space for serious stuff

As if Joanne couldn't get any shittier, she misgendered and insulted a woman who called for support, all because the woman had PCOS/PMOS and "didn't sound feminine enough."

Fuck her.

I might translate this article later today. This one was the most complete one, even in Italian news it's not talked about that much.

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

(Read from left to right.)

Wtf is happening.

If you are getting gender affirming surgery, especially if it’s your first major surgery, PLEASE be aware that you can become SEVERELY depressed afterwards ESPECIALLY if you have a history of depression or suicidal ideation.

Post op depression is a natural reaction to the crazy mix of hormones your body goes through after major surgery as well as the stress and anxiety of recovery. Think of it like an adrenaline crash, but dragged out longer.

For me it kicked in about 6 weeks after top surgery and the worst of it lasted until about 10 weeks post op. EVERYTHING felt IMPOSSIBLE. None of the skills I’d been practicing worked. I thought everything was going to be bad forever. I didn’t attempt, but I was in the hospital. If it wasn’t for my support system I probably would have attempted.

This is not regret, but it can feel like it. I remain happy about my results to this day (going on six years later).

This is not you failing to maintain your mental health, but it can make you feel like a failure.

Things are not hopeless, but through the haze of this depression they can feel hopeless.

It can be terrifyingly sudden or it can sneak up on you. I didn’t even realize what was going on until after the depression finally passed and my mental health went back to normal.

I am writing this post because nobody told me about this before my top surgery. I was caught completely off guard. For my subsequent surgeries being aware has made all the difference. Being able to treat those symptoms as an expected and normal part of the healing journey has made them far easier to deal with. Because even when my emotions go to dark places I *know* they will pass. I have been able to tell the bad thoughts to take a bad seat and focus on healing.

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

This year’s is different. They are now federal REQUIREMENTS, which means there’s no flexibility. As was said previously, the 400 pages are not singularly devoted to being absolute shitheads to trans people. Theres a lot of stuff in there, some of which is the standard dry boring grants stuff, some of which is the horrible ideological warfare outlined above.

This document is issued by the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently lead by fucking Russell Vought, the principal architect of Project 2025. This is how they’re going to implement all the horrible shit in there that wasn’t covered by Executive Order. Russell Vought is actively coming for my job, my marriage, and my kid, and most of my friends lost their jobs last year because of him. He is the fucking arch villain behind the heinous shit the current regime is doing.

My first conversation about PCOS with my new endocrine/OBGYN was about weight management and how that could improve my fertility when I eventually wanted kids. It wasn't asked what my goals were for my health or if I wanted kids, just assumed.

I was a hormonal, depressed mess. I hated my body. My body dysmorphia was so bad that I cloistered myself away from so much. I wore hoodies and jeans in the 90°F, 80% humidity summers. This was considered fine. I was given metformin and birth control pills and told this was all that could be done. That PCOS wouldn't affect my life until I wanted to be pregnant. I wasn't asked if I wanted to be pregnant, just assumed.

I don't know how many PCOS groups I joined on my early 20s hoping to find community and commonality for body dysmorphia and symptom management, only to be bombarded with fertility treatments and tips and 'inspirational conception' anecdotes. They never asked if I was attempting to conceive, just assumed.

So I stopped taking my medication. My hormone levels had normalized, and I knew I didn't want kids, so what difference did it make?

No one ever explained to me that untreated PCOS often becomes diabetes. No one ever explained to me that PCOS causes hair loss and that the only thing that might slow that down is TAKING YOUR FUCKING MEDS.

So now I'm 48 years old with VERY thin hair and type II diabetes that is nearly impossible to get under control thanks to other chronic illnesses that I have.

Uber is a fucking shell game of a company designed to leech investor capital and output bootleg cabs.

Nvidia posted a profit in 2023 of $4.37 billion. This is like someone stealing less than a penny from me.

And they lock this kid in a prison hospital for LIFE?

He was on bail after attacking Nvidia and BT/EE, having demanded $4m as a ransom, and was under police protection when he hacked Revolut (a banking app), Uber, and Rockstar.

Rockstar didn't claim he'd done $10m in damages - that was across all of his victims. Rockstar claimed that he'd done $5m in damages. Revolut stated that they had suffered $3m in damages (and that he had gained 5,000 people's personal information)

He was institutionalised because (if you read literally the paragraph after OP cuts off their screenshot) "the court heard that Kurtaj had been violent while in custody with dozens of reports of injury or property damage."

he breached his bail conditions then violently attacked people while in custody. he was found guilty of 12 offences - 3 counts of blackmail, 2 counts of fraud, and six charges under the computer misuse act.

he was originally exposed, btw, during a gang dispute with his fellow members, where they revealed he had gained $14m in bitcoin through his ransoms. so he was actually convicted for $4m less than he had earnt through his crimes.

notably, he was convicted alongside a 17 year old autistic accomplice, who was sentenced to 18 months' supervision while undergoing rehabilitation. said 17 year old had also been using his skills to stalk two young women. if rockstar was "conspiring" to lock kurtaj up, why didn't they do the same with the 17 year old who was equally described as a key player in the gang and had additional offences to boot?

well, arion kurtaj had previously been attending a special needs school for autistic students. here in the uk, that means that he has very severe needs as an autistic student (speaking from experience as an autistic person with an autistic sibling, both diagnosed young). the doctors were probably right in their decision that he was unfit to stand trial on basis of being autistic. and if he stops wanting to hack people, he can walk at any time.

and to be clear - rockstar are scum for their union-busting practices. don't buy gta 6. but this narrative is wildly inaccurate. why is it rockstar conspiring with the uk govt, and not the five other tech companies that he also attacked during the same spree? like, if we're going full conspiracy theory, then why single out a video game developer that is significantly less wealthy than uber and nvidia? i know that his attack on them was the most well-publicised, but it doesn't exactly come across as being well-informed on his case.