Thereâs basically two reasons someone transitioning gets made into a Big Deal: the trans person excitedly making it a big deal, and someone who doesnât believe trans people should exist gets upset about it.
Trans people usually make a big deal out of our transitions because a lot of us have suppressed this part of ourselves for a long time, and it feels really good to let that part of ourselves out for everyone else to see. Some of us might have known we were trans for most of our lives. Some of us, like me, might not have known until recently. Either way, we had to hold that part of ourselves in, essentially telling ourselves a lie about who we thought we were, or were trying with all our heart to be.
And living like that? Wow, it sucks.
Linkage
Things Katy is reading.
What Does All This Trans Stuff Mean?
How NIMBYs are helping to turn the public against immigrants
in VoxIn principle, there is no reason why population growth must push up the cost of shelter. Immigrants need homes â but they are also disproportionately likely to work in construction and, thus, increase the economyâs home-building capacity.
The problem arises when governments effectively prohibit the supply of housing from rising in line with demand. Between 2012 and 2022, Americans formed 15.6 million new households but built only 11.9 million new housing units. As a result, even before the post-lockdown surge in migration, there were more aspiring households than homes in Americaâs thriving metro areas.
This was largely a consequence of zoning restrictions. Municipal governments have collectively made it illegal to erect an apartment building on about 75 percent of our countryâs residential land. In large swaths of the country, there are households eager to rent or buy a modest apartment, and developers eager to provide them, but zoning restrictions have blocked such transactions from taking place.
This creates a housing shortage. You can house 32 families much more quickly and cheaply by building a single apartment building than by erecting 32 separate houses. To require all of your communityâs housing units to be single-family homes isnât all that different from prohibiting the manufacture of all non-luxury cars. In both cases, you end up with artificial scarcity and unaffordability.
Victorian social housing tenant disputes surge, despite government's $5.3b investment
in ABC NewsIn short: Housing advocates fear the social housing sector is buckling under strain as more and more people are priced out of the private rental market.
The body representing tenants in housing disputes says its workload has almost doubled year-on-year.
What's next: The state government says it's tackling need with record investment in the sector.
Nazis mingle openly at CPAC, spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and finding allies
in NBC NewsThe presence of these individuals has been a persistent issue at CPAC. In previous years, conference organizers have ejected well-known Nazis and white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes.
But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didnât meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017.
At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed ârace scienceâ and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
One member of the group, Greg Conte, who attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, said that his group showed up to talk to the media. He said that the group was prepared to be ejected if CPAC organizers were tipped off, but that never happened.
Billionaires Want Poor Childrenâs Brains to Work Better
in CounterPunchBy blaming poor childrenâs school learning failure on their brains, the billionaires are continuing a long pseudoscientific charade extending back to 19th century âcraniology,â which used head shape-and-size to explain the intellectual inferiority of âlesserâ groups, such as southern Europeans and blacks. When craniology finally was debunked in the early 20thcentury, psychologists devised the IQ test, which sustained the mental classification business. Purportedly a more scientific instrument, it was heavily used not only to continue craniologyâs identification of intellectually inferior ethnic and racial groups, but also to âexplainâ the educational underachievement of black and poor-white students.
After decades of use, IQ tests were substantially debunked from the 1960s onward, but new, more neurologically complex, so-called brain-based explanations emerged for differing educational outcomes. These explanations conceived of the overall brain as normal, but contended that brain glitches impeded school learning and success. Thus entered âlearning disabilities,â âdyslexia,âand âattention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)â as major neuropsychological concepts to (1) explain school failure, particularly for poor children, although the labels also extended to many middle-class students; and (2) serve as âscientificâ justification for scripted, narrow, pedagogy in which teachers seemingly reigned in the classroom, but in fact, were themselves controlled by the prefabricated curricula.
âMAGA Will Govern for 50 Yearsâ: Steve Bannon Opens CPAC With Prediction of Trump Victory Amid âThree Global Crisesâ
Bannon went on to claim Trump âwill go down as the best president since Abraham Lincolnâ and hoped he will win in âa massive frickinâ landslideâ come November. Bannon was joined by other far-right influencers on Wednesday, including Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. Trump is set to address the conference on Saturday.
âWelcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didnât get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it,â Posobiec told the crowd as Bannon added, âAmenâ
Doctors push for expanded bulk-billing as patients feel the pinch of cost-of-living pressures
in ABC NewsThe federal government last year announced it would triple the incentives paid to doctors who bulk-bill children under the age of 16, pensioners and Commonwealth concession card holders.
Health Minister Mark Butler said the national bulk-billing rate rose by 2.1 percentage points in the first two months of the initiative.
He said the incentives applied to three in every five consultations with a general practitioner.
WA GP Damian Zilm said industry professionals welcomed the subsidies, but said the scheme excluded a large cohort of people struggling with cost-of-living pressures.
Dr Zilm said more patients were delaying care as a result.
"We're seeing a lot of conditions presenting later than they should be," he said.
"These have long-term health consequences which end up costing the Australian government and Australian health care system more money in the long run."
Car Enthusiasts Should Hate Car Dependency. Hereâs Why.
for YouTubeThis is one of the best summaries of the problems of car dependency I've seen (and I've seen many).
Iâve loved cars since I was a kid. Iâve owned 60 cars in my life and currently own 9. How did I go from being an absolute car fanatic to someone that canât stand car dependency? In this video, we delve deep into the issues surrounding our automobile-centric society:
⢠The endless hours lost to traffic congestion.
⢠The threats posed to our children.
⢠The alarming fatalities from distracted driving and flawed vehicle designs.
⢠The troubling reasons behind bigger cars and the higher risks they pose.
⢠The questionable decisions of traffic engineers and the infrastructure built for speed over safety.
⢠Unveiling how the auto industry actively promoted car dependency.
⢠The disturbing history of how low-income neighborhoods bore the brunt of freeway constructions.
⢠The alarming shift from pedestrian rights to vehicle dominance.
⢠How the car industry redefined 'crashes' as 'accidents'.
⢠How other nations are getting public transportation right.
⢠And importantly, the crucial role car enthusiasts can play in reshaping this narrative.
Roger Griffin: 'What's in a name?': Fascism's value as a taxonomic term
for YouTubeDiscussion with Prof Roger Griffin on fascism and neo-fascism, comparative fascist studies and his lecture "'What's in a name?': Fascism's value as a taxonomic term in interwar and contemporary history" held online at the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations / Matej Bel University in BanskĂĄ Bystrica (Slovakia) on 11 March 2021 (moderated by Anton HruboĹ).
Full employment and working future
in The Economic and Labour Relations ReviewAfter decades in which macroeconomic policy focused primarily on inflation, the announcement of a renewed commitment to full employment, made by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in 2021, was a major step. Labourâs election campaign included not only a commitment to full employment but the promise of a Jobs Summit leading to a new White Paper on Full Employment, modelled on that of 1945.
Upon taking office, the Labor Government backed away from this commitment. The Jobs Summit was relabelled a âJobs and Skills Summitâ and much of the discussion focused on supposed skills shortages. This was a misnomer. The problem faced by employers was not a shortage of particular skills but the difficulty of filling vacancies of any kind in a situation of full or near-full employment. After decades in which the number of unemployed workers routinely exceeded vacancies, employers found this situation difficult to accept.
An even more consequential change was the removal of the word âFullâ from the name of the proposed White Paper. The decision to break with Laborâs history on this crucial issue seemed to portend the abandonment of the entire process.