committed to “align lending and investment portfolios with net zero emissions by 2050”. […]  At its height, the coalition boasted 40% of global banking assets. And at the time of its launch, its co-founder, the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, described the NZBA as the “breakthrough in mainstreaming climate finance the world needs”.

So far a breakthrough remains at large. In evaluating the NZBA, the benchmark that ultimately matters is that of curbing global emissions and fossil fuel expansion. On both of these points, it’s not clear that the alliance has had any effect. Banks’ targets have been met with widespread criticism concerning lack of transparency and inconsistent or questionable methodologies, and recent research shows little to no difference between the financing and engagement impact of NZBA members and non-members. A separate study found banks that self-present as eco-conscious lend more to polluting industries than those that don’t. Impressively, there has been an overall uptick in fossil fuel financing since 2021 – after the group was formed.

But this raises a critical question: if these alliances were voluntary, non-binding, and seem to have done close to nothing to hinder banks financing fossil fuel expansion, why are banks bothering to quit?

The answer is always, in finance, a calculus of risk. At the time of NZBA’s founding, banks faced considerable reputational risk for being seen as climate laggards. The wind was in the sails of governments and institutions touting climate action, and banks acted accordingly. Today, on the back of record fossil fuel profitability, a protracted backlash against “woke capital” and the second coming of Trump, the calculus has changed.

[…]

In a statement published on 31 December, GFANZ announced it would drop its requirements for members to publish firm targets, allowing “any financial institution working to mobilise capital and lower the barriers to financing energy transition to participate” and earlier this month announced it would no longer work as an umbrella organisation, but a stand-alone body working to “mobilise” climate finance. For a project that still retains many prominent European banks within its ranks, the crumbling to pressure and change of direction was remarkably swift. More cynically, it might be read as an admission that all these “targets” and “disclosures” never meant much at all.

I will accept Bill Moyers as a credible witness:

We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."