A bit of this a bit of that...

sleep apnea is more common in people who are fat.

society decided for some reason that this meant that being fat causes sleep apnea. its often difficult to get referrals for sleep apnea treatment if you are fat, because some PCPs will tell you try losing weight first.

turns out!! having untreated sleep apnea causes weight gain in a not-insignificant number of people. it also makes it fucking impossible for many people to lose weight.

my husband worked out the same amount before he got a cpap as he does now. there have been no major diet changes either. yet he has been losing weight -- and gaining muscle tone -- consistently since he started using a cpap in january.

also, his blood pressure -- which was high, which docs blamed on his weight/diet -- went down significantly within one month of starting cpap treatment, before his weight changed significantly.

ANYWAYS. this is getting long. two final thoughts.

- I Want To Strangle Medical Fatphobia With My Bare Fucking Hands

k e n o b i

Barnaby Joyce will not be a One Nation MP by the next election. David Farley will likely quit or be expelled by the end of this year.

What's missing from all this media obsession with how much One Nation is rising in the polls because of all the oxygen and hype the media is giving to it is the issue of longevity and stability. One Nation has never been stable. Barely any of its members maintain party allegiance after a year in office. Why aren't journalists bringing that up?

One Nation is not a viable alternative. It's the gutter where those too dysfunctional to be part of real political parties go to see if they can whip up enough racist scaremongering to keep their paycheck at the next election.

This is not metaphorical. I mean actual, literal pieces of paper/plastic/metal/whatever explicitly erected to inform the public.

“How did you know this was the right trail?” I read the sign.

“Wow, how did you know what that flower is?” There’s a SIGN.

“How did you know we needed to use the side door?” THERE IS A SIGN POSTED ON THE FRONT DOOR.

Just…why are we having such different experiences of the world? People can read. I KNOW they can read. There’s nothing wrong with their vision.

Just. READ. THE. GOD. DAMN. SIGN.

This also applies to:

Syllabi

This teacher was well loved but very strict, being questioned by her was always a little intimidating. I didn’t know why she was asking.

She pressed to ask if he spoke it with me and I laughed nervously and said no I asked him not to speak it because he couldn’t even conjugate verbs.

Apparently my accent was so good that she assumed I’d had more than one year of practice. The problem was my vocabulary. Ironically I needed her to translate the word for accent as I was unfamiliar with it. I was a decent student but some words tripped me up.

One day she conducted an oral exam and asked us to talk about the hospital. We could say whatever we wanted. In the middle of my nervous little monologue about how we go to the hospital when we are sick and the doctors and nurses help us she suddenly burst out laughing.

I had never seen her laugh before, at least not more than a sensible chuckle. But here she was, bent over her stomach cracking up leaving me baffled as to how talking about the nurses could possibly have inspired this extreme hilarity.

The word I was trying to use for nurse was “Pfleger” but I’d said “Fluger”. (Possibly fliegen? It’s been a long time) What I said was close to fly, and the teacher was imagining flying nurses drifting along the hospital wing.

As I got to the end I saw “berg” and my brain caught up a little and prompted that that means “mountain” in German. My eyes then flicked back to the first part and I started giggling.

I looked at the woman and asked, “Does your name mean ‘Cheese Mountain?’”

Her eyebrows shot up and she asked, “You speak German?”

“Not very well, but I still have basic vocabulary.”

“It does mean Cheese Mountain,” she told me with delight.

“I love that so much. That’s the best name ever.”