Ran

They've been trying to make it for a couple of decades. I wouldn't hold my breath that they'll crack it this time, but who knows

Hah. Didn't think of that. The novel in question, after searching, was Noble House, set in 1960s Hong Kong. I didn't realize that they made a miniseries of it, too, with Pierce Brosnan in the lead.

I was just watching Davie504's latest video where he messed around with AI, and mostly on the art side it's terrible, but then he inputs the lyrics of a song he wrote as part of a collab (or maybe it was the concert) with TwoSetViolions, and, well.... the result was actually pretty impressive, IMO and all considered. He certainly seemed surprised after how dodgy the AI images had been.

There have been known doping athletes who won some, but also lost some despite their doping. The fact that they lose despite having an unfair advantage doesn't make the unfair advantage non-existent. It's still an advantage they have. I'm reminded of Oscar Pistorious and the debates over his blades, and particularly the enusing performance of other double-amputees who saw his performance, saw the rules adjusted to allow his blades ... and then went a step above and switched to longer blades because the rules allowed them to do so, which turned out to make a clear and obvious improvement on their performance by giving them greater stride length than they had had before (which Pistorious and his team complained about, rightly). And yet, how many athletes did this "really" affect? Very few! And yet ... people cared, as they should have, because these were all questions of fairness. Just as people care about doping, as with Lance Armstrong. Re: US Women's team being destroyed in a scrimmage, the FC Dallas Academy U-15 team won 5-2 (as Zorral says). Looking up the goal scorers reported in the article, only Kameron Lacey made any real headway professionally, apparently playing some games for the Jamaican national team and is now on a Division II team in the US after a year in Division III.

I read somewhere or other that Clavell wrote a later novel with a minor Japanese character whose last name was Anjin, had blue eyes, and when asked shared that the family lore was that they were descended from an Englishman who became a samurai.

Just to jog your memory.

So long as you can't copyright works produced by AIs, I don't really think commercial artists will have much to concern themselves about. Artists who have managed to make a living via commissions over the internet for fan art, RPG characters, etc., well... the internet taketh, and the internet taketh away. I think I made the point in the past that far more artists than ever exist and make a living, and nothing says this state of being was going to be eternal. I do think the genuinely good artists will adapt AI into their workflows to increase their ability to produce and perhaps push their art in directions they've never imagined. I've heard of several who've already started doing so, training AI on their own styles to speed up some of the make-work part of their jobs. As to "support artists", well, artisans used to make the furniture people sat on, the rugs they had in their rooms, the lace in their curtains, the cups in their cupboards, the paintings on their walls, etc., etc. Unless you buy only hand-made examples of all of this, you're fairly selective about which artists you support and which you don't.

Yes we did. Buntaro yells at him and pushes him away when he's asking Mariko about when they'll be back or some such, and then more recently in the 8th or 9th episode where he tries to dissuade her from... was it her suicide? By saying how he won't honor her or some such.

What BFC says. Transmen compete at substantial disadvantage in most competitive sports I can think of. Giving them trans-only events would be fairer to them, too. One place where women defeat high school state champions is the 5,000 meter... but fully adult men are substantially faster than junior/senior boys, at least glancing at the WRs, so even there I'm not sure they would have a real advantage.

You are hardly the only person who has trans friends and family and loved ones. I'm in the same club. This doesn't really matter for anything, however. I have no responsibility for what other people want to think or say. The IOC study, when you read it, has, sadly, a lot of substantial flaws, like the fact that the transwomen participants were substantially less fit than the rest of the group. But the biggest flaw is a self-own -- they correct for height and weight, so while the performance of transwomen may seem worse than that of ciswomen in relative terms, in absolute terms they are in fact still superior. This is because height and weight (re: muscle density, fat vs lean) are two things that male puberty plays a big part in, and which hormone treatment only affects so much (or not at all). The absolute superior performance of transwomen in handgrip strength is particularly noteworthy, since handgrip strength is often used as a proxy for general strength. Joanna Harper led a review of studies that's worth reading. She was behind the 2016 IOC policy that allowed Caster Semenya and others to participate, based on her research (including a study of sub-elite distance runners), but afterward she said that she now believed they were wrong on that policy, and that a new policy was needed. She is a transwoman athlete herself.

No, but they give us evidence of what happens to physically fit transwomen who go on hormones. If anything, I'd suspect at the absolute elite level, the margins would be higher after hormone regimens. Your typical boy's state high school champion in various athletics would take the Olympic gold medal in the women's category, by as much as a 10% margin in some events. And they're 17 and 18 year olds, still not fully developed and without world-class level training, facilities, support, etc. It may be that blocking puberty at 14 or 15 may well be enough, and that the current ruling of no natal puberty at all is unnecessary, really, but we'll need more time to figure it out. Do you know where I'd look up information about that? Cycling is one sport I don't really follow. Wikipedia has some information but it seems to suggest she stopped competing well before she transitioned.

Most elite competitive athletics events are decided by 1% margins or less. 9% is huge. I believe the general view is that males have between a 10% and a 30% percent advantage in athletics, depending on the sport. Hormone suppression only removes some of that advantage. Per one biomechanics of sports resarch, the advantage of black elite athletes in sprinting is perhaps estimated to being 1.5% (and, similarly, the advantage of white elite athletes in swimming is estimated to being about 1.5% as well -- apparently Asian swimmers may in theory be even better, but they are not as tall on average, a significant disadvantage).

Then what's shameful or wrong about Trans Olympics? People are fooling themselves into thinking that hormone suppression is all you need to level the playing field between transwomen and ciswomen, in many sports. Per the study I noted earlier, hormone suppression and estrogen therapy for transwomen soldiers lowered their run time advantage over ciswomen from 12% to ... 9%. Because length of stride, narrowness of hips and angle of motion, etc., all play a factor in these things, and they don't go away due to hormones. Height and length of reach matters in a lot of sporting events. Transwomen will on average have advantages there, and in other areas, and it has to do with their natal sex and puberty.There's just ... you know, a lot of things that goes into why we separate the sports between the sexes, and it's not just testosterone, but the whole process of androgenizing. ETA: Of course, re: puberty, it's reasonable to allow transwomen athletes who transitioned before puberty and never went through male puberty, which is I believe the current rule as it applies to the Olympics. This raises some entirely different questions and issues, but it seems, in terms of science and common sense both, a reasonable approach until such time as either we learn more and differently or we develop other means to permit competitive participation.

How do I see them? Say it plainly, please. You're allowed to call me a transphobe, if you feel that fits the bill. Is it? I find it hard to read anything other than a rejection of the idea that trans athletes may need to have their own sports divisions to be able to compete fairly. This goes for transmen, too, who, bless them, compete in male sports with no real complaints despite the fact that they know they are (in most sports) at serious disadvantage. Ditto. I've no particular idea what sports are at issue. But in general, the US has a history of legislation that relates to sex in sports (Title IX) and recognizes that there's a reason for a division of the sexes in many sports.

So the athletes in the Special Olympics and Paralympics are just some "rainbow glitter"? This says a lot more about how you see them than you seem to realize.

It obviously isn't. If I had said "other functional disabilities", I'd be saying that, but I am not. Stop looking for reasons to be offended, please. Nope. Is being mendacious so easily come to you? I'd already cited at least one Olympic sport where trans athletes aren't at all an issue. But who here takes issue with a Trans Olympics for those sports where it is in fact an issue? I wouldn't.

Indeed. The very nature of competitive sports creates a hierarchy.

Many people are born who simply cannot compete in a sport they might like to compete in. Such is life. As trans people become a larger part of the population, there's no great reason there can't be sports divisions for them specifically, not unlike how we see for various functional disabilities at the Paralympics. Or alternatively we get good enough at the science of sport that we can handicap accurately and create new divisions that mix the sexes but remain fair to participants.

@karaddin My understanding is that the vast majority of transwomen do not have the surgery, and I'd guess this goes for transwomen athletes as well. But as I said, a one-size-fits-all policy doesn't seem right -- there's all kinds of transwomen, including those who do not take hormones, much less don't have gender-affirming surgeries. But the point of the research I linked is that even with well-controlled testosterone, there are physical advantages puberty gives that don't disappear at all. Skeletal structure isn't going to change, density of muscle nuclei is not changing or changing only very slowly, etc.

On Blackthorne:

Transwomen athletes retain sizable physical advantages over ciswomen (the Air Force data is particularly interesting), and their "advantage" comes from having been born in the 50% who are the opposite sex. This isn't like Michael Phelps, a freak of nature with half a dozen weird genetic traits that all combine to make him the best competitive swimmer ever -- the vast majority of his advantage versus female swimmers comes simply from having been born male and having undergone puberty, the rest is just the gravy that put him over the top of other elite male competitors. Hormonalization does not reduce transwomens' elite athletic performance sufficiently to put them on an even playing field with their ciswomen sisters in many sports according to the way sports work now. I agree, a one-size-fits-all ban is inappropriate. Different sports will see different variations in advantage, or even none at all -- I follow competitive horse jumping (Henrik von Eckermann won the world cup final again, second year in a row!) and no one would care about a transwoman competitor. Hell, they probably already exist. But then, there's no gender divisions because it doesn't actually matter to performance. But in the sports where it does matter, and there are many, well, it does matter to competitors in those sports, and they have a right to be treated fairly. In the US and UK, yes, but I have to say that the Nordics, Germany, etc. are much less affected by the politics of the Anglosphere. But who says we can't look at these aspects separately? Attributing opposition to unfair inclusion of some transgender athletes in some female sports to being a proxy for discomfort with the existence of trans individuals looks a lot like an ad hominem to me. I happily accept their existence, for reasons both obvious and probably unobvious. I expect you, too, do so. But with increased visibility and acceptance, it is incumbent on society to actually figure out where fairness lies for everybody. Fairness in sport, in medical care, under the law, etc.

Well, yes. Women have far more limited financial opportunities in sports, as you so smartly point out. Which makes fairness all that much more important, for those who want to make careers or go to schools in athletic scholarships.

Does Mechwarrior have the AI companion/co-pilot of the mech/exoskeletion chatting with you? I don't recall that from when I last played the games, but it's a big part of Titanfall.

I feel like I would put money on the odds that at least one of the writers/creators/producers has played Titanfall.