photo by Drew Hamilton

They're so insistent on just Doing Stuff and Keeping Moving Forward that it's not really a thoughtful "does this make sense to do? do we really just want to have whatever's available for these? is this going to be helpful?" and that kind of sums up the whole issue with how things operate here. There's this real and perceived pressure to Keep Doing Stuff and people get dragged or roped or pushed or prodded into it and it doesn't end up being as effective as it could be.

Oh god, I cannot wait to leave this place - because the overall team director is insistent on scheduling all these trainings for our staff and that'll involve a lot of coordination and set up and I just really want to go to a better place and also see some people who have made me feel miserable suffer.

And just going around and making off-the-cuff decisions and comments and then going "but let's talk about this more in-depth at a future point".

3d printed start gate

Need minimum 12 hours a day of do my own thang time

Keep seeing pronoun positivity posts is about he/they and she/theys. That's cool and all but this one's for the she/hes. If you're a she/he I love you and you can take as much mint as you want from our garden

Thank god for muting in online meetings so I can vent without other attendees knowing.

Russia is currently facing a historic labor shortage that could tip the balance on its precarious wartime economy. Nevertheless, authorities in many regions have been imposing more and more restrictions on the types of jobs migrant workers can pursue. While some areas already had prohibitions in place, others began introducing bans following the arrest of four Tajikistani citizens in connection with the deadly March 22 terrorist attack in Moscow. According to a new report from Agentstvo, these restrictions primarily target sectors such as taxi services and trade.

Super Moon captured behind the largest mosque in Turkey 🇹🇷 🕌 🌙

obsessed w this typo actually

📸 by Cyriel Jacobs

Indiana attorney general pushes to disclose terminated pregnancy reports

Indiana Public Access Counselor Luke Britt released an informal opinion last December stating the information gathered by Terminated Pregnancy Reports, or TPRs, could be used to identify patients — “especially in smaller communities.”

Attorney General Todd Rokita released an advisory opinion Thursday that said the decision to not disclose the individual reports complicates enforcement of Indiana law.

Rokita said the reports have been publicly available since the 1970s, but there was “an abrupt change” in policy following the public access counselor’s opinion.

However, with fewer patients receiving abortions following the near-total abortion ban, the Indiana Department of Health raised concerns that releasing the full individual reports could violate patient confidentiality — especially with increased reporting requirements added in 2022.

Britt’s opinion said the statute requires IDOH to provide aggregated data in quarterly public reports, which suggests the individual forms are “non-public.”

On April 16, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law tightening the country’s mobilization procedures. The reform comes as the situation at the front has been worsening for Ukraine: Russia’s offensive has picked up steam and there are fears that Ukraine’s entire defense could collapse. Despite the urgent need for reinforcements, the bill was heatedly debated in Ukraine’s parliament and lawmakers made more than 4,000 amendments before finally passing the legislation. In the end, however, both politicians and those fighting at the front are unhappy with the outcome. Meduza spoke with sources in Kyiv to learn more.

I'm of the opinion that when your enemy is making mistakes, you shouldn't stop them.

"Abortion and the 2024 election: There is no easy way out for Republicans"

GOOD.

Republicans are thrashing around trying to get themselves out of the abortion ban they have tried to win for so many decades. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was the first. In the fall of 2022, just months after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, he proposed legislation calling for a national abortion ban after 15 weeks. So far, this bill has gone nowhere. Then, in 2023, gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin of Virginia put the 15-week abortion ban at the center of his campaign to help the GOP take full control of the Virginia legislature. Rather than holding one house and picking up the other, he lost both. Recently, former President Donald Trump—who often brags about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who made possible the repeal of Roe v. Wade—offered his own way out of the thicket by applauding the fact that states now can decide the issue for themselves. And in Arizona, the Republican Senate candidate, Kari Lake, is trying to rally the party around the notion of a 15-week ban instead of the 1864 near total ban their court just affirmed, even though she’s facing criticism for this on the far right. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal came out with a poll showing that abortion was the number one issue—by far—for suburban women voters in swing states.

In each instance (and there will be more) we find Republicans desperately trying to find a position on the issue that makes their base and the other parts of their coalition happy.

It doesn’t exist, and here’s why—abortion is an integral part of health care for women.

Since 2022, when the Supreme Court eviscerated Roe in the Dobbs case, we have been undergoing a reluctant national seminar in obstetrics and gynecology. All over the country, legislators—mostly male—are discovering that pregnancy is not simple. Pregnancies go wrong for many reasons, and when they do, the fetus needs to be removed. One of the first to discover this reality was Republican State Representative Neal Collins of South Carolina. He was brought to tears by the story of a South Carolina woman whose water broke just after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Obstetrics lesson #1—a fetus can’t live after the water breaks. But “lawyers advised doctors that they could not remove the fetus, despite that being the recommended medical course of action.” And so, the woman was sent home to miscarry on her own, putting her at risk of losing her uterus and/or getting blood poisoning.

A woman from Austin, Texas had a similar story—one that eventually made its way into a heart-wrenching ad by the Biden campaign. Amanda Zurawski was 18 weeks pregnant when her water broke. Rather than remove the fetus, doctors in Texas sent her home where she miscarried—and developed blood poisoning (sepsis) so severe that she may never get pregnant again. Note that in both cases the medical emergency happened after 15 weeks—late miscarriages are more likely to have serious medical effects than early ones. The 15-week idea, popular among Republicans seeking a way out of their quagmire, doesn’t conform to medical reality.

Over in Arkansas, a Republican state representative learned that his niece was carrying a fetus who lacked a vital organ, meaning that it would never develop normally and either die in utero or right after birth. Obstetrics lesson #2—severe fetal abnormalities happen. He changed his position on the Arkansas law saying, “Who are we to sit in judgment of these women making a decision between them and their physician and their God above?”

In a case that gained national attention, Kate Cox, a Texas mother of two, was pregnant with her third child when the fetus was diagnosed with a rare condition called Trisomy 18, which usually ends in miscarriage or in the immediate death of the baby. Continuing this doomed pregnancy put Cox at risk of uterine rupture and would make it difficult to carry another child. Obstetrics lesson #3—continuing to carry a doomed pregnancy can jeopardize future pregnancies. And yet the Texas Attorney General blocked an abortion for Cox and threatened to prosecute anyone who took care of her, and the Texas Supreme Court ruled that her condition did not meet the statutory exception for “life-threatening physical condition.”

So, she and her husband eventually went to New Mexico for the abortion.

Obstetrics lesson #4—miscarriages are very common, affecting approximately 30% of pregnancies. While many pass without much drama and women heal on their own—others cause complications that require what’s known as a D&C for dilation and curettage. This involves scraping bits of pregnancy tissue out of the uterus to avoid infection. When Christina Zielke of Maryland was told that her fetus had no heartbeat, she opted to wait to miscarry naturally.

While waiting, she and her husband traveled to Ohio for a wedding where she began to bleed so heavily that they had to go to an emergency room. A D&C would have stopped the bleeding, but in Ohio, doctors worried that they would be criminally charged under the new abortion laws and sent her home in spite of the fact that she was still bleeding heavily and in spite of the fact that doctors in Maryland had confirmed that her fetus had no heartbeat. Eventually her blood pressure dropped, and she passed out from loss of blood and returned to the hospital where a D&C finally stopped the bleeding.

These are but a few of the horror stories that will continue to mount in states with partial or total bans on abortion. As these stories accumulate, the issue will continue to have political punch. We have already seen the victory of pro-choice referenda in deep red conservative states like Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Ohio; and in swing states like Michigan and in deep blue states like California and Vermont. In an era where almost everything is viewed through a partisan lens, abortion rights transcend partisanship.

And more referenda are coming in November. The expectation is that at least some, if not most, of the pro-choice voters likely to be mobilized by the abortion issue will help Democrats up and down the ballot. As a result, Democratic campaigns are working hard to make sure the public knows that Republicans are responsible.

this is insanity