The Anti-Targ

The thing with gathering evidence on long term effects of gender hormone treatment on children and young teens is it's hard to get evidence without treating children and young teens. Without reading the report I can certainly imagine that there has been no or little long term academic follow up with young people who have received gender hormone therapy, and if that is a significant failing then that needs to be fixed, and applied retrospectively to carry out follow ups with people who received therapies over the last 5+ years.

I have a very strong view that drug use and possession of personal consumption amounts of drugs (any drugs, not just weed) should not come with a criminal conviction or time in prison. If I have to take a side on whether sale of some drugs should be legal I'd come down opposed to sale (and that includes alcohol and tobacco - yes I am in favour of the decommercialisation of booze and ciggies), all drugs, drug users and drug pushers should be equal under the law. Though I would still tend to be against prison or felony convictions if the sale is in small quantities. Prison time should be reserved for the "executives" of business ventures that are making/growing/selling at scale.

It's associated behaviour by all involved in the consumption and supply chain that should be criminal, public disorder, driving while under the influence, violence between competing interests.

Ultimately what moderates drug taking and prevents social harm is people living happy and fulfilling lives. That's what govts and civil society should be trying to achieve. Get that right and the drug problem takes care of itself.

So Trump has put out a video announcement that he is strictly pro state's rights when it comes to abortion, which means he's not strictly pro-life (or pro-choice). He's fine for states to pass laws allowing at will abortion, which is anathema to the evangelical / christian nationalist bloc, and he's basically stated a position (for now of course, which could change before or after his election) that there should be no federal law on abortion.

I assume it won't really damage him among pro-lifers, he's the Republican nominee and no one of any note is running against him with a more conservative position, they still hate Biden way more than being pissed at Trump not being as pro-life as they want, so I don't see it as demotivating for them to the point that they won't vote. I guess the question is whether pro-choice voters in swing states might be attracted to his side because he's kind of gone agnostic on abortion. I suppose if the state as a whole is pro-life it won't influence them, because only a pro-choice administration and congress can pass federal legislation to override pro-life state laws (if that's even constitutionally possible). If it's a pro-choice state such voters might feel less worried about voting Trump because they think he won't put federal abortion bans in place. I wonder how many swing voters there are who's main reason to vacillate is because they are pro-choice and were concerned about Trump's position on abortion.

I guess if X defies a court order the court can give the whole platform a timeout (i.e.block access in Brazil) until it complies with the court order. I suppose that would be a pretty extreme action but ultimately what is a court going to do if a company refuses a court order without going through the legal appeals process to get the court order overturned?

I guess daily fines are good but what if X refuses to pay? If Musk makes this all about standing up for some kind of principle then refusing to pay fines will be part of that moral stand.

4 hours ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Nah, him winning in 2024 would be dumber. 

So the dumbness of this timeline is yet to be determined.

Very interesting effect of climate change that I'd never heard of before now.

Vegetables are losing their nutrients. Can the decline be reversed? | Vegetables | The Guardian

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In 2004, Donald Davis and fellow scientists at the University of Texas made an alarming discovery: 43 foods, mostly vegetables, showed a marked decrease in nutrients between the mid and late 20th century.

According to that research, the calcium in green beans dropped from 65 to 37mg. Vitamin A levels plummeted by almost half in asparagus. Broccoli stalks had less iron.

Nutrient loss has continued since that study. More recent research has documented the declining nutrient value in some staple crops due to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels; a 2018 study that tested rice found that higher CO2 levels reduced its protein, iron and zinc content.

The climate crisis has only accelerated concerns about crops’ nutritional value. That’s prompted the emergence of a process called biofortification, a strategy to replenish lost nutrients or those that foods never had in the first place.

I lot of people have placed the blame of nutrient loss on industrial farming, which may or may not be contributory (and is often given as a reason for why a person eats organic food). But given some of the nutrient loss is because of increased atmospheric CO2 that loss has nothing to do with farming method.

I don't think it's necessary to manipulate crops to put nutrients in that are not naturally part of the plant, since a balanced diet should give you all the nutrients you need. But bringing the natural nutrient contents back up to early 20th century levels seems like a necessary climate change adaptation. It seems like common sense to say people should eat more fruit, nuts, vegetables etc, but if everyone needs to eat 50% more in order to meet their base nutritional needs, esp for micronutrients, then that just means there's less to go around, so it's better to pack more into every gram than for people to need to eat more to get what they need.

Talking about tipping in the US politics thread, I would have thought, is the opposite of a thread derail. Politically speaking, paying service workers properly so that tipping can go back to what it was originally claimed to achieve (better levels of service for the customer) seems like a topic worth discussing. 

I would be interested to know who is in favour of tipping as a way to compensate for service workers only being paid $2.13/hr. I understand federal law requires businesses to ensure incomes in any given week are topped up to at least the minimum wage if the worker doesn't get there with tips + $2.13/hr. So I wonder, is the standard tip rate going from 10%, to 15% to 20% (over the last decade or so) less of a support the workers thing and more of an allows the business to not have to pay top ups often / ever thing?

Wait, so that means past operations have not been based on intelligence? Shocking!

I always hated the idea of tipping (coming from a non-tipping culture), but since it became a necessity to keep service workers from starving and becoming homeless I now know it's objectively bullshit and has no place in a society that values all work. Businesses have to pay workers a decent wage from standard revenues received. If they can't do that and make a profit, then perhaps they're not competent enough to be in business.

We don't tip, we have a much higher minimum wage and yet small service businesses (cafes, bars, restaurants etc) still manage to operate profitably*, partly because the service workers can afford to go to cafes bars and restaurants themselves on their days and nights off.

21 hours ago, karaddin said:

I saw this claim that Biden calls someone a f***** in this video which I'm pretty skeptical of. I can't quite make out what he says, but despite my opinion of him not being the highest - homophobic slurs are not what I expect from the man even ignoring the politics of it.

I'm inclined to assume that he's either saying something else that has a similar sound in the middle, or it's a deep fake. If it's actually real I'd be more inclined to it being another indicator of cognitive decline than sincere slip of homophobia. Anyone got a more concrete read on it?

 

I'm no lip reader, but I don't see an "f" at the start of the word he's saying from the way his mouth moved. Doesn't look like word starting with "m" either. So I have no clue what he's saying, but 95% sure it's not a word starting with f.

I tried to Asian-ify Spaghetti All'assassina. Oddly it didn't taste as different as I thought, I used fresh ginger, lemon grass and peanut oil for the frying oil, and msg, with sesame seed oil for the drizzle after plating and chopped green onion for the garnish instead of italian parsley. It was very good, but no where near as different as I hoped. I guess I need more ginger and lemon grass. I thought I used a decent amount for 120g of pasta.

It does make me wonder how a person can be convicted of hate speech towards a white police officer under current laws and yet those laws not be sufficient to protect minority races, trans people and women from the same sort of hate speech. 

1 hour ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

It's a neutral statement, but yo, when your lead deity character is both a wizard and a zombie, the comp becomes fair. Furthermore, religious texts and comic books can both be incredibly thoughtful or downright silly and obviously not true. Problem is one is rightly seen as fiction and the other as faith with significant cultural importance, and I'm not so sure that's a good thing right now. 

 

Come on, at least get the lore right. A wizard is a wielder of arcane magics, the prophets are conduits of divine magic, thus they are either high-clerics or paladins. Zombies are undead, any dead person who has been brought back through revivification or resurrection spells is alive, not undead. So far as I can tell the biblical resurrections aren't making zombies. So, Jesus is definitely not a lich in the way his miracles and resurrection are described in the source material. But the end times descriptions, when people will be rising from their graves en mass, do sound like zombies. 

10 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Interesting.  How do you address the Fermi Paradox?

There is no need, because the Fermi paradox is not a scientific theory established by rigorous experimentation and confirmation of predictions made based on the paradox. It was just speculative musing made to look sciencey.

We can have a conversation about life elsewhere once we've found several thousand planets with more or less identical (or better) habitability potential to Earth and confirmed none of them have any kind of life we could recognise as such. But for now, we haven't even firmly ruled out life arising independently elsewhere in our own solar system.

It was only 40 or so years ago that science thought planets around other stars would be rare. No serious scientist thinks that any more.

5 hours ago, Melifeather said:

Martin Luther King Jr has been on my mind lately as well. I have been wondering lately if years from now people will believe he was the "Messiah" for the Age of Aquarius just as Jesus was for the Age of Pisces (2 fishes). I feel I must insert that I am not religious nor do I believe Jesus was a god, but I do believe that the Bible is a collection of historical records and should be viewed as a large history book assembled by the Council of Nicaea in 325 common era at the directive of the Roman emperor Constantine.

The "good news" that Jesus was known for has been distorted over time. He was actually a political activist preaching about debt - financial debt that used to be forgiven every Jubilee year. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the jubilee was a time to free slaves, to return land to its rightful owners, and to forgive debts. It was both a time of repentance when injustices were put right and the symbolic beginning of a new era. It was also how rulers were overthrown with the new ruler promising to bring about a Jubilee year - a tradition that the Romans abolished in 313 common era. Is it a coincidence that the council of Nicaea followed so closely after? The Romans created the Christian faith (and gave it a home base in Italy) in order to control the messaging - a sophisticated propaganda campaign that rewrote Jesus's message of forgiveness. How clever of the Romans to turn the message of financial debt forgiveness into the forgiveness of venial sins.

The Romans based Christianity on the Zodiac knowing that the symbolism would appeal to the masses which followed a variety of gods including horoscopes. Jesus is symbolized by two fish (Pisces) which matched up with the current astrological age in which they were living (1 CE to 2150 CE). The precession of the equinoxes are roughly 2150 years until we move from one astrological age to the next. In the Bible, Luke 22:10 confirmed that the next "age" would be Aquarius. It states, “When you have entered the city, a man carrying an earthen jar of water will meet you; follow him into the house that he enters."

We have about 150 years before we are officially in the age of Aquarius. Maybe some political giant as clever as the Romans will make MLK or someone like him be the prophet of this age?

Unlike the Life of Brian and Dune, in the real world the Messiah always identifies them-self as such and owns their station completely, as do many distinctly non-messianic deluded persons. MLK will never be widely regarded as a Messiah, because he knew he wasn't one and he never claimed to be such. Given there are people who say they think Trump is a Messiah of sorts it's certainly possible, even probable, that some people will come to believe it, or see some advantage in laying such a claim whether or not they believe it.

I feel certain that MLK will weep tears of sadness if anyone was to try to make him a Messiah, that people would equate him with his own Lord and Saviour, Jesus, would be a great blasphemy to his spiritual ears. He was a martyr for a great cause (racial equality), but it seems people are not satisfied with such an elevated state for this heroic, but no more than human, figure. 

23 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Unless aliens attack or shit, separate nations spending resources individually for overlapping necessities shall continue to contribute to gross human waste.

I think a major catastrophe is going to end such selfish and wasteful decision making and behaviour, but it will be one of our own making, not because of aliens. Possibly unlike many my belief is that any Alien civilisation advanced enough to travel the stars and visit other worlds with civilisations capable of putting people into space has already gone through and worked out their bullshit selfishness, aggression and desire to conquer, enslave and colonise. We'll get there eventually too, for the most part we've already realised conquering, enslaving and colonising is bad and not something we should do. I have faith. It just might be a few centuries before we get there. 

10 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Yep, you are right. 

Minority persecution here has reached levels akin to the tensions prevailing at the time of Partition. So if you get your hands on such news, needless to say, the severity is far more when and where it occurs.

But regards religious education, I, as a rationally inclined adult, prefer my country, if it calls itself secular, to allow a healthy environment for anyone to practice their faith by choice/birth. But where I draw the line is in institutionalizing of kids by any religion, which has led only to indoctrination, zealotry and far worser and wide ranging problems. How can there be a harmonious coexistence in society if a child from birth is exposed/allowed interaction only with his so called 'kind' and thus easily prepared to ha- better left unsaid for dramatic effect.

That is not  concern limited only to religion of course your / our / my "kind" can be for anything from left/right handedness, eye colour and skull shape to ethnicity, ideology, language, sport, gender etc. Singling out religion, to me, is putting the blame on a symptom rather than a cause. To be sure not much excites one's passions like religion (even among some anti-religionists curiously enough), though country, racial and ideological identity follow closely behind. The root cause is what appears to be a deep primitive tribal instinct. Some kind of need to identify oneself with a subset of humanity in preference to the rest of humanity instead of recognising humanity as one family and the earth as one home and meaningfully acting upon that recognition. Lots of people accept intellectually that we're one species and the earth is one big ecosystem, but they actively resist these truths having a meaningful influence on their lives, choices and attitudes.

Accidentally posted in the UK thread originally.

https://emails.idfa.org/vo/?FileID=ed474941-dec8-491f-aa8b-a2a0967aa534&m=49552ff2-085e-4568-82ef-51844f544028&MailID=6771470&listid=1005940&RecipientID=10536309012

Quote

Dear Dairy Community,
 
Earlier today, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued two important updates on the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) (H5N1) virus in dairy cattle as well as one person. 

CDC Updates – One Human Case Confirmed 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that a person in the United States has tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) (H5N1) virus, as reported by the Texas Department of Health and Human Services. According to the CDC, the person had exposure to dairy cattle in Texas presumed to be infected with HPAI. The patient reported eye redness (consistent with conjunctivitis), as their only symptom, and is recovering. The patient was told to isolate and is being treated with an antiviral drug for flu. 

CDC and Texas DSHS stated today that avian influenza (H5N1) viruses have only rarely been transmitted from person to person. As such, the risk to the general public remains low at this time.

I'm not saying the next pandemic is about to start, but a 'flu virus that successfully jumps species to humans is one of the candidates for the next pandemic. Still worth keeping an eye on the headlines until there stops being any headlines.

You're right must be close to needing glasses if I can't see the difference between US and UK on the browser tabs. Though in terms of culture wars it's almost impossible to distinguish between the two. 

Jonathan Pie definitely not a fan of the Scottish Law.

I don't know enough of the detail to comment, but if what he's saying about the detail of the law is factual that seems like a pendulum swing too far.

IDFA: CDC Confirms H5N1 Avian Influenza in One Person in Texas, Risk to Human Health Remains Low; USDA Confirms Additional HPAI Cases in Dairy Herds in NM and TX, Pasteurized Milk and Dairy Safe for Consumers

Quote

Dear Dairy Community,
 
Earlier today, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued two important updates on the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) (H5N1) virus in dairy cattle as well as one person. 

CDC Updates – One Human Case Confirmed 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that a person in the United States has tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) (H5N1) virus, as reported by the Texas Department of Health and Human Services. According to the CDC, the person had exposure to dairy cattle in Texas presumed to be infected with HPAI. The patient reported eye redness (consistent with conjunctivitis), as their only symptom, and is recovering. The patient was told to isolate and is being treated with an antiviral drug for flu. 

CDC and Texas DSHS stated today that avian influenza (H5N1) viruses have only rarely been transmitted from person to person. As such, the risk to the general public remains low at this time.

I'm not saying the next pandemic is about to start, but a 'flu virus that successfully jumps species to humans is one of the candidates for the next pandemic.

11 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

not the same as religious education 

sorry but i cant reconcile it with the word secular

Schools run by religious organisations typically include religious education as part of their curriculum.

On 3/28/2024 at 5:10 PM, TheLastWolf said:

To be fair religious education has no place in a secular democracy, but when one blatantly moves against it for ulterior/malign motives while harbouring intents to start their own, ugh. As a first time voter my choices are dogshit horseshit bullshit and no shit.

That doesn't quite make sense. Do you man in state schools in a secular democracy, or are you suggesting all schools run by religious organisations should be banned?

Never heard of a gesture egg.

Culture wars is what people do when they have no solutions for the real problems.

Gotta keep the workers at the troll farms busy. The west is doing so much to bring itself to ruin without Russia's help that they need to do a bit of busy work to keep them occupied, and not give them time to think about what Russia is doing to itself.

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Tracker,

You saw my rather pointed criticism of my friend and co-religionist who claims “atheism is really a religious belief”?  Or so I hope.   

It's a belief, and it's not science, and some people are even trying to organise it (like having atheism camps for kids), and it has its evangelists and fanatics writing books and giving sermons on the internet. It has a lot of the qualities of a duck, but maybe it's just a decoy, not a real duck.