The nooz and other stuff

70 thoughts on “The nooz and other stuff”

1. LAUNCH DATE CHANGE: SpaceX just announced a weather delay of launch to at least tomorrow, Thursday, same time window.

2. There’s also a vehicle landing on the moon soon – meaning imminently today- via SpaceX and … Firefly Space … if I am not mistaken.

3. I remember when I was taking Thermodynamics Spring Quarter of my First Year at Chicago. I had old Norman Nachtrieb as a professor. He was talking about something and said, twenty-three hundred degrees Celsius, then corrected himself and said, twenty-three hundred degrees Kelvin. Then he looked at me and said, not that it really makes a difference. We shared a laugh.

4. I suspect that the vast majority of Secretaries of Defense (and before them, Secretaries of War) have been Christians.

   1. And I in turn suspect that very few were the type of Christian that would say “I am redeemed by my lord and savior, Jesus” out loud.

5. “Americans, show me your cat.”

   Many TikTok refugees are joining the Chinese version of TikTok called RedNote.

   The origin of this request is uncertain, and it’s not entirely clear why they want to see our feline friends, but the so-called “cat tax” has become a ubiquitous refrain in the comments, and so far, Americans have complied.

   https://www.thefp.com/p/i-joined-tiktok-refugees-on-rednote-river-page?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

   1. But it’s also Chinese so where’s the advantage?

      1. I suppose the refugees don’t care that either of them is Chinese.

6. I think the law school dean is uttering what goes on in the heads of many hiring committees thru-out the land in academia. It is a mistake to SAY it, but I think it’s widely true.

   1. I can’t believe that he actually said “If I’m ever deposed I’m going to deny I said this”.
      He’s admitting, as a law school dean, that he would lie when giving sworn testimony.

      It’s not like he said, “you didn’t hear it from me, BUT..”. He’s saying he would outright lie under oath. I’ve been deposed a few times over the course of my engineering career, and I was always told / ordered by our legal team to tell the truth even if it seems contrary to the interest of the company, and I always did so. Hearing a law school dean say this blew my mind.

      I do think it is true as you say – this won’t be admitted to in public but it is the practice.

   2. Will the dean be surprised to learn that the proles don’t revere the law, higher education and their practitioners as much as he thinks they should? Or surprised to learn that when his community of scholars abandons its search for truth, there are consequences for academic salaries, tenure and their freedom of speech?

      On another matter, love that wonderful, haunting photo of Cerro Torre.

   3. The counterforce is that if you are damned and determined that you will not under any circumstance hire the “diversity” candidate just because you don’t like his/her/their particular flavour of diversity, you can think it as you blackball him/her/them, as long as you don’t say it.

      I mean, once it’s out there that you can vote how you think, you can vote any way at all. And unlike the professor, I’m not going to tell anyone. They can depose me all they want.

7. I’m with the democrats on this one. Not because I think that men should compete against women in sports. I think the government should stay out of these decisions, each group should be free to decide how they handle things.

   1. Sorry, but this is a Title IX matter of fairness to a group. Presumably you don’t think that whether women are discriminated against in other areas of education is a “local matter best handled by the school.”

      1. Hey boss, have you seen that you are “wrong” about biological sex?

         https://youtu.be/eQSsL85FaEs?t=97

         What a shame, his content generally seems so rational – at least he admits he is outside his specific field.

         1. Wow, per the video: biological sex a term I absolutely
            detest is tricky to Define and absolutely not binary this is particularly true in multi cellular organisms like humans there is no one standard that works across the board

            1. Quite.(Edit: don’t forget his “gender and sex are a spectrum”… /edit) He generally critiques creationists with what seem to a lay person quite reasoned arguments from what would appear to be in his professional bailiwick, but that one for me was unwatchable as he seems to have strayed into the land of ideology. I am disappointed in that creator and will seriously reconsider my subscription to his channel should this continue.

         2. At least one commenter throws a swipe at our host and at Richard Dawkins.

            I left a comment correcting some of the creator’s errors but it’s as if he doesn’t care because for him subjective self-proclaimed gender trumps observable sex anyway. Even some of the sympathetic commenters picked up on this. What he seems to be trying to do is queer the definition of sex into incoherency and then slip in gender as the basis for organizing society. Believe God made two sexes if you like but we’ve just stolen the wheels off that belief. He didn’t make gender. We post-modernists and atheists did!

            He says he’s going to delete transphobic comments and ban the commenters so we’ll see how any of the politely critical comments stay up.

            He doesn’t think much of the Cass Review, just cites the McNamara group from Yale that it is untrustworthy. I don’t think he’s read either.

   2. Your comment and Jerry’s response illustrates why the government had to get involved here. Yes, in principle, sporting organizations ought to be able to decide eligibility for themselves. But in the current trans-rights environment, they can’t. If a women’s sport governing body sensibly chooses to exclude men (including those who say they are women), the men who say they are women will sue (or in Canada, complain to human rights commissions.) The outcome will be that the sporting organization will be fined a large sum of money and, if it survives financially, will have to let the men play. With the new law (if it passes the Senate), that can’t happen. The sporting body that is under furious pressure to accommodate trans people inclusively can point to the law, then at the man, and say, “Sorry, we’d love to let you play in the gender you believe you are. But we can’t. Now go away. Train hard and maybe you can be competitive in our men’s or open division. Or not.”

      Another route is is to clarify civil rights law to say that gender expression and identity is not a protected ground on which it illegal to discriminate in the fields of influence of civil rights law, chiefly employment and provision of services to the public. (Why should it be? The notion that you can be a gender that doesn’t match your sex is gnostic nonsense. Deeming it somehow legally sacred, like sex and race, is perverse.) An employer should be free to not hire a man who wears dresses and says he expects to use the women’s bathrooms and locker rooms at work. That will disrupt the workplace and harm the business. A music festival for women (like the one that used to run in Michigan) should be free to exclude all men, including transwomen, without fear of ruinous discrimination lawsuits. (It was actually internal bickering over this very issue among the collective that ran it that did in the Michigan Womyn’s Festival.)

      Under this rubric, the sporting organization could decide itself to exclude men, including transwomen, from women’s sport. But the trans-rights activists are vicious and they never sleep. The organization might capitulate to pressure to make an exception “for my daughter.” Trans athletes are rare. They’re all exceptions. But each time the organization capitulated to pressure, all the women competing would be disadvantaged. The law makes it impossible for them to capitulate and throw the women under the bus.

      The law is a start. So are laws that criminalize medical mutilation of disturbed minor children in the name of gender affirmation. Someday we won’t need them. But for now we do. Without them the vulnerable will be taken advantage of because safeguarding by voluntary organizations has failed.

      1. Thank you Leslie. Beautifully put reasoning.

         I will never understand how many people lack the ability to empathise with the female athletes.

         It’s odd how no transmen have ever won any significant competitions in the male section and if the organisations offer an open to what you think you are gender section they never get any transwomen entering. Seems to me the objective is for these males is to win and they consider the expense of the loss to women fairness of opportunity an irrelevance.

         It’s a win for common sense and fairness.

         1. Nikki Hiltz identifies as transgender / non-binary. She (female sex) has said that she doesn’t “identify with the gender I was assigned at birth”. A lot was made of this during the Olympics, how she was a groundbreaker, etc., but she competed in the women’s 1500m, not the men’s.
            As much as she may want to be seen as not a woman, she wouldn’t stand a chance in the men’s 1500: her fastest time is 3:55, and the leading US high school boys times are around 3:42 – 3:45.
            To put this in a little perspective, imagine watching a HS boys race, and as soon as the finishers cross the finish line, start counting out down from 10 seconds to see the gap between the boys and where she would be at her very fastest. Incidentally, the women’s 1500m record is 3:49, meaning that US HS boys are regularly beating women’s world records in many track and field categories.
            At the Olympic level, the gap is huge – the winning men’s time in 2024 was 3:27.

            Bottom line is as you say: transmen will never be competitive in the men’s division in most sports, so they don’t compete in that category because they want to have a chance at winning, or even being competitive. Even in an open division, they wouldn’t have a chance, as they’d still be competing against males (this is my argument against having three divisions consisting of men’s, women’s, and open: the open division would be dominated by males calling themselves women so it would in fact create two male divisions, one for males calling themselves men, and one for men calling themselves women) .

            Since Title IX is the governing policy, I absolutely cannot side with the Democrats on this vote in any way whatsoever. They are firmly in the wrong.

         2. Notice that the article even starts out with the canard that “The House on Tuesday passed legislation banning transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports …”

            No. Transgender athletes are not banned from women’s sports — MALE transgender athletes are. The female ones are welcome as long as they haven’t been artificially doping on testosterone.

            But a news story which acknowledges this means the legislation doesn’t sound as draconian. Worse, it would introduce the concept of the sex differential into the too-receptive minds of the readers.

            1. Great point!

               With the exception being that female transgender athletes who are undergoing hormonal treatment would be barred from women’s sport in the same manner as any other female who is doping.

8. Put some warm clothes on before you get home. Currently (11am) it’s -10C in Evanston, and next week is supposed to be colder. Although we get a short break in between.

   1. Yes and these polar air masses are rolling south and east. But we are approaching Jan 28, the anniversary of ill thought out decision to launch Space Shuttle Challenger that icy morning in 1986 when all the lower 48 states had snow on the ground. Forecasting single digits F in DC for morning after the inauguration….though I am pretty certain that we will be told it was the most beautiful, balmy, 70 degree day EVER.

9. I would add sesame seed to the list of acceptable bagels. Yes, real bagels are hard to find. It seems that the Wonder Bread versions leave out the crucial step of boiling. They need to be boiled. And bigger is not better!

   So sad to read about the untimely death of Elżbieta Krajewska at the hands of the Nazis. She was such a beauty. Unforgivable.

   Regarding news…

   Will Hamas and Israel reach an agreement in the next few days? It seems that an agreement is close, but I’m afraid to mention it for fear of scuttling it. Secretary Blinken’s speech yesterday—calling for leadership by a reconstituted Palestinian Authority—probably didn’t help either. Read the transcript here: https://www.state.gov/office-of-the-spokesperson/releases/2025/01/secretary-antony-j-blinken-toward-the-promise-of-a-more-integrated-middle-east.

   President Biden will give his prime time farewell address tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern. I will be watching at 5:00 Pacific time.

   1. IT SEEMS TO BE DONE. That is, a ceasefire and partial exchange of hostages for Palestinian terrorists. But that is not an end to the war.
      I ‘spect that the final end to this war won’t happen peaceably since Israel (rightly) will never agree to leave Hamas in power, and Hamas will never agree to step aside and to not attack Israel.

      1. Yes. They’re are many moving parts that need to mesh correctly in order to achieve success, one of which is the process of disengagement itself—separating the forces to start the ceasefire. And, I am concerned about the point you make. A deal with Hamas implies that Hamas is still the power of record in Gaza. What kind of transfer of power will there be and to whom? There must be such a transfer, else Israel’s major goal of removing Hamas from power now and forever has not been achieved. That is phase II. For now, I await the release of the first hostages. I can’t imagine the ordeal they’ve been through, and I can only hope that they arrive home safely and will be able to start healing.

10. “I am amazed that the Dems voted as a unit . . .”

    I am not. The Democratic Party is plagued by the same ailment as academia and many other professional workplaces: a lack of free expression and diversity of thought. The party has its mix of zealots, true believers, the empathetic yet misguided, the sheep, and the opportunists. Dissent is not allowed, and a not-unjustified fear of consequences awaits anyone who speaks out.

    1. Agree about the Dems. Unfortunately the Republicans are similar.

       Hegseth was pushed through after a campaign targeted Republicans who didn’t like him. They were threatened with being primaried in 2026 if they opposed Hegseth. Unknown sources put up a lot of money for this.

       https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-pressure-campaign-to-get-pete-hegseth-confirmed-as-defense-secretary

       https://archive.is/p3gno

       1. “Agree about the Dems. Unfortunately the Republicans are similar.”
          Took the words right out of my mouth (or fingers)!

          I like Tom Massie on the R side because he generally stands on principal, plus he’s an engineer. I liked Justin Amash when he was there for the same reason. Mike Lee as well, but he sometimes disappoints.

          Also, I like Gabbard’s stance on privacy but agree with the concerns.

    2. Not only did they vote in lockstep (minus two Representatives from safely conservative districts in Texas, and including both Reps. Moulton and Souzzi who clearly got their hands slapped for not toeing the DNC line and won’t make THAT mistake again), but having been coached by activists, nearly every one of them made the same ridiculous claim that not allowing males to participate in women’s and girl’s sports would result in “genital inspections.” Had not a single one done a shred of research or given it five minutes of critical thinking? Cheek swabs are the standard, and even before getting to that point, medical exams are a requirement. Presumably the physicians can tell the difference, although with the current fad/medical scandal, who knows.

       I watched the hearing, and the Dems making this claim sounded patently unhinged. Plenty of us have tried to get through to our representatives but it seems that the party is committed to self-immolation on this issue. Hard not to picture lemmings/cliff, and yes, I know that’s not a thing.

       1. Even forgetting about any medical exams, the organization can simply request a birth certificate.

          1. This wouldn’t work in foolish jurisdictions (like Ontario) that allow anyone to change the sex marker on their official birth registration at the Office of Vital Statistics. Here a doctor just has to attest that the person really does see him/herself as a member of the opposite sex. What doctor is going to contradict someone’s feelings?

             We would have to demand that all female athletes show not only their wallet-card birth certificates or passports but in all cases another certificate attesting that the birth registration sex was never changed from M to F. If no record of the change was kept, to protect transwomen from ever being outed, then no female birth certificate can be trusted for athletic purposes (or for any other purpose.) Trans rights: the gift that keeps on giving.

             Or just demand a cheek swab from all girls and women but then someone has to pay for it.

             As to medical exams, perhaps the family doctors and paediatricians could weigh in but I don’t believe an appropriate medical evaluation for fitness to compete in sport would include observation of a girl’s or woman’s vulva. Checking for hernias in boys, sure. But the physical exam would be focused on things likely to affect medical danger to the athlete from sport: blood pressure, heart murmurs, excessive joint laxity, enlarged spleen, that sort of thing.

             An exam done to verify that a girl who said she was a girl really was a girl would be a different ethical matter entirely. Of course if the prospective athlete had been a patient of the doctor’s since birth, the delivery-room exam at birth would have recorded the observed sex and this would available for the doctor to certify. But if someone immigrates as a schoolchild and now wants to compete as a 13-year-old or has received only episodic care from multiple doctors with no continuity of records — common now — the current doctor may not ever have had first-hand knowledge of the child’s sex, and no medical reason to find out, beyond her say-so. Pap testing isn’t done until after first sexual intercourse, and a girl could still refuse the exam for any number of private reasons including that she wasn’t a girl. The girl would have to consent to genital exam specifically for eligibility purposes, not medical reasons. Even just a quick glance can be a serious transgression.

             None of this is to argue that men shouldn’t be kept out of women’s sport, just that policing against cheaters, no matter how rare they are, will put significant burdens on women athletes, not men. Which seems bitterly unfair.

             Absent genetic testing, you would think that female athletes in locker rooms would quickly suss out that a competitor was really a man, unless there was a conspiracy of silence on the team that was benefiting from a male ringer and the two teams had separate change rooms. One approach would be to test no women ahead of time but allow a coach to challenge the eligibility of a competitor and demand an objective test. At present in self-ID jurisdictions this is considered transphobia (because the woman found to be a man can still play) but the end of self-ID would make this a viable compromise.

11. Make sure to get to Blinkie’s on the early side. They close at noon. I’ve gotten there too late a couple of times, much to my disappointment.

    1. They were open and we had reserved the donuts we wanted in advance. Photos tomorrow.

12. Andrew Doyle (who I think has recently moved to the US) has written a piece about the House vote on women’s sports: https://www.andrewdoyle.org/p/the-era-of-men-in-womens-sports-is

13. Re: Gabbard: Senator Lankford on wgnradio.com/news/key-republican-says-he-will-support-gabbard-as-trump-dni-pick/ :

    “Obviously, she voted against [FISA section] 702 authority. And just to clarify that, that authority is for actually trying to be able to track terrorists overseas. That has nothing to do with American citizens or anything that’s happening in the United States.”

    If that’s all it is, why would Gabbard and many others have a problem with 702? Have not numerous Americans been warrantlessly surveilled? I trust that the senator will go on record regarding the Quiet Skies air marshal surveillance of Gabbard, presumably because of her critique of U.S. foreign policy.

    WSJ: “But further missteps could jeopardize her nomination . . . .”

    Is that a statement of fact or reportorial (editorial?) opinionating about what constitutes a “misstep”? What are the WSJ’s positions on warrantless surveillance and U.S. foreign policy?

    WSJ: ” . . . Gabbard couldn’t clearly articulate what the role of director of national intelligence entails . . . Gabbard seemed confused about a key U.S. national-security surveillance power . . . conflating it with other issues, the two Senate republican aides and a Trump transition official said.”

    Would that one could sit in on that conversation and make his own judgment instead of having to rely on how something “seems” to these unnamed sources. (I’m tempted in my daily life to start making claims citing unnamed sources.) Perhaps the substance of the conversation will be recapitulated in her hearing.

    1. I’m not impressed with Tulsi Gabbard.

       She’s a Hindu which is fine in principle but she belongs to a breakaway sect of Hare Krishna, who are kooks.

       She’s also a big fan of Putin and was a fan of Assad of Syria.

       https://snyder.substack.com/p/tulsi-gabbard-holds-the-knife

       https://archive.is/S4lw3

       https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/11/tulsi-gabbard-nomination-security/680649/

       https://archive.is/xMs2c

       1. Via Perplexity:

          Religious Background

          Gabbard made history as the first Hindu member of Congress, taking her oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita. Her spiritual journey includes:

          Early Years
          • She was raised in the Science of Identity Foundation, founded by Chris Butler (also known as Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa)
          • Her parents were deeply involved with SIF, with her mother serving as the organization’s treasurer

          Current Beliefs
          • She identifies as a Vaishnava Hindu rather than a Hare Krishna devotee
          • She has described Butler as her “guru dev” (spiritual guide), though she maintains she has had many different spiritual teachers
          • She practices traditional Hindu devotional activities, including chanting mantras

       2. Yes Frau – the Putin and Assad files on her are enough for me to nix her vote before we get started on Hare Krishna. I thought evolution deleted them in, like, 1990 or something.

          As for RFK – I wouldn’t let him even LIVE in the United States, less have any power to run it! Jesus. Deport him to Samoa to live amidst the anti-vax dead children he deaded.
          He is one of the most dangerous Americans by a long shot.
          Tulsi is just an unqualified kook.

          D.A.
          NYC

          1. +1

14. Westminster City Council in London appears to be planning to use the Berkeley Law School Dean’s approach to discriminatory recruitment: https://x.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1879273049075458217

15. My dinner with Jerry was a wonderful break from everything going on, but I gotta say, the one thing worse than calling a “website” a “bl*g” would be calling a “Robert” a “Bob” (see above intro). But I can live with that if it’s the price of great conversation combined with great food and wine!

    1. I know better than to call Robert “Bob,” just as I wouldn’t call Richard Dawkins “Dick.” I blame it on the fact that I was typing in my hotel room at 5 a.m. without coffee.

16. If one wants to stay young by singing old rock and roll songs, one can always join the Young@Heart Chorus. You have to be 70 and above, but they actually sing to audiences here and have traveled abroad.
    They have had some good 90 year old singers and can be found on Youtube performing.

    Young@Heart – Full 40th Anniversary Show on Youtube

17. “I am flying home from Burbank”
    Good choice. That or Ontario (CA).
    Some years ago my now-wife gave me a mug for Valentines Day that was enscribed: “I would drive to LAX for you”.
    That’s twue wove.

    1. Forget driving there, I’ve never seen such a poorly designed airport. The number of times I’ve almost missed a connecting flight because of the way the terminals are (not) connected to each other and the confusing signage ….

18. Regarding sport — on the basis of what I’ve been learning about the gender craze issues, I agree with whyevolutionistrue: “I’m afraid that the Democrats, striving to be avatars of equity, got it wrong on this one, and it won’t make them look good in further elections. …”

    The Democrats really got stuck badly with this one, and they will lose further support if they don’t rethink what this is all about. I’ve been trying to learn more about the general issue, beginning with J.K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock’s writings and more recently, Helen Joyce and Stephanie Winn’s extensive podcasts and writing. My current impression is that the gender craze is much worse that most of us realize and the Democrats have fallen in on the wrong side of history and reality.

    It’s depressing, the stuff presented on this post, although the cats are fine. I sure would like to see reality-based politics. I’d like to be able to teleport, too, but at least I don’t want a pony. I guess it doesn’t matter, anyway.

    1. The cats help a lot on depressing political news! 🐈🐈🐈

    2. It’s not just the democrats. Right-wing parties are winning (fairly) more and more elections in various countries. I think that one of the main reasons is the dislike of wokeness, and people (rightly or wrongly) take the right-wing parties to be the lesser evil. However, most people don’t realize this, since anyone who publicly states to be anti-woke must fear cancellation.

19. I spent a fair amount of time behind closed doors watching one Secretary of Defense interact with the Joint Chiefs and the other senior military leadership. And I admit to being amused envisioning the prospect of Pete Hegseth being that man. My ideal candidate for SecDef (and SecState) would be intelligent, measured, disinterested, driven by duty, not given to self-promotion, and have executive leadership experience. But since George C. Marshall is not available, I’m not sure where Trump should turn. Hegseth doesn’t worry me, but I understand why he might worry others. He does have a few traits that appeal to me and others that detract, and as I am not yet convinced that he would be effective, I can see where one could either support or oppose him without it being a purely partisan matter. We would have had a very long meeting if I were a senator.

    What also amuses me is the nature of some of the Democratic criticism. Hegseth is unfit to be an executive leader because: he is a drinker (Lyndon Johnson), he openly declares that Jesus is his Savior (Jimmy Carter), he lacks executive experience (Barack Obama), he is a serial adulterer (JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton). And, while not an executive and lacking any significant experience outside of politics, let’s not overlook that lion of the Democratic Party—Teddy Kennedy—a drinker, a philanderer, and a serial adulterer. But, hey, he never claimed that Jesus saved him.

    1. +1. I’m also not sure how the same people who may speak of “praying for X” or “sending prayers” in times of crises can also criticize someone who at least is very clear about who they are praying to!

       I’m no fan of Hegseth or religion, but if anyone in Congress criticizes his religiosity, I’d fire back “So, are you not a person of faith? Do you not also believe in God?”

    2. I’m intrigued by your opening sentences. What was the interaction like during your time attending the meetings, and how do you envision Hegseth being different? Honestly, I never heard of the guy until he was nominated and since then I’ve seen only negative news about him (and I don’t trust the media), so I’d like to know what your thoughts are. What does he bring to the table that other example you hinted at did not?

       1. That other example was an extremely gifted administrator, yet he had his hands full at the Pentagon. Too many people, too many vested interests, too much money. From what I have seen so far, Hegseth will need an extraordinary deputy to run day-to-day operations. That would allow him to focus on “vision” issues, but it is unclear to me whether he realizes that follow-up rather than issuing orders is 90% of the job. He seems high energy; he’ll need it. I also have no doubt that he will faithfully implement Trump’s directives on culture war issues, but the problems at the Pentagon are much deeper and extend to Capitol Hill.

          The comment I made about amusement pertains to his demeanor. While it is possible that the man has a starkly different private persona from what I have seen of his public one, I don’t know enough about him to judge whether this is the case. From what I have seen, he can still come across as a flamethrowing, over-caffeinated member of the College Republicans who relishes being an iconoclast among his Ivy League peers. You will be hard-pressed to find a service chief or combatant commander who conducts himself similarly. The contrast just makes me chuckle, but I’m juvenile like that.

20. I too mourn the passing of authentic bagels. The last nearly authentic one that I had was purchased over twenty years ago from a refrigerated sandwich case in the Detroit Airport. One time my father told me that there were three different bagel baker unions in Newark, NJ. I asked why and, as he counted off three fingers, he replied “Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform”. In those days you could go to a bagel factory and select fresh bagels as they slid in batches down a metal chute leading to actual bakery in the backroom. They were all the same and they were all plain.

21. Happily eating my everything bagel with lox and a schmear.

22. “I’m afraid that the Democrats, striving to be avatars of equity, got it wrong on this one, and it won’t make them look good in further elections. Perhaps there can be mixed-sports teams in elementary school, but once you get to high school and college, and trans women have experienced male puberty, the whole game becomes unfair to women.”

    The Dems are sort of forced into this though, unfortunately. Imagine the following hypo:

    Trans-woman: “I am a woman in every sense of the word.”

    Democrats: “Of course you are…see how dutifully we use the proper feminine pronouns when addressing you!”

    Trans-woman: “So because I am a woman in every sense of the word, I want to compete with other women and not men in sports.”

    Democrats: “Well, er, um, could you like do us a solid and not do that and maybe compete with the men, or this new made-up category just for folks like you?”

    Trans-woman: “Why? So I’m not really a woman then to you…aren’t you contradicting yourself when you say you ‘respect trans-rights’?”

    Democrats: “Humina humina humina…”

    A person who was born to produce male gametes is a male…and they are certainly a man if they went through puberty. They do not become a woman simply because they declare themselves to be. Thus, transwomen are men, and we should address them as such.

    If you think that an XY individual with the equipment to produce male gametes is a woman, then what do you use to differentiate between “men” and “women”? If a person that gestates can also be a man, and a person that produces sperm can also be a woman, than what if any is the physical difference between men and women? If there is none, why even have the term “man” and “woman” at all, as there seems to be no difference between the two under this rubric.

    1. Do you support me?
       Yes.
       Am I a woman to you?
       Sure. I mean yes.
       Do you think l’m beautiful?
       Yes.
       Say it.
       You are beautiful.
       And am I all woman?
       Don’t be ridiculous.

    2. Carrying on….

       TW: And I want you to tell that music festival in Michigan where they only admit women to the grounds that they have to let me attend.

       Dem: But a lot of women enjoy being naked in the summer sunshine and mosquitoes out of the male gaze. It’s why they make it women only and you’re not… Er, sorry, my handler is trying to get my attention. What? Oh, right, thanks. Shit, I almost said…[handler gesticulating furiously] never mind.

       TW: What about that woman on TikTok from San Francisco who is always being misgendered by restaurant waiters?

       Dem (cautiously now, aware of said TikTok personality): Uh, yeahhh….what about her?

       TW: Well, aren’t you going to sue all those restaurants for civil rights violations? She’s got it all on tape. They call her “sir”. And when she complained, one waiter said, “Well I guess we aren’t as progressive as you are.” [True]

       Dem: Uh, well…

       TW: You made a big show in the previous post about dutifully using proper feminine pronouns when addressing me. Well, those waiters don’t and their employers let them get away with it when they should be arrested and put in front of a firing squad, like those sociopaths who try to check too many items through the 10-items-or-less cashier!

       Dem: Well, we don’t mean it like that. It’s just a kind thing to do, not like its a civil rights violation. [Handler pantomimes shooting self in head with finger revolver.] Dem recovering: But it’s still a really really important thing everyone should do and feel really bad when they slip up!

       TW: But you said the Democratic Party stands for civil rights for trans-gendered people. This is my civil right not to be misgendered. Even Canada has that. What other civil rights are you saying I have but I don’t really?

       Dem: Huh-boy…

       This sounds like a slippery slope argument. But it’s actually a tumble-home.

       1. +1

23. Can’t resist a plug for my buddy Richard, who makes excellent and authentic–dare I say ‘artisanal’–bagels out here in the Mojave Desert, of all places.
    https://29loaves.com/

24. A group of attorneys general have just won a significant victory precluding the interpretation of Title IX rules concerning discrimination against women being interpreted in terms of gender not sex. The Biden administration had taken the Title IX rules to be rules protecting women in terms of gender identity not sex. So under the Biden interpretation, Title IX rules covered trans women. The judge was a Bush II appointment. The ruling also has significant free speech implications as it rules out penalizing subjective offense, like taking offence at being misgendered.

25. Eric, my grandfather was a baker in Newark, and a union man. He worked at Silvers, if you’ve heard of it. In my town, we have a magnificent bakery where the bagels slide down the metal chute and on to the conveyer. Always puts a smile on my face.

26. I don’t seem to have any trouble getting bagels here in Pittsburgh that are just as good as the ones I used to get in Jersey from an authentic Jewish guy.

    But I finally ran into the kind you complain about. From Trader Joe’s. He doesn’t know for bagels!!

27. In three decades I’ve assimilated to the US well I think. The exception is Fahrenheit which I will never respect. My phone weather is set to Celsius like all good people (my fellow Americans, Burmese and Liberians excepted).

    D.A.
    NYC

    1. I live in the US and switched to Celsius in 2016. Most devices can do either except my Honda.

28. I’m the opposite. Canada switched to Celsius in the 1970s along with SI generally. Even though we used Celsius and Kelvin in science long before, thinking of everyday temperatures in Celsius never really sank in. Of course I know what 20C will feel like but it doesn’t register viscerally the way 68 F does. Probably like when you get dementia, you recall and can often sing songs from your childhood even after you forget who your children are.

    There are lots of reasons to prefer SI over traditional measures but temperature isn’t one of them. The only meaningful zero is absolute zero, 0 K. Everything else is entirely arbitrary. You can use the ice point of pure water as a reference point but it doesn’t have to be set at zero. Dividing the distance between freezing and boiling by 100 doesn’t make any calculation easier, the way dividing the metre into 100 centimetres, and using decimal fractions of a millimetre does. (But then, machinists speak in decimal thousandths of an inch anyway, not 149 1024ths.)

    And as the figure makes clear, 0 to 100 captures an ordinary range of commonly experienced ambient temperatures in Fahrenheit. Much to recommend it.

29. I must add the requisite disclaimer that sports is one of the few exceptions in which trans people do not have the “right” to be treated precisely as the sex they claim to be rather than the sex in which they were born.

    Is that “right” in a legal sense or in your opinion?

    In nearly all other areas, trans people should be treated with dignity, respect, and have the same rights as everyone else.

    That’s a different statement. One can treat them with dignity, respect, and let them have the same rights as everyone else. Note that no-one else has, or even claims to have, the right to identify as something they are not and force everyone else to play along.

    In any case, probably most gender-critical people don’t think that they have a right to be treated as the sex they claim to be. I tend to agree (note that that does not mean that they don’t have the same rights as everyone else) and think that such kindness led to the slippery slope which got us to where we are now.

    1. I agree. Girls are relentlessly trained to be polite, kind and gentle, and this is an important reason why so many women let misogynists walk all over them.

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