I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders. My worldview has deeply shaped my career. I have spent my professional life providing counseling to vulnerable populations: children in foster care, sexual minorities, the poor.
For almost four years, I worked at The Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases with teens and young adults who were HIV positive. Many of them were trans or otherwise gender nonconforming, and I could relate: Through childhood and adolescence, I did a lot of gender questioning myself. I’m now married to a transman, and together we are raising my two biological children from a previous marriage and three foster children we hope to adopt.
All that led me to a job in 2018 as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, which had been established a year earlier.
The center’s working assumption was that the earlier you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the more anguish you can prevent later on. This premise was shared by the center’s doctors and therapists. Given their expertise, I assumed that abundant evidence backed this consensus.
During the four years I worked at the clinic as a case manager—I was responsible for patient intake and oversight—around a thousand distressed young people came through our doors. The majority of them received hormone prescriptions that can have life-altering consequences—including sterility.
I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to “do no harm.” Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.
Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue—and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.
Almost everyone in my life advised me to keep my head down. But I cannot in good conscience do so. Because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling.
You're also creating your own subjective reality. The poster made the claim that the dominant views on 4chan regarding Ukraine and vaccines may be viewed positively in the future, not the disturbing imagery.
I am a total cryptocurrency skeptic and critic. But.
If there's one thing you can bank on, it's capitalism seeking a) efficiency (defined by its own metric of profit), b) to penetrate new markets, c) to do more of this faster, with as few costs and obligations and possible. It pushes the boundaries of what's acceptable and feasible to make that happen.
I don't think "web3" in its current form fulfills much of this. But it's probably the harbinger of something that does.
Not saying this is a good thing. It should probably be stopped. That will be hard.
I think most Web3 shills fall into one of two buckets:
1. People treating it like a Ponzi and are just trying to avoid holding the bag.
2. Non-technical people that have no idea that databases have existed for decades.
All it takes is a basic rudimentary analysis of most Web3 "solutions" to determine that they're entirely overengineered and unnecessary. Everything about Web3 is a solution in search of a problem.
I don't disagree. But I think the broader "success" of it is a portent of something bigger. Enthusiasm by a #3 you never mentioned: powerful financial interests (legitimate and illegitimate) who want to move capital outside the explicit view or mgmt of the state.
In any case, every time I get a recruiter pinging me about some "crypto" job I almost want to respond with "Not interested. But do you have any jobs that are actively working to suppress crypto?"
I don't like working for government, but man I'd almost take pleasure in working for an entity doing forensics to trace illegal transactions through the blockchain.
I have not read the whole article so apologies if this is touched on but is "discovered" really the right word here? The foods and molecules that have this flavor were already being consumed long before the term was coined.
This was the scientist that not only hypothesized that umami was a "basic taste" with receptors directly on the tongue, alongside the west's 4 well studied ones (sweet, salty, salty, bitter), but went on to prove it.
(His work actually puts the other four "basic tastes" to shame because where those four are mostly "well studied" in the social sciences [psychology tests of where on the tongue most responded to each of the 4], he actually narrowed down the specific taste receptors for glutamate, and how they operate.)
I think that it's an acceptable use of the term. Even if people consumed it before that, if they weren't aware of it then its existence could still be discovered.
It's along the same line as "Isaac Newton discovered gravity."
Smart contracts are useless. If you want to pick a particular point out of that article to discuss I'm happy to do so but so far it looks like the same flawed reasoning that has been debunked 1000 times over on this site.
Not going off the article, but if you think that 100% of smart contracts are useless, I would like to know why the uniswap is useless in your mind. Its a decentralized exchange contract for trading tokens on ethereum
but it can be used to trade currencies not offered by centralized exchanges, in a way where you dont have to hand over any funds to risk on a centralized exchange. is useful for me at least
"Reserve is a stable global currency (a stablecoin) and a digital payment app for people and businesses in countries with high inflation. The Reserve stablecoin and application enables people and businesses to protect their money, send money across borders, and easily make payments. Unlike many stablecoins that are used primarily as arbitrage tools for crypto traders, Reserve is designed to solve critical, real-world problems faced by hundreds of millions of people in emerging economies around the world."
Investors include Sam Altman, Coinbase Ventures, and Peter Thiel.
For almost four years, I worked at The Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases with teens and young adults who were HIV positive. Many of them were trans or otherwise gender nonconforming, and I could relate: Through childhood and adolescence, I did a lot of gender questioning myself. I’m now married to a transman, and together we are raising my two biological children from a previous marriage and three foster children we hope to adopt.
All that led me to a job in 2018 as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, which had been established a year earlier.
The center’s working assumption was that the earlier you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the more anguish you can prevent later on. This premise was shared by the center’s doctors and therapists. Given their expertise, I assumed that abundant evidence backed this consensus.
During the four years I worked at the clinic as a case manager—I was responsible for patient intake and oversight—around a thousand distressed young people came through our doors. The majority of them received hormone prescriptions that can have life-altering consequences—including sterility.
I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to “do no harm.” Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.
Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue—and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.
Almost everyone in my life advised me to keep my head down. But I cannot in good conscience do so. Because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling.