New from me at TVO, on last week's FAO report on homelessness (spoiler: it's bleak)

Alberta has refused to exempt Indigenous people from the $100 fee for COVID vaccines. And though health advocates contend that amounts to a treaty violation, the federal government won't step in. pressprogress.ca/alberta-char...

No reason anybody can find for any inquiry into policing in Canada.

I drew a hooded warbler

The NDP says Nunavut MP Lori Idlout has crossed the floor to join the Liberals, pushing Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government closer to a majority.

LRP Roadhouse is amazing. Just A+ from everyone

I think @bvrlytweetmaker.bsky.social and I are in agreement there is NOT a bad scene in Roadhouse. Mijo

The House of Lords voted today to remove its last hereditary peers after more than 800 years:

“The gift of Andy and Fergie, which comes at too high a price, has been to bring the antiseptic of daylight to the culture of royal privilege,” Andrew O’Hagan writes in @lrb.co.uk and anyone ever names a baby “Andrew” again, this shrewd skewering may be why.

NEWS: The Trump administration is forcing transgender inmates to detransition by implementing a new policy that would withhold their medical treatment in a way that puts clinicians in conflict with ethics and patients in danger. www.advocate.com/politics/nat...

Scoop from @jonthompson.bsky.social today. Is Doug Ford planning to axe elected public school boards in Ontario? “These decisions are being made without our consultation and consent. For First Nations, sadly, this is the way the government works.” ricochet.media/indigenous/i... #onpoli

Anna is right. I’m fairly certain that home security systems have killed more women than they saved. Abusers are much more likely to use them to escalate violence than police are to intervene.

After revelations that companies like Ring have been selling home security footage to ICE, the most common defense of keeping a camera up seems to be, “But what if I’m stalked?” And as a violence researcher, I’m just here to state for the record that police do not care about your security footage.

The Carney government is also cutting prison librarians to save…$2.5m. This is now a theme with the federal budget - it’s not about cost savings, it’s about destroying access to knowledge and information. #Cdnhist

Trans leadership. Trans accountability. There is no other path towards safety for trans youth.

Every protest, every advocacy, needs to focus on this power imbalance. There is zero point detailing all the thousands of errors in this current evidence review when that feedback goes to the leaders who intentionally designed the process to distort the outcome.

Trans healthcare needs to be led by trans people, to be accountable to trans communities and trans youth. Folks who don't believe in the existence of a trans child cannot continue to hold the reins of healthcare policy and governance. This is where we start.

I don't know exactly what the solution is. But the solution lies in finding ways to challenge the power imbalance that enables this medical and scientific mis-practice. Not in tinkering with the details in their 1000 page report.

We can't combat an exercise in power & domination over trans youth by showing them the errors in their homework. The errors here are so obvious. They are intentional. They are almost showing off - how little pretense at 'evidence' is needed to subjugate trans youth.

The whole thing is not about healthcare evidence. It is a exercise in power over trans youth (and trans communities). They are demonstrating their power. And asserting their power to squash trans youth.

For anyone wondering whether to respond to the consultation. Don't bother. They are not interested in good healthcare. Not even interested in a semblance at good evidence-based healthcare.

We also hear that a similar 'study' was done on adult HRT. For adults it will be a bit harder to skew the evidence. Unless they break the adult population by age range, looking ONLY for studies on 18-25 year olds for example. No data distortion would be surprising at this point

Will this sham be sufficient evidence for a criminal ban on HRT in overseas or private practice? Sham evidence and zero evidence of harm was enough to criminalise blockers, so why wouldn't they do the same for under 18s HRT.

Trans under 18s are currently ONLY offered conversive psychoeducation and talk 'therapy' (plus vocal training after forced through a puberty they don't want). And now we look at where the NHS aims its sights next

Trans youth healthcare in the UK has always been the worst of the worst for medicalised mispractice of this kind. But this particular one is more egregious than most. On this flimsy sham they have banned under 18s HRT on the NHS.

Importantly throughout all the many studies that they excluded for one reason or another, there is also NO EVIDENCE of significant harm. You can bet your bottom dollar they would have been interested in ANY study that showed harm - those wouldn't have been deemed out of scope.

Through this method, and some other chicanery, smoke and mirrors, they were able to claim NO EVIDENCE for a healthcare that is well understood, safe, cheap, beneficial and hugely important. This claim of NO EVIDENCE is enough for a full ban.

It is also very well established that non-binary youth have to pretend to be binary in order to access hormones in many clinics, so the studies on binary youth will for sure include non-binary youth pretending to be binary.

For non-binary people they were even more tricky - looking for studies that focus ONLY on non-binary people. Of course these do not exist, because clinics divide people based on their hormone they are taking, not by their identity.

This method, meant that they could exclude nearly all the studies on under 18s. They also excluded every study of over 18s, even though the difference between a 17 year old on HRT and an 18 year old on HRT in terms of MEDICAL risk is not defined.

Worse than that though, they also excluded EVERY study with a mixed cohort. Some studies of HRT in under 18s looked at everyone on HRT, including some youth who had been on blockers first, and some who had gone straight to HRT. These were all excluded.

As mentioned, blockers first was for a long time a MANDATORY part of the medical pathway, INCLUDING in the NHS. They excluded every study looking at young people who took HRT, if they first had experience on blockers.

First of all they decided that a 16 & 17 year old taking HRT without prior time on blockers is COMPLETELY different from taking HRT without prior time on blockers. Then they decided to exclude from consideration every study that focused on young people who went first to blockers before HRT.

BUT the NHS came up with a clever trick to stop these 16 & 17 year olds from accessing (safe, beneficial, low risk, well evidenced) HRT. They looked at the evidence in a VERY specific way.

GUESS what? This isn't a problem. Blockers at 16 and 17, on their own and without HRT, are actually a terrible idea. They are not good healthcare. They cause menopause. 16 and 17 years olds shouldn't be put onto blockers with HRT.

16 and 17 years olds cannot access blockers at all on the NHS, through intentional government policy. They've not been able to access blockers for several years. Therefore, 16 & 17 year olds wanting to start HRT, will, in the main, not have first started blockers.

The vast majority of trans youth, in past clinical studies, had blockers first, and then HRT. This stepped path was mandatory in the UK. It was literally not possible to go straight to HRT under the age of 18.

Yesterday the NHS banned all under 18 prescriptions of HRT for trans young people. This ban was justified by 10 new studies that largely stated NO EVIDENCE for under 18s HRT exists. The study underpinning this played one particular trick. Let's briefly look at how the NHS rigged the game 1/5

Tomorrow there is a baby shower at work and while I am generally not thrilled by all the cis and straight coded milestones it seems to normal to celebrate in the work place, the agenda said there would be cake

One of the excluded systematic reviews is the York systematic reviews commissioned as part of the Cass Review itself. NHS England excluded from its evidence review a systematic review produced for the very process this evidence review is supposed to implement. It's a joke.

Come crash our couch on April 11 and get your Barger Couch T-Shirt 😂 🎟️ TICKETS: https://bit.ly/3NleQ5U

I think he looks like he's about to announce that the Bajoran workers have taken control of Ore Processing and have three minutes to surrender before neurozine gas is vented into the compartment.

cannot stress enough that "separate the art from the artist" was meant for private individuals reconciling the art they love with its flawed creators and not meant for the ceo of a company driving a dump truck of money up to a bigot's front porch www.theverge.com/podcast/8914...

Canadian govt officials dislike public access to info. Very simple.

holy shit

I would like Vic Rauter to narrate important moments in my life.

MATT DUNSTONE WITH A HUGE WIN FOR THE SHORT AND SAD WHITE BOY COMMUNITY

THE CURLING WAS VERY VERY GOOD.

Sat but the river that runs through town for a few minutes today. Since basically two feet of snow have melted in 3 days, the water is high and moving quickly. Some dipshit dad was letting his 5 year old play by the water and ice about 50 feet from the waterfall. WTF

I went for a walk. Why is it so hard to walk single file when someone is coming the other direction? Keep right? Keep your dog on a short, controlled leash??