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- #3: Flu, trans exodus, and Musk vs nukes
#3: Flu, trans exodus, and Musk vs nukes
After a mild hiatus, a roundup of my recent work!
Io Dodds
July 11, 2025
Protesters parade outside Palantir's office in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley, on Thursday June 26, 2025 (Io Dodds for The Independent)
Oops. When I first launched this newsletter I said I wanted to make it as simple as possible, creating the absolute minimum possible barriers between my ADHD-ass brain and regular publication. Sometimes, I said, it would just be a bunch of links to my recent work.
Sooooooooooooooooooooooo about that…
Eh, fuck it. It’s a process! I’m learning, you’re learning, we’re all learning. One and a third months isn’t that long. And right now I’ve got a terrible flu that’s had me laid up in bed all week hallucinating that my bod is a vast field of orbital debris and cavernous derelict space stations that my consciousness must navigate by the narrow beam of a flashlight and the thin jets of a NSA MMU (yeah, I watched Gravity). What better conditions to get back on the horse?
Without further ado, the headlines:
These days every trans gathering is haunted by the same topic of conversation. Are you getting out? Where might you go? How are your plans coming? Friends and family send us worried emails and messages warning us not to wait too long, saying they’ll help any way they can. We plan, and we worry, and we try to get ready to say goodbye in a hurry to the people we love.
Last month, the US Supreme Court ruled in US v Skrmetti that states — in this case, Tennessee — can indeed ban transition healthcare for under-18s without violating their constitutional rights. I spoke to 42-year-old Tennessee realtor Stacy Davis, who has a trans eight-year-old, about why she and her family are intent on staying in Nashville.
Having dissected the reverse question last month, I take an inventory of Musk’s options in his battle against the President. Granted, Trump has the nukes; but Musk still has cards to play — from stranded astronauts to primary challenges.
One sunny day in late June, I hopped on the Caltrain down to Palo Alto where about 130 and 200 people were protesting against the data company Palantir’s work with ICE and the IDF. For me it was a fairly uneventful break from the home office, but in New York City things got spicy, with six demonstrators arrested by the NYPD.
In a shabby end to an unedifying spectacle, the University of Pennsylvania has cave to Trump administration pressure and rescinded the records of a single transgender woman who happened to win some trophies — despite scant evidence that she had any unfair advantage. Note that this only applies to Thomas’s Penn-specific records, not her NCAA titles.