Singal-Minded with Jesse Singal

What can you say about something like this? Two quick admin notes. First, next week will be busier than usual here, with pieces about the October 7 protests against Israelis for Peace, AI in math, and Cornell University’s well-paid sex educators all in the works. Second, it’s not yet certain but I might be headed to Vermont this month. If I’m able to make it, and if there’s sufficient interest, I might try to do a meetup in Burlington for premium Singal-Minded and BARPod subscribers.

This was originally published in The Dispatch. As per sacred Singal-Minded tradition, I am unlocking it a day later for my premium subscribers, except this time I’m also sending it out to my free ones, but please don’t tell anyone. My book draft is IN and I’ll have more Real Content for you very, very soon. Singal-Minded is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This post is free, but I hope you’ll consider becoming a paying subscriber. Remember that anyone who is a paid subscriber as of today, September 4, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern gets two months added to the end of their subscription (details here). Subscribing also allows you to unlock two posts from earlier this week — one on a plagiarism-y issue at CNN and one on Nature’s. . . troubling editorial about Jason Arday.

Back in 2024 I published an article headlined “Why Is The Same Misleading Language About Youth Gender Medicine Copied And Pasted Into Dozens Of CNN.com Articles?” The sentence in question was “Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender — the one the person was designated at birth — to their affirmed gender — the gender by which one wants to be known.” As I wrote: But of course,...

I’ve done so little other than work this summer that every time I go anywhere New York City only seems more magical Hello! I hope each and every one of you has had the best summer in human history. As for me? Still, all these years — decades? Centuries? — later, I have a bunch of book stuff left to do. The good news is that it’ll be wrapped up soon; the bad news is that I badly wanted to be in the clear by now but alas, I am not.

Donner Party memorial via me Hello! My hiatus is going well — thanks for asking. Below is a story I wrote for The Dispatch. Hope you enjoy, and please stick around for a brief after-thought below the story itself. I’m going to try to make a habit of adding something a little extra whenever I publish one of my Dispatch pieces here, like I did last time.

Local tradition holds that the volcanic plug on the horizon represents the future of Singal-Minded After this post goes up, I’m going to put Singal-Minded to sleep for roughly a month and a half. If you’re a paying subscriber, you don’t have to do anything — you won’t get charged while the newsletter is dormant.

New York Times health and wellness reporter Simar Bajaj has a new article about “The Return of Blaming and Shaming in Public Health,” as the headline puts it. It’s pegged to our esteemed Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr., and discusses the relationship between stigma and public-health concerns like obesity and smoking.

One thing I did in May was go to a Substack event where they really went for it May flew by! Here are some of your best comments, with some responses by me. Jonathan Reale, on “On The New York Times’ White-Guy Discrimination Case (And Bubbles)”: The rest of that quoted section from the Klein article also could benefit from some “turnabout” perspective.

Last week I published an article originally titled “How WPATH And The Endocrine Society Thumbed The Scale Of Youth Gender Medicine Research.” I say originally because I’ve since nixed “The Endocrine Society” from the headline. I’ve also unlocked that article, which was paywalled when I published it. What follows will make a lot more sense if you read that one first.