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Dying is difficult, a nurse told me. It might have been even more appalling had Dad not been clear about his wishes. Yet most of us remain deeply reluctant to outline how we want the end to go

My father spent the last 12 days of his life unconscious, unresponsive, in a hospital bed on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

My mother sat beside him night and day, holding his hand. I massaged Dad’s legs, horribly swollen, the effects of oedema – a buildup of fluids. His mouth fell open, dried out; I swabbed it constantly in an attempt to keep it wet. Sometimes his breath was a gurgle. My brother and I took turns sleeping on a stretcher in his room – the “dying room” was what hospital staff called it.

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Unfortunately, every civilization is built on “the blame game.” We’re barely an eighth of the way into Donald Trump’s second term, but his trademark brand of populism feels like it hit its apex decades ago. When millions of people are out of work, underpaid, and overall disgruntled, it’s easy for leaders—particularly those on the far-right—to redirect citizens’ anger towards a disenfranchised target: immigrants, racial minorities, anyone who isn’t cisgender and heterosexual. Why would people in power take accountability if it stopped lining their pockets? This leads us to the contemporary normalization of conspiracy-theorist and grifter culture, a not-so-fringe-anymore series of “movements” that Yorgos Lanthimos hyperbolizes in his Oscar-nominated latest, Bugonia .

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With Matt Reeves ' iteration of the Dark Knight front-and-center on the big screen, the Batman franchise still has no concrete plans for the character's official introduction into the James Gunn -crafted DC Universe. Fans are, unsurprisingly, on the edge of their seat wondering how Batman will fare in the current cinematic adventures. The character obviously exists, as referenced in Blue Beetle and is briefly seen in Creature Commandos , but we have yet to see him properly introduced in live-action in Gunn's DCU. As we continue to wait, perhaps DC Studios could look to video games for inspiration on how to update the comic book character for the small screen; a game like Batman: Arkham Asylum may prove a worthy foundation.

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When I first heard the announcement on Wednesday that the Department of Defense will begin a mandatory testosterone screening program for service members, my mind naturally leapt to a series of questions derived from my career studying men’s health and population-level screening in men’s health. In particular, I fear that the widespread rollout of testosterone screening may lead to some surprising and unintended consequences that must be carefully weighed if we want to prioritize the health of U.S. servicemembers.

As a practicing urologist and health outcomes researcher, I have seen firsthand how testosterone supplementation has received growing interest in recent years. I have also studied the impacts and implementation other types of screening tests, including among military servicemembers . As with any type of population-level medical screening, a careful examination of risks and benefits is vital.

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