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Danae and my therapist agree with me that I should avoid news for a while. With my new Bluetooth headphones, I thought I'd try listening to some podcasts while working. I started with 99% Invisible, about architecture, design, and people's interfaces with the built environment. Stuff that's really fascinating to me and I can get excited about!

Of the first two I listened to, one was about successes and ongoing failures of universal design and accessibility for the disabled, and the second was about the context of the rise of manufactured housing and the resultant precarity of residents' living situations. So exciting and uplifting, huh? *sighs*

Still, learning about groups fighting for things like occupant-owned trailer parks and the successes they've had makes me feel a little bit optimistic.

And the stories of disability activists in Berkely who poured concrete under the cover of darkness to make ramps for wheelchair riders are pretty badass. I want to shake their hands.

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The episode I'm listening to right now used audio from where I work, oddly enough. It was an actor playing a patient to whom a student doctor is giving a terminal cancer diagnosis as part of learning how to deliver bad news. Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross comes up too, which makes me think of a friend who is part of hosting death cafes to encourage people to talk about these things in ways that we often don't. Funny personal connections.

So the American Medical Association actually published ways for doctors to lie to patients who had cancer, to avoid telling them they were going to die. How fucked-up is that?

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The episode I'm listening to right now used audio from where I work, oddly enough. It was an actor playing a patient to whom a student doctor is giving a terminal cancer diagnosis as part of learning how to deliver bad news. Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross comes up too, which makes me think of my friend Sherry's work in hosting death cafes. Funny personal connections.

So the American Medical Association actually published ways for doctors to lie to patients who had cancer, to avoid telling them they were going to die. How fucked-up is that?

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What?! I just listend to a bit more after helping a couple of patrons. If a patient discovered the truth and reacted poorly to a fatal diagnosis? They recommended lobotomies. No shit. Aw, this person is having a hard time dealing with zir mortality? Who want to deal with that? Let's just lobotomize 'em. Jesus Christ.