Heartofice

All you need to do is look at the number of referrals over the previous years and compare. The relevance is that the number was relatively consistent prior to 2009, then started rising, then shot right up from 2014. The relevant question is to why that number increased so massively in such a short space of time. There isn't a question as to whether it shot up or not. It certainly isn't explained by an exponential growth in population.

This would only be relevant if you ignore all of the context which I laid out on the last page.

Why?

Sure, but why is it relevant? Its the scale of change that is of relevance.

Well it's more than 5000, but I'm not sure why you think that is the question to ask here.

I really liked John Carter when it came out, but I think I liked it because I understood the context of the movie and where that story had come from. It was silly and over the top, which to modern audiences might look like just another dumb hollywood CGIfest, but actually I think the story kind of captured that pulp feel and I could connect the dots to older storytelling. Jupiter Ascending was just pure garbage, just an absolutely horrible movie that has little excuses for why it was so bad.

You are entitled to your opinion. Having said that, I think that position has now become a bit of an outlier that people are willing to challenge and thanks to things like the Cass report we are now finally getting to a place where decisions will hopefully be made on evidence and it's helped wake people up to the reality of what has been happening over the past decade or so.

No I don’t consider that representative of children feeling more comfortable with trans identities, and the Cass review doesn’t consider it a good explanation either. I do think there are a range of other factors at play which has caused the rise. I can see why, if you think there is nothing interesting about those numbers, you might also not think there is anything interesting in anything the review said.

I think the dissonance here is coming from your assumption that these children do know their own minds, that these are simply 'trans kids' who need to put onto the right treatment that will help them. From that assumption its pretty easy to get to a place where you don't see any issues with the direct step from PB to Hormones, where that would just seem like a natural step. However we need to remember the context in which this is happening. Over the last decade or so we've seen an explosion in the number of children reporting to gender clinics for help. The nature of these children has changed to. There was an exponential rise in the number of children coming to GIDS from 2014. An explosion’: what is behind the rise in girls questioning their gender identity? It is not known why there has been such an enormous increase in these numbers in such a short amount of time. As Cass says: But Cass also pours cold water on the idea that this is simply a matter of greater acceptance for trans identities in society (something many trans activists would debate anyway) There is also the context of a huge rise in mental health issues reported by teenagers and children. Cass mentions that this is all very hard to disentagle and that peer issues are also most likely at play. Then you put all of that context into a system that is unable to cope with the huge numbers, as well as a method of treating children that is based on affirming their trans identity rather than trying to understand whether it might be an expression of some other issue the child is experiencing. Cass reported how children were not treated as individuals but treated as a homogenous group that should be given the same treatment. Indeed the report mentions that the sheer act of looking for other causes to the child's complaints was seen as invalidating to their identity and so were avoided. So by the time children are being given puberty blockers they have already been put on a pathway to affirm their new identity without enough scrutiny as to whether there might be other causes at play. The giving of PB then just becomes another step on a one way process and another validating action to confirm what the child wants to hear. Then there is the whole issue that Cass is reporting on, that the evidence base for PBs themselves is incredibly weak, the benefits are not clear and there is potential long term effects on children's bodies and health. PBs are claimed to be 'time to think' for children, but the reality is very far from just thinking time. The reality is these children have already been place on an affirmative pathway lacking real scrutiny, that children with a range of conditions and past trauma have been given life altering treatments because there hasn't been the will or courage to challenge some of their assumptions, and due to an ideology that is built on a set of false precepts. Nobody is claiming that giving PBs to kids causing them to transition, the point is it is another affirmative action to push them in one direction, it is not about thinking space.

Who is this toxic side? Is it the side of people who have been warning about this for years? Or is the side who have been defending these practices and who continue to be blind to the issues? Well firstly, maybe the reason it isn't being talked about quite so much is because the most important finding, and the bulk of the recommendations by the Cass review centre on the past poor practices and mistreatment of vulnerable young people. I understand why you wouldn't want to acknowledge that and are much more comfortable moving the focus to an area that isn't damning to your position. Secondly, one of the reasons that there is a need for so many gender specialist clinics is due to the exponential rise in the number of children being referred. It is unsurprising that services have been unable to cope with such a rapid change, and more investigation should be made into the factors behind this increase if you want to truly understand it. There should be a concern that children are getting the right treatment and not being mistreated. I'm not sure what is hard to understand about it. Let's just ignore mistreatment of children, it's just a small number, don't even talk about it. Move onto something more important like Tesco prices. Some humility here would go a long way. On this topic, you and others have continuously mischaracterised the other side of the debate, misrepresented what people are saying and not listened. This is an opportunity to actually listen.

Yes she has been instrumental in helping to expose a lot of these practices and giving whistleblowers, who had been scared to speak about it, a way to speak up. She was on the news yesterday I saw, and her basic message was ‘where have you been?’, in reference to the BBC and other media outlets who have spent the past few years ignoring this scandal, and those who have been shouting down anyone saying the exact same things that the Cass report has exposed. Its also notable that prominent figures like Wes Streeting and Yvette Cooper have all come out in support of the report, which is a big about turn from Labours position only a couple of years ago. Even Stonewall and Mermaids, two of the biggest supporters of the very treatments that Cass is criticising have come out with ‘yes we agreed with this all along’ statements which would be funny if it wasn’t so grim.

Well, the main criticism of the report is that treatment was rolled out at scale to children with very little robust science behind it. That’s more than a failing, it’s a huge medical scandal. Especially given the life altering nature of these treatments on confused and vulnerable children. On top of that, gender clinics were not keeping data on follow up patients, and if they did they refused to give investigators access to it. That is the claim yes. The problem is as posted above, in reality they are just a stop gap measure on a pathway to full hormone therapy. This might not seem to be an issue to someone if they are working from the assumption that most children claiming to have gender confusion are quite literally ‘trans kids’ and that for most the appropriate action is to affirm and help them by giving them full gender reassignment treatments. However, the overwhelming majority children grow out of this confusion and so that treatment would simply be inappropriate. Another criticism in the report is that children were not given a holistic examination. There was little work trying to understand what other mental health issues and causes might be going on at the same time in relation. So rather than trying to understand how trauma or autism might be playing in to a child’s behaviour, they were just affirmed, and put into an irreversible pathway. Puberty blockers might be an appropriate treatment for some, but it’s almost certainly a much smaller percentage of children than the one Cass is criticising. The report details how actions were taken irresponsibly and quite often due to external pressures.

Because the relationships were bland and cookie cutter, so I'm not sure how much it added to the show. By the end of the series I don't care about any of the characters, I care more about the story the show is telling. So all that time spent dealing with relationship stuff seems pretty unsuccessful, especially if it took away from highlighting some of the key information that should be communicated.

Exactly. It really was blink and you miss it. I remembered the scene and I mentioned it, because they start the show demonstrating he is a scientist, I guess he is smart then. The problem then is that for the rest of the show they just drop most of that to leave him to muck about with his mates, chilling and hanging out with the ladies!

I've played every Fallout game I think, oh except Fallout 76 (who would play that garbage!). I didn't have any high hopes for the series until I saw the trailer, which I thought looked spot on and seemed to get the tone right. I don't think there are any especially good stories in any of the games. The plots are generally pretty amusing pastiches of other movies and games, and it all works quite well to create a fun universe. I've never felt involved in any of the characters or storylines though. I guess there is a lot they can do, and a lot of freedom to create a good story, because they don't have to stick to any pre-existing plotlines.

Sure, I don’t think that automatically translates into ticket sales in the 2020s though. It was also a top selling book when the Lynch movie came out and that was a flop.

Hilary Cass: Weak evidence letting down children in gender care The full Cass report is out now detailing the mistreatment of children who were questioning their gender.

That is supposed to be a musical right? Are they underplaying that aspect for the trailer?

There is your answer. They have been making these movies, they were shit and nobody watched them. There have also been a ton of sci fi movies made, they just tend to also be reboots of older franchises, because that is the only risk Hollywood is wanting to take. The real question is how did Dune ever get made, given how unlikely it was that it would money. That it did make money is also a sort of miracle.

My list of top games over the past 20 years would just various versions of Football Manager, Civilisation and Total War and nothing else.

Yeah Dark World is a hugely forgettable movie. I didn't think it was outright bad, I just thought that most of it didn't land. However as you say, Thor and Loki are always good, and I liked the stuff with Thor's mum. In the same way Ironman 2 gets a lot of shit, but it has some good bits, it has Justin Hammer and Micky Rourke being weird for starters. I just don't think Quantumania has a single thing to recommend it.

Baldur's Gate 3 dev calls industry layoffs an "avoidable f*ck up" Seems relevant to someone like Sega basically gutting their business, based heavily on betting on future trends that didn't come to pass. Seems insane the way Hyenas was handled, and we are seeing the outcome of that now. This is similar to what I was saying earlier, but what if you can't get any more growth, because there is none to be had, well then if you want to satisfy the shareholders you need to cut costs to make things look better.

Well he's sitting in a room using a machine in pretty much the first few minutes of the show. After that he does basically no science. That was hardly some revelatory big brain thinking. Anyone off the street could have made that guess. He also has glasses.

Yeah Ant Man 1 was a pretty mediocre movie that was elevated by being quite funny at times and really leveraging the use of scale to make some amusing fights and situations. The bath scene and the train scene are both pretty memorable and the supporting cast brought in a few laughs. Ant Man 3 has none of that. The sense of scale is gone because everyone is the same size, the humour has completely disappeared and the visual effects are much worse. I don't agree it wouldn't have stood out. I think if Quantumania was in phase 1 or 2, we might not be looking at an MCU.

United are 11 points behind Villa, and one point off West Ham with a game in hand. That highlights the way the league is going right now and is a better indicator of their level than their position. United should be even lower though, too many games this season they really have not deserved to get the points they have. If they were 11th or 12th I don't think it would be too undeserving.