the bad thing about having unhealthy habits due to mental illness, is when you DO do something healthy style you can't brag about about it because then people will then know you've been doing it yucky style all along. Like you can't brag you changed your sheets or brushed your teeth because then ppl will be like oh did you not brush your teeth regularly before? Thats yucky disgusting! So you just gotta keep it to yourself. And be proud alone, I suppose.
its really cool that we discovered glass which is the material that doesnt have any chemical reactions with anything in the universe very useful for doing chemistry due to being able to put things in it to contain chemical reactions and never having it react with the things that are in it due to it being completely and entirely unreactive to every chemical
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
The "Serenity Prayer" (Serenity to accept things I can't change/Courage to change the things I can/Wisdom to know the difference) is usually cited as pop psychology or addiction recovery advice, but I think there's a place for it in policymaking.
Take the EU's fight against US Big Tech. During the Biden years, the EU's tech policy matured into something serious and ambitious, culminating in the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA), a pair of big, muscular policies that would curb Big Tech's most abusive conduct. The EU's ambition didn't occur in a vacuum: it was part of a global wave of antitrust fervor whose top agenda item was reining in tech:
In this fight, the EU had important partners all over the world. For example, South Korea and Japan used the facts uncovered through EU enforcement action against Google and Apple to pursue similar cases:
But the EU's most important partner in its fight against American Big Tech was America. Biden's trustbusters – Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra, Jonathan Kanter, Tim Wu, et al – were every bit as serious about Big Tech power as anyone in the EU. After all, the American public are always the first victims of any new tech scam, and America is the only country with a large, affluent population who lack modern, comprehensive consumer privacy protection, making Americans highly prized prey for tech companies:
With America and the EU on the same side of the tech fight, the world had a fighting chance. Tech knew this, which is why Big Tech backed Trump hard during the 2024 election and aggressively curried his favor after he won. From the tech barons who paid $1m each to sit behind Trump on the inaugural dais to the millions tech companies donated to Trump's Epstein Ballroom at the White House, tech has made it clear that it supports anything Trump wants to do, provided he shields Big Tech from any attempt to limit their ability to spy on and steal from Americans and the world.
Even before he took office, Trump made it clear how he would reward tech's loyalty: weeks before the inauguration, Trump went to Davos and threatened the EU with reprisals if they enforced the DSA or DMA against his tech companies:
Trump wasted no time leaning on US trading partners on behalf of Big Tech. He bullied Canadian PM Mark Carney into dropping his plan to tax US tech companies. Big Tech uses a variety of tax-cheating gambits to evade taxation around the world, making it impossible for (tax-paying) domestic companies to compete:
None of the governments that caved to Trump got anything in return. As I've written:
Give Trump everything he asks for and he'll demand more. Deny Trump anything and he'll demand more. Sign a contract with Trump and he'll break it. Send Trump an invoice and he'll stiff you. For Trump, "the art of the deal" can be summed up in one word: renege.
Case in point: after the EU surrendered to Trump on AI regulation, Trump announced that a on ban EU officials who had worked on the Digital Services Act from traveling to the USA:
After all, Apple is a key partner in the Trump administration's mass deportations. Apple blocked an iPhone app that warns Apple customers if they're about to be kidnapped or murdered by ICE. Trump needs Apple, just as much as Apple needs Trump:
Despite this, the EU keeps trying to enforce its laws against Trump's companies. Last week, the Commission announced a $1b fine against Google for violating the Digital Services Act with conduct that cost Europeans many billions:
In other words, Google wasn't even being ordered to disgorge all the money it stole, just some of it. Remember, a fine is a price: the EU's fine here will only make this kind of cheating slightly less profitable.
Nevertheless, Trump responded immediately by threatening the EU with many billions more in tariffs if they continue to attempt to enforce the law against one of his companies:
Trump, the European Commission and Google all know this is about more than one $1b fine. The DSA and DMA both provide for steeply rising fines and other penalties for repeat offenders, and Google clearly has no plan to end its very profitable European crime-spree. Trump's threats aren't a bid to kill this enforcement – Trump wants to kill all enforcement.
Retaliatory tariffs aren't the only weapon Trump has at his disposal. If the EU (or any other country) levies a serious fine against Google, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, or any of Trump's other tech companies, Trump can order US banks not to turn over those fines, even after the EU sends them a court order for the money. If a bank defies Trump, he can threaten to yank its charter. Or he could just run the same swindle he pulled on Tiktok: stealing the whole company and selling it to one of his buddies, who will run it the way Trump wants.
The reality is that without America's assistance, the EU has precious little hope of forcing American companies to do things they don't want to do. In terms of the Serenity Prayer, this is "a thing they cannot change."
The Serenity Prayer doesn't stop with "things you can't change." The next line seeks "the courage to change the things I can." The EU has no control over Google's conduct, but it has total control over its own conduct.
Specifically, the EU could get rid of the laws that ban European companies from modifying US tech exports. The EU adopted the Copyright Directive in 2001. Article 6 of the EUCD makes it a crime to reverse-engineer and modify a device without the manufacturer's permission. This law was adopted under pressure from the US Trade Representative, who threatened the EU with tariffs on its exports unless it adopted an "anticircumvention rule" that banned EU technologists from making products that let Europeans prevent US tech companies from stealing their money and data":
This law is still in force in the EU, despite the fact that Trump (predictably) reneged on the US side of the bargain, hitting the EU with massive tariffs and even threatening to steal part of Denmark.
Article 6 of the Copyright Directive is the reason European tech companies can't jailbreak America's apps, whether that's to get its government and corporate data off of US platforms:
The EU can't control what Apple or Google do. But the EU can absolutely decide whether Trump's companies can use Europe's courts to destroy European companies that defend the privacy and economic integrity of the European people.
If the EU kills off Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, they can use European companies to bring Google and Apple's defective tech exports into compliance with European law. Unlike Trump's companies, those companies can be forced to pay their taxes and respect their users' privacy, labor and consumer rights.
That's the Serenity Prayer's "wisdom to know the difference."
Finding out AI companies are chewing through - literally, they’re pulping and burning them as they go - millions of books often including 1/1s and old texts that cannot be reprinted
Meanwhile there’s always some dipshit telling me AI is the future and we’ve got to just let companies erase human history and literature so they can train their abomination machines to pretend to think like people because a judge said it’s fine
Today is the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin. Before that, Type 1 diabetes was a death sentence.
For perspective, I’ve been diabetic for about 25% of this discovery’s history. When my grandparents were born, this treatment did not exist. If you ask me, “what time period would be fun to go back to?” I can’t even speculate more than one hundred years back, because I know I couldn’t live in that world.
Today, I’m going to pick up four boxes of insulin from my local drug store. My endocrinologist is renewing my prescription, so I’m set for several months to come. I lead a more difficult life than someone without Type 1 diabetes, but I do live, and so do my relatives and friends with the condition. Thank you, Banting, Best, Macleod, and Collip (and all those dogs), for letting me do that.
One hundred years later, after insulin’s discoverer gave his patent away for $1 so as never to profit from the discovery, pharmaceutical companies are forcing people to ration insulin or go without entirely due to unchecked price increases. This is particularly true in the US, and is a major reason why I did not stay there after graduate school. There, and in much of the world where insulin is expensive and scarce, people are dying. Things are starting to change, but not soon enough. It’s been one hundred years, and we need to do better when the alternative is death.
Insulin is worth being grateful about, and its exploitation is worth being angry about. One thing to be aware of is that it is a treatment only, not a cure. Diabetes is still high-maintenance, and I still have a very complicated relationship to it.
Today, though, I’m choosing to focus on my gratitude, and being alive, and being able to go for a walk with my friend in the rain-scented air, do some trivia, see a show.
They say the change in the first child to receive a dose of insulin, 100 years ago, looked like magic.
Today (January 11, 2022) is the 100th anniversary of the first insulin injection being given to a human patient, 14-year old Leonard Thompson.
It wasn’t a perfect solution - Thompson actually had an allergic reaction to the first shot, probably due to an impurity - but, twelve days later, they had refined the dosage enough for a successful, magic-like change. I cannot emphasize how much Type 1 diabetes was a death sentence before this moment, and what an incredible gift, an incredible second chance, insulin was, despite its imperfections.
It’s important to note that Thompson successfully took insulin for 13 years, but still died at the age of 26. This was not directly because of diabetes. Insulin gave him the chance to live. Pneumonia killed him. Diabetic bodies are still more vulnerable to illness and anything else that compromises homeostasis.
It would have been my friend’s 40th birthday yesterday. He also had diabetes, and was in the hospital for related complications, but COVID (which he caught there) is what killed him.
My (out, proud, and brilliant) friend’s motto was from Tony Kushner’s masterwork Angels in America: “More Life.” It’s a play in large part about the AIDS epidemic, which was overlooked or even celebrated by many because the people who died from it were considered undesirable, expendable, broken.
Insulin gives me more life. Its costs still shorten the lives others. We, along with other marginalized groups, are still in many respects considered expendable.
I’m still grateful for so many things, and I’m still angry about so many others.
It’s the 101st anniversary of the first insulin shot today.
Jon should have turned 41 yesterday.
This week, my diabetes tech failed me twice; first, my continuous glucose monitor went defective and rogue, giving completely incorrect readings which determined my basal insulin dose and thus made me ill, a roller coaster of highs and lows as insulin was cut off and delivered at random, until I stopped the sensor. Why didn’t I cut it off immediately? Because a ten-day sensor costs at least $100, and once you shut it down, it’s done. I was hoping it would fix itself, as sometimes happens.
On Monday, my pump site failed just before I started teaching. I was so busy for the three hours that I didn’t notice, until the alarm sounded that I was out of insulin. My pump had delivered everything it had left, none of which wound up in my body, in a desperate attempt to lower my blood sugar. After only three hours without insulin, my blood sugar, which had been resting comfortably between the “diabetic normal” of 4-8, had risen to 20. All I had consumed that day was water. I was sick for the rest of the day.
For a Type 1 diabetic, and for many Type 2s, a lack of insulin is a death sentence. At the same time, in our current reality, each new advancement, each little bit of magic, comes at a cost.
Despite its imperfections, it’s still an incredible gift.
I just wish the gift were freely available to everyone.
It’s the 104th anniversary (January 11, 1922) of the first insulin injection given to a human. Jon’s 44th birthday would have been yesterday. He was born only 60 years after this medical advance, so close in living memory that it’s a little frightening to think about where I and many others would be without it.
I started the Dexcom G7 continuous glucose monitor two weeks ago, after being on the G6 for a few years. Startlingly, my blood sugar has been in range more than 90% of the time for an entire week. Talk about magic.
If the system can be trusted, that is–another company’s CGM has recently been implicated in at least 7 deaths (none in North America, though, chirp the articles–only 57 injuries in the US). When you pair the monitor with an insulin pump, letting it control your baseline insulin delivery, it is an incredible act of trust that you can’t think about too much lest you turn into an anxious mess. Check your sources with another meter if things seem too uncharacteristic. But a rogue sensor can kill in the night.
Gratitude, though. A few nights ago, I came home incredibly tired. I made myself a sandwich, took insulin before eating the sandwich (because you’re supposed to do so at least 15 minutes before you eat for optimum insulin efficiency–yet another consideration), then fell asleep before eating the sandwich. A potentially fatal error that I haven’t made in years and years. When my blood sugar crashes, I almost always wake up. Not this time. The Dexcom worked its magic, stopped my basal insulin, dragged me up from the depths. No medical attention required. Gratitude [it looked like magic].
On the other side of 40, I’ve noticed the first wisps of what might be aging, what might be diabetes complications. Anger: this disease has stolen so much. Gratitude: I’m still here to feel these things.
Getting on the new CGM was an insurance nightmare. Dexcom stopped its delivery service and discount program, cutting us off in its rush to get us all on the most updated version. It is a business, after all! Prescriptions wouldn’t transfer. Discount codes expired. Three different insurance programs had to be notified, begged, at the most hectic time of year. There was a gap and I had to buy emergency supplies out of pocket (hundreds of dollars that I can thankfully currently afford).
I apologized to the trainee pharmacy student behind the counter for all the stress. “No, no,” he said. “This is good, I’m learning a lot.”
Leonard Thompson would have died a skeleton in 1922 at 14 years of age. I just had to call my insurance company a few times. It’s not the same, yet the underlying fear is.
The advances are great; so are the costs. Advances don’t mean anything if they don’t come with access.
Today is the 105th anniversary of the discovery of insulin.
About five weeks ago, I started on a concentrated version of insulin that’s essentially “double strength,” so that I could take fewer units of that miracle hormone and therefore put less daily stress on the cannula insert area. I had a great care team lead for once who has really tried to work with my “no trends” numbers, so I was feeling excited.
A week and a half before the switch, I found out he’d gotten a job elsewhere and left without a trace, and now my big switch was to be handled by people I had never met, one of whom had never presided over that specific medication change. It was, to say the least, disheartening. Worse, they had to push my appointment back.
Since I had already ordered the new insulin, my insurance wouldn’t let me order the old kind–and I was going to run out, now, a day before the switch, and I wasn’t allowed to switch by myself. Thankfully, you can order insulin over the counter and it was only $45 for a vial (most of which will go to waste, now), but what if I didn’t have it? Rationing or skipping insulin kills.
When I got to the hospital for the appointment, I had to explain to one of the nurses in charge of my health, a woman in her 60s, the basic functions of how my insulin pump worked. While I love teaching hospitals and I am an educator by profession, it did not inspire confidence. But the switch was made, and the dosages cut accordingly. Everything was done clearly, and correctly.
And at 2am, with my beautiful new supercharged insulin, I almost died anyway. It worked too well.
A non-diabetic in Canada should have a blood glucose level of 4-7 mmol/l, depending on time of day and what you’ve eaten. For diabetics, the ideal is 4-8 with up to 10 after meals (that is *ideal.* Reality is regularly extremely different). Anything lower than 4–even 3.9–is cause for concern. Anything lower than 3 is a bright red warning sign. It can lead to seizures or unconsciousness. You can not wake up. The lowest I’ve ever been is 1.7, but that was mercifully brief. (Most meters don’t even read that low.) When your blood sugar is below 3, it’s literally like you can feel your life force draining away, while professional soccer players kick the shit out of your muscles. Even when you come back up, the effects can last for a day.
I was between 2.1-2.3 for more than two hours. I could not bring myself up, no matter what I ate or drank. I have been diabetic for almost 30 years and I have never gone to the hospital. I did not want to wake anyone up. Ten more minutes and I would have had to.
In the weeks since, I’ve managed to get things much more balanced. I feel the switch was, on balance, a great choice. I’m no longer burning through expensive supplies at a furious pace.
It’s a constant reminder that insulin is a 105-year-old treatment, not a cure, and that too much can quickly become even worse than too little. (Remember: there are at least 42 factors that influence blood sugar, so it’s not as simple as carbs to insulin.) The whole thing has me thinking about the precariousness of care, and the notion that we can be one postponed appointment or one miscalculated dose away from disaster.
It makes me want to fight more for access for everyone, and to feel grateful for what I do have.
I'm sorry but you absolutely cannot strip Jane Austen's work of Regency politics and social etiquette without the entire narrative collapsing into nonsense.
Modern writers need to stop treating Austen’s world like a generic, pretty fairy tale, and start remembering that her books were actually razor-sharp critiques of a brutal socioeconomic landscape with examinations of class, gender, power and money that are still culturally relevant today.
i did a thing the other day
rambled nervously but asked
it didn't work out due to timing
but the person was open to
trying again some time and
like i want to, god, i want to badly
but i don't know how i managed
the confidence to ask the first time
so for now, it's just a nice dream
