Month: June 2023

Thursday: Hili dialogue

June 29, 2023 • 6:45 am

We’re almost into July! It’s Thursday, June 29, 2023, and National Almond Buttercrunch Day. (Who thinks up these days? Nobody’s going to eat almond buttercrunch today, even though it’s pretty good.)

source

It’s also National Camera Day, The Feast of Saints Peter and Saint Paul, National Handshake Day, National Waffle Iron Day, and, in India, National Statistics Day. Here’s a statistic from India: the population was   as of today. You can see India’s real-time population clock here, and boy does it move fast! It includes births and deaths. Or click on the icon below.  India now almost the same population as China (China’s real-time clock is here.)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the June 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The WSJ reports that Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin had planned to capture Russian military leaders as part of his march on Moscow last week.

Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin planned to capture Russia’s military leadership as part of last weekend’s mutiny, Western officials said, and he accelerated his plans after the country’s domestic intelligence agency became aware of the plot.

The plot’s premature launch was among the factors that could explain its ultimate failure after 36 hours, when Prigozhin called off an armed march on Moscow that had initially faced little resistance.

Prigozhin originally intended to capture Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s general staff, during a visit to a southern region that borders Ukraine that the two were planning. But the Federal Security Service, or FSB, found out about the plan two days before it was to be executed, according to Western officials.

Gen. Viktor Zolotov, commander of the National Guard of Russia, a domestic military force that reports directly to President Vladimir Putin, also said authorities knew about Prigozhin’s intentions before he launched his attempt.

“Specific leaks about preparations for a rebellion that would begin between June 22-25 were leaked from Prigozhin’s camp,” Zolotov told state media on Tuesday.

Western intelligence agencies also found out early about the plans by Prigozhin, Putin’s former confidant, by analyzing electronic communications intercepts and satellite imagery, according to a person familiar with the findings. Western officials said they believe the original plot had a good chance of success but failed after the conspiracy was leaked, forcing Prigozhin to improvise an alternative plan.

. . . Prigozhin’s plot relied on his belief that a part of Russia’s armed forces would join the rebellion and turn against their own commanders, according to this intelligence. The preparations included amassing large amounts of ammunition, fuel and hardware including tanks, armored vehicles and sophisticated mobile air defenses days before the attack, according to Western intelligence findings.

And so ends Prigozhin’s plans to depose Putin and take over the Russian Army. He’s toast now, and even in Belarus his life isn’t worth a plugged nickel. Russia will send someone to take him out with either a gun or an umbrella that inserts tiny a poisoned sphere into his leg.

*Russia keeps striking civilian targets in Ukraine with missiles, and then denying it’s aiming at civilians. This time a missile killed 11 (including three teenagers) at a pizza restaurant in Kramotsk,a city  in eastern Ukraine. And the Ukrainians think it was an inside job, with one of their own pointing out the target to the Russians.

Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday arrested a man they accused of helping Russia direct a missile strike that killed at least 11 people, including three teenagers, at a popular pizza restaurant in eastern Ukraine.

The Tuesday evening attack on Kramatorsk wounded 61 other people, Ukraine’s National Police said. It was the latest bombardment of a Ukrainian city, a tactic Russia has used heavily in the 16-month-old war.

The strike, and others across Ukraine late Tuesday and early Wednesday, indicated that the Kremlin is not easing its aerial onslaught, despite political and military turmoil at home after a short-lived armed uprising in Russia last weekend.

. . .In Kramatorsk, two sisters, both age 14, died in the attack, the city council’s educational department said. “Russian missiles stopped the beating of the hearts of two angels,” it said in a Telegram post.

The other dead teenager was 17, according to Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin.

The attack also damaged 18 multistory buildings, 65 houses, five schools, two kindergartens, a shopping center, an administrative building and a recreational building, regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

. . . The Security Service of Ukraine said the man it detained, an employee of a gas transportation company, is suspected of filming the restaurant for the Russians and informing them about its popularity.

It provided no evidence for its claim. Russia has insisted during the war that it doesn’t aim at civilian targets, although its air strikes have killed many civilians. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov repeated that claim on Wednesday.

I don’t know if this was an inside job, but it’s pretty bloody obvious that the Russians are targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. That’s a war crime, but it will be a cold day in July when Putin is called to account for it.

*It’s really hazy in Chicago today, and once again we top America with most hazardous air (see below). The smoke from Canadian wildfires has hit the Midwest at last.

Here’s the ranking yesterday morning. “300” is hazardous but all day today (I’m writing on Wednesday afternoon) we had the world air quality in the world. Top of the world, Ma!

This morning it’s down to a mere 168, or “unhealthy”. And we may get some rain to lower it further.

The smoke is the result of one of Canada’s worst wildfire seasons in decades — nearly 500 active wildfires were burning in Canada early Wednesday, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, and more than 250 were burning out of control.

Climate change has turned once improbably high temperatures into more commonplace occurrences and intensified conditions that fuel catastrophic wildfires and their effects on air quality. Wildfire season in Canada usually doesn’t even begin until early July, and the blazes are likely to grow, said David Brown, an air quality meteorologist at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, meaning dangerous air quality could threaten the northern United States for weeks to come.

But the Canadians aren’t getting off easy, either:

As smoke from Canadian wildfires billowed into the United States and as far as Europe this week, millions of Canadians on Wednesday were grappling with poor air quality that is quickly becoming an unfortunate way of life in the fire-battered country.

Over the past month, the wildfires have forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from their homes, while underlining that environmental hazards do not obey borders. On Wednesday, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre said there were 479 active wildfires in the country.

Environment Canada said on Wednesday that high levels of air pollution were expected in northern Quebec and Ontario, including in Toronto, the country’s largest city and its financial center, as well as in Windsor and London, Ontario.

*Here’s omething else connected with global warming, as well as environmental damage. The NYT reports scientists’ scary finding that the earth’s axis—the imaginary rod through the planet around which it spins—started wandering around pretty quickly since 2000.

For decades, scientists had been watching the average position of our planet’s rotational axis, the imaginary rod around which it turns, gently wander south, away from the geographic North Pole and toward Canada. Suddenly, though, it made a sharp turn and started heading east.

In time, researchers came to a startling realization about what had happened. Accelerated melting of the polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers had changed the way mass was distributed around the planet enough to influence its spin.

Now, some of the same scientists have identified another factor that’s had the same kind of effect: colossal quantities of water pumped out of the ground for crops and households.

“Wow,” Ki-Weon Seo, who led the research behind the latest discovery, recalled thinking when his calculations showed a strong link between groundwater extraction and the drifting of Earth’s axis. It was a “big surprise,” said Dr. Seo, a geophysicist at Seoul National University.

. . .Between 1960 and 2000, worldwide groundwater depletion more than doubled, to about 75 trillion gallons a year, scientists estimate. Since then, satellites that measure variations in Earth’s gravity have revealed the staggering extent to which groundwater supplies have declined in particular regions, including India and the Central Valley of California.

I’m not surprised that it would have an effect” on Earth’s spin, said Matthew Rodell, an earth scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. But “it’s impressive they were able to tease that out of the data,” Dr. Rodell said, referring to the authors of the new research, which was published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “And that the observations they have of the polar motion are precise enough to see that effect.”

The wobbling axis doesn’t threaten us, but what makes it wobble does. Beyond more evidence of anthropogenic damage to our planet, we can now use the wobbles to further study climate change.

*I couldn’t resist this at the Washington Post: “What’s the best vanilla ice cream? We tried 13 popular brands.”Here are the rankings from best to worst:

  1. Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla
  2. Kirkland Signature Super Premium Vanilla (Costco)
  3. Tillamook Vanilla Bean
  4. Trader Joe’s French Vanilla
  5. Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Bean
  6. 365 Vanilla (Whole Foods)
  7. (tie) Blue Bell Natural Vanilla Bean and Great Value Vanilla Bean (Walmart)
  8. Turkey Hill Vanilla Bean
  9. Blue Bunny Vanilla Bean
  10. Halo Top Vanilla Bean
  11. Edy’s Vanilla Bean
  12. Breyer’s Natural Vanilla

But the ranking of Ben and Jerry’s and Costco’s Kirkland are both high and close to each other AND Kirkland, which comes as two half-gallons, costs only 15¢ per ounce  as opposed to 44¢ per ounce for Ben and Jerry’s. I’ve had Costco’s and it’s good, and cost only a THIRD as much as the high-prices brand. This is a no brainer. PLUS, Costco’s is made with great ingredients and comes in (a pack of two) honest half-gallons as opposed to a meager 48 ounces that replaced what used to be a half-gallon for most major brands. Buy at Costco!

*Here’s a video of the guy who carved his name, and that of his squeeze, into the wall’s of Rome’s Colosseum. The story is here, and the Italians are royally peeved, as they should be.

The footage, captured by a fellow bystander, shows  a smiling man sporting a backpack allegedly using his keys to engrave “Ivan+Haley 23” onto the walls of the 2000-year-old Roman monument, also known as the Flavian Amphitheater.

The culprit’s actions prompted disbelief from the bystander recording the video, who can be heard in the YouTube video titled: “A**hole tourist carves name in Colosseum in Rome 6-23-23”, as they say: “Are you f**ing serious, man?”

. . .The identity of the alleged vandal remains unknown. If identified by police, the defacer could face hefty fines upwards of $16,000 and potentially a prison sentence of up to five years, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.

Echoing Sangiuliano’s sentiments, Italy’s Minister of Tourism, Daniela Santanche, has expressed her hopes for the man to face stern punishment “so that he understands the gravity of the gesture.”

He shouldn’t be hard to catch. His name is Ivan, that of his girlfriend is Haley, and here’s a good video of what he looks like. He’ll probably leave Italy before he’s caught, but I bet they’ll never let him into the country again once they identify him.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is enigmatic, but Malgorzata explains: “Hili dislikes the idea of ‘influencers’ on the Internet so she decided to fight the phenomenon with their own weapon.”

Hili: I’m an agent of influence.
A: Whose influence?
Hili: Mine.
In Polish:
Hili: Jestem agentką wpływu.
Ja: Czyjego?
Hili: Mojego wpływu.
And a photo of Baby Kulka:

********************

From the Absurd Sign Project 2.0.  I guess this product isn’t meant to be served to guests:

From Beth:

From Jesus of the Day:

Masih is back tweeting again. Another woman defies two Hijab Police, one of which is a woman.

From Titania, a speech from a woman who’s reverted to three years old:

From Merilee. This is wrong in so many ways! I hope they paid the cat a lot of money.

From Barry, who says “NOT a good boy!”

I guess you’ll have to go see it on the site as for some reason it won’t embed. Just paste it in your browser.

https://twitter.com/_Islamicat/status/1673275165436674048

A bonus tweet from Malcolm:

From the Auschwitz Memorial: A six-year old girl gassed with her brother upon arrival:

Tweets from Matthew. The first one is a new version of an amazing case of crypsis (camouflage) that I’ve pointed out before:

A tweet emitted by Matthew, who says, “From the Guardian. I assume it was deliberate.”

And a paper to skip:

The smog gets worse in Chicago

June 28, 2023 • 2:30 pm

Usually, when it’s very cold in Chicago, the weatherperson says that we’re inundated by “cool Canadian air”. Now our Canadian friends are sending us something worse: smog from the extensive wildfires up north. Yesterday Chicago had the worst air quality in the world. It’s just about as bad today. Here’s our index from the NYT:

Here are the air quality indices for several major cities this morning. The index runs from 0 to 500; the higher the number, the greater the level of air pollution. An A.Q.I. of 301 or more is considered hazardous. Find your city here.

We’re Number One!!

More from the NYT:

In Chicago, Air Force One descended through a thick layer of smoke and haze at the O’Hare International Airport late Wednesday morning, as President Biden arrived for a speech on the economy.

. . . . The smoke is the result of one of Canada’s worst wildfire seasons in decades — nearly 500 active wildfires were burning in Canada early Wednesday, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, and more than 250 were burning out of control.

It’s funny, but though the air is visibly hazy even a block away, I can’t smell anything. But here’s the view of downtown Chicago, six miles away, from my crib. I can nearly always see the skyscrapers quite clearly rising up in the distance between the two buildings in the middle ground. Today: bupkes.  The downtown is completely obscured.

I just hope the ducks are okay.

Chronicle op-ed gives arguments for institutional neutrality

June 28, 2023 • 12:00 pm

If you’re an academic and your college or university has issued a ringing statement in favor of political, ideological or moral positions, that might make you feel good. But in the long run it’s bad, for taking institutional positions (as opposed to personal ones) acts to chill the speech of others.  As I’ve said many times, institutional neutrality is the position of the University of Chicago, codified in the 1967 Kalven Report. While some “stands” are allowed by the University and its units and departments, those are limited to positions that further the university’s educational mission. You can see, for example, a 2020 pro-DACA statement issued by our former provost, and its rationale as part of the University’s mission.  Of course, Chicago encourages its members to speak freely as individuals, but not as official units or representatives of the University. I can say what I want about Trump, but my department or the University cannot.

For decades, we were the only university in America that had this policy, but now we’re joined by an enlightened University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  That’s two—out of nearly 4,000 degree-granting institutions in America—and that’s pathetic. Schools just can’t restrain themselves from proclaiming their political and moral virtues, but it’s at the cost of stifling free speech. That’s the rationale for Kalven.  I’ll bet that if you’re at a “progressive” school like Berkeley, Oberlin, Harvard, or Smith, you’ll have seen these statements all over the place in the last five years.

This short op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education by David Bell, a history professor at Princeton, gives the arguments for institutional neutrality as they apply to colleges and universities. But the policy could usefully be applied in many institutions.

Here are the kinds of statements that universities and departments make:

The claims about moral obligation are eloquent, passionate, and heartfelt, and often invoke shameful aspects of a discipline’s political past. For instance, the “Statement on Anti-Racism” issued by the Princeton English department after the killing of George Floyd decried “literary study’s long history as a prop to the worst forces of imperialism and nationalism, and its role in underwriting crimes of slavery and discrimination.” The department of religious studies at the University of Iowa promised: “We will work to acknowledge and expose the racist histories of our discipline and of the religions that most of us have studied and taught.” A statement from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health lambasted the role of public-health professionals in promoting “slavery, Jim Crow, scientific racism, eugenics, and other structural atrocities.” Taking a slightly different tack, the department of classical studies at Boston University spoke to the present day, condemning “the appropriation of classical antiquity as a tool of white supremacy, nationalism, and gender or class-based discrimination.”

The supposed rationale and the problems it raises:

By invoking their discipline’s political histories and uses in this manner, the statements imply that taking a stance on current affairs constitutes a self-evident and morally necessary corrective, a form of reparation for past political sins. The statement by the Princeton English department, for instance, asserts that the discipline’s history “compels us … to actively dissociate literary studies from their colonial and racist uses.” But in taking this stance, the statements leap over several crucial questions. Why should academic units of a university, as opposed to individual scholars or disciplinary organizations, be making these pronouncements? What if certain members of the unit do not agree with them, or consider them factually flawed? What if they feel that their unit should be issuing statements about a different issue than the one chosen, or disagree about the language of the statement and the specific actions called for? What if something in the statement violates their moral convictions?

And why universities should NOT be making these statements. I’d think this would be self-evident, but it’s clearly not, because we have to keep making these point over and over again—even at Chicago!

The statements I have quoted mostly do not bear individual signatures and say nothing about the process by which they were produced. They generally use the first-person plural and leave the impression that they express unanimous, collective sentiments.

I am sure that in many cases they have indeed expressed unanimous viewpoints. But how can anyone be sure? Imagine a case in which a department chair and the most senior, influential, tenured professors all insist passionately that their department needs to issue a statement on a burning issue of the moment. How likely is it that a pre-tenure or non-tenure-track professor would dare to oppose them? We do not need advanced cultural theory to understand how intimidating it can be for an untenured instructor to speak out against powerful senior colleagues.

Public statements become still more problematic when they go beyond expressing a view on a current issue, and pledge members of the unit to engage in particular sorts of academic work — for instance, scholarship that exposes the racist histories of major religions, or classroom teaching that is explicitly antiracist. The Princeton English department, for instance, pledged to “strive for active antiracism in our classrooms and our scholarship as a means of raising awareness and changing consciousness.” To be sure, vulnerable junior scholars are always going to feel pressure to write and teach in ways that their senior colleagues approve of. But formal statements issued in the name of an entire department, program, or school increase this pressure. And while academic work itself may indeed always have potential political stakes, the choice of political stance says nothing about the quality of that work. Public statements that commit a unit’s members to do certain sorts of work blur this distinction. They can create the impression that the subject scholars choose to work on, and the stance they take on it, will matter as much as how well they do the work when it comes to promotion and tenure.

At the end Bell brings up Kalven again:

It may well be naïve to think that a university can ever be a wholly neutral space, and that it can maintain, as the Kalven Report put it, “an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures.” It is not naïve, however, to recognize that universities host scholars with different, often conflicting beliefs, and that these differences need to be respected and protected. Allowing academic units to issue public statements on current affairs erodes that respect and those protections.

Is that so hard to realize? Or do people want universities in which everybody agrees on everything?  I’m baffled by the failure of fellow academics to see this simple point: you can make personal statements all you want, but official ones put a damper on the open discourse essential to a university.  Maybe I should put it in simple language by writing a children’s book: “The Little Professor’s Guide to Free Speech”.

Or, as Stanley Fish already wrote in a book for adults, “Save the world on your own time.”

Celebrities and influencers call on social media to remove anti-trans “hatred”

June 28, 2023 • 10:00 am

GLAAD was founded in 1985, with the acronym standing for Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. As Wikipedia notes, the organization has now extended its coverage to transsexual and bisexual people.  That’s presumably why the organization will remain “GLAAD” without the full name being used.

GLAAD (/ɡlæd/[1]) is an American non-governmental media monitoring organization. Originally founded as a protest against defamatory coverage of gay and lesbian demographics and their portrayals in the media and entertainment industries, it has since included bisexual and transgender people.

Yesterday, a whole pile of celebrities and “influencers”, as well as “allies,” posted a demand on the GLAAD site for social media moguls (Zuckerberg, Musk, etc.) to stop allowing disinformation and “hate speech” against trans people on their sites. I wholeheartedly agree with nearly everything on the list of demands, which you can read by clicking below). But I have two significant objections. First, read the statement (you’ll be impressed by the list of supporters):

Here’s the content that the signers want censored by companies like Facebook and Twitter:

  • Content that spreads malicious lies and disinformation about medically necessary healthcare for transgender youth. As described above, such harmful content from high-follower hate-based accounts has resulted in extraordinary real-world harms.13 Specific mitigations on such disinformation must be developed (for instance akin to election and COVID-19 mitigations and rules).
  • Accounts and postings that perpetuate anti-LGBTQ extremist hate14 and disinformation,15 in violation of platform policies, and which target trans and LGBTQ people, including baseless and malicious disinformation of LGBTQ people being threats to children (e.g. the anti-LGBTQ “groomer” conspiracy theory16). Such harmful and dangerous lies must be more effectively moderated and mitigated.
  • Dehumanizing, hateful attacks on prominent transgender public figures and influencers. Online attacks against LGBTQ organizations and individuals are on the rise.17 A recent report from GLAAD, UltraViolet, Kairos, and the Women’s March shows that 60% of LGBTQ people feel harmed not only from direct harassment and hate, but from witnessing harassment against other LGBTQ community members such as celebrities and public figures.18 Directing hate against LGBTQ public figures is a common vehicle for expressing general anti-LGBTQ bigotry. When your companies maintain policy loopholes that allow such hate, this perpetuates harm against entire communities.
  • Anti-transgender hate speech, including targeted misgendering, deadnaming, and hate-driven tropes.19 For example, Media Matters, GLAAD and others have identified multiple YouTube videos — which have accumulated millions of views — that bully, harass, and misgender trans people. In each video, prominent anti-trans pundits use YouTube to demean, target, and misgender young people, their parents, and public figures20 in videos saturated with blatant anti-trans rhetoric. These videos remain active despite these violations having been reported by Media Matters, GLAAD, and other organizations to YouTube.

My first qualification is about “hate speech.”  My view is that, as far as possible, social-media outlets should adhere to the First Amendment principles of free speech, while recognizing that, as private companies, they don’t have to.  But I’m in favor of the open discourse that the First Amendment provides.

Note, though, that the Amendment does not protect all speech: it disallows threats to people, speech intended to promote imminent lawless action , false advertising, fraud, and defamation.  FIRE gives a list of exceptions, noting that “hate speech” and online “harassment” (but not harassment in the workplace) are protected categories of speech.  I’m not sure why, if you take the First Amendment view, transgender people should be protected from legal speech while other groups like Jews, Muslims, or any minority, are not.  (As a First-Amendment hard-liner, and a secular Jew, I am perfectly happy to have people make anti-Semitic remarks on social media, including denying the Holocaust or even, like the Scottish dog, raise their paw when the owner says “gas the Jews”.) But of course I reserve the right to answer that nonsense on the same social media.

Given the tremendous variation in what people think of as “hate speech” which is also legal speech, nobody should be immune on social media from “hate speech”—except the form that violates the First Amendment. For crying out loud, P. Z. Myers called me an “asshole” on his blog the other day, and I’m fine with that, though I won’t engage in the kind of puerile name-calling that occurs during his daily Two Minutes Hate.

But what worries me about this particular issue is that some justifiable discussion of trans matters might fall under the nature of “hate speech” or “disinformation about medically necessary healthcare for transgender youth”, and it this discussion should not be censored on the grounds that it engenders hate.  I’m thinking in particular of criticism of “affirmative care”, which to me includes not just a therapeutic rush to confirm whatever gender identity a young person claims, but also the rush to give gender-dysphoric children puberty-blocking hormones.  This is because the efficacy of “gender affirming therapy” (henceforth GAT), as contrasted with conventional therapy with an objective and empathic counselor has not been demonstrated, and GAT almost invariably leads to hormones: first blockers and then either testosterone or estrogen. (And sometimes surgery.) We know that most gender dysphoric children who aren’t given GAT will resolve their issues, most often either resuming their original gender or becoming gay. In both cases. the possibly damaging effects of hormone therapy and surgery are avoided. Of course some of those children will go on to become transgender, and assuming that they are of age (say 16 or 18) when they decide to take hormones, that is their decision.

But the manifesto above assumes that GAT is always the way to go. At least that’s what I take from the desire to ban “Content that spreads malicious lies and disinformation about medically necessary healthcare for transgender youth.”  Who determines what is “medically necessary” for youth? The assumption here is that transgender youth (including those who are gender dysphoric and feel “trapped in the wrong body”) require medical healthcare. Yet there’s a lot of debate about that, and that debate should not be censored, even if you think social media needn’t adhere to the First Amendment. These issues are ongoing throughout the West, and Europe has dealt with them differently from the U.S., taking a more wait-and-see approach.  Calling for caution about these matters until the data are is is not transphobia.

And there is this claim in the text leading up to the list of demands given above. The bolding is mine.

This disinformation and hate, inadequately moderated on your platforms, plays an outsized role in the sharp increase in real-world anti-transgender targeting and violence.9 As documented by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation in 2022,10 this is particularly the case when it comes to the online extremists leading proactive coordinated campaigns of hate and lies about gender affirming healthcare for trans youth.11 Despite the fact that every leading medical and psychological association affirms the safety and necessity of gender affirming healthcare for trans people, including youth, inflammatory disinformation falsely asserting that this healthcare is dangerous is allowed to fester on your platforms because it drives clicks and profit. Trans youth and their families and care providers are being endangered by your negligence, causing many families to flee their homes.

It may well be that all the American associations assert that gender-affirming healthcare is “safe and necessary”, but there are many physicians who dissent. More important, entire European countries have not embraced that affirmation, but are worried about the hormonal aspects of GAT as possibly harmful in the long term, and are using things like puberty blockers only in clinical trials. This is now the case in the UK and Sweden,  while puberty blockers are being strictly limited in places like Finland, Norway, and France.  And just yesterday Ireland’s national health service board (the HSE) ordered a review of puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.

As the Atlantic noted,

But doctors do not agree [with American claims that GAT is necessary] , particularly in Europe, where no treatments have been banned but a genuine debate is unfurling in this field. In Finland, for example, new treatment guidelines put out in 2020 advised against the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other medical interventions as a first line of care for teens with adolescent-onset dysphoria. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare followed suit in 2022, announcing that such treatments should be given only under exceptional circumstances or in a research context. Shortly after that, the National Academy of Medicine in France recommended la plus grande réserve in the use of puberty blockers. Just last month, a national investigatory board in Norway expressed concerns about the treatment. And the U.K.’s only national gender clinic for children, the Tavistock, has been ordered to close its doors after a government-commissioned report found, among other problems, that its Dutch-protocol-based approach to treatment lacked sufficient evidence.

Last November, the NYT reviewed the evidence for the harms vs. the value of puberty blockers, concluding that we just don’t have enough data to pronounce them safe and irreversible. Another NYT article by Emily Bazelon last June highlighted the “deep divisions” in America’s medical community about gender-affirming healthcare.  Here’s an excerpt from Bazelon’s piece.

Taking puberty suppressants (or hormones) for gender affirmation is “off-label,” meaning this specific use of the medications is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Off-label prescriptions are common and don’t imply anything improper, but there may be less research about the drug’s effects. If young people continue on to hormone treatments, puberty suppressants “probably” compromise fertility, especially for trans girls, Stephen M. Rosenthal, a pediatric endocrinologist at the gender center at U.C.S.F. who is on the group for the SOC8 chapter on hormone treatments, explained in a review last year for Nature Reviews Endocrinology. The medication can also prevent bone density from increasing as it typically would, and while levels returned to normal in trans boys who went on to hormone therapy, they remained low in trans girls who did the same, according to a 2020 study from the Amsterdam clinic. Little is known about the impact on brain development. “The relative paucity of outcomes data raises notable concerns,” Rosenthal wrote in his review. But he has no hesitation about prescribing puberty suppressants to kids who are deemed ready for them at his clinic. “The observed benefits greatly outweigh the potential adverse effects,” he said.

The problem is that we don’t have a good handle on the “potential adverse effects.” That’s why they’re “potential.”

(See my post on her article and the ACLU’s enraged reaction to Bazelon’s piece).

I’ll draw to a close by saying that the two NYT pieces alone would be considered “hate speech” by the GLAAD manifesto above, yet they’re objective discussions of GAT, both affirming the need for more data before we start a widespread practice of prescribing hormones to kids with gender dysphoria. This is not transphobia, but a necessary and essential debate that has to take place, along with acquiring data, before making GAT any kind of gold standard or requirement for treating gender-dysphoric children. Calling for bans on such discussion is not only misguided, but potentially harmful.

Finally, Jesse Singal has tweeted his take on the manifesto above:

In the response from GLAAD, two physicians are mentioned, and you might want to look up their records. They—especially Turban—are known for being wholehearted advocates of GAT.

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ the Jews

June 28, 2023 • 9:00 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “spread,” has a short note appended:

That explains everything!

Here’s one of the Sunnah (second only to the Qur’an in authority) in which the Prophet is reported to have cursed the Jews—and Christians, too!—on his deathbed:

On his death-bed Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) put a sheet over his-face and when he felt hot, he would remove it from his face. When in that state (of putting and removing the sheet) he said, “May Allah’s Curse be on the Jews and the Christians for they build places of worship at the graves of their prophets.” (By that) he intended to warn (the Muslim) from what they (i.e. Jews and Christians) had done.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3453, 3454
Book 60, Hadith 121

Yup, all it takes is the existence of Jews!

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 28, 2023 • 8:15 am

Thank Ceiling Cat that four or five readers came through with photos and promises of sending some imminently. We’re safe for a while!

Today’s batch of bird photos comes from Paul Edelman of Vanderbilt University. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Birding in Tennessee during the summer can be hard work.  It’s hot, humid and often rainy.  And the pickings can be slim.  Nevertheless there are a number of interesting birds that summer here and occasionally I can photograph them through the sweat dripping down my brow.  All of these photos are taken recently in local parks–Radnor Lake, Shelby Bottoms and Bell’s Bend–using my trusty Nikon D500 and Nikkor 500mm f5.6 lens.

The two most common warblers I see are the Common Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas) and the Prairie Warbler (Setophaga discolor).  The Prairie Warblers are usually out on branches and twigs, but the Yellowthroats tend to hide in low brush where they are more easily heard than seen.  This one was more accommodating than most.

Common Yellowthroat:

Prairie Warbler:

In the open areas I see Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens) and large numbers of  Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea) singing from the tops of bushes.  Higher in the trees the occasional Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus)  will come out of hiding.  Also up in the trees are Orchard Orioles (Icterus spurius) and Scarlet Tanagers (Piranga olivaceaI).

Yellow-breasted Chat:

Indigo Bunting:

Yellow-billed Cuckoo:

Orchard oriole:

Scarlet Tanager:

Around the lakes I see Green Heron (Butorides virescens) and deep in the woods are the Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) strutting their stuff.

Green Heron:

Wild Turkey:

One final note: in a bit of self-promotion, I have posted these and many other bird photos on my web site:  pauledelman.smugmug.com to which your readers are invited.  Comments welcome!

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 28, 2023 • 6:45 am

Greetings on Wednesday, a Hump Day (“ਹੰਪ ਦਿਵਸ” in Punjabi), June 28, 2023. It’s National Tapioca Day, and I have to admit that I love the stuff. It’s the little balls that distinguish it from plain pudding, and I like them even more when they’re enlarged and put in “Bubble Tea”.

Boba / Bubble tea. Homemade Various Milk Tea with Pearls. Source.

It’s also International Body Piercing Day, INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY, and Tau Day. The explanation:

In 2001, Bob Palais published π Is Wrong, where he said pi (π) should not be used for the circle constant—the geometry of a circle expressed in a single number. Instead, he called for tau (τ), which is equal to 2π, or roughly 6.28318, to be used instead. Whereas π compares a circle’s circumference to its diameter, τ is defined as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its radius. This means the measurement of the circumference of any circle is about 6.28318 times its radius. 2π is used quite often in mathematics, and proponents of tau say it would be much easier to simply replace that symbol with τ. In general, mathematicians write equations about circles using its radius as well, not its diameter.

In American date format, today is 6/28, an approximation of τ.  Unfortunately, while you can celebrate March 14 as Pi Day by baking a pie, there is no tau to bake.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the June 28 Wikipedia page.

Wine of the Day:  Patricia Green Cellars in Oregon is famous for their Pinot Noirs, but they’re often pricey. And this is one of them, which appears to go at present for about $84, but I didn’t pay anything near that since I bought it at least six years ago. I certainly paid less than half that, but I did want to try one of their high-end pinots.

This was spectacular. And even though it’s 11 years old, the cork crumbled, and I had to decant it through a cloth and a wine funnel to get rid of sediment and bits of cork, it was not by any means over the hill. In fact, I can’t imagine this wine getting better. It’s perfectly balanced, smooth (like a velvet blanket on the tongue) and with a pronounced cherry aroma. It is SO delicious, and improved after one day in the bottle. (I had it with chicken, rice, and broccoli.)

The reviews on the Internet are scarce, but some by amateur wine lovers point out its ability to open up after decanting. (Decanting is an underrated practice!)

What can I say? This is the best American pinot, by far, that I’ve ever had. But it’s gone, and virtually impossible to buy (and at $84 it’s out of reach). Just remember “Patricia Green” when you are looking for pinot noir. Oh, and this one had a wee bit of the “barnyard nose” of great Burgundy.

Da Nooz:

*The terse legal news From Ken:

SCOTUS just issued its decision in Moore v. Harper rejecting the fringe “independent state legislature” theory.

The vote was 6-3, with the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented. You can access the opinions here.
From the WaPo:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the theory that state legislatures have almost unlimited power to decide the rules for federal elections and draw partisan congressional maps without interference from state courts.

The Constitution’s Elections Clause “does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a 6 to 3 decision.

The dissenters were Clarence Thomas (praised by Glenn Loury!), Gorsuch, and Alito.

The decision was praised by Democrats and voting rights advocates, more for avoiding what they thought would be a radical change than for establishing new law. But maintaining the status quo has been seen as a victory in a court that has often gone the other way. And just recently, the court agreed that Alabama should draw a second congressional district in which Black voters could be empowered to elect a candidate of their choice.

The case at hand came from North Carolina, and under the theory advanced by its Republican legislative leaders, but rejected by the court, state lawmakers throughout the country would have had exclusive authority to structure federal elections, subject only to intervention by Congress.

The “independent state legislature theory” holds that the U.S. Constitution gives that power to lawmakers even if it results in extreme partisan voting maps for congressional seats and violates voter protections enshrined in state.

. . . If the ruling had gone the other way, the case could have had a major influence on results in the 2024 election. It has drawn attention in part because of the nation’s polarized politics, in which former president Donald Trump and his allies are still advocating to overturn the 2020 election, and the midterms showed that control of Congress can depend on the drawing of congressional district lines.

The Republicans want to gerrymander the hell out of their states so they can keep down non-white voters, and the Court rules that Republican legislatures can’t do that if it violates their states’ laws.

*One thing I think we liberals can count on with this conservative Supreme Court is that it will uphold the speech bit of the First Amendment—though not necessarily the Establishment Clause. And so they have done, by a vote of 7-2, with the regular dissenter Thomas joined by Barrett as the two who lost:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed the conviction of a man who made extensive online threats to a stranger, saying free speech protections require prosecutors to prove the stalker was aware of the threatening nature of his communications.In a 7-2 ruling authored by Justice Elena Kagan, the court emphasized that true threats of violence are not protected by the First Amendment. But to guard against a chilling effect on non-threatening speech, the majority said states must prove that a criminal defendant has “disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined in part by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, agreed with the outcome but expressed concern about the risk of cracking down on speech that is unintentionally threatening. She worried that the ruling could lead, for instance, to a high school student going to prison for sending another student violent music lyrics.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett dissented from the majority, with Barrett writing that the standard set by the court on Thursday gives “preferential treatment” to a broad range of threatening speech and makes it more difficult for law enforcement to address actual threats.

“A delusional speaker may lack awareness of the threatening nature of her speech; a devious speaker may strategically disclaim such awareness; and a lucky speaker may leave behind no evidence of mental state for the government to use against her,” Barrett wrote. “The Court’s decision thus sweeps much further than it lets on.”

I was actually in this situation, with a delusional nutjob (probably drunk as well) leaving scary messages on my office answering machine at regular intervals. When I tried to report it to the cops (I knew the guy’s name and address), they said they couldn’t intervene unless there was an explicit threat. (I never got to the point of having to show that this guy was actually aware that he was threatening me, which he never did explicitly. Regardless, I think the court made the right decision.

*Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has arrived in Belarus, so there’s no mystery about where he is, but the NYT argues that the man had reached his apogee and is on the way down.

The Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny V. Prigozhin arrived in Belarus on Tuesday, the Belarusian state news media reported, ending days of speculation over his whereabouts after he called off a weekend uprising that marked the most dramatic challenge to President Vladimir V. Putin’s rule in two decades.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Putin praised his security forces in a grandly choreographed speech that portrayed the rebellion as a heroic episode for the Russian state. In a series of appearances three days after the mutiny, Mr. Putin appeared to be trying to seize the initiative, indirectly warning of consequences for officials who helped Mr. Prigozhin enrich himself at the country’s expense. He also thanked the Russian military for having “essentially stopped a civil war,” state media reported.

The Russian authorities dropped an investigation into Mr. Prigozhin and members of his Wagner group over the armed rebellion. The group was preparing to hand over military equipment to the Russian Army, state news media reported, as the Kremlin mounts a concerted effort to move on from the mutiny.

Seriously? Prigozhin is going to give its military equipment to the Russian Army? Forgive me if I have trouble believing that. Without equipment, Prigozhin and the Wagner group are moribund.  And that’s what another piece in the NYT says:

Well before Yevgeny V. Prigozhin seized a major Russian military hub and ordered an armed march on Moscow, posing a startling and dramatic threat to President Vladimir V. Putin, the caterer-turned-mercenary boss was losing his own personal war.

Mr. Prigozhin’s private army had been sidelined. His lucrative government catering contracts had come under threat. The commander he most admired in the Russian military had been removed as the top general overseeing Ukraine. And he had lost his most vital recruiting source for fighters: Russia’s prisons.

Then, on June 13, his only hope for a last-minute intervention to spare him a bitter defeat in his long-running power struggle with Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu was dashed.

Mr. Putin sided publicly with Mr. Prigozhin’s adversaries, affirming that all irregular units fighting in Ukraine would have to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense. That included Mr. Prigozhin’s private military company, Wagner.

Now, the mercenary chieftain would be subordinated to Mr. Shoigu, an unparalleled political survivor in modern Russia and Mr. Prigozhin’s sworn enemy.

Perhaps he is finished. If he hands over his military equipment to Russia’s army, we’ll know that’s true.

*The Justice Department has ruled that Jeffrey Epstein was able to kill himself in jail because of negligence and misconduct by the jail staff.

A pattern of negligence and misconduct by staff at a federal jail in New York gave disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein a perfect opportunity to kill himself in his cell in August 2019, the Justice Department’s watchdog said in a report pointing to chronic problems within the beleaguered federal prison system.

Despite a suicide attempt by Epstein just weeks earlier, staff at the since-closed Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan in the hours before his death didn’t assign him a cellmate, neglected to search his cell, failed to conduct their rounds and gave him extra bedding that he used to hang himself, the report said. Surveillance cameras around the unit where Epstein was housed were turned on but broken, so they captured no video of the area the night he died.

The jail was short-staffed, poorly managed and ill-equipped to manage suicidal inmates, the report said. One staff member assigned to supervise Epstein had worked 24 hours straight by the time the accused sex trafficker was found dead in his cell.

. . . Epstein’s suicide—a determination made by a medical examiner and confirmed by the inspector general’s probe—laid bare a federal prison system beset by understaffing, leadership issues, inmate violence and other problems. The agency is responsible for running more than 120 facilities with roughly 160,000 inmates.

By all accounts he was guilty as hell, and, at 66, would have been sentenced to up to 45 years in prison: a life sentence accompanied by disgrace. It’s no surprise that he did himself in, but the victims are denied their day in court.

*From Phys.Org, reader Gregory sends a headline that gets the “no shit!” award. I mean, could it have been otherwise given that we’re reading this?

Click to read:

Actually, the headline isn’t as bad as it sounds as there are some non-obvious results.  What the authors found was that placental mammals (the group we belong in) were in existence before the Big Asteroid Hit, contradicting others who said that placentals evolved after the hit:

Fossils of placental mammals are only found in rocks younger than 66 million years old, which is when the asteroid hit Earth, suggesting that the group evolved after the mass extinction [the “K-Pg mass extinction“]. However,  has long suggested an  for placental mammals.

In a new paper published in the journal Current Biology, a team of paleobiologists from the University of Bristol and the University of Fribourg used statistical analysis of the fossil record to determine that placental mammals originated before the mass extinction, meaning they co-existed with dinosaurs for a short time. However, it was only after the asteroid impact that modern lineages of placental mammals began to evolve, suggesting that they were better able to diversify once the dinosaurs were gone.

Primates, the group that includes the human lineage, as well as Lagomorpha (rabbits and hares) and Carnivora (dogs and cats) were shown to have evolved just before the K-Pg mass extinction, which means their ancestors were mingling with dinosaurs. After they survived the asteroid impact, placental mammals rapidly diversified, perhaps spurred on by the loss of competition from the dinosaurs.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is uber cynical:

Hili: Pandemic.
A: A new one?
Hili: No, as old as the world, a pandemic of absurdity.
In Polish:
Hili: Pandemia.
Ja: Jakaś nowa?
Hili: Nie, stara jak świat, pandemia absurdu.

********************

 

From reddit via Peter:

Laws apply to everyone 🫡
by u/Physical-Theory-5829 in cats

 

A biology meme from Matthew. Both of these species are supposed to be in the line of descent (or close to it) of whales from artiodactyl ancestors. Indohyus is an earlier form.

Did you know that most recently manufactured Jeeps have a hidden animal on them? It’s true!  From Jesus of the Day:

 

Masih hasn’t tweeted in several days, but Titania is back on Twitter:

From Malcolm. Oy, poor kitty!

SEE UPDATE: From Barry: Here’s Roseanne Barr, who’s Jewish, unleashing what seems to be of the worst anti-Semitic tirades I’ve heard. HOWEVER, as several readers point out in the comment, she’s making a sarcastic comment about the tendency of social media to engage in censorship.  See the longer video posted by Malgorzata in the comments.

From Ana, daughter of reader Jez:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I tweeted. The “selections” always make me feel dreadful:

Tweets from Matthew. First, an obstacle course for a jumping spider (salticid). The reward is a cricket, which it finally gets.

Okay creationists, explain those vestigial wings! (The species description is here.)

What do you call a group of Nautilus (Nautilii?):