Criminalisation of drug use results in the mass incarceration of people who use drugs. Illicit drug offences represent the second most common offence for custodial sentences in Australia.

There is no other story that incites more hate then a story about a transgender person participating in sport, with the exception of stories relating to transgender bathroom use or in President Trumps World his hate for transgender people serving in the military.
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Let’s remove the words transgender, Laurel, Hannah or Mack Beggs out of the conversation for a minute and let’s look at some of the medical consequences that occur when an XY male suffers low levels of testosterone.
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When a man has low testosterone, or hypogonadism, he may experience:
-Reduced sex drive
-Erectile dysfunction
-Low sperm count
-Enlarged or swollen breast tissue
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Over time, these symptoms may develop in the following ways:
-Loss of body hair
-Loss of muscle bulk
-Loss of strength
-Increased body fat
Chronic, or ongoing, low testosterone may lead to osteoporosis, mood swings, reduced energy, and testicular shrinkage.
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None of these medical consequences are performance enhancing. No castrated XY male has ever broken a world record or even competed at the elite level of sports.
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During my career as a prison boss if I could of implemented a safe injecting room I could have saved many lives & minimised the spreading of communicable diseases such as Hepatitis C virus (HCV) where the prevalence in NSW prisons is 20-30 times higher than in the community.

Criminalisation of drug use results in the mass incarceration of people who use drugs. Illicit drug offences represent the second most common offence for custodial sentences in Australia.

There are currently no needle and syringe programs (NSPs)operating in any Australian prisons. This is despite a growing body of international research clearly demonstrating that NSPs have been shown to be safe, beneficial and cost-effective within a variety of prison settings.

Australia cannot afford to continue to avoid the serious implications of not implementing prison-based NSPs, both to protect prisoners’ health and human rights, and to limit the spread of BBVs as individuals are released back into the community.

The vast majority of injecting episodes inside prisons occur with shared injecting equipment – a practice identified to be one of the most effective ways to transmit HIV and HCV.12. I have found needles that have been used by multiple inmates for months on end.

I jumped in my time-machine & landed in the middle of the 2035 World Athletics Championships in Paris.

It was 800 metres finals day, but to my surprise, there were 5 races scheduled, not two.
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On inquiring, I learnt there had been a shake-up: the "men's" and "women's" classifications were no more; instead the classification system changed to one that was based on functional ability.
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Rather than labelling athletes as male or female , they were placed in a racing category based on the movements their body can perform, related to the sport they compete in.

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Finding the balance between sex, gender, human rights,  & the sciences and fairness in sport is without a doubt sports greatest challenge.

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There are many factors that significantly affect the competitive edge in sport such as nutrition, age, height, weight, coaching & training facilities, & other genetic and biological variations like oxygen-carrying capacity.
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Female athletes are still subjected to the equivalent of a sex test, based on whether they appear feminine.

Dutee Chand in her successful appeal against the validity of the IAAF’s hyperandrogegism regulations, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) originally began investigating her after complaints that she “ran like a

Chand was banned in 2014 after the @WorldAthletics decided that her androgen (testosterone) levels were above the 10 nmol/L permitted by the IAAF’s hyperandrogegism regulations, resulting in her missing the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Androgens, including testosterone, are naturally produced in significant – but varying – levels by both men and women.

Endocrine profiles in 693 elite athletes in the post-competition setting’, found that 16.5% of the ‘male’ athletes had low testosterone levels, and 13.7% of the ‘females’ had high testosterone levels, ‘with complete overlap between the

There's been a lot of talk about the missionary killed by the natives of North Sentinel Island. They're probably so aggressive because of this weirdo, Maurice Vidal Portman. So here's a big thread about this creep and some facts from my decade-long obsession with the island.

The Sentinelese are often described as “uncontacted,” but this not strictly true. They had a very significant contact in 1880 with Commander Portman.

Portman, the black sheep third son of some minor noble, was assigned by the English Royal Navy to administer and pacify the Andaman Islands, a job he pursued from 1880-1900 with the full measure of his own perversity.

Portman was erotically obsessed with the Andamanese, and he indulged his passion for photography by kidnapping members of various tribes and posing them in mock-Greek homoerotic compositions.

During his 20 years in a sexualized heart of darkness, Portman measured and cataloged every inch of his prisoner’s bodies, with an obsessive focus on genitals.

1/OK, I should really write another thread about university-centric regional development, because I think people often make some (very understandable) mistakes when thinking about this issue.

2/The biggest myth, I think, is that universities help regions by educating locals as undergraduates.

Skeptics of universities say: "But most of the people who graduate end up leaving."

3/In fact, most of what a university does for a regional economy is NOT about educating local kids.

Educating local kids is good for the nation, but doesn't help a region much.

The way a university helps a region is through

4/Undergraduates usually leave town after graduation.

But university RESEARCH pulls in OTHER smart people from other regions, and they stay there.

Here's a paper showing that this is the main way universities increase a region's human capital:

5/Research also pulls in business investment.

Companies want to partner with university labs, so they can commercialize the technologies the labs produce. So they invest in the labs, and sometimes they even put their offices in the town.

When I was 25, I worked as a legislative assistant in the Missouri General Assembly.

It was a dream job, honestly.

But that dream dissipated the day the #MoLeg decided to name Rush Limbaugh as an “honorable Missourian” and place his bust in the “Hall of Famous Missourians.”

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The Hall of Famous Missourians sits in the Missouri State Capitol.

There are busts of Mark Twain, Dred Scott, Josephine Baker, Harry Truman and other legends of history.

The day I learned Rush Limbaugh would join their ranks, I thought it was a joke.

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We received phone calls from constituents appalled that Missouri would honor a man who had become infamous that year for calling a college student a “slut.”

And who just that week had continued spreading the racist birtherism lie about our then-President, Barack Obama.

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What I learned that day is that it wasn’t *despite* his racism, but because of it that he received this award.

It’s because he created a universe where it was permissible to lynch with language America’s first black President.

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Several State Representatives and their staffers intended to protest the vote and the selection.

By the time we made it to the doors of the House Floor, we weren’t allowed in. It was Republicans only. The doors were locked and secured by the Highway Patrol.

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