Sunday: Hili dialogue

January 26, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the sabbath for goyische cats: it’s Sunday, January 26, 2025, and National Peanut Brittle Day.  Here’s how to make it with only three ingredients:

It’s also National Green Juice Day, a drink I’ve never had but I suppose is good for you. I’d try it if the version didn’t have Satan’s vegetable: broccoli

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Inspectors general are individuals that have oversight of an agency, being a general auditor and looking for waste, embezzlement, and the like.  And, yesterday, Trump fired at least a dozen of them, a move that, like preventing birth citizenship, is probably illegal (archived here):

President Trump fired at least 12 inspectors general late on Friday night, three people with knowledge of the matter said, capping a week of dramatic shake-ups of the federal government with a purge of independent watchdog officials created by Congress to root out abuse and illegality within federal agencies.

The firings appeared to violate a law that requires presidents to give Congress 30 days’ advance notice before removing any inspector general, along with reasons for the firing. Just two years ago, Congress strengthened that provision by requiring the notice to include a “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for the removal.

The move was the latest wave of abrupt upheavals following the inauguration of Mr. Trump that have put the government in increasing confusion.

There were competing lists circulating in Washington on Saturday morning of which inspectors general had received an email from the White House telling them that “due to changing priorities, your position as inspector general” was “terminated, effective immediately.”

But agencies and departments whose watchdogs were said to have been removed included the departments of agriculture, commerce, defense, education, housing and urban development, interior, labor, transportation and veterans affairs, along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Small Business Administration.

It was not clear whether the departments of State and the Treasury were included, but multiple people said that Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general for the Justice Department, had been spared. Mr. Horowitz was lauded by Mr. Trump’s supporters in 2019 after he uncovered serious errors and omissions in the F.B.I.’s applications to wiretap a former foreign policy adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign as part of the Russia investigation.

I don’t know enough about the fired IGs to render an opinion on the specifics, but surely the illegality of the firings is sufficient to contest it. I suppose Trump has the right to do this if he fulfills the required month’s notice to Congress, but perhaps he should slow down on the housecleaning, and Congress (and the American people) deserve to know why these oversight people are getting dumped.

*And another bad Trump appointment comes though: Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Secretary of Defense after Vice President J. D. Vance broke a tie in the Senate after three Republicans defected from a bloc vote, while all Democratic Senators rejected the nomination.  (archived here).

The Senate narrowly confirmed Pete Hegseth as defense secretary on Friday after he survived a bruising struggle with Democrats who decried the Trump nominee as unqualified and unfit to oversee the country’s 1.3 million active duty troops and the Pentagon’s nearly $850 billion budget.

Vice President JD Vance had to cast a tiebreaking vote to confirm Mr. Hegseth, after three Republicans — Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — joined all Democrats in opposition.

The final vote, 51 to 50, was the smallest margin for a defense secretary’s confirmation since the position was created in 1947, according to Senate records.

Mr. Hegseth, a military veteran and a former Fox News host, has vowed to bring his self-described “warrior” ethos to the Defense Department, which he says has been made weak by “woke” generals and diversity programs.

Republican leaders embraced that outlook as they cheered his confirmation.

“Peace through strength is back under President Trump and Pete Hegseth,” Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and the chairman of the armed services panel, said in a statement after Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation, adding: “We cannot wait another minute to rebuild our military might and put the war-fighter first.”

But Democrats, who unanimously opposed Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation, promised to continue their scrutiny of him.

Kudos to Collins, Murkowski, and (LOL) Mitch McConnell, who, though Republican, still recognize that Hegseth really is unqualified for the job.  McConnell even said this:

Mr. McConnell stressed that in his estimation, Mr. Hegseth had not demonstrated a sufficient understanding of national security challenges to handle the job of defense secretary, which he called “the most consequential cabinet official in any administration.”

“Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement explaining his vote. He added: “Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test.”

*At the Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan approves of “Undoing Biden’s left-extremism.”

To say I have conflicted feelings after a week or so of Trump’s return to power would be an understatement. Some of his early decisions remind me why I couldn’t vote for him. His decision to pardon even those among the J6 mob who assaulted cops jibes with his own instinctual love of vigilante justice against anyone in his way. That’s why his egregious withdrawal of security detail from John Bolton and Mike Pompeo is so instructive. Trump is no longer fond of these men, so he has all but invited a foreign hostile government to murder them. His embrace of anti-police vigilanteism at home is matched by his removal of sanctions on the violent settlers in the West Bank this week. He’s a thug who loves thugs.

But for all this, a large part of me is exhilarated by this first week. Yes, exhilarated. Liberated even. I wasn’t quite expecting this, but I can’t deny it. I suddenly feel more oxygen in the air as the woke authoritarianism of the last four years begins finally to lift. And let me put the core reason for this exhilaration as simply as I can. On the central questions of immigration and identity politics, what Trump is proposing is simply a return to common sense — a reflection of the sane views of the vast majority of Americans, who support secure borders and oppose unfairness in sports and medical experiments on children. My conservative soul is glad.

Joe Biden brazenly lied when he promised moderation in 2020. Check out my column on his initial flurry of executive orders four years ago this week:

[Biden] is doubling down on the very policies that made a Trump presidency possible. In every major democracy, mass immigration has empowered the far right. Instead of easing white panic about changing demographics, Biden just intensified it.

All Trump had to do was wait. But Biden’s EOs on “equity” were even more extreme, effectively ending any pretense of color-blindness in American law and society. Biden, I wrote four years ago, was:

enforcing the Ibram X. Kendi view that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” And he’s enforcing it across the entire federal government and any institution the federal government funds.

It was a direct and proud embrace of systemic race and sex discrimination by the federal government. It was accompanied by a massive shift in the private sector toward illegal race and sex discrimination in hiring, firing, and promotion. This was buttressed by actual mandatory workplace indoctrination in critical race, gender, and queer theory. This was authoritarian brainwashing, accompanied by blatant race discrimination.

Biden also decreed by executive order that the postmodern notion of “gender” would henceforth replace biological sex in determining who is a man or a woman. He mandated that any school or university getting federal funds should remove distinctions between boys and girls — even in sports and intimate spaces. His administration fully backed the medically irreversible transing of children with gender dysphoria, lied about the science, and secretly urged removing all age restrictions on transition — subjecting countless gay and autistic children to the permanent destruction of their future ability to have kids or even an orgasm.

Biden was, in these respects, an unremitting extremist; and almost all Trump is doing this week is unraveling this insanity. The one actually radical act from Trump is rescinding LBJ’s “affirmative action” directive of 1965. Reagan wanted to do this, but he faced bipartisan opposition. One justification of the feds moving from anti-discrimination to being pro-discrimination was because, in LBJ’s words, African-Americans “don’t have their 12 percent” in federal employment, i.e. their proportion in the country at large. Today, African-Americans are almost 19 percent of federal employees — much higher than their population share. The MSM won’t frame it this way. But that’s the truth. And Trump’s EO language suggests he now has a staff shrewd and determined enough to push back. This week was more regime change than shit-show.

But he’s not that hopeful, and, of course, we will some day have a Democratic President who may undo much of what Trump did.

It is, however, far too soon to declare the war on left authoritarianism over. It is far from dead; it has replaced Christianity entirely for many, as we saw with Bishop Budde at the National Cathedral this week, or the Oscars giving an unpopular film 13 nominations just so they can give a Best Actress award to a biological man. The Ivy League will do everything it can to keep discriminating against members of “oppressor classes.” The MSM is too far gone to reform itself. If you want proof of that, notice that the NYT has two emphatically “queer” columnists pushing gender woo-woo, and it just fired the only writer in that publication, Pamela Paul, who helped expose the medically baseless transing of children.

*Over at the Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi, trying to understand Trump’s order on sex while desperately trying to adhere to gender-activist extremism, gets a lot of stuff wrong or confused:

Most scientists now reject the idea that sex is strictly binary. The likes of Nature, possibly one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, has noted that “the research and medical community now sees sex as more complex than male and female”. And there’s a huge amount of disagreement as to how these categories should be described. “Scientists ourselves cannot agree on how to define the two sexes,” Rachel Levin, a Pomona College neuroscientist who studies the development of sex, told me over the phone. “To say that sex is simple and easily defined – and defined at conception – is factually incorrect.”

I urge you to look at the Nature link to see if it shows that science rejects the sex binary, particularly one based on difference in the reproductive apparatus to produce sperm or eggs. No, it doesn’t, but it involves the reader in a lot of confusion about intersexes and DSDs. The paragraph below makes an argument that is becoming familiar: because the development of secondary sex traits is complicated, and different organisms use different cues to produce the universal gamete binary), and because people differ in their secondary sex traits, then sex cannot be binary.  But it’s binary in other animals!  I’d like to ask these people four questions:

  1. How many sexes are there in nonhuman animals likes cats, horses, hyenas, ducks, or sharks?
  2. If “two,” Is there a universal way to tell them apart? (the answer, of course, is “two” and “gamete type”
  3. Now how many sexes are there in humans?
  4. If answer to #3 differs from that to question #1, Why is that the case, and then how do you tell the more-than-two sexes apart?

Biologically, we are animals, mammals, and primates, and have the same number of sexes in all species of animals (and vascular plants). Bringing in hormones, chromosomes, and the like is what I now call “The Argument from Complexity,” Remember, the definition of biological sex is not the same as the way that biological sex is determined (it differs among taxa), and those are also different from the way biological sex is usually recognized (genitals, in humans, but that can be wrong.

More palaver:

There are lots of factors that contribute to how we think about sex, including physical characteristics, hormone levels, gamete size (larger gametes are eggs while smaller gametes are sperm), sex chromosomes, etc. Trump’s executive order seems to tie sex to just gamete size at conception. This is despite the fact that a lot of academics have moved away from a sex-classification system based primarily on gametes because some people will never produce a gamete. And, while it’s true that most people inherit either XX (typically female) or XY (typically male) chromosomes at conception, declaring that sex is determined so early is overly simplistic. “Most of us develop along a certain fairly common pathway, but a lot of us do not,” Levin notes. “One really important thing for the public to realize is that the president declaring something to be the case doesn’t make it true.

Note the arrant stupidity of claiming that if you’re a sterile male or a postmenopausal or prepubertal female, you’re not male or female. Does this writer have two neurons to rub together? (This claim, which is common, is really a move of desperation.  If you have the reproductive anatomy to make one of the two types of gametes, but your gun is jammed or you’re out of ammo, you are still male or female. Just as clearly, a male who gets castrated is still a male.  Further, we do not have “gamete size at conception,” we have the genetic underpinning at conception of what your gamete size has the potential to be.

What all this boils down to, in short, is that sex is a hell of a lot more complicated than Trump’s executive order would have you believe. Shocking, I know. Who would have thought that the guy who suggested “nuking hurricanes” to stop them hitting America wouldn’t be the most trustworthy scientific voice?

Yep, it’s the argument from complexity, which refuses to recognize the biological universal of two sexes based solely on the apparatus used to produce large, immobile or small, mobile gametes. Why do they refuse to recognize one of the few “laws” of biology that holds across all animals and vascular plants? Because it makes those who don’t feel male or female uncomfortable, including trans people. But, as I’ve often said, biological fact is not dictated by ideology, nor should we discriminate against people (except in a few cases like sports or where one is incarcerated) because of differences in gamete size.

It’s no surprise that Mahdawi is a columnist and not a biologist, and not even a science columnist.

*Good news in medical science, at least: a woman with a pig kidney as her sole kidney has now survived for two months. As you might expect, the pigs had been genetically altered to make their kidneys more like human ones to prevent immunological rejection.

An Alabama woman passed a major milestone Saturday to become the longest living recipient of a pig organ transplant – healthy and full of energy with her new kidney for 61 days and counting.

“I’m superwoman,” Towana Looney told The Associated Press, laughing about outpacing family members on long walks around New York City as she continues her recovery. “It’s a new take on life.”

Looney’s vibrant recovery is a morale boost in the quest to make animal-to-human transplants a reality. Only four other Americans have received hugely experimental transplants of gene-edited pig organs – two hearts and two kidneys – and none lived more than two months.

“If you saw her on the street, you would have no idea that she’s the only person in the world walking around with a pig organ inside them that’s functioning,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health, who led Looney’s transplant.

Montgomery called Looney’s kidney function “absolutely normal.” Doctors hope she can leave New York – where she’s temporarily living for post-transplant checkups – for her Gadsden, Alabama, home in about another month.

. . .Scientists are genetically altering pigs so their organs are more humanlike to address a severe shortage of transplantable human organs. More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant list, most who need a kidney, and thousands die waiting.

Pig organ transplants so far have been “compassionate use” cases, experiments the Food and Drug Administration allows only in special circumstances for people out of other options.

And the handful of hospitals trying them are sharing information of what worked and what didn’t, in preparation for the world’s first formal studies of xenotransplantation, expected to begin sometime this year. United Therapeutics, which supplied Looney’s kidney, recently asked the Food and Drug Administration for permission to begin a trial.

Loobey donated a kidney to her mother, and then lost her other one when she developed post-pregnancy high blood pressure. So far there is no sign of rejection, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she does well. It’s amazing that we got to this point, a point where we could modify in animals hard-to-get organs that can be used in place of human organs.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is perturbed (Malgorzata uses fat-free milk, but Andrzej’s milk in his coffee has fat in it):

Hili: This coffee has a strange color.
A: Because Małgorzata adds a strange milk.

In Polish:

Hili: Ta kawa ma dziwny kolor.
Ja: Bo Małgorzata dolewa do niej dziwne mleko.

From Things with Faces:

From Cat Memes:

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy (this looks like the UK to me):

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

Retweeted by Masih. “Woman, Life, Freedom”

A woman who is fed up with people forcing women to get undressed in front of trans women:

From Malcolm, who captions this, “I have one, too!”:

From Jez’s thread of heartwarming pet stuff:

From the IDF, re the four female soldiers returned by Hms:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A 38-year-old Czech woman, born on this day in 1906, died in Auschwitz at 38.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-26T11:23:26.537Z

Two posts by Dr. Cobb.  About the first one he says, “I guess you need to write about this.” So I’ve just printed out the paper.

A single gene underlies male mating morphs in ruff sandpipers, a new Science study finds. The results show how evolutionary changes in a single gene's structure, sequence, and regulation can drive significant diversity within a single species. Learn more in our new issue: https://scim.ag/4arzNmU

— Science Magazine (@science.org) 2025-01-23T19:05:01.357Z

I stole this from Matthew’s feed. Crikey: chewed its legs off!

Predators predated.

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-01-25T13:46:23.003Z

 

41 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. And speaking of Trump appointments and “unappointments” (disappointments?), on today’s This Week in Virology episode 1187, at the end, Vincent points out an article reminding us about Trump’s pick for NIH head, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and his Great Barrington Declaration carrying on. Vince’s part is at 1:49:56 and there is a link to the Science-Based Medicine article as Vincent’s weekly pick in the show notes. TWiV is at url https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

    1. Bhattacharya’s approach was similar to Sweden’s. His point is that public policy during a pandemic needs to focus on global well being, and not just on one pathogen.

      It is no accident that Sweden’s excess death rate was the lowest in Europe: https://www.cato.org/insights/swedens-excess-death-rate-was-lowest-in-europe

      If all virologists are as arrogant as those guys, it makes it more probable in my view that virologists caused the pandemic with gain-of-function research.

      1. Cato Institute is right wing. I don’t completely trust them.

        Sweden had higher death rates than Norway.

        https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8807990/

        And no it was not caused by gain of function research.

        You might look at Dr Paul Offit’s posts on Covid. I won’t enter the link because I’ve already entered one link but you easily find by searching for “Paul Offit Substack.” It’s free to read.

        Covid became intensely politicized and remains that way.

        1. The study you cite just considered 2020. However, the pandemic did not end in 2020.

          Here is a study that covers 2020-2023:

          https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762%2824%2900163-7/fulltext

          Please look at Fig. 1.

          I suspect that the supporters of lockdowns, school closures, masking of 2 year olds, vaccine mandates, etc. have still not come to grips with the societal harm these measures caused.

          BTW Cato is libertarian and not particularly right wing.

    2. “. . . his Great Barrington Declaration carrying on.”

      Jim, can you show me in which points the Great Barrington Declaration departed radically (or at all) from what were generally accepted public health practices and recommendations prior to 2020?

      It strikes me that the radical departures from accepted practice were lockdowns, prolonged school closures, vaccine mandates, universal masking—among others. The burden of proof rested—and still rests—on those who proposed these departures.

      You and I come from somewhat similar lines of work. I imagine it was standard practice in your workplace to convene a board, panel, committee, team to do an after-action report (lessons learned, way ahead, etc.) after any major operations so that one could identify successes and failures and incorporate this knowledge into future planning. Curiously, the Biden Administration steadfastly refused calls for an independent panel to review our pandemic response, despite it being one of the most major disruptions of national life in over a century and amidst recurring declarations that we need to be ready for the next pandemic. Bhattacharya and others have long been calling for such a review and have proposed an extensive list of questions that we should address. Do you have any insight into why one hasn’t been done?

      1. A Swedish scientist states:
        “If the relative distribution of excess mortality in Sweden had been the same as in Norway in 2020-2022, approximately 7000 individuals who died in 2020 would instead have died as excess mortality in 2022, saving approximately 14,000 person-years in Sweden.
        Conclusions: The report disregards residual confounding due to the broad definition of the period 2020-2022. Mass media should avoid one-sided reporting.”
        https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38499977/

  2. Note the arrant stupidity: if you’re a sterile male or a postmenopausal or prepubertal female, you’re not male or female. Does this writer have two neurons to rub together? Clearly, a male who gets castrated is no longer a male.

    I feel there might be some question marks missing from this. I’d say absolutely my post-menopausal partner is female. If the above is really your opinion, I think we have to disagree.

    1. My opinion is that if you have the reproductive anatomy to produce one type of gamete, it’s irrelevant to what sex you are if you don’t produce that gamete. My view is that postmenopausal prepubertal females, sterile males, and castrated males are members of their respective sex, and their inability to produce gametes is irrelevant. My last sentence is clearly sarcastic, okay?

      1. I think should have put a question mark after “you’re not male or female”! Otherwise you appear to be stating the opposite of your own beliefs, as you clarified above.
        I expect many of us have interacted with a frequent commenter at many sites (banned from nearly all) who insists that if you don’t actually produce gametes then you are sexless—he included pre-pubertal children, post menopausal/andropausal adults, and the surgically sterilized. He has an excuse, being very evidently a concrete-thinking autistic. I like the guy, but gave up arguing with him as his concrete is considerably harder than my arguments.

        1. Okay, okay, I’ve fixed it without a question mark. It should be okay now. Did people really not understand what I meant when I didn’t use a question mark, or are they just kvetching?

          1. Serious question for Dr Coyne: what sex do you consider an XY individual with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome to be? Or someone like Caster Semenya? Are those examples of true intersex individuals?

          2. You asked this of Dr PCC(e) but I want to respond.

            Caster Semenya is a biological male. The mutation she and others like her have prevented her, in utero, from making a penis or scrotum, among other things. She still has testicles, which is why her testoterone levels are so high, but because of her developmental problems (no scrotum), they never descended. Thus when she was born, without a penis or scrotum, she was thought to be biologically a female. She is not.

          3. Arlene, that’s a thoughtful question and I hope this response is thoughtful.

            XY people with complete insensitivity to androgen are a special case. The condition is lumped in with the grab-bag of intersex conditions, yes, but that pigeonhole is a medical-social construct used only to help doctors organize our thinking to distinguish among disorders that can be confused with one another. The only internal body plan they have is testicular and therefore exclusively male, not female. The “inter” applies only because they have superficially female external genitalia which causes us to incorrectly diagnose their sex. They appear to be typical baby girls at birth and the undescended testes are not usually noticed because there is no scrotum for them to not descend into. (In partial insensitivity a testis might find its way into a labium majus.). The girls don’t masculinize at puberty and may appear quite feminine because some of the abundant testosterone secreted from the testes at puberty is converted into estradiol. (Pubic hair in both sexes is driven by hormones that come from the adrenal glands.) They don’t menstruate and this is typically when the diagnosis is made. Famously, some adolescent athletes have attributed absence of menarche to intense training and may be just as happy not to be inconvenienced by menstrual periods during highly focussed competition.

            I don’t think it matters what sex these individuals “really” are. They were registered as baby girls, grew up as girls, and no body changes occur later that would cause anyone who saw them naked to doubt for a moment that they were now partially or fully estrogenized women. No one but themselves and their doctors need ever know that they are “really male” and indeed it would not be appropriate to communicate the diagnosis to an adolescent girl (or anyone) in this way. (There are medical issues around sexual function and with having undescended testes which would need to be addressed.)

            The only public issue would be in sport. If an adolescent athlete rose to a level where sex testing was done, she would be discovered to have a Y chromosome or an SRY gene. If she already knew her diagnosis she would have been planning for this event and it would be prudent to disclose it confidentially to the testing authority ahead of time. This would prevent any initial suspicion of cheating especially near an important event and might make repeat testing unnecessary. If she was not aware of her diagnosis it would of course come as a flabbergasting shock but all organized sport knows about CAIS and she would be cleared to compete as a woman once the diagnosis was confirmed to be CAIS and not some other XY condition that would disqualify him.

            So if normal rules of medical confidentiality held tight, the athlete would compete as female and lead the rest of her life as female. No one except an intimate sexual partner would ever know any different. Because her birth certificate said female she would be female on her driver’s licence, passport, and medical records. She could describe herself to herself any way she wanted to, but “a woman with an inactive Y chromosome” would be consistent with biological reality to a first approximation. There would be no moral basis to compel her (or her doctor) to “correct” her official birth records.

            Theoretically she could father a child by assisted reproduction if her undescended testes produced spermatozoa at puberty in response to FSH — particularly unlikely in the absence of testosterone effect — but the precise details of parenting would never be made public unless she wanted to tell the world.

            A lot would depend on how she chose to see herself as a free individual and this is my main point. In this era of group identities leading to claims for group-based rights and DEI privileges I want to stress this. A person with diabetes, for instance, may see himself first and foremost as, say, a musician, rock climber, and devoted father who takes insulin every day and only in a minor sense as a member of the class of “diabetics.” Of course he knows he has diabetes but he doesn’t have to identify as a “diabetic” just to satisfy the group aggregators. Similarly a woman with CAIS when asked, “So what sex are you really?” might just reply, “That seems to be more important to you than it is to me.” And during my training we weren’t given to see it as important to know. We just treated the patient as she was. It seems to have become important now just so activists can use these human beings to undermine the sex binary.

            Sorry this is long. But it’s complicated.

  4. I was happy to see Andrew Sullivan address the fact that Trump pulled the security teams protecting Mike Pompeo and and John Bolton (and Brian Hook). Both men have been targeted for assassination by Iran. Pompeo, evidently, will not stay at his own home.

    Mr. Sullivan, however, failed to mention that Trump pulled the security team protecting Anthony Fauci, a man falsely accused by Trump of “crimes against humanity”.

    The pulling of these teams is, for me, beyond reprehensible. They demonstrate what Fran Lebowitz said about Trump: “A level of moral squalor so profound”.

    1. I would argue also to set an example. If you are not loyal to Trump, you are going to pay, so don’t ever contradict Trump. As many of you know, this is bad as it discourages open dialogue.

    2. I finished reading Anthony Fauci’s memoir last week.* It was excellent. It’s truly reprehensible that people are out there threatening his life.

      *https://www.amazon.com/Call-Doctors-Journey-Public-Service/dp/0593657470

    3. Fauci criticized Trump. He will not tolerate that.

      Fauci was already was receiving death threats from RFK Jr publishing lies about him.

    4. Fauci promoted plans that seriously harmed the education of American children. The effect of closing schools was obvious to everyone who thinks schools are good thing and the minimal effect of Covid on children was known early in the pandemic.

      IMO, these actions are unforgiveable. Obviously he should not be threaten or harmed but his actions during the pandemic were questionable at best.

  5. When I see the “Argument from Complexity” being raised by activists, my spidey sense is to think that the claimants are trying to create an illusion of complexity so as to throw off their adversaries and confuse the public. It’s called FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Regarding the sex binary, it would be smart to question not only the wisdom of the “complexitors,” but also their veracity.

    The woman living with a pig’s kidney is a very exciting development. When Baby Fae* was implanted with a baboon heart in 1984, I knew that the heart would be rejected and that the baby would soon die. I was right, of course. The possibility that allografts can integrate without immune-system rejection is a huge advance!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Fae

    1. I think most of the people using the Argument from Complexity are, like most apologists, sincere. It’s the primary stance of those who claim that disagreeing with gender ideology is “unscientific.”

      If you look at anything in nature carefully, you’ll find that it’s more complex and the explanations less obvious than it might appear on first glance. It’s easy, however, to carry this too far — particularly if you’re not recognizing nuance among the alternatives.

      The Argument from Complexity is usually accompanied by the Argument from That’s What The Religious Right Thinks.

  6. I knew Rachel Levin at the University of Washington. She’s not a neuroscientist (she’s a very good behavioural ecologist who studies sex differences in bird behaviour). Her late-career project is a large survey of “trans” people in LA, and she has started to write papers about that project.

    This one (DOI10.1080/19359705.2022.2127042) is a review of studies of the possible biological etiology (or developmental origins) of “trans” identities. I read it hoping for a biologist’s view. I was sad to find an activist’s take instead.

    “[W]e critically examine the biological literature which explores the etiology of transgender identity…Interpretation of etiological studies of transgender identity can be misunderstood and/or misused by media, politicians, and care providers, placing transgender people at risk. We question the utility of etiological studies in clinical care, given that transgender identity is not pathological.”

    I feel like I see a lot of pathology among the trans people I know who have medicalized their gender identities with hormones and surgery.

    The paper includes only the most brief nod to the mental health comorbidities that seem to plague so many “trans” people, and no acknowledgement that “trans” might be caused by unresolved mental health problems (rather than lack of acceptance of “trans” identities causing depression etc.). Most surprising is that “autism” or “autistic” appears nowhere in the article. This is all unexpected given the paper is published in the “Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health”.

    The last author is E. Kale Edmiston, a “trans” man, physician, and activist who became internet famous for his beef with Jesse Singal over Edmiston’s claimed role as an author (or as it turned out not actually an author) of the WPATH Standards of Care 8 chapter on treatment of youth gender dysphoria (for context, WPATH SoC 8 is the one with “eunuch” as a gender identity).

    https://x.com/jessesingal/status/1626997603341860865

    There was a funny BarPod episode about the whole sad affair.

    It’s too bad Rachel has taken up with people like that. Real biologists like her could have a lot to contribute to understanding what “trans” really is, where it comes from, and how “trans” people could be helped.

    2. Thx Mike. As I see it the comorbidities are a HUUUGE part of the story.
      Even schizophrenia is way overrepresented in “trans kids” before we even get to the autism elephant in the room.

      Ditto the horrors of puberty blockers/cross sex hormones.

      I was interested in this as a moral panic/social contagion since Lisa Lipman’s (sp.?) paper in about 2019. Trans effecting a close member of my family in 2022 focused me with vigor on the science of the entire thing. I’m a retired options trader/attorney so I have some analytical skills and a lot of time on my hands.
      It is the scandal of the century, leagues ahead of lobotomy.
      The doom males in “your daughter’s change room” brought to the Dems in this last election is just the start.

      Jessie Singal should get some kind of big prize for his reportage and enduring a hideous backlash from the very unwell trans lobby.
      D.A.
      NYC/FL

  7. About the distinction between the biological sex, sex determination adn sexual characteristics, i think there is a reason the wokes and the layman don’t understand, beside politiical reason.

    To define sex, they use a descriptive approach : what are the sexual characteristics present or absent in an individual. So they use secondary sexual characteristics, chromosoms, or anything like that. Binary characteristics, ironicaly. And since those sexual characteristics are correlated but not perfectly, they think there is more than one sex.

    But descriptives approachs are flawed in biology and can’t work. They have been abandonned for describing species, same for sex. “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” as a wise man said. Sexual characteristics are irrelevant for the evolution of sexual reproduction, while the use of gametes (or potential/predispositions to produce them in sterile people) make sense when interpreted in evolutionnary terms, not the sexual characteristics.

    The wokies are using a descriptive, naturalistic approach, the kind of approach abandonned because it was just stamp collecting, the kind of stamp collecting that ironicaly lead to “scientifc racism” and other disgusting ideologies.

  8. I happen to agree with Mitch McConnell that little in Hegseth’s background suggests that he is ready for the substantial leadership and management challenge awaiting him. (Note: that is not the same as saying he isn’t ready.) But as a political Independent, I will ask my Democrat friends this: Given that it is the President who is commander-in-chief and is the one ultimately responsible for directing those three million troops and managing the alliances and partnerships around the world, not to mention overseeing all the departments alongside Defense, can you tell me what substantial executive leadership experience was evidenced by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris that suggested that each of them were up to the task?

    If Democrats can shove a largely untested “leader” into the top executive job in the country, hoping that rhetorical skills, or intelligence, or likeability, or decades of hobnobbing with peers, or (it couldn’t be) the fact that he or she shares their political views will either predict success or compensate for the executive experience deficit, then I can’t be too angry with Republicans for likewise going with an untested man who will be surrounded by many others with proven managerial experience.

    1. I won’t comment on Obama: I was still working then and didn’t have time to follow American news in any detail.

      But demented Biden was not just bad: it’s a scandal. Who was actually running things?

      I was unimpressed with Harris too.

      I don’t care for Hegseth from what I’ve read: the sexual encounter may well have been consensual, apparently both were drunk. He definitely had a drinking problem.

      His only work experience is on Fox News.

    2. Thanks for asking this question, Doug. I’ve been wondering the same thing. I don’t ask it to be impertinent, either.

    3. I agree that all these Democratic presidents were horrible, but the way I see it, the president sets the general policy, while Hegseth’s job requires matter-of-fact expertise.

    1. Wow thanks for that. Good replies to Hooven’s twitter thread, including a commenter who asked, “I wonder who else she [the reporter] reached out to?”

      I remind my kids that the news is not just what appears on web sites and podcasts but also consists of the things the editors and reporters decided not to tell us about. The picture of the world painted by the media includes a vast negative space that should be paid attention.

  10. Re the guy mansplaining…(transplaining?)…why women shouldn’t mind undressing in front of “transwomen.”
    I saw what he was doing. The word “transwoman” is a linguistic trick to make the listener think that transwomen are a subset of women, and a particularly equity-deserving subset because they are oppressed by “ciswomen” for their gender identity, in the same way that lesbian women are oppressed by straight women, black women are oppressed by white women, and all women (especially transwomen) are oppressed by Jewish women.

    Even though we know that the intersection set between between transwomen and women is not “transwomen” but instead the null set (because transwomen are not women at all, but men), each time we say “transwomen” we let the activists force us to explain again why we want to discriminate against transwomen in women’s change rooms. You’re OK with changing in front of lesbian women, “I hope!”, so what’s your problem with transwomen?

    My plea therefore is that we purge our speech (voluntarily of course) of the word “transwomen”. If instead we say “trans-identified men” we avoid appearing to endorse the view that they are a class of women. They are a class of men, which gets the discussion of whether they have any rights to equity off to a more coherent start. In the video clip, the male activist would have been back-footed every time he had to explain to the woman why she should be willing to undress in front of a trans-identified man. What’s special about his trans-identification that gives him the right to watch her get naked in her dressing room?

        1. Thank you for the link, Leslie.

          An update: ACLU has already found a trans-identifying male (TIM) inmate to sue under the Fourteenth Amendment.

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