Usually pretty good but can dip severely occasionally without warning
15- Description of who I dislike the most
This is the person I dislike the most that I know irl, cause otherwise it’d be the Cheeto in Chief
He’s loud. He thinks he knows everything. He learns so that he can seem better than others, not to better himself for the sake of it or to help. He’s y’all and has greasy hair. He is the living embodiment of “Well, actually”. He is the WORST
20- Favourite Ice Cream Flavor
Vanilla with loads of chocolate syrup on it and then mixed for like a creamy chocolate/vanilla mix
30- Two Insecurities
I feel like I won’t amount to anything important sometimes and I also feel like my teachers are disappointed in me constantly.
41- Nicest Thing Said to me
Can’t think of a specific NICE one, so here’s a funny one- “Are you French?” “I don’t think so, why?” “You kinda sound French” “No, I just have a bit of a lisp.”
50- Last text message sent
“A mood: eating folded artisanal tortillas while sipping a Diet Coke can and snacking on microwaved leftover chicken and fries from lunch”
the DA didn’t make the case for the crime and i went into the deliberation room knowing that. i also knew a half-dozen white orange county folks might not see it that way. the defendant was latino, there was a gang charge in addition to robbery.
sure enough, as we went around the table to give our first impressions, the white ladies used language around “gut instinct” and “he shouldn’t be hanging out with bad people” and the like. others were undecided because there was so much unreliable testimony.
they got to me and i flatly said “i have reasonable doubts.” i stated some of my reasoning and heads started to nod. the next 3 jurors to talk after me were hispanic. they stated that they understood why this might be confusing, and then gave some personal perspectives about growing up in disadvantage neighborhoods, how not everyone is a gangster just because they live there. one white lady said “well, you know, they should really move if that’s the case.”
the discussion opened up and it went right to gangs, right to how the defendant shouldn’t be hanging out with gang members. everyone had an opinion about how the defendant looked, or talked, or that he was drinking a 40 just before the robbery, or that he was related to a gang member. they went right to that.
but that’s not what we were supposed to decide on. we were there for a robbery as the primary charge. a robbery that i very clearly felt the state had not been able to pin on this guy.
so… being the loud mouth that i sometimes am… i interrupted and said “let’s all turn to page 14 in the jury instructions and go through what would make the charge ‘guilty’, line by line, and see where we all stand.”
sure enough, when we focused on the actual charge, and the facts actually required for someone to be found guilty, most in the room agreed it wasn’t there. well, except for two white ladies.
so i, also a white lady, helped to walk them through the list. when “gut instinct” or “it’s a bad neighborhood” came up, i kindly pointed out that those are not facts of the case. when i requested that they use the facts of the case to provide reasoning for their position, they both quietly agreed there weren’t any.
and that’s how, in about an hour, we came to a unanimous decision of ‘not guilty’.
i don’t have experience with the court system. and i don’t watch court room based tv dramas. so i was really a blank slate to all this.
i was taken aback at the very clear inherent bias that some jurors displayed, and all the while realizing they didn’t think of themselves as biased. but i was also taken aback by how focusing on the process, the rules, and the facts quickly squashed that line of reasoning.
this has buoyed me a bit, in light of the actions of the aclu over the muslim ban. but it also feels so fragile. so very fragile.
Even under the best circumstances, American juries are very heavily skewed against black people and other people of color.
Very nicely done, @notentirely. As a young black man who has had some close calls with the criminal “justice” system, I want to say thank you for putting your white privilege to good use.
The perfect execution of civic duty. Thank you, op, for being an excellent citizen.
The most common cause of female infertility – polycystic ovary syndrome – may be caused by a hormonal imbalance before birth. The finding has led to a cure in mice, and a drug trial is set to begin in women later this year.
Polycystic ovary syndrome affects up to one in five women worldwide, three-quarters of whom struggle to fall pregnant. The condition is typically characterised by high levels of testosterone, ovarian cysts, irregular menstrual cycles, and problems regulating sugar, but the causes have long been a mystery. “It’s by far the most common hormonal condition affecting women of reproductive age but it hasn’t received a lot of attention,” says Robert Norman at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
Just going to point out that as much as this excerpt here describes it as affecting “fertility” and oh woe, they can’t get pregnant as easy…uh, it’s also something that can make them fucking miserable and POTENTIALLY KILL THEM
Here’s the thing: ovaries normally do produce cysts. They’re supposed to! To an extent. They produce like, a tiny number, maybe one, each menstrual cycle, because the egg that is ready to be hypothetically fertilized, is PUSHED OUT to the fallopian tube, by an actual cyst.
This is the normal process, in the “4 out of 5″ women who don’t have PCOS.
In PCOS, though, my understanding is that the cyst production does not happen in this nice, orderly fashion, only happening approximately every few weeks; instead, it goes haywire and happens all over the place and WAY too much (hence “polycystic”).
Left unchecked, this can cause the organ to become damaged, it can cause it to swell and even press on other things in the abdomen and put OTHER parts of the body at risk, can cause all sorts of awful things.
IIRC ( @tekka-wekka I think you know more about this than I do, by all means please correct me if I’m wrong about any of it?) it tends to cause a lot of pain or heavy bleeding during many people’s menstrual cycles and, as noted, causes them to be more irregular – so it’s basically a disability, one that can be LIFE-THREATENING.
And guess what the main treatment for PCOS is, to keep the cysts in line and regulate the menstrual cycle properly?
Hormone-regulating pills.
You know, the ones normally labeled “birth control”.
This was what Sandra Fluke was testifying about a few years back, during health care debates, by the way. She had a friend who had EXACTLY this condition, and the fact that Georgetown’s student health coverage would NOT cover her “birth control” medication meant that she went without it for three months…and her ovaries, filled with cysts, enlarged so much that she required EMERGENCY SURGERY (to remove them entirely, IIRC).
Which is why Sandra Fluke was FIRMLY arguing for increased access to “birth control” medications; because leaving aside questions of autonomy, it’s an actual literal life-or-death health necessity for many people! Such as those with PCOS in specific!
But I digress.
My point is: this is a condition that goes beyond “fertility” issues; it requires a LOT of people to go on pretty much (IIRC) permanent hormonal regulation to carefully regulate their menstrual cycles in order to NOT DIE. Because, left untreated, it can, in fact, literally pose that risk. (And depending on the specific hormonal birth control in question – this may have the trade off of things like a higher stroke risk, so that’s…that’s a thing, too, oops)
So uh. This?
This is REALLY good news.
But not JUST for folks with PCOS who want to have biological children; it’s literally just good news in general, because this could be LIFE-SAVING research??
I just wanted to point that out because, like, I don’t think a lot of people are aware of PCOS and how it can potentially KILL YOU, and there’s a lot of misconceptions about ovarian/uterine health in general, and like… and I think some folks might scroll past this thinking it’s mostly about “fertility”?
When it’s actually a condition that impacts WAY more than that, and chances are very very good you actually know someone with this condition, whether you realize it or not.
Reblogging for the additional info. Most of the folks I know with this don’t give a shit about fertility. They just want to stop needing S5+ painkillers to function at least 25% of the time.
The thing about this is, if IVF drugs were an effective treatment for PCOS, there wouldn’t be so many women with PCOS who go through multiple rounds of IVF.
IT’S NOT CAUSED BY BEING FAT.
If there’s one thing I want people to take away from this article, it’s that PCOS IS NOT CAUSED BY BEING FAT.
(Or at the very least, not caused by the person who has it being fat. DFK how maternal weight is involved, but since PCOS is hereditary, more likely PCOS also isn’t caused by your mom being fat.)
The connection between weight and PCOS is that because fat tissue has a role in hormone production, being fat can exacerbate symptoms somewhat. However, PCOS also causes weight gain, so telling people with PCOS to lose weight is useless advice. It just so happens that people with less fatty tissue who have PCOS, have slightly more manageable symptoms.
And peopel took this to mean that fat causes PCOS, because people hate anyone who weighs more than like 90lbs.
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