Jessica Kant

It was in those spaces, in the late 2010s, that I realized that the fundamentalist Christians I’d grown up with weren’t the only people enforcing rigid ideas about how others should think. After arriving in New York with mainstream Democratic views, I took classes heavy on critical theories that fixated on identity categories and reflexively decried capitalism and the West. Within influential LGBTQ organizations, gay rights had given way to radical queer politics, and academic theories about sex and gender had hardened into doctrine. Widespread revulsion toward Donald Trump had narrowed the boundaries of permissible discussion on the left. The more Trump and his followers opposed something, the more we were supposed to support it. The prevailing view was that any debate within our side would become ammunition for the right.

For a long time, I feared that if I didn’t keep my thoughts to myself, I would lose the only community I’d ever really belonged in. As controversy flared up nationally about pediatric gender medicine, though, I started voicing concerns, rooted in my own experiences, over what looked to me like a rush to medical treatment. For all the sloganeering about protecting trans kids, I heard no discussion about protecting effeminate gay boys from unnecessary medicalization. When I and others asked whether progressive norms might be nudging effeminate gay boys to think of themselves as girls, no one wanted to hear it. Instead of answers, we were given the LGBTQ community’s official line. “Gender identity and sexual orientation are two different things,” the Human Rights Campaign asserts. But the confidence with which people claim that the two have nothing to do with each other is hard to square with research findings: According to data collected mostly before the recent surge in pediatric-dysphoria diagnoses, most prepubescent children who experienced gender distress went on to experience same-sex attraction and ultimately did not pursue a gender transition. Of 70 adolescents whom Dutch clinicians subjected to puberty suppression from 2000 to 2008, the overwhelming majority were attracted exclusively to people of their biological sex.

Straightforward right-wing agitprop. The idea that thousands of kids were pushed into gender-affirming surgeries because the left shuts down debate is a laughable conspiracy theory. The overwhelming social pressure is to be cis, not trans!

We’ll have more to add but seeing mainstream media report on the ruling without seeming to grasp the facts of the case requires this: this is a specious case given emergency relief on the shadow docket specifically bc it was brought by a dark money funded Christian legal non profit.

Perhaps the most contentious is the Christian expression on his bicep: "Deus Vult," meaning "God Wills It," believed to be a Crusader battle cry. There is another cross with a sword, referencing a verse in the Gospel of Matthew reporting the following words of Jesus: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." "Yeshua," Jesus' name in Hebrew,

Since tattoos are understandably getting a lot of attention this week, I would like to remind people that this was a conversation we had in 2024 and he was still confirmed.

newlinesmag.com/essays/pete-...

Yes, the religious freedom implications are extremely worrying and signal that we are indeed entering a theocracy, but also I am of the bold opinion that official policy should never be pro-Armageddon.

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military

"This morning our commander [...] said that 'President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.'"

“The fact that Ellis was flagged for her name change alone suggests the state of Kansas is intensely monitoring transgender citizens.”

BREAKING: Credible whistleblower discloses that FBI forensic experts were ordered to stand down from processing the scene where Renee Good was killed, because Kash Patel did not want Good referenced as a “victim” in the warrant.

I’m late on this and for that I apologize.

To any trans human being out there who sees this, I’m furious that Kansas has committed another act of abuse against you by invalidating legal documents that are necessary to function.

It’s wrong and it’s devastating. I’m so sorry this is happening.

Unbelievably, pointlessly cruel.

Well, yes, trans people are getting drugs; yes, from entirely unregulated sources; yes, without counselling; yes, without blood tests; yes, they are self-administering; yes, without clinical oversight; yes, risking long term harm; yes, it is highly suboptimal.

What did you think would happen?

There has been nothing normal about the war on trans people either. Trans people have been attacked simultaneously on a broad range of issues.
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I was in public health school before the pandemic and at the immediate beginning. Before no one knew beyond broad strokes what it did. By a month in, everyone I knew was talking about how we should have funded the CDC better and will need to keep it flush with cash forever after if we made it out.

It’s demonstrably not true, and it serves the exact same purpose repeating “border crisis” over and over did: to convince people it was not only a problem but that any solution was acceptable so long as it was grievously rash.

If you asked most people in 2024 what absolutely needed to change in America, no one who isn’t a professional grifter would have put gutting the CDC at the top.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said the agency must restore public trust following the Covid-19 pandemic, shift its focus away from chronic disease and center its efforts on infectious-disease response.

I’m so tired of seeing this line about restoring trust repeated. Appreciation for public health reached a new high with the pandemic. The majority of people understand that science made *incredible* progress in a staggeringly small amount of time. The people who “lost trust” never did to begin with.

It should absolutely not be necessary to remind Americans that having despotic leadership does not magically make the citizens of a country expendable.

Sure.

Quick editorial suggestion: if you’re currently drafting something framing the slaughter of civilians as a problem of economics, you can vastly improve it by just formatting your computer instead.

You’re not exactly talking to an intellectual iconoclast here

In order to understand UK politics in 2026 you must realise that a plumber & plasterer doesn't represent the interests of the working class because she is left-wing but a wealthy broadcaster & former academic does represent the interests of the working class because he is right-wing. Hope this helps

Sure does! From part one: "But this headline was eventually rearranged by an aggregator which re-ordered some of the words and omitted a critical verb. It additionally lost the scare quotes, and while this is a slight shift in language, the meaning changed substantially."

jessk.org/blog/ai-and-...

It’s such a nightmare

I’m also going to go ahead and say it’s bullshit either way? HIV drugs are expensive and it’s a fucking public health crisis

yup. it's not like no one ever mashed the words together, but look at the astronomical rise starting 2016. ngram viewer is super cool, thank you

Near any army base? or are you being extremely specific on purpose because your point doesn’t match that most countries have schools near or on bases?

Florida Cuts HIV/AIDS Funding, Blocking Thousands from Access to Meds The emergency rule comes just one day before a planned hearing between the DOH and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

Background on the underhanded maneuvering behind this, attempting to circumvent the courts

“The Florida DOH’s emergency rule was filed on Tuesday, February 24, just one day before a hearing was planned between the DOH and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF).”

I had Eliza on a 68k Macintosh just after the Cretaceous period

Florida just cut off HIV meds for 16,000 people.