This is ruining me I can't breathe

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Uwe Henneken - Portal, 2023

Fun fatphobia fact of the day:

CMS/HCC is a way for insurance companies to estimate how much money a patient will cost to insure, based on the major problems they have.

This is my list of diagnoses.

I blacked out one of them because it is my intersex condition and has to do with my assigned gender, which I don't want to be associated with my online presence. Also, there are a few repeats because doctors will put in their own phrasing, so sometimes when I switch doctors, I get re-diagnosed with the same thing, with slightly different wording. It's also missing a few diagnoses i got as a kid, namely my autism and a comprehensive list of the specific learning disorders I have, because I didn't think they were relevant to a general practitioner and i didn't want them on my record for safety reasons. Anyways, you'll notice that there are several of them that have the aforementioned CMS/HCC label. Those are schizoaffective disorder, major depression (which is part of my sza,) and two counts of "morbid obesity". My adhd, which I need to take two different medications daily to treat sufficiently enough to function, is not labeled as a major disorder, but my size is. Twice!

You'll notice that nowhere on this list is any diagnosis that is supposedly related to my fatness. That is because, metabolically speaking, my health is perfect. My lipids, a1c, blood pressure, pulse, and o2 are all in the excellent range. I am not on any kind of medications for any of these, either. The fact that I have more body tissue than their ideal, which has no bearing on my actual health, is considered more important to address than my neurodevelopmental disorder that requires two expensive medications to treat. They think that I am more of a risk for them because of an imagined bogeyman of a diagnosis ("morbid obesity", aka being fat) than something which actually has real life functional and financial consequences (my severe combined type adhd). Or, for that matter, my ocd, which I needed intensive outpatient therapy for; my transgender identity, which has cost them thousands of dollars in hormones and surgery; my asthma, which requires two medications to treat; and my gerd, which requires one.

I'm not advocating for medical insurance companies to make it harder for people with these diagnoses to get treatment. I'm just pointing out that the medical system sees me as a drain on their resources specifically because of my weight rather than the diagnoses that actually cost them money (albeit with one exception). They think my adipose tissue, which is not causing me any health problems, is more important to note than most of my legitimate health problems.

That is medical fatphobia.

I wanted to look this up to make sure I understood this before reblogging, and the article I read made this even more damning.

You can read the article here.

I implore people to read the article since I don't have the emotional energy to dissect all of this into an entire essay. These are the few points I have the energy to make right now:

All of these conditions are either not proven to be caused by fatness, have weight gain as a resulting symptom of the condition, or are often caused by medical fatphobia (such as oppression resulting in developing mental illnesses or a fat person developing cancer because doctors refused to ever do any tests due to A) Being too disgusted and bigoted to touch a fat body and/or B) Blaming everything on weight for years and just prescribing weight loss, leading the cancer to become worse at it went untreated). But since many of these conditions are associated with fatness (not caused by it, as I explained above), the medical field loves to suddenly forget the vital research/science/medical fact of correlation does not equal causation. After all, medicalizing fatness is a huge moneymaker, which leads me to the next point I wanted to make.

These doctors intentionally go out of their way to medicalize fatness to make even more money. Also hilarious how the article says being 240 pounds is why the hypothetical "female" had a BMI (a proven bullshit health tool) of 44 despite BMI being decided using weight AND height. The article, these doctors, and the medical field care solely about making money off of fatness that even this example has fatphobic tunnel vision.

The last point I want to make (though so much can be said about all of this fatphobia) is how one of the listings of "ob*sity" on the pictured document is specifically labeled "morbid (severe) ob*sity due to excessive calories."

Unless the doctor that wrote that label had a detailed, hour by hour food log of everything the op has eaten for months, a log of every minute of exercise, and looked at every health condition the op has without fatphobic bias but actual medical expertise, there is no fucking way to know the op "eats too much."

Fat bodies are not grocery store receipts. You cannot look at a fat person and tell how much they eat, what they eat, when they eat, how they exercise, how much they exercise, what their health is, etc. There are fat people who starve and stay fat. Fatness is barely affected by food and exercise. 70% of weight variance is due to genetics, and the other 30% includes a plethora of other factors like disabilities and socioeconomic status. Research has made evident that long term weight loss no matter what method used is a feat as possible as climbing Mount Everest without a sherpa (aka not gonna fucking happen). There are fat people who go to the Olympics and exercise constantly while never not being fat. There are fat people who eat as much as any random thin person you know, who eat even better than whatever thin person you can think of, who are dealing with food insecurity and can barely even afford to eat, who have dieted their entire lives and are still fat because they will never not be fat. Just like how there are thin people who stay thin no matter what and how they eat, countless fat people are fat just because that's how their body is meant to exist. Their body fights to stay that way.

Assuming the op "eats too much" because they're fat is absolutely, positively, fucking horseshit. Everyone also needs different amounts of calories, the recommended 2000 calorie daily diet was intentionally lowered despite the research saying people need more calories than that, and calories are not a simple equation. "Calories in, calories out" doesn't fucking work. Bodies are more complicated than a mechanical machine with inputs and outputs. That label of "excessive calories" is a fucking disgusting, fatphobic, shitty joke, and I am appalled at the audacity required for that doctor to call themself a medical "professional" when their decisions are based on making assumptions using bigoted stereotypes that conveniently make the doctor more money.

Fuck the current state of the medical field and this entire fatphobic world.

-Mod Worthy

Adding to the bit about "morbid obesity due to excess calories", I actually complained to my doctor's office three times about it because my doctor has never, ever discussed my dietary habits with me. Ever. I said they either need to find a way to indicate weight without attributing it to excess calories, or remove it from my medical records. After my third complaint they finally removed it entirely. The fact that they conflate higher weight with "excess calories" is infuriating on its own, but especially in the context of care and insurance considerations.

I'm seriously proud of you for advocating for yourself against this oppression. That is incredibly hard, and we shouldn't have to be advocates for ourselves to keep us from being harmed by a system supposedly meant to help people. Your strength gives other fat people the strength to advocate for themselves too. We deserve actual healthcare.

-Mod Worthy

this is legitimately one of the most unsettling jokes they’ve ever made on the simpsons

stunned at the number of people overthinking it in the notes. there’s no deeper meaning you’re missing, it’s just a weird thing that becomes viscerally upsetting the more you imagine it. to me.

Literally the joke is that a mom tried to save money by making her own pepsi for her kids, and her homemade pepsi is gross.

they are like beautiful tropical birds to me

Literally..

@guooey ya

Ars Goetia Demons by Zhengyi Wang

Weevil appreciation

Noticed everyone gives love to moths, but not enough love to silly weevils

Weevils of all different textures, sizes and shapes!!! They’re awesome, silly, cute, and ughhhh yes!!

Ludovix fasciatus is one of only a handful of weevils that ever kill anything in their whole life because they lay their own eggs in the eggs of a semiaquatic grasshopper, like a parasitoid, and also they actually look like a weevil that makes you say “oh, that one’s gonna turn out to be the villain”

Was trying to find out more about #3 (apparently called a giraffe weevil), and came across this artsy one:

(Interestingly-titled) source

one of the funniest images uploaded in the last 10 years

Yesterday I almost cried because my baby cousin ran up to my grandmother and was like. “Ha! Buhbuh ba ha.” And she said okay you want to show me something? And he led her over to the garden patch and crouched down and pointed at rocks and plants and was like. “Ah. Habah ba ah” as she listened attentively.

And I was like that happened 1,000 years ago. Probably 10,000 years ago. Maybe 100,000. The youngest human in a group went to the oldest one and said to the best of their ability “come see.” And the adult went.

this is such a beautiful post it doesn't need my dumb addition, but i can't fit this in the tags. at the archaeological site Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic there are a bunch of really really fascinating finds and I'm only going to tell you about one tiny detail of one of the most interesting sites in the world.

at this settlement 20-30,000 years ago there lived a person who appears to have been a sort of sorcerer-grandmother-ceramics artist and her workshop was preserved very well in the sedimentary layers. her hut where she had her kilns was full of little sculptures of animals and people that seem to have been made to explode in the kiln on purpose, we're not sure why but nevermind. the relevant detail is that when you sculpt something with your hands and then fire it, your fingerprints can be preserved in the surface of the clay forever, so we have fingerprints of ancient ceramics artists that have survived for tens of thousands of years. and one of the major artifacts from Dolni Vestonice has a fingerprint on it that is so small it could only have belonged to a child

so this shaman-grandmother-sculptor, who was buried with her pet fox by the way, had children running through her workshop and touching everything she made while she was at her mysterious work of creating the world's oldest ceramics, none of which appear to be bowls, bottles, pots, or any "useful" items at all, but rather a collection of animal and human and sometimes anthropomorphic figures, some of which appear to be self portraits. exactly the same as sandersstudios' grandmother being led to the garden by an excited baby. we've all been the same for 30,000 years.

I’d bet money that the exploding sculptures were made to entertain the kids

The wildfires in Maui aren't natural disasters, they are colonial disasters and a direct result of both the fossil fuel industry and the military industrial complex.

Realtors preying on property in Lahaina- while Kānaka Maoli who resided there for generations are now houseless- is a result of greed and disaster capitalism.

Citizen journalists on the ground are reporting on the devastating cost these fires have on their communities and the untold stories in the media about the tourists still actively extracting land and from already limited resources.

pics by slowfactory on ig

HAPA Hawaii support link

Stop Maui land grabs petition

Theres a lot of notes but more ppl need to sign the petition

jenniferbin 

Location: The Entrance of Switzerland's Castelgrande

— Yumi Tomsha

as a huge lover of birds, 90% of the concern against wind turbines being used for energy is literally just pro fossil fuel propaganda. birds ARE at a risk however there is a lot of strategies even as simple as painting one of the blades that reduces a lot of accidental deaths. additionally renewable energy sources will do more in favor of the environment that would positively impact birds (and all of us). one study found over one million bird deaths from wind turbines. while that is a shockingly high number and we should work to drastically shrink it, at least 1.3 billion birds die to outdoor cats on a yearly basis. it was never about caring about birds

there was a study done in 2015 that shows an even greater possible yearly divide than the 2012 one

Article title is “Direct Mortality of Birds from Anthropogenic Causes,” authors are from the following institutions:

[flashing lights warning]

good news everybody! the entire video of Summer, from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, on an analog synthesizer

source

I started T 👍