Today was a tough one. Little baby girl comes in for “recurrent UTIs”. Parent is frustrated because she’s been to ER multiple times this year when these symptoms started where she’s given antibiotics & sent home. But symptoms always come back - belly pain, pain in urination,…
When writing about flooding in Pakistan can I please still ask that you think carefully about the narrative you are producing on this disaster. Here are my two cents on what we should avoid, and not. Part 2 🧵
That thread asking people how they would get out of homelessness if they only had $20 is literally people saying "I would simply just'" and then saying something that is literally impossible, unavailable, or has been made illegal by local city governments.
If you urgently need a meal, there's no emergency number to call. But if you steal food, there's a 24 hour response so you can be punished for it (it's not a crime prevented by force, just by food). How we design our emergency responses reflects our values but also inertia.
it's fine to ask questions about short- and long-term strategy, tactics, concerns about who might get overlooked, etc. but it's very absurd we hold the people demanding change to a far higher standard than we have ever held our actual systems, which are cobbled together messes
any time you critique an oppressive system, people come to you demanding a perfectly articulated step-by-step plan for creating a flawless alternative system, today. as if the system we are currently locked inside of were meticulously designed from the top down. it wasn't.
I deliberately tell my students not to be devil's advocates in discussions because it normalizes disingenuous argument and leads into gaslighting. There's no point in arguing from the perspective of evil. Nothing good comes from that.