Danger! Danger!

Vini Jr my beloved

Doctors are to black women what police officers are to black men. That may seem controversial but I believe it to be true and I speak from personal experience.

If you've seen this TikTok you know that a 2016 study showed that 50% of medical students and residents thought that black people couldn't feel pain the same as white people.

And we learned from this video that because of a 1999 study, to this day, there's a black correction factor for the creatinin levels in black people's kidneys, meaning we're less likely to recieve a kidney transplant if needed.

So if you go to a doctor, feel you aren't getting proper treatment or they refuse the treatment you've requested, say to them the following:

If you weren’t already going to spread this advice because black women are at risk, then spread it because it’s applicable to everyone else as well, including you reading this.

New research used an AI (note that this is a good use of AI to analyze data for research, not a LLM) to analyze over 45,000 recorded observations of coral reefs with the goal of finding locations where reefs were more likely to survive higher ocean temperatures into the future. Based on over 40 criteria, the AI model predicted at least 64,000 square miles of reef would be able to survive rising ocean temperatures into 2050 and beyond. That's about the size of Wisconsin.

Corals in these "coral refuges" had some combination of a faster rate of recovery, more heat-resistant species, and better protection from heat-related damage.

The study authors hope that their research can help guide more efficient allocation of limited coral conservation resources.

Although coral reefs face immense threat from climate change, our knowledge of coral conservation has increased by leaps and bounds in the last 20 years. Only two decades ago we couldn't breed corals in human care, now we have mobile coral labs that can breed thousands of coral in just a week. We can restore reefs faster and more successfully, and there are scientists working on breeding more heat-resistant coral lineages.

“They’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”

I see this reaction a lot, and I gotta say, it always makes me a little sad. Whenever the conversation of exploitation of labor comes up, inevitably someone finds themselves struggling with the guilt of “It is so important to me not to contribute to exploitation but I cannot do this thing myself and need someone else to do it for me, so how do I even approach that?”

Exploitation isn’t in the hiring of a service worker. Exploitation is in the respect you show them for their ability to perform the service you need from them.

I have been on a cleaning service staff before, and also been someone who hired a cleaning service, and I can tell you for sure that a lot of cleaning crews (especially worker owned ones) absolutely LOVE their clients and are genuinely happy to be able to make their lives better. The clients they don’t like? Those are the ones who disrespect the workers.

When I was involved with a cleaning service, we had everything from little old ladies living alone to McMasions with five cars as clients, and I can assure you that whenever there was someone who clearly hired us because they were overwhelmed or unable to keep their space clean, those were the households where you put a little more elbow grease in and did a deep clean even when it wasn’t paid for, because you could see how much these people were trying and struggling, and they were always so kind and generous and often embarrassed when talking to you about the job.

I only hired a service a couple if times in my life, but whenever I did, I worked with the same people as often as I could, tipped as well as I could afford, and tried to be the kind of client I would want to have, and that’s how I often ended up with my baseboards cleaned too, or my fridge scrubbed and organized or a restorative clean done in a high use room even when that wasn’t what I had scheduled or paid for.

I’ve heard the same thing from all manner of service workers over the years. Many of us like our jobs! We enjoy the work. It’s the customers that can do a number on you.