Speaking of private equity, this conversation with a dentist is just awful.

welcometohellworld.com/i-know-some-re… One of the things I have often wondered about is how I went through my young life getting 2-3 cavities per trip to the dentist, even though I have dreams of teeth falling out, and floss and brush my teeth constantly…

I know someone who was planning to have a baby at a birth center. That birth center—which was profitable—got bought by a private equity group that happened to also own a number of hospitals nearby.

They closed the birth center.

https://twitter.com/DGlaucomflecken/status/1657023598899363843

It’s not like they twirled their mustaches and explained the reasoning, but closing the birth center where they also owned the nearby hospitals simply made sense. If they make it so that people can’t choose the less expensive option, they’re going to profit.

I want to clarify some of my off-hand remarks that I made yesterday about racism in the OTW because I think the point I want to make has diverged from the point that others have made. My experience has been that it is not possible to write rules that prevent racism when the people charged with enforcing those rules are themselves racist.

Shot

https://twitter.com/Hezbolsonaro/status/1669049745019645952

Chaser

https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1668631268073050115?s=20

I’m sure the Lithwick quotation is completely out of context, since I’ve heard her say this before, and she was talking about speaking out about her own sexual harassment at the hands of a federal judge.

Little chance that the rest of this isn’t just manufactured gibberish.

https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1669471521834954752

And Dahlia, if you’re reading this, please remember: We only spoke up because we were at a rare moment in time when women could, you know, do that, and in that exact moment, when it could actually do something you also spoke up.

So I have an APAP for sleep apnea and I have to say that ordering supplies for it is the most awful and obnoxious thing, assuming I want to order it through my insurance. Ordering supplies on my own: go to website, put in cart, pay $X, get supplies three days later.

Good advice if you just want to collect money, and not that much of it, rather than write books.

https://twitter.com/thebookseller/status/1669337219872464897

I do not know how to survive literary apocalypses (is that what we are in? Maybe excessive?) any other way except than to write books that people want to read.

Long thread about AO3.

TL;DR AO3 is incapable of meeting its legal obligations as a content provider on several fronts, and not treating volunteers ethically.

https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1669350441971494914

I think AO3 does a lot of good. I think it could do a hell of a lot more.

Because I can remember publishing more than ten years ago, I remember back when major publishers announced, in public record sessions that they did not publish books by Black or Latino authors.

This idea that, now that they do that, white people can’t get published, is goofy.

https://twitter.com/jgnoelle/status/1668992694629068800

Go look through the author list of just about every major publisher, and you’re going to see white people. Go look up new deals on Publisher’s Weekly and you’re going to see white people.

Oh hey, since we’re talking about food, someone in the comments dropped this piece on MSG.

news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/… This is a GREAT deep dive into the creation of the so-called “Chinese restaurant syndrome,” which started with a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine by “Robert Ho Man Kwok.”

Many people know the story about Graham/Kellogg being anti-sin and thinking that bland foods lead to decreases in masturbation, but the historical context is that this occurred in a period in time when colonialism had become highly effective at lowering the price of spices.

https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1668706555905155077

Approximately before then, give or take a hundred years, spice was the province of the wealthy and so highly spiced dishes were a sign of being rich.

But now the middle class—and even, sometimes, the poors could afford it.

I’m seeing some people say that he’s been arrested, and some people say that he’s been arraigned and charged but not arrested.

A lot of people play loosey-goosey with the meaning of the word “arrest” so does anyone who doesn’t know if he’s been actually arrested? That last sentence is not clear.

I meant: Does anyone who knows what “arrest” really means believe that he has been arrested?

To put in context how bizarre the Colorado weather is at the moment, Colorado Springs received about 1” more of rain in one single day than the 90th percentile rain received in the month of June.

https://twitter.com/WXAlexOBrien/status/1668414081404129282

The previous record for that day was 0.69 inches! This is so extremely *weird*.

Fuck around and find out.

Just remember that the step they’ll take from here isn’t “oh, we were wrong” but direct arguments for full elimination.

https://twitter.com/CaelanConrad/status/1666118432448716802

That’s why it’s a mistake to let them define who they get to exclude as a matter of their rights.

Really hoping that this evening’s entertainment* will drop by the time I get home.

*updates in Mata v. Avianca It’s here, it’s here!

courtlistener.com/docket/6310779…

I hate having to do this, but I do try to be very clear about what I do and do not know when I talk to people, and I explicitly did not say this, and when asked on this point, explicitly told the fact checkers when they asked, that I could not say this was true. This is what I actually told the Wired reporter.

It’s so fucking weird to see people say “why aren’t women allowed to have rights anymore” and then realized that they mean the right to exclude marginalized people and not, like, abortion or contraceptives, the things actually under attack. Anyway, this is your reminder that the people who claim that being a woman is a sacred category defined by bodily pain and the making of babies (ugh) walk hand-in-hand with the ones who think we should be forced to make more babies.

Okay so like… you all know that it can’t actually tell if something is logical, right?

It can only tell if something looks like logic it has encountered before.

And it can’t actually tell whether something’s well written.

https://twitter.com/Maria_Tureaud/status/1665711456220860420

This is also going to be bouncing things for reasons like “this book uses unfamiliar words” or “this very normal dialect is not proper.”

It does not feel things and cannot tell what words are good at making people feel things.

Awww who could have predicted that a chat not trained on the entire internet would *checks notes* tell someone contacting an eating disorder hotline to cut 500 calories from their diet *chat bot argh autocorrect

This is skating in the US.

https://twitter.com/AshWagner2010/status/1663886841299324936

Not just the celebration of this person, but the people defending him in the comments claiming that Ashley is doing this for “fame.”

Just catching up on the trash fire that is USFSA. They always want you to believe that they support survivors.

They don’t want to *do* anything to justify that belief, of course, but they absolutely want you to believe it so they don’t ever have to do anything. I hate so much how having spoken out wins you a ticket to keep having to speak out, at the continued expense of your healing, because nobody else is going to do it and if you don’t keep shouting, speaking in the first place was all for nothing.