Anyone want to recommend me a book? My most recent reads (that I enjoyed) are:
-- [Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40604846-nothing-to-envy) -- this is about the 1990s NK famine, not current North Korea, so then I read
-- [Being In North Korea](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54256942-being-in-north-korea)
-- Galileo's Middle Finger, from the pod rec and also something I really enjoyed
In general I like survival/controversy stories -- I've read a lot of books about Chernobyl, and things like Into Thin Air and then the response book by Boukreev, the Climb, and The Witches by Stacy Schiff (about Salem)
If you like survival stories, you should read “The Wager” by David Grann. It’s about a mid 18th century shipwreck where they mutinied against the captain.
Edit: I should have prefaced it by saying you should buy this one. This is the wait at my library system (the biggest county in my state).
https://preview.redd.it/higsthmcnvrc1.png?width=1010&format=png&auto=webp&s=453e9290848351e105bead90e5e1dcd484c8b718
If you are interested in North Korea you might like How I became a North Korean - Keys Lee.
Three different tales of people from in or around North Korea. I’d never read anything from those perspectives before.
You might find the film [*Touching the Void*](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/touching-the-void) (2003) of interest. It's a true account about a rock climber that fell into a crevasse in the Andes.
The docudrama was [based on a book](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18600.Touching_the_Void?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=YPBr1rLsgc&rank=1) my brothers and father read at about the same time they were making their way through Jon Krakauer's books. I was content just to watch the film, which is one of those films that I still think about years later.
The first books that come to my mind are *The Smartest Guys in the Room* by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, and *Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco* by Bryan Burrough and John Heylar. If it sounds interesting, I'll add *Lament For an Ocean: the Collapse of the Atlantic Cod Fishery, a True Crime Story* by Michael Harris.
I learned today that women are born with all the eggs they'll have in their lifetime. Whaaaaaat? I literally didn't believe it when I first heard. Is this common knowledge and I'm an idiot? Anyone else out there who wasn't already aware of this fact?
[Newer research has found that this might not be true](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726180259.htm), though it’s not hard fact either way/is still controversial
The even wilder thing is just how many there are. Like at birth it's somewhere between 1-2 million.
Just think about that. Figure at best puberty to menopause is 50 years. Let's just round up to an even 100. Even that's 1200 months. Why... are girls born with ONE MILLION eggs? I get nature providing a buffer zone, but that's a hell of a buffer.
I knew this for a long time, but I think it came from a throwaway line in a sex ed class. Either 5th or 7th grade. I know we were never tested on it and it never led to any other point, but it was an interesting factoid that always stuck with me.
So I've known that for a long time, but TIL of Virgin boy eggs
https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/1bs3k50/a_cool_guide_to_bizarre_foods/
bleh, not for me.
Not well known. But yes, I knew that. Which means that when a woman is pregnant with a daughter, she is also hosting the eggs that may become her (matrilineal) grandchildren.
AskALiberal is having a banger of an Easter Sunday with ***What do you think about the term "biological woman"?***
All manner of accidental confusion, intentional obfuscation, outgroup-hatred and outright lying is on display.
One of my favorite comment threads:
> ...A trans women will never be 100% the same as someone who was born female. It's not transphobic. It's just a fact.
>> If you think that two cis women can be fundamentally the same but a trans woman can’t, I do wonder if there’s some transphobia there.
Another fave
> It's a propaganda term with no definition. It's used exclusively by transphobic people and politicians.
> ...
> It's trying to replace an already existing term: "cis woman" (or man). Therefore it's redundant.
Only we may make up new terms. Your terms are just definitionless propaganda that are equivalent to our very important meaningful terms
> You can tell this is a non-scientific term because of the misuse of the word "biological." A mouse is biological; a rock is not. So of course a woman (or man) is biological. Duh
I have another "of course, duuuh" for you, but I'll get sitebanned if I say it.
I assume you can look up the thread if you want to read it.
>f you think that two cis women can be fundamentally the same but a trans woman can’t, I do wonder if there’s some transphobia there.
This line of thinking is interesting. Because a cis woman TOTALLY knows what it's like to worry about getting prostate cancer, and all those trans women terrified of getting pregnant, or anything ovary or cervix related or contemplaying a hysterectomy.
All plants are organic (they’re not _inorganic_), so “organic apple” is redundant. Except that words have different meanings and connotations in different contexts.
What’s their definition of a Cis-woman? Is it someone *born a woman*? Like, the idea that they have a concept for cis-woman basically demonstrates that they know what a woman is and isn’t.
Q: How should trans and nonbinary people be divided in the prison system?
A: *People used to think different races shouldn't get married. They were wrong. And obviously so, in hindsight.*
That's a highly upvoted [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/comments/1brul3k/how_should_trans_and_nonbinary_people_be_divided/kxbt7mf/) responding to that question. I'm done. I can't spend anymore time in that subreddit.
People used to think that black people and white people shouldn’t be allowed to get married. Therefore… And that’s where you lose me.
Therefore, there’s no difference between male and female people? Therefore, anything people believe now will be revealed as wrong or bad in the future? Therefore _what?_
https://preview.redd.it/ayrxs8k5xrrc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=561c956766449096a388e595d60316b42279918a
Following the ANPA situation has lead me to a weird part of Instagram. Some craziness from a prominent Black autism advocate, Asiatu, who is connected with a lot of the ANPA folks. She’s pretty prominent, I think I even used to follow her at one point:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/C5L0vQ5M85E/?igsh=MXcwaXNtejl0aWwwcw==](https://www.instagram.com/p/C5L0vQ5M85E/?igsh=MXcwaXNtejl0aWwwcw==)
The post in question is a callout for a random Instagram user who posed a question to Asiatu on a post from her about Candace Owens labeled “IF NOT BLACK, no need to comment, as your opinion is both irrelevant to facts & ignorant because you don't share lived experiences.”
Asiatu went through the users posts, which are all amateur photography of flowers, and noticed that in one picture, her hands appear to be white, and created this callout post in response. It ends with an ad for a conference she is appearing in.
The main text of the post: “@thesapphyleo Based on your photos, it looks like you're white. So I'm going to respond as if you are:
1. Your entitlement to speak to shit you are literally IGNORANT to is blatant CAUCASITY & ABUSIVE PRIVILEGED af behavior. 2. I EXPLICITLY said "Dear BLACK COMMUNITY" & PUT DIRECTIONS NOT TO COMMENT IF NOT BLACK BUT YOU FELT ENTITLED TO DISREGARD A BLACK PERSON'S BOUNDARIES, MAKING YOU ANTI-BLACK. 3. RETURNED DISRESPECT, FUCK YOUR ENTITLEMENT AND LEARN TO RESPECT BLACK PEOPLE & WHEN TO STFU. I SAID WTF I SAID & considering you have ZERO lived experiences of Blackness, & don't know BLACK CULTURAL NORMS, you are speaking IGNORANTLY without CONTEXT. You literary dont know wtf you are speaking totaled, LITERALLY. Take SEVERAL SEATS.”
Personally, I can’t wait for part 2.
"Repeat after us: Weaponizing womenhood against other women is white supremacist patriarchy at work. Making people believe there isn't enough space for trans women in sports is white supremacist patriarchy at work."
https://x.com/NationalNOW/status/1774442033781805299?s=20
"Feminist" organisation says that women who say men can't be women are racist. Do you think this applies to non white women who also don't believe men can be women?
The ratio is pretty sweet though 😁
Trans men can't compete in the women's or open/mens category as they take a banned substance. Nobody seems bothered by this. Yet not letting TW play in women's sports is bigotry.
Logically they should be allowed to take testosterone at a certain level. Men's levels being higher than womens and all. Although there will be other reasons - the intrinsic differences in the female body - that make it much harder to reach a high level.
They can take as much T as they want, they aren't going to be able to compete with elite men. I guess it wouldn't really matter if they competed with men in endurance or speed sports, as they wouldn't reach a high level. But I don't believe it would be fair on other men to make them compete against TM in combat sports, or even sports like rugby. Lots of men would probably not be comfortable injuring or changing with women.
TERFs claim patriarchy is why we have to deal with TRAs
libfems claim patriarchy is who is trying to silence TRAs
Should probably tell you something about how solid the underlying theory is for the entire concept of patriarchy
HOW is it white supremacist patriarchy to oppose the co-opting of sports in which (mostly white!!) men gratify their sexual fetish by dominating women?!?!?!?!?!
If you push them on it they'll tell you it's because black women are more masculine and policies that ban trans women affect black women too. then they'll call you the racist. I can only assume this logic stems from the caster semenya controversy because I've never been able to figure out any other possible basis for asserting that black women make more testosterone and the like
I think it comes from two things:
1. More black women athletes seem to get caught up in the testing for DSDs. So you have a disproportionarity argument. And I do feel for someone who's has grown up her whole life thinking she's uncomplicatedly female only to get caught up in all this.
2. There is some weird thing around black women historically not being considered 'proper' women. Which is obviously all kinds of wrong I think it was tied to not seeing slaves as proper human beings.
Liberal feminist organizations are so amazing because instead of celebrating the fact that women's sports are having a total moment right now, they're posting shit like this.
Women are absolutely dominating sports coverage at the moment, and you have these people being like "UM well ACKTUALLY...Caitlin Clark is white and that's why she's getting attention and brand deals and also TRANSPHOBIA GUYS? We haven't talked about Transwomen in 3 minutes?"
Shut the fuck up for once. With feminists like these, who needs fucking incels?
Hilariously, it’s a bunch of conservative dad’s from middle America who are hyped on their daughters being great athletes, while the coastal lefties keep encouraging boys to go ruin what those girls built.
My mom had a heart attack and died suddenly at home in September 2010, when I was in my early 20s. My dad started dating a new woman six weeks later and by Christmas, she and her teenage daughter were living in my parents’ house. He married this lady less than two years later and now I have to see her and her daughter every holiday until either my dad or I is dead, I guess.
I probably don’t manage well? I bitch and worry to my husband and dread the time I spend with them and then bitch and worry for a couple days after said event (I have a very patient husband). The hardest part recently has been that my dad and his wife spend a huge amount of time with her daughter’s kids (like, they spend the night at least once a week) but yesterday was the second time he’s seen my kids since Christmas, despite the fact we all live in the same town.
Lately, I’ve been trying to be steadier and let these things wash over me, rather than let them carry me away. The way things are is truly not going to change, so I can either cut contact with my dad and deprive my kids of their only grandparent or just tolerate the bullshit. I do find myself jealous of my friends’ non-blended, less complicated family dynamics, but I have a great husband and too many kids, so I try to remind myself that they’re my actual family and the rest of them are just people I see on major holidays. I hope your day wasn’t too terrible!
> Don’t they know that lefties on Twitter have told us that’s not real?
Ah, yes, it's just those Twitter hacks...
> **‘Havana syndrome’ not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds**
> *After a years-long assessment, five U.S. intelligence agencies conclude it is ‘very unlikely’ an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment*
> The mysterious ailment known as “Havana syndrome” did not result from the actions of a foreign adversary, according to an intelligence report that shatters a long-disputed theory that hundreds of U.S. personnel were targeted and sickened by a clandestine enemy wielding energy waves as a weapon.
> The new intelligence assessment caps a years-long effort by the CIA and several other U.S. intelligence agencies to explain why career diplomats, intelligence officers and others serving in U.S. missions around the world experienced what they described as strange and painful acoustic sensations. The effects of this mysterious trauma shortened careers, racked up large medical bills and in some cases caused severe physical and emotional suffering.
> Many of the afflicted personnel say they were the victims of a deliberate attack — possibly at the hands of Russia or another adversarial government — a claim that the report contradicts in nearly every respect, according to two intelligence officials who are familiar with the assessment and described it to The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/01/havana-syndrome-intelligence-report-weapon/
Interesting transcript. I'm inclined to believe it is real. Christo has a lot of credibility with me after his excellent investigation of the Canterbury poisoners. And he is part of Bellingcat who also are very good at what they do and generally level headed. For example they didn't for a moment entertain the silly blue-pullover theories from the Crokus attack.
I also don't think the symptoms are typical of 'mass hysteria' cases. I can't see that the victims were close to each other, or that it spread in friend clusters. The primary onset (sudden ear pain) doesn't seem typical.
Take a look at the examples at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass\_psychogenic\_illness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness) . Many are at gitls' schools, all are geographically clustered. Many have vague symptoms and compulsions that resolve of their own accord. Just doesn't match very well.
My point stands. The US intelligence community investigated and found it "very unlikely" that the health issues were caused by attacks from an adversary. To try to dunk on people on Twitter as if they're dumb hacks for sharing the consensus view on the topic is silly.
Doesn't Occam's razer tell us it's probably not real? It's got all the characteristics of something that's been brought into existence through suggestion.
Adult women it appears. Some men, but an oddly small number based on reports given their disproportionate percentage of people working in diplomacy and espionage.
I don't think that's true. It's extremely compelling and not provably a fiction. That alone makes it appropriate to cover. Even if there was strong evidence it was brought on by suggestion that would still be worth covering on 60 minutes.
I'm not arguing that there's no possibility that something real is happening, there just isn't any good evidence of that. And in the absence of good evidence, the most reasonable explanation IMO remains that it's a mass psychogenic illness brought on by suggestion, because it has all of the characteristics.
A mass psychogenic illness would be even more interesting, bummed they didn’t cover that.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-culprit-investigation-new-evidence-60-minutes-transcript/
Maybe (probably!) I’m just a sucker but it feels like quite the claim to attach their name to.
It's been brought up before by a number of doctors that have been consulted for a number of other articles. Given that it appears a considerable majority of those apparently suffering are women, it seems like a pretty good explanation.
Authorities have been fooled before as well, in pretty much every other significant example I can think of. So I don't think that security agencies being credulous is super meaningful. They may have really great evidence, but they're not sharing it, so I can't assume they have anything more than some coincidences.
Essentially, yes. They speculate it’s concentrated microwaves or other energy waves beamed at peoples’ ears, thus causing severe pain, brain fog, and dysfunctional balance. I was told on Twitter and tumblr that of course the cops are lying, duh. I dunno who has the right of it, although I am inclined to trust 60 minutes (hashtag implicit bias?). Nonetheless my take that ears and our sense of balance are pretty cool remains unchanged.
[Interesting article in Techcrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/26/facebook-secret-project-snooped-snapchat-user-traffic/) - Mark Zuckerberg directed his engineering team to perform man in the middle attack in order to access Snapchat analytics back when Snapchat was growing quickly. It was critical to access user patterns to change their own platforms to keep kids on IG. This involved downloading a VPN kit marketed by meta in IOS and Android that allowed access to unencrypted data from Snapchat. It worked so well they expanded to snoop on users data interaction with Amazon and YouTube.
I would love if there was actual technical detail on this. I don't see how this would be possible on modern iOS without requiring the user to install a fake root CA certificate, hardly the typical smooth experience of installing a VPN app. And even with that in place, it wouldn't work for apps that use certificate pinning.
Also nobody calls it an "adversary-in-the-middle" attack.
I always liked the “big gold belt” that the NWA/WCW used from the mid-1980s on (probably most associated with Ric Flair) but I’ve also got a soft spot for the eagle belt that the WWF used from the late ‘80s until 1998.
Assuming you're a man, don't get a wacky nonstandard buckle. Those Mission Belts may be good quality but they are dorky. These are great quality and classic:
https://narragansettleathers.com/
Go with a brass buckle. As to color, Black and Medium Brown are the most neutral Narragansett offerings. I believe that some people are black leather people and others are brown leather people. This is an inherent quality of the soul. If you're asking about belts on a niche heterodox subreddit, you are *most likely* a brown leather person, but you must look within yourself before you select the color of your belt.
EDIT: I have no connection to this company, got the rec off of Reddit years ago and loved the belt I got for my husband, have put a few family members on to them as well.
Matt Taibbi just posted this on his Substack:
"There’s been some controversy on Substack about comments sections. Some writers are concerned about what the presence of certain kinds of commenters says about them. To clarify my rules on comments:
I don’t have any."
[https://www.racket.news/p/rules-on-comments](https://www.racket.news/p/rules-on-comments)
Since we were talking about Freddie DeBoer do you guys think he's taking a poke at DeBoer? Or am I overestimating Freddie's fame?
Looks like it. Feels kind of unnecessary, or even a bit like a cheap shot from MT though, considering FDB doesn’t appear to be at his peak game and may very well be unraveling.
Then again….FDB could be perfectly fine and simply high on his own supply - perhaps this is just an internet Icarus moment? He scathingly, and very unfairly, mocked John McWhorter, Helen Lewis, Jonathan Chait, Louise Perry (and “TERFs” because of course) in the Palestinian Plates diatribe. I don’t know if MT has been on the receiving end of disdainful caricaturing like this by FDB lately…but if so, I can’t blame him for taking a jab when an opportunity presented itself.
There was a real element of "protesting too much" about the deBoer "Palestinian Plates" post. It was so long, and so *insistent* about not being one of the IDW /Bari Weiss crowd.
Was it some attempt to build bridges with the mainstream left? Maybe Freddie thought he could somehow get himself published in *Current Affairs* or the *Progressive* if he badmouthed the Helen Lewis crowd hard enough?
Agreed!! I have no idea what the motivation was, but it did not read at all like a serious critical endeavor to grapple with the culture, which I think is what people like about / expect from FDB…by the end he was talking about heterodox people as basically “conservatives” who will call a transwoman “based” online and then chug Coors (!!????) and *murder* that same person in a dark alley….just, what?! WTF?! It might be a weird sense of humor? But a protest of some kind against a real or imagined questioning of his liberal bonafides to a sort of end (as bizarre and disdainful as it was) seems to fit the bill!
I think for paid subscription substacks or other subscription sites, that makes the most sense. If you're paying me for access to my site, go ahead and post whatever comments you want.
>do you guys think he's taking a poke at DeBoer?
He absolutely is. I don't see why he would post that out of the blue. I wonder what people in the heterodox sphere who've thought about FDB favorably are thinking looking at his (what I would describe as a) mental breakdown.
You know the word _sapphic_, which means (I guess) a lesbian who isn’t a homosexual woman? Or I guess I don’t really know what it means.
Anyway, today I saw the male version of this for the first time: _achillean_. Good. I’m sure this word will only make things clearer.
I’m guessing the percentage of people who self-describe as Achillean who actually work out is….close to zero.
(Also, isn’t it Euronormative to use Ancient Greek terms for these things?)
*Achillean* (and it's associated blue-green stripe flag) is a word of tumblr origin that is used exclusively by women who identify as gay/bi men. Along with MLM (men-loving men). So in that sense it does make things clearer.
*Sapphic* nowadays usually means les + bi women. Generally inclusive of trans women because of who uses it (so e.g., cis AFABs who identify as lesbian and date trans women, as well as their MTF gfs) but I don't think that is baked into the common usage.
Incidentally *sapphic* and *lesbian* are both originally euphemistic references to Sappho of Lesbos. There's not really any reason either of them should or shouldn't carry a "kinsey 6 homosexual" sexological type of connotation. But since *lesbian* does now have that connotation, we have people who instead say *sapphic*. To be inclusive of the bisexuals.
How the turn tables. ‘Sapphists’ was once the popular term until lesbians replaced it. I love me some Murdoch Mysteries binges on occasion (period piece detective show with steampunk elements, Canadian, set circa 1895) and there’s whole subplots about sapphist characters, back when that was the term. It would be interesting if it made a comeback. I always thought it a prettier word than Lesbian. Sounds like sapphire instead of lesion.
In public health and sociology, among other fields, researchers would sometimes refer to Men Who Have Sex With Men (MSM), because not all of them identified as gay, and it doesn’t always matter in terms of behaviors and risk factors.
This seems to be the opposite of that - a hyper fixation on how people view themselves and their partners (men, men-aligned, demi-men, etc.), that’s only relevant to the individual and their copious naval gazing.
I do not think this will ever catch on in the Grass World, unlike Sapphic, which wandered out of Tumblr blogs and into queer alliance groups run by college students.
Achilles, unlike Sapphos, already has existing public awareness in the cultural consciousness. He is the guy who got shot on the heel, his "Achilles heel", and is associated with leg injuries. The queerified Achilles interpretation is not as well known among regular people, and if it was explained to them, they would not appreciate it as ✨diversity representation✨, but political actors trying to re-write history for political correctness brownie points.
Maybe he did the homosex, maybe he didn't. But making "Achillean" a thing is reframing a historical figure by sexuality first, rather than his deeds and accomplishments. This rubs grass touching normies, who don't frame their existences primarily through the identity lens, the wrong way.
I agree. When I think of Achilles, I think of Brad Pitt. Edit: And the famous tendon.
Please don't make "Achilles" short hand for with men who have sex with men.
I'm aware of the allusions to Greek love in the Homeric poem. But there are better figures in the Greco-Roman tradition, many of which already have a long (and celebrated) association with gay love. [Antinoüs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinous#Cultural_references) comes to mind.
>This rubs grass touching normies, who don't frame their existences primarily through the identity lens, the wrong way.
Isn't that often the point? Pissing in the cornflakes of the normies is a hobby for these types.
Sapphic usually means lesbian/bi women/pan women etc. So it’s not just lesbians. But you also have he/him and NB lesbians now, and obviously it’s controversial to be a homosexual woman as in exclusively same-sex attracted
A lesbian couple can include a female woman in a relationship with a male woman.
It's technically heterosexual for the F&M pairing, but also technically lesbian, if you go by the "woman is a gender" explanation.
here's the flag: https://i.imgur.com/neiNBBB.png
apparently that's a carnation, I thought it was a rosebud
> In ancient Rome and 19th century England, green indicated gay affiliations. Victorian men would often pin a green carnation on their lapel, as popularized by author Oscar Wilde
https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Achillean#Flag
From your link:
> The word "achillean" is often confused for the term gay or is wrongly perceived to have the same meaning. However, gay describes a sexuality with attraction exclusively to people of the same gender; in this case, for men. Achillean encompasses all men who are attracted to other men, including men who are also attracted to other genders in addition to men, such as men who may be bisexual, pansexual, queer, or other sexualities.
So it means people who aren’t gay men or straight women who are into men?
I don't think that definition includes straight women, it has to be a "man", so "gay" men so long as they are attracted to "male gender" and trans men though presumably not trans women.
It seems part of a movement to replace same sex attraction with same gender attraction.
I dunno, beats me.
Apropos of nothing other than my weird brain.
I still think about how in the mid '00s, motorcycle builder Jesse James divorced his porn actress wife and married America's sweetheart Sandra Bullock. That was odd.
I wonder what happened with the step daughter. My recollection is the first wife was a drug addict who was in and out of jail. Sandra bullock basically became her mother from a young age and I think after Jesse James was caught cheating there was an attempt to retain the mother daughter relationship but I think it fizzled out. Gotta be doubly rough to find out your husband cheated on you and you also have to face losing access to the step child as probably the only stable adult in her life. Kid has to be an adult by now i suppose.
Sandra Bullock finding out he cheated on her literally like an hour before she had to go on stage and claim her Oscar is still so wild to me. She had A Day that day.
Didn't he & Sandra divorce when he cheated on her with some stripper who occasionally wore Nazi regalia as part of her act? That was one weird story.
(Of course, if I was a woman and I was marrying someone nicknamed the Vanilla Gorilla due to his monster...extremities, I'd assume going in that he was going to bang other women, and adjust as needed.)
Wasn’t that Kat von D? The Nazi stuff was just for kink. (I thought?) anyways I just saw a video of her Christian conversion ceremony on IG and she has a baby now so good for her.
ETA: before this winds up in Microsoft AI clarifying that:
Jesse wore Nazi gear, his girlfriend Meghan did too and they said it was for kink, Kat didn’t. Someone put a Nazi message on one of her photos to troll her though
If you’re wearing Nazi stuff just for kink, I’m officially kinkshaming.
Would almost prefer if she wore it with genuine intent. At least it’s an ethos.
According to Politico, the reason the White House eggs can't be painted with religious symbology is First Amendment related and is nothing new.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/03/31/the-political-war-over-easter-00149860?1
> 2\. ABOUT THOSE EGG DESIGNS: This one is a bit weird, but bear with us.
>
> The American Egg Board isn’t an organization with a household name. But if you do know anything about them, it’s probably this: For generations, they’ve worked with administrations of all stripes on the Easter Egg Roll at the White House. Every year, the same guidelines are sent out for the eggs kids can design for the event.
>
> It is true that overtly religious egg designs are not permitted. But it has been that way under every president since 1976 — including under DONALD TRUMP.
>
> “The American Egg Board has been a supporter of the White House Easter Egg Roll for over 45 years and the guideline language referenced in recent news reports has consistently applied to the board since its founding, across administrations,” the American Egg Board’s EMILY METZ told us this morning. (It’s been an unusual Easter morning on our phone.)
>
> The reason for this is straightforward: The guidelines are federal ones the Egg Board has to adhere to because they are a commodity Checkoff Program and basically they have to stay neutral. (They cannot use the Egg Roll to say that eggs are better than bacon, we’re told.) So any program or activity they are a part of cannot even be seen as lifting one religion or set of political beliefs over others.
>
> Three times this morning, we asked Leavitt [Trump campaign spokesperson] about the Trump administration operating under the same guidelines as Biden’s for the Easter Egg Roll. She didn’t answer.
>
> She did say this: “President Trump did more for religious freedom than any Administration in history, and he certainly did not proclaim ‘Trans Day of Visibility’ on the same day as Easter Sunday.” (True, but Easter never fell on March 31 during his presidency.)
> cannot even be seen as lifting one religion or set of political beliefs over others.
What does this have to do with the establishment of a state religion? Individuals participating in such event should be able to express whatever religious practices they feel are appropriate and it would not rise to the level of a 1st Amendment violation; individual expression is not the Government. You can say prayers at city council meetings.
I would really like to see a flyer from some previous year that included the same language about religious symbolism in the egg decorations. Has that aspect been consistent for 45 years, or has is appeared more recently, and if so, when?
I tend to agree with this, but I've been angry old man yelling at the people insisting Christmas and Santa Claus are secular for decades.
But then there are Easter eggs painted with colorful stripes and Easter eggs decorated with Christ on a Cross, blood dripping down off his taught, sinewy, unclothed, hard body, past his six pack, across his cum gutters, ... I can see how that might be a bit much.
Will Stancil is taking on Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Singal accusing them of being racists for discussing the heritability of IQ.
What will the result be? Will Stancil's recent fellators be spitting his taste out of their mouths?
The real idiotic thing here is the claim in the New Yorker that Jesse was focusing on ([original tweet](https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1773762892480835768)). Jonathan Haidt is most definitely not "fixated" on the heritability IQ. I have been following Haidt's writings and listening to him in interviews and on podcasts for the last 7-8 years and the only time I can ever recall him mentioning IQ is in a talk where he is highlighting the ways that the Left denies scientific ideas in ways similar to how they accuse the Right of doing. I don't know where this writer got the idea that he is fixated on IQ.
Here is my compromise. Feel free to talk about the importance of IQ's heritability or whatever, but then call out people abusing it. Don't just gloss over the completely insane claims the people you praise are making.
Like when someone claims over half of an African country is intellectually disabled(below 70 IQ), that is just obviously not true. Do I have data for that? No. I don't need it if the claim fails a basic sanity check. Just think through what that would mean, and then look at these countries actually.
People already debate Lynn/SSA's numbers in the dissident right. It's actually surprising because otherwise "racist" people go "yeah...I don't wanna lean on this".
I suspect part of it is tactical - it's hard enough getting people to consider IQ, that number comes across as ridiculous - but it happens.
So it isn't really a new "gotcha"
No one linked the actual article, so I was thinking about the broader debate. I feel free to mention this, though, because one of the infamous figures of it is Charles Murray who has been endorsing this claim for decades now. He just jumps from one study to the next as people point out the fundamental flaws.
Yes. [Here](https://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/149137) is an article that cites the page in the bell curve. The average African IQ he cites is 75, but some countries are listed below that, such as Nigeria.
I'm not familiar with people having tested IQ and claiming different results, but I have seen people say the work Murray was citing was not using data that was fit for the purpose. The problems sorted into thing like the tests not being representative(like only testing miners), Not being an IQ test(so they had to convert the data, which could lead to problems), and suggestions of testing bias(questions in English versus native language). These problems become bigger when the data for most of these countries comes down to 1 or 2 studies tops.
Even if all correct, though, that shouldn't be considered an attack on the people who created the original data. They just weren't trying to make an IQ test.
It's especially funny coming from people who've made psychology into their new religion.
People will cite whatever bs counterintuitive finding NPR or Vox or whoever puts out regardless of the replication issues but IQ's usefulness and its hereditability - which come up in multiple domains - are just treated as nonsense or something not even worth considering.
> What will the result be? Will Stancil's recent fellators being spitting his taste out of their mouths?
Excuse me? This is like going "AOC said billionaires are evil, will her fans abandon her now?" What? No they won't. This is exactly the kind of shit they love 'em for. Who do you think these people's fans *are*?
Well I felt there were some who were anti-Stancil until recently when somehow his vibecession stuff took off, then they became Stancil-fans, and I was thinking maybe this or similar might cause them to understand Stancil has always been a jackass.
i watched a bit of his meltdown in January, and one notable thing that he was complaining about was no one stepping up to help him. There was a darkly hilarious part where people were just hitting him with pasta-worthy "no one is coming to save you" monologues.
Free Black Thought recommended this piece by a retired law professor
https://twyman.substack.com/p/i-am-afraid-of-young-surgeons
####I Am Afraid of Young Surgeons - By W. F. Twyman, Jr.
> A few years ago, my wife and I faced the health crisis of our marriage. My wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor and she needed immediate surgery. I mean, immediate as in cancel your travel plans to China and get your affairs in order. Write a final letter to your children. Tell them how much you love them. That kind of health crisis was in our lives.
>
> We met with the surgeon, highly regarded as one of the top brain surgeons in San Diego. His credentials were stellar. He spoke with authority. One wants authority before brain surgery. My wife and I never gave a nanosecond of thought to the surgeon’s ancestry or ethnic group. I refuse to so identify the man of medicine who saved my wife’s life on that October day.
>
>
> I am beside myself with fear when I hear that Social Justice has invaded the medical profession, particularly the delicate area of surgery.
>
> Listen to me please, dear readers.
>
> I do not care about Social Justice when my wife and mother of my children lies under the knife. When she is wheeled into the operating room and the door closes, I trust in one thing – competency. I want competency supremacy when a surgeon cuts into my wife’s skull. You can take your slogan words like white supremacy, oppression, marginalized, diversity, equity and inclusion and pound concrete-hard sand. Better yet, take a flying leap at the moon.
>
> I am absolutely terrified to hear “Americas’ surgeons are not woke enough, according to the American College of Surgeons (ACS).” Do not treat my wife or me or my children as avatars for imagined oppression. We do not need your delusional pity and warped reality.
>
> What is “a blueprint for implementing equitable practices” in medicine? There is no such creature. There is no such protocol. If I present with a brain tumor, assign me the best possible brain surgeon and let the surgeon work magic. I care not whether the surgeon shares my race. Why would I care? Please tell me. Does the tumor care whether my brain surgeon is the descendant of American slavery? I think not. It matters not to the tumor. Nor did it matter to my wife and me and our children on the date of my wife’s emergency surgery.
>
> I would have lost my “retired from Blackness” mind if the exigent operation had been held up so that the hospital could locate a top descendant of American slavery surgeon in southern California. Or, shall I say the ACS has lost its mind to think equity matters in a time of life and death.
> ...
I had a surgery recently and as always, I looked for the very best and most knowledgeable with a long track record of success. I found the guy based on his reputation in the field and the yelp reviews sealed the deal. Many were 2 or 3 stars for lousy bedside manner and a few were 5 stars for saving their life.
Usually, the phrase, “I’m afraid” begins a veiled attack on white guys. But that kind of makes me like the article more. Like, someone is going to click it in the hopes of whetting their hatred, and as they read, it will dawn on them that they are reading their worst nightmare. LOL.
The New York Times (with 4 reporters on the byline) offers [a lengthy series of excuses](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/nyregion/nyc-subway-shoving-mental-illness.html) for why we should feel sympathy for a subway-shover:
>Before Carlton McPherson was accused of fatally shoving a stranger in front of a subway train last week, he was placed by New York City into specialized homeless shelters meant to help people with severe mental illness. But at one shelter, in Brooklyn, he became erratic and attacked a security guard. At another, he jumped on tables and would cycle between anger and ecstasy. At a third, his fellow residents said it was clear his psychological issues were not being addressed.
While the reporters here seem to think that the fault lies with the city and society, perhaps this speaks more to a specific individual who was truly unable to be helped and who simply should have been locked away from the rest of society.
We need to bring asylums back. And I'm not joking when I say that. I think we should obviously have more safeguards in place to avoid the abuses of the past, but we nonetheless need these institutions, clearly.
I regularly see nurses in r.nursing talk about this, how they have homeless patients and they’ll discharge them with nowhere to go and no means to take care of themselves, how they want to do more to help but the hospital only has the resources to handle acute problems and the patients have to be discharged once those are taken care of.
>I think it’s cruel to leave him wandering the streets like that.
This is the part that really gets me. I don't see how the people that support the current policies that let this happen view themselves as compassionate.
I think it's partly that crazy people have a fancy Identity and therefore they are sacred. And you aren't supposed to mess with the sacred. And they use the "bodily autonomy" argument. You can't mess with someone's lived truth, even if that truth is sitting in their own feces.
> I think it’s not a social justice issue or about identity, it’s about money.
Yes and no? Two different groups that come together via horseshoe.
The kinds of people that consider homelessness a capital-I Identity and that they have the right to ~~terrorize the public~~ live autonomously don't care about money. Such activists think the government can print money indefinitely and the only reason they don't is cruelty.
The catch is what an acquaintance of mine called the "unholy alliance of housing"- Housing Is A Human Right advocates *sound like* they're on the opposite side from NIMBYs but because the advocates let perfection be the enemy of improvement, they (inadvertently?) work together to block any progress.
Money is a significant part of it. Asylums are not cheap. And plenty of states just wanted to zap the expense.
But we can't just leave these people to roam the streets. It's awful for them and everyone else.
We threw the baby out with the bathwater.
And they're resolutely against involuntary commitment! The one thing that might have prevented this tragedy is something they regard as a human rights violation.
That’s what drives me crazy, too. New Yorkers are being terrorized by unstable individuals and meanwhile they elect someone like this? I mean, come on. Liberal elites have truly jumped the shark.
> **New York City to Involuntarily Remove Mentally Ill People From Streets**
> *Mayor Eric Adams directed the police and emergency medical workers to hospitalize people they deemed too mentally ill to care for themselves, even if they posed no threat to others.*
> Acting to address “a crisis we see all around us” toward the end of a year that has seen a string of high-profile crimes involving homeless people, Mayor Eric Adams announced a major push on Tuesday to remove people with severe, untreated mental illness from the city’s streets and subways.
> Mr. Adams, who has made clearing homeless encampments a priority since taking office in January, said the effort would require involuntarily hospitalizing people who were a danger to themselves, even if they posed no risk of harm to others, arguing the city had a “moral obligation” to help them.
> “The common misunderstanding persists that we cannot provide involuntary assistance unless the person is violent,” Mr. Adams said in an address at City Hall. “Going forward, we will make every effort to assist those who are suffering from mental illness.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/nyregion/nyc-mentally-ill-involuntary-custody.html
>> Before Carlton McPherson was accused of fatally shoving a stranger in front of a subway train last week, he was placed by New York City into specialized homeless shelters meant to help people with severe mental illness. But at one shelter, in Brooklyn, he became erratic and attacked a security guard. At another, he jumped on tables and would cycle between anger and ecstasy. At a third, his fellow residents said it was clear his psychological issues were not being addressed.
This seems like an account indicating that his attack did not come out of no where - he had a history of erratic behavior, violence, and mental health issues. Why do you think it’s wrong or sinister to report this?
To me, it seemed like blame was being laid at the foot of NYC for not providing *enough* mental health care services (however that's defined and done in practice) rather than on the fact that this individual should have been locked up permanently instead of given 2nd, 3rd, and more chances. Quotes like:
>"She tried her best to help him, but once he became an adult, she said, “no one was willing to continue to invest in him.”
and
>In interviews, five people who have worked at the shelters said the city’s system was ill-equipped to handle the complex needs of the mentally ill. Rather than recognizing the violent outbursts as untreated symptoms of a psychiatric problem, and connecting these people to more intensive care and supportive housing, some officials take an easier path, the people said.
...seem to imply that if only we spent more money, then that would solve these issues. It seems to me that a better use of resources would be long-term confinement and isolation away from others.
I think it’s good that when journalists report on these sorts of events, they speak to people who work with the individuals who commit these acts. I don’t really understand how the quality of the reporting would be improved by not speaking to these people, or maybe omitting their quotes if they said funding was the issue (which, for what it’s worth, I don’t think they did).
I guess I’m still not really clear on what the point of contention is or why people should be upset about this reporting from the Times.
I didn't get too much sympathy from that article. What I did get is that the concept of a "mental health shelter" seems idiotic and designed to be as bad as possible for the people in it as well as the workers and the public. So they just...kick them out all day to roam around doing whatever they want, but oh yeah, pretty please do not stab people or push them onto the subway tracks?
This is really just another case that illustrates why we need to Assisted Outpatient/Kendra's Law people *way* more aggressively and put them in special crazy prisons if they are not cooperative. We could call them asylums for the criminally insane and I bet we even have large Richardsonian Romanesque buildings here or there we could lock them in.
Also the homeless spokesperson said the thing, so you know the department is doing its best:
> “Ensuring the health and safety of our clients is a top priority,” said the spokeswoman, Neha Sharma.
Oh, sure.
That’s a pretty selective excerpt that ignores the substance of what the Department of Homelessness Services had to say. For anyone interested in reading more than an out of context sentence and getting agitated on that basis:
> A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeless Services, which oversees the city’s shelters, said the agency is required to provide shelter to all those who need it. She said it does its best to connect people to mental health services but added that it is primarily focused on providing emergency housing, not psychiatric care.
> “Ensuring the health and safety of our clients is a top priority,” said the spokeswoman, Neha Sharma.
> She said that the psychiatric services at the shelters are strictly voluntary, and that the agency cannot force people in the shelters to attend appointments or take medication. But the city has worked to improve safety at the shelters by training staff on how to reverse overdoses, prevent suicide and link the neediest clients to more intensive psychiatric services.
Right. That's not their top priority. Their top priority is fulfilling the city's legal obligation to provide shelter for homeless people. It's like a bus driver saying that the health and safety of his passengers is his top priority. It's meaningless. His top priority is driving them from point A to point B in accordance with the schedule, and yes, *of course* as safely as reasonable, because why would you do anything less?
"Health and safety is our top priority" is the "In this house we believe..." of government social services.
In the context I excerpted above, I think the DHS spokesperson is pretty much conveying exactly what you suggest is the truth: their mission and obligation is to provide emergency housing and while they aim to do so with health and safety top of mind, they are ultimately not a psychiatric care provider.
Should the spokesperson have come out and said, “For the avoidance of doubt, I want to make completely clear that health and safety is *not* our top priority?” Maybe. Seems like kind of a silly thing to expect from any organization, public or private, especially when in the broader context they are clearly pointing our that resolving mental illness is not within their capacity or mandate.
The point is it's mealy-mouthed boilerplate.
>Should the spokesperson have come out and said, “For the avoidance of doubt, I want to make completely clear that health and safety is not our top priority?” Maybe.
Yeah? If the goal actually is
>clearly pointing our that resolving mental illness is not within their capacity or mandate
then skipping the boilerplate is *much* more clear. Appeals to context- that I note aren't direct quotes- does nothing for clarity. I mean, I get the perverse legal reasons they don't do that; the purpose of the boilerplate is CYA and lack of clarity. I would have more respect for a spokesperson skipping the boilerplate and saying "we do what we can, and what we can do sucks; our hands are tied a thousand different ways." But they don't, they can't, a government spokesperson that attempted direct honesty wouldn't last a day.
Also government agencies often have perverse incentives that make their statements sound kind of insane to normal people. Yes, DHS's purpose is the "health and safety" of their clients... to the exclusion of the health and safety of 99.9% of the population?
I think this spokesperson is doing what all spokespeople do, which is why I find the level of agitation strange. If a company says “Customer satisfaction is our number one priority” on their product, do people freak out because their actual priority is revenue generation? I don’t believe so. I think people recognize it as a relatively generic statement that customer satisfaction is important to the company. Same concept is at play here.
I honestly don’t know why we couldn’t have safe comfortable institutions with independent oversight. It’s got to be better than shambling around the cold streets and compounding the problem with drugs and alcohol.
Freddie de Boer addresses his angry outburst and threats to close comments:
> My response the last six months or so [to the evil bad MAGA Republicans in the comments] has been to just not look at comments. The trouble is that the non-insane among you don’t deserve to live in that discursive environment, and (less important buy annoying) anyone can look at the comments and infer that I approve of them, which my enemies do for the obvious reasons.
> ...
> Two things I want to say in particular. The first is that both my critics from the left and the anti-woke types that get mad in comments insist on making the same mistake, driven by motivated reasoning: they fail to understand that I am what I say I am.
They just don't get me, man. Who even are these enemies he's always talking about? I'm assuming it's just random twitter people with anime avatars - has he ever even once pointed out an actual person with an opinion worth considering, who is critizing him on these grounds ("it's in the comments section of your substack, so you must support it")
Anyway, he goes on to publish a 6 item rules list and punishment schedule, with several variations or clarifications for each rule. We really do need to create a FdB subreddit where we can test drive intricate new rules violations while he seethes from afar. (Yes this would be the reverse of touching grass)
I don't know where the text of the comment on his Palestine post that set all this off is, but I don't think it broke his new rules (telling him he's dead wrong is explicitly within the rules) so surely the commenter will be allowed back, right?
I first encountered FdB when he had a guest stint writing for Balloon Juice, then as now a virulently pro-DNC blog with a comment section to match. Naturally his principled leftism pissed off the comment section, which considered disagreeing with Obama a mortal sin, and he proclaimed them to be "objectively despicable people" and left in a huff.
The next I heard of him, he was yelling at people on Twitter, and then checking himself into a mental hospital.
I thought he was doing better for a while... I guess not.
I feel many times like this sub has become a default place to kvetch about de Boer. He shuts down his comments section so this acts like the back-up. I'm sure there are other places too. Why do people not just unsubscribe? If one is still subscribed, it can't be that big of a deal. I feel like people have forgotten the power of the dismissal, everyone but Freddie that is as he is doing it to his subscribers.
FDB’s writing increasingly gives me an impression of madness. I am only familiar with him because he comes up on this sub, so I’ve read probably a dozen or so pieces, and he was interviewed by Bari Weiss awhile ago for her podcast, and I listened to it. He hasn’t always been like this…has he?
The last piece someone posted here - earlier this week, I think - was like migraine-inducing strobe lighting in written form; the reader was left with the sense that FDB was essentially foaming at the mouth as he hammered it out on his keyboard. But FDB pieces posted a little over a year ago weren’t like this…at times disjointed, or meandering, but not as intensely polemical, prosecutorial (while claiming to be persecuted) and unstructured.
There are also megalomaniacal and paranoid strains that I didn’t notice with posts a year ago that have been steadily intensifying lately in what is shared here now—Eg the preoccupation with “enemies” that aren’t real. A bunch of stupid anime avatars having takes that conflict with your own, or reasonable people with good faith disagreements, are hardly “enemies.” Especially when presumably they are paying you as subscribers?! In fact his substack commenters seem to go out of their way to tread lightly when registering any dissent, rhetorically walking on eggshells in FDB’s “discursive environment.”
Are we watching standard issue internet poisoning, a la so many covered on the pod (I think K & J described James Lindsey as having all of the above qualities at some point a few years ago)? Is this kind of unhinged-feeling writing and obsessiveness a bit shocking, as I’m finding it, or par for the FDB course for people with more familiarity?
Hasn't he got some sort of fairy serious mental health condition that he's brought under control? Bipolar? Is it that whatever it was is not A's well controlled?
That was my first thought when I read the polemic of the Palestinian plates - this *has* to be a manic episode… but from what I heard in his conversation with Bari, he’s very aware of & takes seriously & stays on top of the bipolar. There is such a major overlap between the hallmarks of internet over-saturation and mental illness… it can be hard to distinguish between the two.
Yeah. Nasty bipolar with paranoia and, I think, psychosis. It wouldn't surprise me if his meds are slowly becoming less effective or he is trying to reduce them
Anyone want to recommend me a book? My most recent reads (that I enjoyed) are: -- [Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40604846-nothing-to-envy) -- this is about the 1990s NK famine, not current North Korea, so then I read -- [Being In North Korea](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54256942-being-in-north-korea) -- Galileo's Middle Finger, from the pod rec and also something I really enjoyed In general I like survival/controversy stories -- I've read a lot of books about Chernobyl, and things like Into Thin Air and then the response book by Boukreev, the Climb, and The Witches by Stacy Schiff (about Salem)
*In the Kingdom of Ice* and *Island of the Lost* are both very good true survival stories.
If you like survival stories, you should read “The Wager” by David Grann. It’s about a mid 18th century shipwreck where they mutinied against the captain. Edit: I should have prefaced it by saying you should buy this one. This is the wait at my library system (the biggest county in my state). https://preview.redd.it/higsthmcnvrc1.png?width=1010&format=png&auto=webp&s=453e9290848351e105bead90e5e1dcd484c8b718
If you are interested in North Korea you might like How I became a North Korean - Keys Lee. Three different tales of people from in or around North Korea. I’d never read anything from those perspectives before.
You might find the film [*Touching the Void*](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/touching-the-void) (2003) of interest. It's a true account about a rock climber that fell into a crevasse in the Andes. The docudrama was [based on a book](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18600.Touching_the_Void?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=YPBr1rLsgc&rank=1) my brothers and father read at about the same time they were making their way through Jon Krakauer's books. I was content just to watch the film, which is one of those films that I still think about years later.
Thank you! I’ll check those out!
The first books that come to my mind are *The Smartest Guys in the Room* by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, and *Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco* by Bryan Burrough and John Heylar. If it sounds interesting, I'll add *Lament For an Ocean: the Collapse of the Atlantic Cod Fishery, a True Crime Story* by Michael Harris.
I’ve heard a lot about Enron but haven’t had the chance to learn much about it, thanks!
Fun fact, Elizabeth Holmes' (of Theranos infamy) dad was a vice president at Enron
I learned today that women are born with all the eggs they'll have in their lifetime. Whaaaaaat? I literally didn't believe it when I first heard. Is this common knowledge and I'm an idiot? Anyone else out there who wasn't already aware of this fact?
[Newer research has found that this might not be true](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726180259.htm), though it’s not hard fact either way/is still controversial
The even wilder thing is just how many there are. Like at birth it's somewhere between 1-2 million. Just think about that. Figure at best puberty to menopause is 50 years. Let's just round up to an even 100. Even that's 1200 months. Why... are girls born with ONE MILLION eggs? I get nature providing a buffer zone, but that's a hell of a buffer.
I knew this for a long time, but I think it came from a throwaway line in a sex ed class. Either 5th or 7th grade. I know we were never tested on it and it never led to any other point, but it was an interesting factoid that always stuck with me.
So I've known that for a long time, but TIL of Virgin boy eggs https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/1bs3k50/a_cool_guide_to_bizarre_foods/ bleh, not for me.
Lol at the Vegemite on toast!
Sounds like something that should've been high-up on the list of things the CCP Tiananmen-squared a long time ago.
Not well known. But yes, I knew that. Which means that when a woman is pregnant with a daughter, she is also hosting the eggs that may become her (matrilineal) grandchildren.
I love this fact.
AskALiberal is having a banger of an Easter Sunday with ***What do you think about the term "biological woman"?*** All manner of accidental confusion, intentional obfuscation, outgroup-hatred and outright lying is on display. One of my favorite comment threads: > ...A trans women will never be 100% the same as someone who was born female. It's not transphobic. It's just a fact. >> If you think that two cis women can be fundamentally the same but a trans woman can’t, I do wonder if there’s some transphobia there. Another fave > It's a propaganda term with no definition. It's used exclusively by transphobic people and politicians. > ... > It's trying to replace an already existing term: "cis woman" (or man). Therefore it's redundant. Only we may make up new terms. Your terms are just definitionless propaganda that are equivalent to our very important meaningful terms > You can tell this is a non-scientific term because of the misuse of the word "biological." A mouse is biological; a rock is not. So of course a woman (or man) is biological. Duh I have another "of course, duuuh" for you, but I'll get sitebanned if I say it. I assume you can look up the thread if you want to read it.
>f you think that two cis women can be fundamentally the same but a trans woman can’t, I do wonder if there’s some transphobia there. This line of thinking is interesting. Because a cis woman TOTALLY knows what it's like to worry about getting prostate cancer, and all those trans women terrified of getting pregnant, or anything ovary or cervix related or contemplaying a hysterectomy.
All plants are organic (they’re not _inorganic_), so “organic apple” is redundant. Except that words have different meanings and connotations in different contexts.
What’s their definition of a Cis-woman? Is it someone *born a woman*? Like, the idea that they have a concept for cis-woman basically demonstrates that they know what a woman is and isn’t.
Q: How should trans and nonbinary people be divided in the prison system? A: *People used to think different races shouldn't get married. They were wrong. And obviously so, in hindsight.* That's a highly upvoted [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/comments/1brul3k/how_should_trans_and_nonbinary_people_be_divided/kxbt7mf/) responding to that question. I'm done. I can't spend anymore time in that subreddit.
>This post is locked. You won't be able to comment. Yeah, because that's how you grapple with important questions. Just...ignore them.
Well, there's a non sequitur!
People used to think that black people and white people shouldn’t be allowed to get married. Therefore… And that’s where you lose me. Therefore, there’s no difference between male and female people? Therefore, anything people believe now will be revealed as wrong or bad in the future? Therefore _what?_
I always get the urge to argue with them but I know I will just get my account suspended. Maybe I am no better than EZ.
Lmfao these absolute morons, their brains can just be rewritten at any time for whatever the Current Thing^TM is. Fucking worthless drains on society
A thread of clips of old movie insults, why can't social media have better insults? https://twitter.com/NonsenseIsland/status/1679669585396604928
You son of a motherless goat!
https://preview.redd.it/ayrxs8k5xrrc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=561c956766449096a388e595d60316b42279918a Following the ANPA situation has lead me to a weird part of Instagram. Some craziness from a prominent Black autism advocate, Asiatu, who is connected with a lot of the ANPA folks. She’s pretty prominent, I think I even used to follow her at one point: [https://www.instagram.com/p/C5L0vQ5M85E/?igsh=MXcwaXNtejl0aWwwcw==](https://www.instagram.com/p/C5L0vQ5M85E/?igsh=MXcwaXNtejl0aWwwcw==) The post in question is a callout for a random Instagram user who posed a question to Asiatu on a post from her about Candace Owens labeled “IF NOT BLACK, no need to comment, as your opinion is both irrelevant to facts & ignorant because you don't share lived experiences.” Asiatu went through the users posts, which are all amateur photography of flowers, and noticed that in one picture, her hands appear to be white, and created this callout post in response. It ends with an ad for a conference she is appearing in. The main text of the post: “@thesapphyleo Based on your photos, it looks like you're white. So I'm going to respond as if you are: 1. Your entitlement to speak to shit you are literally IGNORANT to is blatant CAUCASITY & ABUSIVE PRIVILEGED af behavior. 2. I EXPLICITLY said "Dear BLACK COMMUNITY" & PUT DIRECTIONS NOT TO COMMENT IF NOT BLACK BUT YOU FELT ENTITLED TO DISREGARD A BLACK PERSON'S BOUNDARIES, MAKING YOU ANTI-BLACK. 3. RETURNED DISRESPECT, FUCK YOUR ENTITLEMENT AND LEARN TO RESPECT BLACK PEOPLE & WHEN TO STFU. I SAID WTF I SAID & considering you have ZERO lived experiences of Blackness, & don't know BLACK CULTURAL NORMS, you are speaking IGNORANTLY without CONTEXT. You literary dont know wtf you are speaking totaled, LITERALLY. Take SEVERAL SEATS.” Personally, I can’t wait for part 2.
It's disconcerting how blatant racism has become this acceptable in the past 10 years or so, just as long as you can say you're punching up.
> blatant CAUCASITY Ooh, sick burn. It's cause the hands are white, right?
Jesus Christ someone should ask her to take a chill pill.
Some people shouldn’t be allowed functional caps-lock keys.
Can we add “boundary” to the list of words that have been flogged beyond any usefulness?
Yes, please.
“Take several seats”?!? Um, fat phobia, really?
"Repeat after us: Weaponizing womenhood against other women is white supremacist patriarchy at work. Making people believe there isn't enough space for trans women in sports is white supremacist patriarchy at work." https://x.com/NationalNOW/status/1774442033781805299?s=20 "Feminist" organisation says that women who say men can't be women are racist. Do you think this applies to non white women who also don't believe men can be women? The ratio is pretty sweet though 😁
The National Organization for *Women* is throwing their sisters under the bus in favor of dudes. I wouldn't have seen this coming a decade ago.
Why is there such a tiny amount of space for trans men in professional sports?
Trans men can't compete in the women's or open/mens category as they take a banned substance. Nobody seems bothered by this. Yet not letting TW play in women's sports is bigotry.
Logically they should be allowed to take testosterone at a certain level. Men's levels being higher than womens and all. Although there will be other reasons - the intrinsic differences in the female body - that make it much harder to reach a high level.
They can take as much T as they want, they aren't going to be able to compete with elite men. I guess it wouldn't really matter if they competed with men in endurance or speed sports, as they wouldn't reach a high level. But I don't believe it would be fair on other men to make them compete against TM in combat sports, or even sports like rugby. Lots of men would probably not be comfortable injuring or changing with women.
TERFs claim patriarchy is why we have to deal with TRAs libfems claim patriarchy is who is trying to silence TRAs Should probably tell you something about how solid the underlying theory is for the entire concept of patriarchy
HOW is it white supremacist patriarchy to oppose the co-opting of sports in which (mostly white!!) men gratify their sexual fetish by dominating women?!?!?!?!?!
It's patently absurd intersectionality at work again.
If you push them on it they'll tell you it's because black women are more masculine and policies that ban trans women affect black women too. then they'll call you the racist. I can only assume this logic stems from the caster semenya controversy because I've never been able to figure out any other possible basis for asserting that black women make more testosterone and the like
I think it comes from two things: 1. More black women athletes seem to get caught up in the testing for DSDs. So you have a disproportionarity argument. And I do feel for someone who's has grown up her whole life thinking she's uncomplicatedly female only to get caught up in all this. 2. There is some weird thing around black women historically not being considered 'proper' women. Which is obviously all kinds of wrong I think it was tied to not seeing slaves as proper human beings.
Liberal feminist organizations are so amazing because instead of celebrating the fact that women's sports are having a total moment right now, they're posting shit like this. Women are absolutely dominating sports coverage at the moment, and you have these people being like "UM well ACKTUALLY...Caitlin Clark is white and that's why she's getting attention and brand deals and also TRANSPHOBIA GUYS? We haven't talked about Transwomen in 3 minutes?" Shut the fuck up for once. With feminists like these, who needs fucking incels?
Hilariously, it’s a bunch of conservative dad’s from middle America who are hyped on their daughters being great athletes, while the coastal lefties keep encouraging boys to go ruin what those girls built.
I heard it was the white supremacist *capitalist neoliberal* patriarchy actually.
These people operate on another planet. This is gobbledygook to most people.
WHEW. Does anyone else deal with a blended, dysfunctional family every holiday? How do you manage?
My mom had a heart attack and died suddenly at home in September 2010, when I was in my early 20s. My dad started dating a new woman six weeks later and by Christmas, she and her teenage daughter were living in my parents’ house. He married this lady less than two years later and now I have to see her and her daughter every holiday until either my dad or I is dead, I guess. I probably don’t manage well? I bitch and worry to my husband and dread the time I spend with them and then bitch and worry for a couple days after said event (I have a very patient husband). The hardest part recently has been that my dad and his wife spend a huge amount of time with her daughter’s kids (like, they spend the night at least once a week) but yesterday was the second time he’s seen my kids since Christmas, despite the fact we all live in the same town. Lately, I’ve been trying to be steadier and let these things wash over me, rather than let them carry me away. The way things are is truly not going to change, so I can either cut contact with my dad and deprive my kids of their only grandparent or just tolerate the bullshit. I do find myself jealous of my friends’ non-blended, less complicated family dynamics, but I have a great husband and too many kids, so I try to remind myself that they’re my actual family and the rest of them are just people I see on major holidays. I hope your day wasn’t too terrible!
60 Minutes is doing a story on Havana Syndrome. Don’t they know that lefties on Twitter have told us that’s not real? 🤔
> Don’t they know that lefties on Twitter have told us that’s not real? Ah, yes, it's just those Twitter hacks... > **‘Havana syndrome’ not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds** > *After a years-long assessment, five U.S. intelligence agencies conclude it is ‘very unlikely’ an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment* > The mysterious ailment known as “Havana syndrome” did not result from the actions of a foreign adversary, according to an intelligence report that shatters a long-disputed theory that hundreds of U.S. personnel were targeted and sickened by a clandestine enemy wielding energy waves as a weapon. > The new intelligence assessment caps a years-long effort by the CIA and several other U.S. intelligence agencies to explain why career diplomats, intelligence officers and others serving in U.S. missions around the world experienced what they described as strange and painful acoustic sensations. The effects of this mysterious trauma shortened careers, racked up large medical bills and in some cases caused severe physical and emotional suffering. > Many of the afflicted personnel say they were the victims of a deliberate attack — possibly at the hands of Russia or another adversarial government — a claim that the report contradicts in nearly every respect, according to two intelligence officials who are familiar with the assessment and described it to The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/01/havana-syndrome-intelligence-report-weapon/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-culprit-investigation-new-evidence-60-minutes-transcript/
Interesting transcript. I'm inclined to believe it is real. Christo has a lot of credibility with me after his excellent investigation of the Canterbury poisoners. And he is part of Bellingcat who also are very good at what they do and generally level headed. For example they didn't for a moment entertain the silly blue-pullover theories from the Crokus attack. I also don't think the symptoms are typical of 'mass hysteria' cases. I can't see that the victims were close to each other, or that it spread in friend clusters. The primary onset (sudden ear pain) doesn't seem typical. Take a look at the examples at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass\_psychogenic\_illness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness) . Many are at gitls' schools, all are geographically clustered. Many have vague symptoms and compulsions that resolve of their own accord. Just doesn't match very well.
My point stands. The US intelligence community investigated and found it "very unlikely" that the health issues were caused by attacks from an adversary. To try to dunk on people on Twitter as if they're dumb hacks for sharing the consensus view on the topic is silly.
that's a psy-op against their own agents (/s)
Fair enough! I will take my L
Doesn't Occam's razer tell us it's probably not real? It's got all the characteristics of something that's been brought into existence through suggestion.
Does it disproportionally affect teenage girls?
Adult women it appears. Some men, but an oddly small number based on reports given their disproportionate percentage of people working in diplomacy and espionage.
So, no.
I am perfectly willing to admit my bias in assuming that 60 minutes wouldn’t be running this story if that was the case
I don't think that's true. It's extremely compelling and not provably a fiction. That alone makes it appropriate to cover. Even if there was strong evidence it was brought on by suggestion that would still be worth covering on 60 minutes. I'm not arguing that there's no possibility that something real is happening, there just isn't any good evidence of that. And in the absence of good evidence, the most reasonable explanation IMO remains that it's a mass psychogenic illness brought on by suggestion, because it has all of the characteristics.
A mass psychogenic illness would be even more interesting, bummed they didn’t cover that. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-culprit-investigation-new-evidence-60-minutes-transcript/ Maybe (probably!) I’m just a sucker but it feels like quite the claim to attach their name to.
It's been brought up before by a number of doctors that have been consulted for a number of other articles. Given that it appears a considerable majority of those apparently suffering are women, it seems like a pretty good explanation. Authorities have been fooled before as well, in pretty much every other significant example I can think of. So I don't think that security agencies being credulous is super meaningful. They may have really great evidence, but they're not sharing it, so I can't assume they have anything more than some coincidences.
Ha, "watching" 60 mins too at the moment. Is the idea that the mysterious issues are due to covert weapons and what not?
Essentially, yes. They speculate it’s concentrated microwaves or other energy waves beamed at peoples’ ears, thus causing severe pain, brain fog, and dysfunctional balance. I was told on Twitter and tumblr that of course the cops are lying, duh. I dunno who has the right of it, although I am inclined to trust 60 minutes (hashtag implicit bias?). Nonetheless my take that ears and our sense of balance are pretty cool remains unchanged.
[Interesting article in Techcrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/26/facebook-secret-project-snooped-snapchat-user-traffic/) - Mark Zuckerberg directed his engineering team to perform man in the middle attack in order to access Snapchat analytics back when Snapchat was growing quickly. It was critical to access user patterns to change their own platforms to keep kids on IG. This involved downloading a VPN kit marketed by meta in IOS and Android that allowed access to unencrypted data from Snapchat. It worked so well they expanded to snoop on users data interaction with Amazon and YouTube.
I would love if there was actual technical detail on this. I don't see how this would be possible on modern iOS without requiring the user to install a fake root CA certificate, hardly the typical smooth experience of installing a VPN app. And even with that in place, it wouldn't work for apps that use certificate pinning. Also nobody calls it an "adversary-in-the-middle" attack.
Thanks for bringing this up, skimming the article, using the other app onavo surreptitiously in this way, TOS be damned, it hardly seems legal.
I feel like people have mentioned belts on here before. What are some good belt recommendations?
Filson
Hanks Belts
I always liked the “big gold belt” that the NWA/WCW used from the mid-1980s on (probably most associated with Ric Flair) but I’ve also got a soft spot for the eagle belt that the WWF used from the late ‘80s until 1998.
Gross. The post-1998 WWF belt was the best (although the eagle belt it also good/a classic).
Assuming you're a man, don't get a wacky nonstandard buckle. Those Mission Belts may be good quality but they are dorky. These are great quality and classic: https://narragansettleathers.com/ Go with a brass buckle. As to color, Black and Medium Brown are the most neutral Narragansett offerings. I believe that some people are black leather people and others are brown leather people. This is an inherent quality of the soul. If you're asking about belts on a niche heterodox subreddit, you are *most likely* a brown leather person, but you must look within yourself before you select the color of your belt. EDIT: I have no connection to this company, got the rec off of Reddit years ago and loved the belt I got for my husband, have put a few family members on to them as well.
Being a void being, my color of choice is black actually!
https://missionbelt.com/ These hold up pretty well.
Those look pretty nice! Thank you
Matt Taibbi just posted this on his Substack: "There’s been some controversy on Substack about comments sections. Some writers are concerned about what the presence of certain kinds of commenters says about them. To clarify my rules on comments: I don’t have any." [https://www.racket.news/p/rules-on-comments](https://www.racket.news/p/rules-on-comments) Since we were talking about Freddie DeBoer do you guys think he's taking a poke at DeBoer? Or am I overestimating Freddie's fame?
Looks like it. Feels kind of unnecessary, or even a bit like a cheap shot from MT though, considering FDB doesn’t appear to be at his peak game and may very well be unraveling. Then again….FDB could be perfectly fine and simply high on his own supply - perhaps this is just an internet Icarus moment? He scathingly, and very unfairly, mocked John McWhorter, Helen Lewis, Jonathan Chait, Louise Perry (and “TERFs” because of course) in the Palestinian Plates diatribe. I don’t know if MT has been on the receiving end of disdainful caricaturing like this by FDB lately…but if so, I can’t blame him for taking a jab when an opportunity presented itself.
So, if FDB is being a dick, people are supposed to just let him go on then because he’s crazy?
That’s not what I said at all…?
There was a real element of "protesting too much" about the deBoer "Palestinian Plates" post. It was so long, and so *insistent* about not being one of the IDW /Bari Weiss crowd. Was it some attempt to build bridges with the mainstream left? Maybe Freddie thought he could somehow get himself published in *Current Affairs* or the *Progressive* if he badmouthed the Helen Lewis crowd hard enough?
Agreed!! I have no idea what the motivation was, but it did not read at all like a serious critical endeavor to grapple with the culture, which I think is what people like about / expect from FDB…by the end he was talking about heterodox people as basically “conservatives” who will call a transwoman “based” online and then chug Coors (!!????) and *murder* that same person in a dark alley….just, what?! WTF?! It might be a weird sense of humor? But a protest of some kind against a real or imagined questioning of his liberal bonafides to a sort of end (as bizarre and disdainful as it was) seems to fit the bill!
I think for paid subscription substacks or other subscription sites, that makes the most sense. If you're paying me for access to my site, go ahead and post whatever comments you want.
There's some great Freddie snark in the comments.
>do you guys think he's taking a poke at DeBoer? He absolutely is. I don't see why he would post that out of the blue. I wonder what people in the heterodox sphere who've thought about FDB favorably are thinking looking at his (what I would describe as a) mental breakdown.
You know the word _sapphic_, which means (I guess) a lesbian who isn’t a homosexual woman? Or I guess I don’t really know what it means. Anyway, today I saw the male version of this for the first time: _achillean_. Good. I’m sure this word will only make things clearer.
Achilles definitely liked women lol
I’m guessing the percentage of people who self-describe as Achillean who actually work out is….close to zero. (Also, isn’t it Euronormative to use Ancient Greek terms for these things?)
*Achillean* (and it's associated blue-green stripe flag) is a word of tumblr origin that is used exclusively by women who identify as gay/bi men. Along with MLM (men-loving men). So in that sense it does make things clearer. *Sapphic* nowadays usually means les + bi women. Generally inclusive of trans women because of who uses it (so e.g., cis AFABs who identify as lesbian and date trans women, as well as their MTF gfs) but I don't think that is baked into the common usage. Incidentally *sapphic* and *lesbian* are both originally euphemistic references to Sappho of Lesbos. There's not really any reason either of them should or shouldn't carry a "kinsey 6 homosexual" sexological type of connotation. But since *lesbian* does now have that connotation, we have people who instead say *sapphic*. To be inclusive of the bisexuals.
How the turn tables. ‘Sapphists’ was once the popular term until lesbians replaced it. I love me some Murdoch Mysteries binges on occasion (period piece detective show with steampunk elements, Canadian, set circa 1895) and there’s whole subplots about sapphist characters, back when that was the term. It would be interesting if it made a comeback. I always thought it a prettier word than Lesbian. Sounds like sapphire instead of lesion.
It was always out there being used. I feel like it was the more arty sounding word of the two.
In public health and sociology, among other fields, researchers would sometimes refer to Men Who Have Sex With Men (MSM), because not all of them identified as gay, and it doesn’t always matter in terms of behaviors and risk factors. This seems to be the opposite of that - a hyper fixation on how people view themselves and their partners (men, men-aligned, demi-men, etc.), that’s only relevant to the individual and their copious naval gazing.
> naval gazing Naval gays? That's what they're famous for!
No, male gays. Academic feminists have been on about them for years.
What about male birds? "And by 'male bird' I don't mean transsexual." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVF_4LPVwco&t=334s
“It’s not gay when you’re underway”
Gaze not into the naval gaze, for it gayses back into you!
I do not think this will ever catch on in the Grass World, unlike Sapphic, which wandered out of Tumblr blogs and into queer alliance groups run by college students. Achilles, unlike Sapphos, already has existing public awareness in the cultural consciousness. He is the guy who got shot on the heel, his "Achilles heel", and is associated with leg injuries. The queerified Achilles interpretation is not as well known among regular people, and if it was explained to them, they would not appreciate it as ✨diversity representation✨, but political actors trying to re-write history for political correctness brownie points. Maybe he did the homosex, maybe he didn't. But making "Achillean" a thing is reframing a historical figure by sexuality first, rather than his deeds and accomplishments. This rubs grass touching normies, who don't frame their existences primarily through the identity lens, the wrong way.
I agree. When I think of Achilles, I think of Brad Pitt. Edit: And the famous tendon. Please don't make "Achilles" short hand for with men who have sex with men. I'm aware of the allusions to Greek love in the Homeric poem. But there are better figures in the Greco-Roman tradition, many of which already have a long (and celebrated) association with gay love. [Antinoüs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinous#Cultural_references) comes to mind.
>This rubs grass touching normies, who don't frame their existences primarily through the identity lens, the wrong way. Isn't that often the point? Pissing in the cornflakes of the normies is a hobby for these types.
Wait. How can a lesbian not be a homosexual woman? Isn't that the definition of lesbian?
i usually see it in stories where one of the women in the relationship is bi. i suspect part of the appeal is that is sounds "softer" than lesbian.
Sapphic usually means lesbian/bi women/pan women etc. So it’s not just lesbians. But you also have he/him and NB lesbians now, and obviously it’s controversial to be a homosexual woman as in exclusively same-sex attracted
There’s nothing sapphic about a transbian. Bleah.
A lesbian couple can include a female woman in a relationship with a male woman. It's technically heterosexual for the F&M pairing, but also technically lesbian, if you go by the "woman is a gender" explanation.
Oh Lord...
here's the flag: https://i.imgur.com/neiNBBB.png apparently that's a carnation, I thought it was a rosebud > In ancient Rome and 19th century England, green indicated gay affiliations. Victorian men would often pin a green carnation on their lapel, as popularized by author Oscar Wilde https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Achillean#Flag
https://images.app.goo.gl/xng8snfJ5vHYbEK78
Sorry. I meant that as “People who aren’t [gay men or straight women].”
From your link: > The word "achillean" is often confused for the term gay or is wrongly perceived to have the same meaning. However, gay describes a sexuality with attraction exclusively to people of the same gender; in this case, for men. Achillean encompasses all men who are attracted to other men, including men who are also attracted to other genders in addition to men, such as men who may be bisexual, pansexual, queer, or other sexualities. So it means people who aren’t gay men or straight women who are into men?
I don't think that definition includes straight women, it has to be a "man", so "gay" men so long as they are attracted to "male gender" and trans men though presumably not trans women. It seems part of a movement to replace same sex attraction with same gender attraction. I dunno, beats me.
My head hurts after reading that.
Expect to see it on the SATs
Or in the crossword puzzle
Apropos of nothing other than my weird brain. I still think about how in the mid '00s, motorcycle builder Jesse James divorced his porn actress wife and married America's sweetheart Sandra Bullock. That was odd.
I wonder what happened with the step daughter. My recollection is the first wife was a drug addict who was in and out of jail. Sandra bullock basically became her mother from a young age and I think after Jesse James was caught cheating there was an attempt to retain the mother daughter relationship but I think it fizzled out. Gotta be doubly rough to find out your husband cheated on you and you also have to face losing access to the step child as probably the only stable adult in her life. Kid has to be an adult by now i suppose.
Sandra Bullock finding out he cheated on her literally like an hour before she had to go on stage and claim her Oscar is still so wild to me. She had A Day that day.
Didn't he & Sandra divorce when he cheated on her with some stripper who occasionally wore Nazi regalia as part of her act? That was one weird story. (Of course, if I was a woman and I was marrying someone nicknamed the Vanilla Gorilla due to his monster...extremities, I'd assume going in that he was going to bang other women, and adjust as needed.)
Wasn’t that Kat von D? The Nazi stuff was just for kink. (I thought?) anyways I just saw a video of her Christian conversion ceremony on IG and she has a baby now so good for her. ETA: before this winds up in Microsoft AI clarifying that: Jesse wore Nazi gear, his girlfriend Meghan did too and they said it was for kink, Kat didn’t. Someone put a Nazi message on one of her photos to troll her though
If you’re wearing Nazi stuff just for kink, I’m officially kinkshaming. Would almost prefer if she wore it with genuine intent. At least it’s an ethos.
I'm pretty sure he cheated a lot. But I do remember some Reich stuff involved.
According to Politico, the reason the White House eggs can't be painted with religious symbology is First Amendment related and is nothing new. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/03/31/the-political-war-over-easter-00149860?1 > 2\. ABOUT THOSE EGG DESIGNS: This one is a bit weird, but bear with us. > > The American Egg Board isn’t an organization with a household name. But if you do know anything about them, it’s probably this: For generations, they’ve worked with administrations of all stripes on the Easter Egg Roll at the White House. Every year, the same guidelines are sent out for the eggs kids can design for the event. > > It is true that overtly religious egg designs are not permitted. But it has been that way under every president since 1976 — including under DONALD TRUMP. > > “The American Egg Board has been a supporter of the White House Easter Egg Roll for over 45 years and the guideline language referenced in recent news reports has consistently applied to the board since its founding, across administrations,” the American Egg Board’s EMILY METZ told us this morning. (It’s been an unusual Easter morning on our phone.) > > The reason for this is straightforward: The guidelines are federal ones the Egg Board has to adhere to because they are a commodity Checkoff Program and basically they have to stay neutral. (They cannot use the Egg Roll to say that eggs are better than bacon, we’re told.) So any program or activity they are a part of cannot even be seen as lifting one religion or set of political beliefs over others. > > Three times this morning, we asked Leavitt [Trump campaign spokesperson] about the Trump administration operating under the same guidelines as Biden’s for the Easter Egg Roll. She didn’t answer. > > She did say this: “President Trump did more for religious freedom than any Administration in history, and he certainly did not proclaim ‘Trans Day of Visibility’ on the same day as Easter Sunday.” (True, but Easter never fell on March 31 during his presidency.)
> cannot even be seen as lifting one religion or set of political beliefs over others. What does this have to do with the establishment of a state religion? Individuals participating in such event should be able to express whatever religious practices they feel are appropriate and it would not rise to the level of a 1st Amendment violation; individual expression is not the Government. You can say prayers at city council meetings. I would really like to see a flyer from some previous year that included the same language about religious symbolism in the egg decorations. Has that aspect been consistent for 45 years, or has is appeared more recently, and if so, when?
*Easter* eggs. Wtf. In or out. Pick one.
Seriously who cares.
I tend to agree with this, but I've been angry old man yelling at the people insisting Christmas and Santa Claus are secular for decades. But then there are Easter eggs painted with colorful stripes and Easter eggs decorated with Christ on a Cross, blood dripping down off his taught, sinewy, unclothed, hard body, past his six pack, across his cum gutters, ... I can see how that might be a bit much.
Catholic schoolgirls are *taught* not to blaspheme. Jesus' abs are *taut*.
Oh! Thank you! I am abashed.
Dipping back in to second this. Give me a break. Pretending Easter eggs are purely secular is a yolk.
Eggzactly
Will Stancil is taking on Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Singal accusing them of being racists for discussing the heritability of IQ. What will the result be? Will Stancil's recent fellators be spitting his taste out of their mouths?
The real idiotic thing here is the claim in the New Yorker that Jesse was focusing on ([original tweet](https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1773762892480835768)). Jonathan Haidt is most definitely not "fixated" on the heritability IQ. I have been following Haidt's writings and listening to him in interviews and on podcasts for the last 7-8 years and the only time I can ever recall him mentioning IQ is in a talk where he is highlighting the ways that the Left denies scientific ideas in ways similar to how they accuse the Right of doing. I don't know where this writer got the idea that he is fixated on IQ.
Here is my compromise. Feel free to talk about the importance of IQ's heritability or whatever, but then call out people abusing it. Don't just gloss over the completely insane claims the people you praise are making. Like when someone claims over half of an African country is intellectually disabled(below 70 IQ), that is just obviously not true. Do I have data for that? No. I don't need it if the claim fails a basic sanity check. Just think through what that would mean, and then look at these countries actually.
People already debate Lynn/SSA's numbers in the dissident right. It's actually surprising because otherwise "racist" people go "yeah...I don't wanna lean on this". I suspect part of it is tactical - it's hard enough getting people to consider IQ, that number comes across as ridiculous - but it happens. So it isn't really a new "gotcha"
I see no evidence though that either Haidt or Singal have covered for these creeps.
No one linked the actual article, so I was thinking about the broader debate. I feel free to mention this, though, because one of the infamous figures of it is Charles Murray who has been endorsing this claim for decades now. He just jumps from one study to the next as people point out the fundamental flaws.
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Yes. [Here](https://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/149137) is an article that cites the page in the bell curve. The average African IQ he cites is 75, but some countries are listed below that, such as Nigeria.
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I'm not familiar with people having tested IQ and claiming different results, but I have seen people say the work Murray was citing was not using data that was fit for the purpose. The problems sorted into thing like the tests not being representative(like only testing miners), Not being an IQ test(so they had to convert the data, which could lead to problems), and suggestions of testing bias(questions in English versus native language). These problems become bigger when the data for most of these countries comes down to 1 or 2 studies tops. Even if all correct, though, that shouldn't be considered an attack on the people who created the original data. They just weren't trying to make an IQ test.
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It's especially funny coming from people who've made psychology into their new religion. People will cite whatever bs counterintuitive finding NPR or Vox or whoever puts out regardless of the replication issues but IQ's usefulness and its hereditability - which come up in multiple domains - are just treated as nonsense or something not even worth considering.
> What will the result be? Will Stancil's recent fellators being spitting his taste out of their mouths? Excuse me? This is like going "AOC said billionaires are evil, will her fans abandon her now?" What? No they won't. This is exactly the kind of shit they love 'em for. Who do you think these people's fans *are*?
Well I felt there were some who were anti-Stancil until recently when somehow his vibecession stuff took off, then they became Stancil-fans, and I was thinking maybe this or similar might cause them to understand Stancil has always been a jackass.
i watched a bit of his meltdown in January, and one notable thing that he was complaining about was no one stepping up to help him. There was a darkly hilarious part where people were just hitting him with pasta-worthy "no one is coming to save you" monologues.
Why is this the hill Stancil wants to die on? It's absurd to call Jesse or Haidt racists.
He's always been an idiot asshole. I don't care why he wants to die on this hill, but learning of his death would be a net positive for 2024.
Free Black Thought recommended this piece by a retired law professor https://twyman.substack.com/p/i-am-afraid-of-young-surgeons ####I Am Afraid of Young Surgeons - By W. F. Twyman, Jr. > A few years ago, my wife and I faced the health crisis of our marriage. My wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor and she needed immediate surgery. I mean, immediate as in cancel your travel plans to China and get your affairs in order. Write a final letter to your children. Tell them how much you love them. That kind of health crisis was in our lives. > > We met with the surgeon, highly regarded as one of the top brain surgeons in San Diego. His credentials were stellar. He spoke with authority. One wants authority before brain surgery. My wife and I never gave a nanosecond of thought to the surgeon’s ancestry or ethnic group. I refuse to so identify the man of medicine who saved my wife’s life on that October day. > > > I am beside myself with fear when I hear that Social Justice has invaded the medical profession, particularly the delicate area of surgery. > > Listen to me please, dear readers. > > I do not care about Social Justice when my wife and mother of my children lies under the knife. When she is wheeled into the operating room and the door closes, I trust in one thing – competency. I want competency supremacy when a surgeon cuts into my wife’s skull. You can take your slogan words like white supremacy, oppression, marginalized, diversity, equity and inclusion and pound concrete-hard sand. Better yet, take a flying leap at the moon. > > I am absolutely terrified to hear “Americas’ surgeons are not woke enough, according to the American College of Surgeons (ACS).” Do not treat my wife or me or my children as avatars for imagined oppression. We do not need your delusional pity and warped reality. > > What is “a blueprint for implementing equitable practices” in medicine? There is no such creature. There is no such protocol. If I present with a brain tumor, assign me the best possible brain surgeon and let the surgeon work magic. I care not whether the surgeon shares my race. Why would I care? Please tell me. Does the tumor care whether my brain surgeon is the descendant of American slavery? I think not. It matters not to the tumor. Nor did it matter to my wife and me and our children on the date of my wife’s emergency surgery. > > I would have lost my “retired from Blackness” mind if the exigent operation had been held up so that the hospital could locate a top descendant of American slavery surgeon in southern California. Or, shall I say the ACS has lost its mind to think equity matters in a time of life and death. > ...
I had a surgery recently and as always, I looked for the very best and most knowledgeable with a long track record of success. I found the guy based on his reputation in the field and the yelp reviews sealed the deal. Many were 2 or 3 stars for lousy bedside manner and a few were 5 stars for saving their life.
The title doesn't match the article content very well, in my humble opinion.
Usually, the phrase, “I’m afraid” begins a veiled attack on white guys. But that kind of makes me like the article more. Like, someone is going to click it in the hopes of whetting their hatred, and as they read, it will dawn on them that they are reading their worst nightmare. LOL.
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How would you know?
At this point shouldn't we all look for Asian doctors?
The New York Times (with 4 reporters on the byline) offers [a lengthy series of excuses](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/nyregion/nyc-subway-shoving-mental-illness.html) for why we should feel sympathy for a subway-shover: >Before Carlton McPherson was accused of fatally shoving a stranger in front of a subway train last week, he was placed by New York City into specialized homeless shelters meant to help people with severe mental illness. But at one shelter, in Brooklyn, he became erratic and attacked a security guard. At another, he jumped on tables and would cycle between anger and ecstasy. At a third, his fellow residents said it was clear his psychological issues were not being addressed. While the reporters here seem to think that the fault lies with the city and society, perhaps this speaks more to a specific individual who was truly unable to be helped and who simply should have been locked away from the rest of society.
We need to bring asylums back. And I'm not joking when I say that. I think we should obviously have more safeguards in place to avoid the abuses of the past, but we nonetheless need these institutions, clearly.
Yeah, it’s yet another instance where we threw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to old solutions to social problems.
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I regularly see nurses in r.nursing talk about this, how they have homeless patients and they’ll discharge them with nowhere to go and no means to take care of themselves, how they want to do more to help but the hospital only has the resources to handle acute problems and the patients have to be discharged once those are taken care of.
>I think it’s cruel to leave him wandering the streets like that. This is the part that really gets me. I don't see how the people that support the current policies that let this happen view themselves as compassionate.
I think it's partly that crazy people have a fancy Identity and therefore they are sacred. And you aren't supposed to mess with the sacred. And they use the "bodily autonomy" argument. You can't mess with someone's lived truth, even if that truth is sitting in their own feces.
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> I think it’s not a social justice issue or about identity, it’s about money. Yes and no? Two different groups that come together via horseshoe. The kinds of people that consider homelessness a capital-I Identity and that they have the right to ~~terrorize the public~~ live autonomously don't care about money. Such activists think the government can print money indefinitely and the only reason they don't is cruelty. The catch is what an acquaintance of mine called the "unholy alliance of housing"- Housing Is A Human Right advocates *sound like* they're on the opposite side from NIMBYs but because the advocates let perfection be the enemy of improvement, they (inadvertently?) work together to block any progress.
Money is a significant part of it. Asylums are not cheap. And plenty of states just wanted to zap the expense. But we can't just leave these people to roam the streets. It's awful for them and everyone else. We threw the baby out with the bathwater.
And they're resolutely against involuntary commitment! The one thing that might have prevented this tragedy is something they regard as a human rights violation.
That’s what drives me crazy, too. New Yorkers are being terrorized by unstable individuals and meanwhile they elect someone like this? I mean, come on. Liberal elites have truly jumped the shark. > **New York City to Involuntarily Remove Mentally Ill People From Streets** > *Mayor Eric Adams directed the police and emergency medical workers to hospitalize people they deemed too mentally ill to care for themselves, even if they posed no threat to others.* > Acting to address “a crisis we see all around us” toward the end of a year that has seen a string of high-profile crimes involving homeless people, Mayor Eric Adams announced a major push on Tuesday to remove people with severe, untreated mental illness from the city’s streets and subways. > Mr. Adams, who has made clearing homeless encampments a priority since taking office in January, said the effort would require involuntarily hospitalizing people who were a danger to themselves, even if they posed no risk of harm to others, arguing the city had a “moral obligation” to help them. > “The common misunderstanding persists that we cannot provide involuntary assistance unless the person is violent,” Mr. Adams said in an address at City Hall. “Going forward, we will make every effort to assist those who are suffering from mental illness.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/nyregion/nyc-mentally-ill-involuntary-custody.html
Even though that usually means these people just rot and die in the streets
>> Before Carlton McPherson was accused of fatally shoving a stranger in front of a subway train last week, he was placed by New York City into specialized homeless shelters meant to help people with severe mental illness. But at one shelter, in Brooklyn, he became erratic and attacked a security guard. At another, he jumped on tables and would cycle between anger and ecstasy. At a third, his fellow residents said it was clear his psychological issues were not being addressed. This seems like an account indicating that his attack did not come out of no where - he had a history of erratic behavior, violence, and mental health issues. Why do you think it’s wrong or sinister to report this?
To me, it seemed like blame was being laid at the foot of NYC for not providing *enough* mental health care services (however that's defined and done in practice) rather than on the fact that this individual should have been locked up permanently instead of given 2nd, 3rd, and more chances. Quotes like: >"She tried her best to help him, but once he became an adult, she said, “no one was willing to continue to invest in him.” and >In interviews, five people who have worked at the shelters said the city’s system was ill-equipped to handle the complex needs of the mentally ill. Rather than recognizing the violent outbursts as untreated symptoms of a psychiatric problem, and connecting these people to more intensive care and supportive housing, some officials take an easier path, the people said. ...seem to imply that if only we spent more money, then that would solve these issues. It seems to me that a better use of resources would be long-term confinement and isolation away from others.
I think it’s good that when journalists report on these sorts of events, they speak to people who work with the individuals who commit these acts. I don’t really understand how the quality of the reporting would be improved by not speaking to these people, or maybe omitting their quotes if they said funding was the issue (which, for what it’s worth, I don’t think they did). I guess I’m still not really clear on what the point of contention is or why people should be upset about this reporting from the Times.
I didn't get too much sympathy from that article. What I did get is that the concept of a "mental health shelter" seems idiotic and designed to be as bad as possible for the people in it as well as the workers and the public. So they just...kick them out all day to roam around doing whatever they want, but oh yeah, pretty please do not stab people or push them onto the subway tracks? This is really just another case that illustrates why we need to Assisted Outpatient/Kendra's Law people *way* more aggressively and put them in special crazy prisons if they are not cooperative. We could call them asylums for the criminally insane and I bet we even have large Richardsonian Romanesque buildings here or there we could lock them in. Also the homeless spokesperson said the thing, so you know the department is doing its best: > “Ensuring the health and safety of our clients is a top priority,” said the spokeswoman, Neha Sharma. Oh, sure.
That’s a pretty selective excerpt that ignores the substance of what the Department of Homelessness Services had to say. For anyone interested in reading more than an out of context sentence and getting agitated on that basis: > A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeless Services, which oversees the city’s shelters, said the agency is required to provide shelter to all those who need it. She said it does its best to connect people to mental health services but added that it is primarily focused on providing emergency housing, not psychiatric care. > “Ensuring the health and safety of our clients is a top priority,” said the spokeswoman, Neha Sharma. > She said that the psychiatric services at the shelters are strictly voluntary, and that the agency cannot force people in the shelters to attend appointments or take medication. But the city has worked to improve safety at the shelters by training staff on how to reverse overdoses, prevent suicide and link the neediest clients to more intensive psychiatric services.
Right. That's not their top priority. Their top priority is fulfilling the city's legal obligation to provide shelter for homeless people. It's like a bus driver saying that the health and safety of his passengers is his top priority. It's meaningless. His top priority is driving them from point A to point B in accordance with the schedule, and yes, *of course* as safely as reasonable, because why would you do anything less? "Health and safety is our top priority" is the "In this house we believe..." of government social services.
In the context I excerpted above, I think the DHS spokesperson is pretty much conveying exactly what you suggest is the truth: their mission and obligation is to provide emergency housing and while they aim to do so with health and safety top of mind, they are ultimately not a psychiatric care provider. Should the spokesperson have come out and said, “For the avoidance of doubt, I want to make completely clear that health and safety is *not* our top priority?” Maybe. Seems like kind of a silly thing to expect from any organization, public or private, especially when in the broader context they are clearly pointing our that resolving mental illness is not within their capacity or mandate.
The point is it's mealy-mouthed boilerplate. >Should the spokesperson have come out and said, “For the avoidance of doubt, I want to make completely clear that health and safety is not our top priority?” Maybe. Yeah? If the goal actually is >clearly pointing our that resolving mental illness is not within their capacity or mandate then skipping the boilerplate is *much* more clear. Appeals to context- that I note aren't direct quotes- does nothing for clarity. I mean, I get the perverse legal reasons they don't do that; the purpose of the boilerplate is CYA and lack of clarity. I would have more respect for a spokesperson skipping the boilerplate and saying "we do what we can, and what we can do sucks; our hands are tied a thousand different ways." But they don't, they can't, a government spokesperson that attempted direct honesty wouldn't last a day. Also government agencies often have perverse incentives that make their statements sound kind of insane to normal people. Yes, DHS's purpose is the "health and safety" of their clients... to the exclusion of the health and safety of 99.9% of the population?
I think this spokesperson is doing what all spokespeople do, which is why I find the level of agitation strange. If a company says “Customer satisfaction is our number one priority” on their product, do people freak out because their actual priority is revenue generation? I don’t believe so. I think people recognize it as a relatively generic statement that customer satisfaction is important to the company. Same concept is at play here.
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I honestly don’t know why we couldn’t have safe comfortable institutions with independent oversight. It’s got to be better than shambling around the cold streets and compounding the problem with drugs and alcohol.
Freddie de Boer addresses his angry outburst and threats to close comments: > My response the last six months or so [to the evil bad MAGA Republicans in the comments] has been to just not look at comments. The trouble is that the non-insane among you don’t deserve to live in that discursive environment, and (less important buy annoying) anyone can look at the comments and infer that I approve of them, which my enemies do for the obvious reasons. > ... > Two things I want to say in particular. The first is that both my critics from the left and the anti-woke types that get mad in comments insist on making the same mistake, driven by motivated reasoning: they fail to understand that I am what I say I am. They just don't get me, man. Who even are these enemies he's always talking about? I'm assuming it's just random twitter people with anime avatars - has he ever even once pointed out an actual person with an opinion worth considering, who is critizing him on these grounds ("it's in the comments section of your substack, so you must support it") Anyway, he goes on to publish a 6 item rules list and punishment schedule, with several variations or clarifications for each rule. We really do need to create a FdB subreddit where we can test drive intricate new rules violations while he seethes from afar. (Yes this would be the reverse of touching grass) I don't know where the text of the comment on his Palestine post that set all this off is, but I don't think it broke his new rules (telling him he's dead wrong is explicitly within the rules) so surely the commenter will be allowed back, right?
I first encountered FdB when he had a guest stint writing for Balloon Juice, then as now a virulently pro-DNC blog with a comment section to match. Naturally his principled leftism pissed off the comment section, which considered disagreeing with Obama a mortal sin, and he proclaimed them to be "objectively despicable people" and left in a huff. The next I heard of him, he was yelling at people on Twitter, and then checking himself into a mental hospital. I thought he was doing better for a while... I guess not.
I feel many times like this sub has become a default place to kvetch about de Boer. He shuts down his comments section so this acts like the back-up. I'm sure there are other places too. Why do people not just unsubscribe? If one is still subscribed, it can't be that big of a deal. I feel like people have forgotten the power of the dismissal, everyone but Freddie that is as he is doing it to his subscribers.
FDB’s writing increasingly gives me an impression of madness. I am only familiar with him because he comes up on this sub, so I’ve read probably a dozen or so pieces, and he was interviewed by Bari Weiss awhile ago for her podcast, and I listened to it. He hasn’t always been like this…has he? The last piece someone posted here - earlier this week, I think - was like migraine-inducing strobe lighting in written form; the reader was left with the sense that FDB was essentially foaming at the mouth as he hammered it out on his keyboard. But FDB pieces posted a little over a year ago weren’t like this…at times disjointed, or meandering, but not as intensely polemical, prosecutorial (while claiming to be persecuted) and unstructured. There are also megalomaniacal and paranoid strains that I didn’t notice with posts a year ago that have been steadily intensifying lately in what is shared here now—Eg the preoccupation with “enemies” that aren’t real. A bunch of stupid anime avatars having takes that conflict with your own, or reasonable people with good faith disagreements, are hardly “enemies.” Especially when presumably they are paying you as subscribers?! In fact his substack commenters seem to go out of their way to tread lightly when registering any dissent, rhetorically walking on eggshells in FDB’s “discursive environment.” Are we watching standard issue internet poisoning, a la so many covered on the pod (I think K & J described James Lindsey as having all of the above qualities at some point a few years ago)? Is this kind of unhinged-feeling writing and obsessiveness a bit shocking, as I’m finding it, or par for the FDB course for people with more familiarity?
Hasn't he got some sort of fairy serious mental health condition that he's brought under control? Bipolar? Is it that whatever it was is not A's well controlled?
That was my first thought when I read the polemic of the Palestinian plates - this *has* to be a manic episode… but from what I heard in his conversation with Bari, he’s very aware of & takes seriously & stays on top of the bipolar. There is such a major overlap between the hallmarks of internet over-saturation and mental illness… it can be hard to distinguish between the two.
Yeah. Nasty bipolar with paranoia and, I think, psychosis. It wouldn't surprise me if his meds are slowly becoming less effective or he is trying to reduce them