I would lay where you lay, when our brief time is done

Insurance agencies use M markers to deny coverage for pregnancy related healthcare. Doctors offices hang up on pregnant people trying to schedule pre- and post-natal appointments for themselves because their voices or their names aren’t feminine enough. And if they manage to make the appointment, they can get harassed out of the waiting rooms or face medical malpractice behind closed doors.

Charities and benefits made for pregnant or new mothers don’t accept pregnant/new fathers or non-gendered parents. The WIC fund is called women, infants, and children.

If we degender pregnancy and childbirth (and periods while we’re at it) we open up support for every trans and intersex person who needs it. We normalize pregnant people of other genders and sexes, leaving less room for harassment and malpractice and more accountability for those who decide to be assholes anyway.

Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.

"How to reason with a War CRiminal"

Some points of interest:

Corporate profits are soaring. After taxes, they now take 12.3 percent of national output, far above their postwar average of 7.3 percent.

Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019, Ip noted. Corporate profits over the same period have risen 50 percent.

The Economic Policy Institute calculates that since 1979 the productivity of American workers has grown 90 percent while the pay of the typical worker has grown 33 percent. Had wages tracked output, the average worker would earn $16.40 more an hour today.

The profits are concentrated among the largest corporations. Earnings at the 500 biggest US firms rose 28 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2021, and their profit margins reached 14.8 percent. The seven technology giants known as the “Magnificent 7”—Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla—grew their profits 63 percent.