DAME Magazine

23/09/2025

Entropy is a scientific concept that measures the probability of disorder.

When applied to the history of dictatorial regimes, it can often reveal that eventually autocrats overplay their hand to their detriment — and our relief.

“And now we must act in complete unity, strongly against anyone who is trying to shut down our strength, the unity of our nation!” The crowd of thousands gathered, against the backdrop of a grey sky in late December, to listen to their president’s declaration. Though they had heard all of this...

16/09/2025

Making America “healthy again” with wellness wearables could be seen as less about encouraging robust research and more about increased governmental control of individual bodies, with potentially devastating consequences.

It’s six a.m., and the birds are chirping as sun streams through the slatted blinds of your bedroom window. An alarm sounds. You roll to your side, reach to hit snooze — but not before you consider your performance in bed the night before. No, not that kind of performance. You’re thinking abou...

09/09/2025

The Double Standard Is Glaring

When Biden stumbled over words, the media called it a "national crisis." When Hillary Clinton had pneumonia for 3 days, it was a "major campaign moment" that could "upend the race."

But when Trump appears with bruised hands, swollen ankles, and increasingly rare public appearances? Crickets from the press.

Our latest media column exposes the blatant media hypocrisy around presidential health coverage. The same outlets that scrutinized every Biden slip are now dismissing concerns about Trump as "conspiracy theories."

Why the double standard? And what does this tell us about how power and accountability really work in America?

There is something physically wrong with President Donald Trump. He walks haltingly, speaks incoherently, forgets names and places and mixes up dates and statistics, making up numbers where none exist. Lately, Trump’s public appearances have become increasingly rare: Whereas now he is only availab...

28/08/2025

In addition to Covid prevention, medical researchers were this close to discovering ways mRNAs could treat various cancers, HIV, and sickle cell anemia.

But RFK Jr. and the Trump administration are doing everything they can to halt their efforts.

Read the rest at the link in comments.

26/08/2025

In the fun and s*xy second installation of Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s “lesbian B-movie" trilogy, the filmmakers subvert pulpy noir tropes to reveal the narrative convention's reliance on Big D Energy.

Toward the end of the Honey Don’t — the new film by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke — the title character Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley) is sitting at a stoplight in Bakersfield, California, in her battered, boat-size vintage turquoise Chevrolet convertible, when a woman (Lera Abova) pulls u...

21/08/2025

The Right's attempts to diminish the truth of the horrors of slavery in the U.S. and Trump's most recent attempts to control the Smithsonian make clear their authoritarian goals.

There is a fundamental choice between democratic truth-telling and fascist mythology in American politics.

Last week, the White House sent this "Letter to the Smithsonian," their latest missive addressed to one of our cultural institutions with their demands to whitewash history. It is likely not going to be Trump’s final word on trying to promote a shiny, happy, mythological vision of our past, in thi...

19/08/2025

Under increasing pressure to release the incriminating Epstein files, the Art of the Deal-maker believed he could wing an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, appease Putin, and earn himself a Nobel Prize.

But his reckless ignorance continues to put the entire world in peril.

Donald Trump shuffled restlessly on the tarmac at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson just outside Anchorage. He glanced back toward Air Force One, then to the Tupolev Tu-214 idling catty-corner to the presidential jet. His eyes shifted to an aide, then back to the Tupolev. Was Vladimir Putin really mak...

14/08/2025

Watching Lena Dunham's new series "Too Much" inspired the award-winning Canadian TV (e.g., Baroness von Sketch, Schitt's Creek) and fiction writer Zoe Whittall to offer her expert advice on how to write fat characters. Writers, have this bookmarked. It's really helpful.

Recently, I read a headline that appeared in the British online magazine, Stylist U.K., declaring: “Netflix’s Too Much: It’s refreshing to see a plus-size lead whose story has nothing to do with her weight.” The article praises the way Lena Dunham’s new rom-com, Too Much, starring comedian...

22/07/2025

Autocracy, Fascist, Kleptocracy. There are plenty of ways to describe this government.

However, there's one concept that fully encapsulates the policies of the White House and its servile GOP: necropolitics.

Necropolitics goes beyond a theoretical right to use violence against citizens. In effect, it dictates who has the right to live. It's as much about the freedom of the government to expose you to harm and death because it has no obligation to protect you.

From climate disaster response to public health to immigration, there is no shortage of ways our current government will tolerate and enable all kinds of death for people living in America.

Read the rest here.

Our nation is quickly being destroyed by “necropolitics,” which dictates who has the right to live — and who the state may kill or dispose of at its whim.

15/07/2025

The benefit of the doubt given to Trump and his administration, and the relentless skepticism directed at his critics, is glaring. He and his people are spoken of euphemistically: “racially charged rhetoric,” when he says racist things, or a “combative tone,” when he’s being verbally abusive.

Meanwhile, patently true statements — that he is violating federal law and engaging in discrimination against entire groups of Americans — are qualified and softened.

The more outlandish and dangerous his claims, the more determined it seems the press is to normalize the occupant of the Oval Office.

The more outlandish and dangerous his claims, the more determined is the press to normalize the increasingly delusional occupant of the Oval Office.

10/07/2025

Who Will Deliver Our Babies?

The recent GOP
budget bill cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid over 10 years. This isn't just policy—it's personal.
Here's why this matters for EVERY family:

🚼 Medicaid covers 40%+ of births nationwide
🏥 Hospitals lose thousands per delivery compared to private insurance
👶L&D units must stay staffed 24/7 but only get paid per birth
‼️1 in 25 obstetric units closed just between 2021-2022

The result? Over 1 in 3 US counties are now "maternity care deserts"—no obstetric care available at all.

As one expert noted: "It's shocking that more than half of all U.S. counties don't even have a hospital that provides any obstetric care at all."

We're becoming like rural sub-Saharan Africa in terms of distances people must travel for basic childbirth care.

Twenty years ago, in the midst of a multi-day labor with my son, I asked the labor and delivery (L&D) nurse when I might expect to finally deliver. She smiled, squeezed my hand in between contractions, and told me, “The baby will come when he is ready to. These things don’t happen on a schedule!...

08/07/2025

With the recent measles outbreaks, the U.S. is experiencing the devastating impact of "alternative facts," which will only worsen under RFK Jr's MAHA campaign.

But there are ways to successfully debunk medical misinformation.

A few weeks ago, a friend posted the first photos of her newborn daughter on social media. Amid the oohs and aahs (and the inevitable posting of different connections’ birth horror stories), one of comments, from the new mother’s aunt, jumped out at me. “What a gorgeous little girl! Keep her t...