Tuesday
(bc of that tweet about how I hate Tuesdays, this is now canon)
Today’s featured pet is Sansa. She was getting jealous of all the other dogs getting HER attention.
Sansa, reports her human companion, Nicole, is a North American Cuddlewolf. In reality, she washed out of an actual SuperDog breeding program for being a) too small (84 pounds as of her vet check this morning) and b) too loving (the breed standard is Aloof and Silent.)
Here she is, trying Not To Be Seen.
Obviously this is a complex issue and diabetes is a major health concern, but this piece in Science absolutely reinforces my personal experience this past year having at least three black female friends dx'd as “pre-diabetic” with zero real explanation:
In medicine, prevention is usually an unalloyed good. But in this case, other diabetes specialists argue, medical and epidemiological data give weak support, at most, for increasingly dire prediabetes admonitions. "Nobody really thought at the time, how ‘pre’ is prediabetes for all these people?" says Kahn, who left ADA in 2009 and is now at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, and other medical authorities have rejected prediabetes as a diagnostic category because they are not convinced that it routinely leads to diabetes or that existing treatments do much good. John Yudkin, a diabetes researcher and emeritus professor of medicine at University College London, describes the ominous warnings about prediabetes from ADA and CDC as "scaremongering."
Yet ADA, a nonprofit that funds research, issues treatment standards, and raises public awareness, has gradually broadened its definition of prediabetes to encompass more people. "The public needs to know that right now, in the United States … one out of three may have some aspect of glucose abnormality," says William Cefalu, ADA's current chief scientific and medical officer. "A great percentage … particularly in select ethnic groups, may have an increased chance, or a higher rate of progressing [to diabetes]."
CDC has followed ADA's lead, because "they set the primary standards of care in the U.S.," Albright wrote in a statement to Science. (Albright declined interview requests, and CDC would not permit Edward Gregg, Albright's top epidemiologist, to comment for this story.) In the past, Albright and CDC have said repeatedly that 15% to 30% of untreated prediabetes patients progress to diabetes within 5 years—a claim that hospitals, professional organizations, and local and state health departments have embraced and publicized. She backed away from that number in response to a question from Science, saying, "We no longer use that statement to characterize risk." Indeed, CDC's own data show progression from prediabetes to diabetes at less than 2% per year, or less than 10% in 5 years. (Other studies show even slower rates.)
One of the biggest knitting websites in the world, which claims to have more than 8 million members, has announced that it will ban users from expressing support for Donald Trump, saying that to do so constitutes “white supremacy”.
On Sunday, administrators for Ravelry, a site for knitters, crocheters, designers and anyone dabbling in the fibre arts, said that they were making any expression of support for Trump and his administration in forum posts, patterns, on their personal profile pages or elsewhere permanently off limits.
“We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy,” the site’s administrators said in a post.
It’s limeade season, tell me which limeade you drink and what you do to it:
I have been GLUED to this account of the babe.net arc all morning (you have to read the whole thing bc you will then read this passage differently):
The site’s managing editor, Eleni Mitzali, a 24-year-old blonde with a sharp bob and half-a-dozen tiny earrings who told me she only listened to podcasts about business strategy and murder, offered me a doughnut while I waited for the day to start. I sat on a small couch, in front of a DIY wall-hanging of Rihanna photos, while Rihanna songs played on a nearby Sonos. Above an archway hung a tweet that a staffer had printed out and enlarged: Overheard in LA (at my dinner table): What the fuck is babe dot net? — Bridget Phetasy (@BridgetPhetasy) January 15, 2018.
DID YOU SEE LIZZO FUCK IT AAAALLLL UP BRILLIANTLY AT THE BET AWARDS? Click through for vid:
IN THIS HOUSE WE SUPPORT E. JEAN (her advice has occasionally been wildly off-base but her piece describing her assaults deserves our respect and love):
E. Jean Carroll, a New York-based writer who has accused President Trump of sexually assaulting her more than two decades ago, voiced frustration Monday that Trump has not faced consequences from a string of previous allegations of misconduct.
“With all the women it’s the same: He denies it, he turns it around, he attacks and he threatens — and then everybody forgets it until the next woman comes along,” Carroll said during an interview on CNN. “I am sick of it. I am sick of it.”
Carroll, a longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine, is among 16 women who have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct over the past several decades. Most spoke out just weeks before the 2016 election, after The Washington Post published a recording of Trump bragging during a 2005 “Access Hollywood” interview that his celebrity gave him permission to grab women by their genitals.
STRAP IN FOR A WILD RIDE:
I made the FATAL ERROR of saying on Twitter yesterday that I prefer Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel” to Old Crow Medicine Show’s, and it got VERY heated, so let us unite in peace:
Literally nothing could be more relevant to our collective interests than THE MONSTROUS FEMININE:
In February this year, a true-crime documentary series titled Lorena was released. It told the story of Lorena Bobbitt, who cut off her husband’s penis as he slept, of how she threw it into the long grass at the side of the road in Manassas, Virginia. I think of how they sold penis-shaped sweets outside the courthouse where her trial took place, of how the proceedings made it into a Saturday Night Live sketch, of how she was shown as crazy, fiery, a scorned wife mutilating her husband after he threatened to leave. What I think of most, though, is how Lorena Bobbitt was tortured physically, sexually and emotionally by her husband for years before she castrated him. How she became a punchline. Howard Stern, one of the most prominent voices in the discussion of the case, refused to believe the extensive evidence that supported her claims of abuse because ‘she’s not that great looking’. In the article that coincided with the documentary’s release, the New York Times ran with the headline ‘You Know the Lorena Bobbitt Story. But Not All of It.’ If Tamás asserts that the penis hex isn’t really about the penis, the way Lorena’s story was told definitely seemed to assume that it was: ‘They always just focused on it . . .’ she told one reporter. Her ex-husband – and his penis – were what attracted sympathy. The jury found her not guilty ‘by reason of temporary insanity’; she served a mandated stint in a mental health facility. The article ends with Lorena reflecting on how people react to her story of unendurable abuse: ‘“They laugh,” she said several times [. . .] “They always laugh.”’
MUSIC VIDEOS:
my basically fav song, ‘cause I’m a white divorced dad
into the woods (this song is so incredible)
goldfrapp
lesley gore, lesbian icon
face your fears!
okay okay this one too
my personal fav Beyonce song (count the key changes!!)
I love you extra today. Also, remember, if you want to be a paying subscriber but it would screw up your grocery and rent bills, email me at nicole dot cliffe and I will freebie you. Honor system!
oxoxoxox
n
I have spent the last year STRESSED OUT after a 'prediabetes' (barely) diagnosis. Thank you for sharing the Science article. I feel 100% lighter.
Oops, Leslie Gore, it's the law that we now go out and watch First Wives Club.