Deadline: Tuesday 16th June 2026 (end of the day)

We are looking for text contributions on self-diagnosis for our growing Self-medicated Practices publication. We have a total of 400 euro budget in total and are looking for two contributions,so we can offer 200 euros per text.

We are looking for writing dealing with the reality of self-diagnosing when healthcare won’t help. Personal, auto-theoretical, critical. You may write about medical gaslighting and workarounds. About using LLMs critically, what they give and what they take. About how LLMs are both extraction and access. How big tech harvests the gap healthcare opens and monetizes desperation, while also making huge amounts of scientific knowledge available in graspable language, thus providing space for those who do not have the time or privilege to spend hours decoding medical papers alone. About knowledge sharing and support networks in your community and the alternatives people build when institutions fail them.

These are mere scattered suggestions. If you are dealing with similar topic from another angle, you are also welcome to send an idea.

We are especially interested in voices that get excluded from both medical and tech spaces.

Send us a short proposal by June 16th for a text at info@varia.zone with [self-diagnosis open call] in the subject. We certainly do not ask you to write a whole piece for an open call, but an idea so we can make the difficult choice of selecting two texts. We wish we could have a bigger open call, but for now that is what we can offer.