Friday: Hili dialogue

March 28, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the end of the “work” week: it’s Friday, March 28, 2025, and National Black Forest Cake Day. As Wikipedia notes, it’s “a layer cake made out of cocoa powder, cherries, Kirsch, and whipped cream, with dark chocolate as a decoration.” It’s history is a matter of dispute, but not its appeal. Here’s one:

posted to Flickr by Mikelo , Creative Commons

It’s also National Something on a Stick Day, Weed Appreciation Day (no, bnot that kind of weed), National Hot Tub Day, and, most important, Respect Your Cat Day.  The first reader to send me a photo of their cat will have it added below (please give an identifying caption with the cat’s name).

And here’s the first in: Joan Langerfeld with a kitty photo (note that it’s polydactylous) and a note:

Here is my daughter’s cat, Bigfoot. He was part of a small litter found under the loading dock where she works, at about 3-4 days old (the kittens had not yet opened their eyes). After their mom did not return for over 8 hours, workers split up the litter and now they’re all healthy and a bit more than 1 year old.

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

Da Nooz:

*As the kids used to say, “I can’t even. . . ” A terrible hire at the HHS  (archived here):

A vaccine skeptic who has long promoted false claims about the connection between immunizations and autism has been tapped by the federal government to conduct a critical study of possible links between the two, according to current and former federal health officials.

The Department of Health and Human Services has hired David Geier to conduct the analysis, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Geier and his father, Mark Geier, have published papers claiming vaccines increase the risk of autism, a theory that has been studied for decades and scientifically debunked.

David Geier was disciplined by Maryland regulators more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license. He is listed as a data analyst in the HHS employee directory.

Public health and autism experts fear that choosing a researcher who has promoted false claims will produce a flawed study with far-reaching consequences.

I think that fear is pretty justified!

*The University of Sussex was given a big fine because its Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement quashed free speech on the issue. The Office of Students supported the ruling, but the University is badmouthing the fine.  Sussex, you may recall, is where Professor Kathleen Stock (OBE) was more or less forced out because she opposed self-identification for non-binary or trans people, including her claim that (gasp!) there are only two sexes.

British authorities issued a record fine against one of the country’s universities on Wednesday for issues including failing to “uphold the freedom of speech and academic freedom” in a policy statement on transgender equality, an escalation in the debate over student and staff rights on campus.

The Office for Students, the regulator for higher education in England, imposed a penalty of 585,000 pounds, more than $755,000, on the University of Sussex. The fine followed an investigation into the university that began more than three years ago after Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor, resigned saying that she had faced a campaign of harassment from students and activists over her views on gender identity.

The fine from the regulator, the Office for Students, comes amid fraught conversations about both trans rights and free speech on campuses in the United States and Britain, with many universities trying to balance the right of free expression with preventing hate speech.

Dr. Stock quit in 2021 after she was accused of being transphobic by students and activists for arguing that transgender women were not women. She said she faced a campaign of harassment, bullying and character assassination before quitting.

The university publicly defended Dr. Stock at the time. But on Wednesday, the Office for Students said the university’s policy statement on trans and nonbinary equality had created a “chilling effect” that could cause students and staff members to “self-censor.”

The regulator said this included requiring course materials to “positively represent trans people and trans lives.” It also penalized the school for failures in government and management processes.

A university’s governing documents “should uphold principles of free speech and academic freedom,” Arif Ahmed, the regulator’s director of free speech and academic freedom, said. He added that the university’s policy “restricted” speech, teaching and learning, and that Dr. Stock withheld materials from her students that she otherwise would have included as a result.

“Nothing in our approach has anything to do with taking sides on this issue,” he said, arguing that the regulator was concerned only with speech issues and neutral on issues of gender.

The university condemned the ruling, saying in a statement that it would make it impossible to create “policies to prevent abusive, bullying and harassing speech.” Sasha Roseneil, the university’s vice chancellor, promised to mount a legal challenge and said the regulator was mandating “libertarian free-speech absolutism as the fundamental principle for U.K. universities” and was “perpetuating the culture wars.”

This tweet leads to a thread which shows some of the University’s reaction:

*Ars Technica and the NYT reports two deleterious effects of dumb medical advice (h/t Reese). First, an outbreak of measles reported by AT:

An eruption of measles is spreading quickly in Kansas, with cases doubling in a week and spreading to three new counties, some with vaccination coverage among kindergartners at pitiful levels as low as 41 percent. Coverage of 95 percent or greater is thought to protect communities from onward spread of the extremely contagious virus.

In an update Wednesday, March 26, Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) reported 23 measles cases across six counties—up from 10 cases across three counties on March 21. The 23 people ill with the dangerous virus are mostly children, including six who are 0 to 4 years old, nine who are 5 to 10, three who are 11 to 13, three who are 14 to 17, and two adults between the ages of 25 and 44. Fortunately, none of the cases have been hospitalized so far, and there have been no deaths.

Twenty of the 23 cases were unvaccinated. One case was “not age appropriately vaccinated,” one was “age appropriately vaccinated,” and the remaining case’s vaccination status is pending.

From the NYT, a RFK Jr. “remedy” for measles that’s hurting people:

Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by vaccine skeptics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary.

Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated, against the virus.

One of those supplements is cod liver oil containing vitamin A, which Mr. Kennedy has promoted as a near miraculous cure for measles. Physicians at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, say they’ve now treated a handful of unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage.

Some of them had received unsafe doses of cod liver oil and other vitamin A supplements for several weeks in an attempt to prevent a measles infection, said Dr. Summer Davies, who cares for acutely ill children at the hospital.

“I had a patient that was only sick a couple of days, four or five days, but had been taking it for like three weeks,” Dr. Davies said.

While doctors sometimes administer high doses of vitamin A in a hospital to manage severe measles, experts do not recommend taking it without physician supervision. Vitamin A is not an effective way to prevent measles; however, two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine are about 97 percent effective.

USELESS remedies. Vitamin A is about as useful for measles as is ivermectin for Covid (n.b. Bret Weinstein). I suspected that RFK Jr. was the appointment that may cause the most damage to Americans, though Pete Hegseth is running neck and neck with him.

*Regardless of what you think of Christopher Rufo, the guy has a sense of humor. On his Twitter thread he’s destroyed the credibility of NPR head Katherine Maher by simply reposting her tweets from several years ago (she testified before Congress yesterday at a House subcommittee on government efficiency hearing along with PBS head Paula Kerger; both organizations get about 15% of their budget from the federal government). The hearings, dominated by Republicans, were intended to hector the organizations because–and this is true–they use federal money but have a pronounced left-wing slant to their news. (h/t Luana for the links):

There are many tweets in Rufo’s thread; here are a few (some with screenshots). Of course the Republicans were hostile and out to get her. Their goal: to replace her. But the first allegation, which she didn’t deny, is pretty distressing:

There are many more like these, and I can’t resist putting them up. Lots are hilarious. But Maher has to go. We’ll see:

 

*More RFK Jr. malfeasance: he plans to lay off ten thousand people from the Department of Health and Human Services:

The Trump administration on Thursday announced a layoff of 10,000 employees at the Health and Human Services Department, as part of a broad reorganization designed to bring communications and other functions directly under the purview of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The layoffs are a drastic reduction in personnel for the sprawling health department, which now employs about 82,000 people and touches the lives of every American through its oversight of medical care, food and drugs. Together with previous layoffs and departures, the move will bring the department down to about 62,000 employees, the agency said.

The restructuring will include creating a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America. “We’re going to do more with less,” Mr. Kennedy said, even as he acknowledged it would be “a painful period for H.H.S.”

The 28 divisions of the health agency will be consolidated into 15 new divisions, according to a statement issued by the department. Mr. Kennedy announced the changes in a YouTube video. The staff cuts, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, are being made in line with President Trump’s order to implement the Department of Government Efficiency’s shrinking of the federal work force.

Mr. Kennedy said rates of chronic disease rose under the Biden administration even as the government grew. He pitched the changes as a way to refocus the agency on Americans’ health, but did not outline any specifics on how he would mediate rates of diabetes, heart disease or any other condition.

The reorganization will cut 3,500 jobs from the Food and Drug Administration, which approves and oversees the safety of a vast swath of the medications and consumer products people eat and rely on for well-being, according to an H.H.S. fact sheet. The cuts are said to be administrative, but some of the roles support research and monitoring of the safety and purity of food and drugs, as well as travel planning for inspectors who investigate overseas food and drug facilities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will also have its work force cut by about 2,400 employees, and will narrow its focus to “preparing for and responding to epidemics and outbreaks,” the fact sheet said. The C.D.C. also does work on H.I.V./AIDS, tobacco control, maternal health and the distribution of vaccines for children. The National Institutes of Health will lose 1,200 staff members, and the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid is expected to lose 300.

This is a huge layoff (technically, more than a “decimation,” which really means getting rid of 1 person out of 10), and I don’t like the sound of it HHS is an important department, and I’m dubious that they can cut this many people without doing harm to Americans.  I keep telling myself, “Well, in four more years we’ll have a Democratic President,” but I can’t quite convince myself of that. Who will our candidate be? And will they lean from the Democrats’ big loss last November?

*Finally, another “miracle” found to have a naturalistic explanation.

A laboratory analysis turned up nothing miraculous about red marks found on a Communion wafer at a Catholic church in Indiana.

The discovery at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Morris was unusual enough for a formal inspection, the Archdiocese of Indianapolis said.

But a biochemical analysis revealed only “fungus and three different species of bacteria, all of which are commonly found on human hands,” the archdiocese said Monday, adding that no blood was found.

. . . Before the analysis, some members of St. Anthony Church were excited about what might be found.

What did they expect? Hemoglobin?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili (looking a bit chonky) is touting herself again:

Hili: Do you really think that other things are more important?
A: More important than what?
Hili: More important than my needs.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy naprawdę sądzisz, że są ważniejsze sprawy?
Ja: Ważniejsze niż co?
And a picture of Baby Kulka in the outside windowsill. Notice that she has a lot more white on her face than does Hili:

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

From Meanwhile in Canada:

From Things With Faces, a scary spud:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih, who draws an analogy between anti-Hamas Gazans and anti-regime Iranians:

From Malcolm: closing the deal:

From Barry, who says I may have posted this before. It looks familiar, but what’s the harm of posting it again?

A year on Earth from the erstwhile commander of the ISS vis reader Bryan. The year was 2024-2025:

From my feed; a jealous kitten gets its own bottle:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

A Dutch girl was gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was ten.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-28T10:24:08.333Z

Two marine tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a lemon shark with a fish entourage. Are they waiting for bits of the shark’s prey?

Lemon shark rolling deep with an entourage of jacks on a blue water day #lemonshark #jackcrevalle #entourage #sharksofcoralcity #rollingdeep #crew #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #miamibeach #biscaynebay #coralcity #civicpridethroughbiodiversity

— Coral City Camera (@coralcitycamera.bsky.social) 2025-03-26T15:52:35.960Z

. . . and a beautiful stingray:

Magic carpet flap flapping through! #southernstingray #stingraysofcoralcity #stingray #flapflap #ufo #magiccarpet #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #miamibeach #biscaynebay #bfi #noaa #aoml #coralcity #civicpridethroughbiodiversity #glennnevis

— Coral City Camera (@coralcitycamera.bsky.social) 2025-03-25T15:20:14.945Z

45 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    The mind is the effect, not the cause. -Daniel Dennett, philosopher, writer, and professor ( 28 Mar 1942-2024)

  2. Note: I’m joking.

    RFK Jr. Needs to get a government agency to issue a report saying that with no evidence, and with low confidence, they think vaccines cause autism. Much quicker and cheaper then actually trying to gather evidence.

    1. Good idea — there’s precedent — fits with the times. NYT will reprint it with full credulity (we were misled) and it will be accepted (even further) in the national discourse, though some “independent thinker(s)” will be “agnostic”.

      In the meantime, yesterday I had a medical procedure yesterday. My pre-op prep nurse asked me if I would accept a blood product if necessary and, in further discussion, added that at least once a day she heard adamant refusal: “not if it comes from vaccinated people” (esp. mRNA vaccine). She’d ask — not even if you’re dying?…no, not then.

      1. The story from the nurse doesn’t entirely add up and isn’t consistent with current transfusion practice. How would the blood bank even know if a unit of blood in its inventory had come from a “vaccinated” person? It doesn’t, because the information isn’t collected at donation. Canadian Blood Services does ask if we’ve had a vaccination in the last three months because they will defer donors if they’ve had a replicating live-virus vaccine like oral polio (not used in Canada) or MMR that could conceivably transmit live virus to a recipient. There is no deferral for Covid vaccines unless the person is acutely unwell from the vaccine, which is common in the day or two following. The non-deferral for Covid or influenza vaccines isn’t written down, and if your last vaccination with anything was more than three months ago, you would just reply No. (Proven Covid infection is deferred for 10 days and you have to be feeling well and recovered.)

        So I think the correct response for the nurse to make to the hypothetical patient who refused blood from vaccinated donors would be to say, “Sir, there is no way to tell. That information isn’t collected by the donor centre. We simply can’t honour a request to exclude vaccinated blood. If you are going to refuse therefore all blood, the surgeon will have to decide if it is safe to proceed with the surgery.”

        She may have been making some kind of point to you about the fixity of vaccine derangement syndrome but it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to ask, “Not even if you’re dying?” to an actual patient, because that would imply incorrectly that the request was actionable and could be honoured if they happened to have any non-vaccinated blood in stock.

        https://www.blood.ca/en/covid19/vaccines-and-blood-donation

        1. The story of the nurse simply indicates that there is delusion among some of the population regarding “vaccinated blood”. I have seen this same delusion posted on FaceBook. But you have some points, and I will say it was a rapid pre-op conversation with me. I didn’t have time to tell her what she might say to them, nor would I & don’t know if she had further conversation with patients in those circumstances — it might have been that here “not even if you’d die?” comment was her “aside thought” to me. But it seemed to me the refusal of possibly “vaccinated” blood was adamant, and that most likely, since it was generally a rote pre-op question, not an ER scene, that the likelihood of needing life-saving blood transfusion was remote. But that’s how it is out in the hinterlands, the idea that the blood supply is contaminated.

  3. That HHS proposed reduction is 20,000 people—half voluntary, half not. If completed, it would bring staffing to about 7,500 fewer than when the Biden Administration took power. Many of you have experienced the explosion of administrative and staffing positions in the universities over the last 35 years and the stagnation in instructional faculty. Are you producing better graduates as a result? Now imagine that cultural dynamic with a far larger budget, very little accountability, no need to pass a financial audit, byzantine rules that impede attempts at improvement, and one party that will add union jobs wherever, whenever it can. I don’t know what the right answer is at HHS as my experience with government waste is elsewhere, but I’m fairly confident that reflexive opposition is not part of the solution.

    https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1905243470366670926

    1. Agreed to quite an extent. America (and many Western countries) have way too many managers and way too much “process”.

      A good example from Twitter recently was an exchange between Jon Stewart and Ezra Klein (so both left wing, this is not from MAGAs) about Biden’s plan to spend $42 billion on better broadband in rural areas:

      “Ezra Klein stuns Jon Stewart by detailing the failures of Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’:
      Ezra Klein: “7.5 billion passed for a nationwide network of electric vehicle chargers. We also get 42 billion dollars to do rural broadband. By the end of the administration, they just have not happened.
      How the law becomes a series of implementation rules, then a notice of funding opportunity, then there’s a comment period, then there’s a challenge period for the comments, then there’s a series of court cases.
      Rural broadband:
      A 14 stage process. There’s a period where the commerce department needs to draw up a map of what parts of the country don’t have the right amount of broadband. Then there’s a challenge period on the map.
      56 states and jurisdictions try to apply for this money.
      By the end of 2024, 3 [of 56] have got to the end of the process.”
      Jon Stewart: “End of the process meaning they’ve built it?”
      Klein: “No of course not. They just got to the point where in theory they could get the money to build.” ”

      For detail of the 14 steps, see here.

      The DOGE attitude of “move fast and break things” might be over-doing it in the opposite direction, but something like that seems to be necessary.

      1. Re BEAD, Evan Feinman, who was running the program was recently let go. After 4 years of administering the program, with a budget of $42.5 billion, no homes have been connected as a result of the program, but Feinman sent a “blistering” email warning to his staff about the danger of Elon Musk. He also said that there are some projects that are “shovel ready”. After 4 years and $42 billion, the federal government can’t even connect one house? Starlink could be used without the need for building wired infrastructure at a far lower cost.

        Re EV charging station funding, as of last June only 7 were built using the $5 billion in funding maybe a few more have been built since then). The Biden administration touted that the charging infrastructure has doubled with over 192k public charging ports available but when you read the DOT statement referenced, they talk about the federal funding but dance around whether federal funds were actually used for building these chargers. Mayor Pete was grilled about this last year on CNBS. The vast majority were built using non-federal funding, whether state or local government money or by businesses. The Tesla Supercharger network alone as 60,000 charging ports, paid for by Tesla to support their business model.

        On the plus side, if nothing was done, then hopefully the money is still sitting somewhere and can be reclaimed.

        For those who want evidence:
        https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/42-billion-broadband-boondoggle-brought-internet-to-zero-homes/
        https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/16/official-exits-commerce-department-musk-warning-00232278
        https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/05/ev-charging-stations-deployed-under-2021-us-program-electric-vehicle-biden.html
        https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/investing-america-number-publicly-available-electric-vehicle-chargers-has-doubled

    2. What’s your evidence that there really are 20,000 people just wasting money and what makes you think that the right 20,000 people will be fired if there are?

    3. Yes, re-orgs can be very good for an organization. It happens in business all the time and can often end up in a leaner, more efficient and more capable organization. The trick is doing it right.

      My confidence level is pretty low here.

    4. Per the WSJ, “Key to the reorganization is a plan to centralize the department’s communications, procurement, human resources, information technology and policy planning—efforts currently distributed throughout the health department’s divisions and even their branches.”

      Years ago, large companies learned to centralize these back office functions for greater efficiency and cost savings.

  4. As evidenced by the NPR fiasco:

    What’s the next most distressing thing to watching Trump and his acolytes stomping this country to death?

    Watching liberals and Democrats slicing their own throats in the meantime.

    1. Lost the third line of Hili’s Polish dialogue!
      I like to follow the Polish, having been married to a Pole for 35 years!

  6. Finally, someone is taking NPR to task. I don’t like seeing a Congressional hearing being used to humiliate someone, but the American people should not be paying for NPR (or PBS). Let them stand on their own if they are capable of standing at all.

    1. Norman Ms. Maher is a particularly egregious individual. She’s a woke narcissist of the highest order and should be nowhere near the levers of any sort of power.

      Dig deep on her and it is amazing – her Khmer Rouge ideology twinned with her mammoth self regard and arrogance. She is sui generis of this species.
      best Norm,

      D.A.
      NYC

    2. I would rather have an assurance that these organizations continue with an a-political slant, and that this could be done (and sustained) with some governmental funding and oversight. I hear good and informative news on NPR every day. Its just certain programs that go off the rails. PBS even more so, with their art and educational programming that i regard as a cultural treasure. Although not all of it!

    3. “… the American people should not be paying for NPR (or PBS).”

      I wholeheartedly disagree. If you are lucky enough to be able to find the testimony of some of our nation’s best and brightest wrt the Radio Act of 1927 (which actually mandated that licensed broadcasters serve the public interest) and the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, you will be deeply moved by their passion for the importance of public education in our society and democracy.

      “Sesame Street” alone has had a tremendously important role in the preschool education of our youth. There are numerous examples of programming that promotes the public interest.

      The question is how did we get from such auspicious beginnings to Wokeville on PBS on the Left, and Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh dominating AM radio on the Right. I would argue what happened is the end of the Fairness Doctrine.

      The Fairness Doctrine, in place since 1949, had two main elements:

      Broadcasters had to devote airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest.
      They were required to present contrasting viewpoints on these issues.

      Ronald Reagan’s FCC Commissioner get rid of the Fairness Doctrine in1987. We should reinstate it.

  7. Re Sussex: this blog put me onto Kathleen Stock a couple+ years ago — for that, I’m grateful.

    I did a close reading of her book. Just finishing a second close reading of Helen Joyce’s book, and I’ve become quite immersed in the topic — reading Carole Hooven, Lisa Littman Emma Hilton, Jerry Coyne, R. Dawkins, –(et al.) — following Sex Matters, GenSpect, etc., a few psychotherapists (e.g. Stephanie Winn, in Portland, Sasha Ayad (Gender A Wider Lens) – and online interviews — e.g. HJ & Richard Dawkins interview, a gem. HJ’s book is really uncomfortable reading where she described trans-capture of Democratic policy.

    My attitude a few years ago might have been typical of a lot of people who should know better — thinking deeply about other matters, knowing of people like Bruce Jenner (ugh!) or other adult male “transitions”, not really knowing much and, heaven forbid, figuring the Dems hadn’t got as captured by crazy as the Republicans –as DEI creeps out (such a kind title) — but the gender thing….!

    Tribalism — trust groups. And the critical inverse of trust groups — distrust reactions — e.g. if the gun-crazy, trumpazoids are against I’m for it. We all have to watch out for that — distrust reaction — certainly consider the source, but consider the argument, even, if briefly, why it being touted. Look for the mosaics — someone may be spot-on about mammalian sexual dimorphism and really at sea about, oh, say, viruses, zoonotic origins or vaccines . And, definitely — vice versa — I’ve seen that in trust groups that I visit. That might lead to careful conversation or to reflexive insult.

    I feeling betrayed and am sickened by the feckless Democrats who can’t admit this terrible gender-nonsense error. The least they can do is just slink away, though an apology would be nice — and I want to grow wings & fly, too. The Democrat leadership should watch that video on 8 hour loop, no lunch break –of Payton McNabb getting her face smashed by that dude in volleyball.

    Helen Joyce recently had a trenchant comment: Most people, smart they may be, have their own concerns, don’t have knowledge about whatever issue is burning in your mind.

    1. Funny, Mr. Normal: I am extremely familiar with all the people/groups you mention above. Since it impacted my family genderwang-trans has been a bit of an obsession of mine.

      All those you mention are excellent, I’ve even donated money to Genspec.
      And hat tip to WEIT who mentions them.
      This is the value of WEIT and smart peoples’ twitter – they put one on a course to discover new things and arguments. In this case excellent ones.

      D.A.
      NYC

    2. Completely agree. If there’s anything worse than Trump it’s watching a Democrat reaction of doubling down on every single bad idea.

      The gender nonsense remains an article of faith with so many on the left. It reigns unchecked here in Canada.

    4. I, too, recently pursued the gender rabbit hole. I recommend J. Michael Bailey’s “The Man Who Would Be Queen,” which is available online. He is an expert and talks about the two kinds MTF: homosexual transexuals (many of whom I suspect of harboring severe internalized homophobia), and heterosexual autogynephilia, which make up the highest percentage of MTF; these are men who are aroused by the thought of themselves as women.

      The whole business shocks me, and I meditate here on how I would have fared were the transing mania alive in the 1960s: https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2025/03/what-becomes-of-the-femboy.html

      1. Wow — thanks for this link and — your story. Depictions of kindergarten were spot-on! I was generally the 2nd smallest boy in the class, careful and prudent, bullied some (it was easy to make me cry) but essentially heteronormative. I was in kindergarten in 1955/56.

  8. Johanna Olson-Kennedy argues that her witholding results from her (publicly funded) gender study is reasonable, as the results might be “weaponized” against certain minority interests. How is this different from arguing that David Geier should not study the (purported) link between vaccines and autism?

    If the study is going to be bad (because Geier is not qualified), then let’s see it anyway – let us be the judge. Though it’s a much older issue than the one about the harms of Gender Affirming Care, the “harms of vaccines” issue seems to me similarly plagued by group-think and conflicts of interest.

    I acknowledge the argument that the value “herd immunity” may outweigh the possible harms done to a minority of people who cannot tolerate one or another vaccine. But if this is in fact happening, we should know about it. I imagine the numbers of people who might be hurt by vaccinations are very small, which means herd immunity would not be damaged by excluding such people from vaccination programs/requirements. (If one can test for or otherwise identify those people, for whom vaccination presents a higher risk)

    1. Interesting. The problem with Geier and the autism/vaccine work is that it’s much like the government paying for studies to investigate the alleged roundness of the earth, or the location of the Ark. Not likely to produce anything useful and it gives the subjects unwarranted credibility.

    2. I hope it is acceptable to elaborate on EdwardM’s correct take. To Retroformat: The only children who would be harmed by live (attenuated) vaccines are those very children who depend on herd immunity achieved by all other children being vaccinated: children with immune deficiencies that render them unable to fight off even the attenuated strain of the virus(es) put in the vaccine. These children may die of vaccine measles and, of course, of natural measles if they get infected during an outbreak. (There are scattered children with allergy to any of the manufacturing components of the vaccine. No one is “allergic” to the attenuated viruses themselves.). We already know all this. There is no need to study this phenomenon to verify it. Immune-deficient children aren’t now being given live attenuated vaccines. They need the rest of the population to accept vaccination in order to keep herd immunity high enough to protect them from natural measles. If more than about 5% of the rest of the community says to that child, “Sucks to be you, but I don’t want my kid to get that jab”, then I guess those are times we live in.

      The MMR-autism “link” was based on a fraudulent study done for financial gain. With its debunking, there is no evidence that MMR causes autism, so it’s difficult for me to understand why it needs to be studied again. The big problem is finding a control group. If 95% of the children are vaccinated, there will be too few cases of autism among those few controls for statistical power. Here there is a bright spot: with declining vaccination rates, it should be easier now to assemble a large control group of unvaccinated children and observe for differences in autism between them and the vaccinated children. However, the factors that cause a parent not to vaccinate might be correlated somehow with risk for autism, confounding the results. Since we don’t know what causes autism, it will be impossible to control for this unknown causal factor differing among the refuseniks compared to the acceptors.

      The other challenge in design is survivor effect. The unvaccinated group will suffer some deaths from measles, fortunately not many, but not zero either. (The vaccinated group won’t.). Those toddlers who die of measles won’t be alive to not get labelled with an autism diagnosis at age six.

      Finally, there is a more fundamental objection to letting an unqualified investigator study this. It is impossible to prove, even in a randomized controlled experiment, that anything (e.g., MMR) doesn’t cause some something bad (e.g., autism.). All we can say is that, for a study of a certain size, the magnitude of the harmful effect, if it exists, is probably (e.g., to p=0.8) smaller than some agreed-on cut-off acceptable value that takes into account the known benefit of MMR in reducing dangerous and fatal complications of measles. In a real study of whatever design, if MMR really truly doesn’t cause autism, you wouldn’t expect exactly the same number of cases of autism in the MMR group as the controls, just as if you flipped a fair coin 100 times, you wouldn’t expect exactly 50 heads every time. This makes intuitive sense to most people in the abstract but in vaccine politics they would claim MMR causes autism if the results were 499:501 against it.

      What an unscrupulous or unqualified investigator is likely to do is spin such a not-perfectly-balanced result that is statistically consistent with no connection between MMR and autism as a source of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that the vaccine is safe. Some studies shouldn’t be done, simply because you can’t trust the investigator not to lie, which is exactly what Wakefield did: he lied. (Ironically, studying the roundness of the earth shows that it isn’t perfectly round. Should we conclude that Aha! there has been a round-earth conspiracy theory just as we always suspected now exposed?)

      This is different from JOK refusing to publish results she has already assembled and analyzed, which is reprehensible. The case I’m making is that some studies shouldn’t even be done. The results that are already known are sufficient to guide policy and individual clinical decisions. MMR should be recommended for all children except those who can’t take live virus vaccines.

  9. I have a friend who worked at a poison control call center during the early part of the pandemic. They were constantly getting calls from people who had gotten themselves sick with overdoses of vitamin D and sometimes vitamin A. Word had gotten around that vitamin D boosts immune function and that many people are mildly deficient. The theory was that vitamin D supplementation might help one have milder Covid outcomes. So idiots got the idea that if a few hundred IUs of vitamin D might help, tens of thousands of IUs would be even better.

    My own revered mother, rest her soul, was a vitamin nut. I was furious to discover one time that she had gotten one of our cats sick with vitamin A poisoning. The cat had a cold and was suffering from the sniffles, so she started giving the cat 50,000 IUs of vitamin A twice a day. That is a very hefty dose for a human sized animal, though a human could tolerate that for a few weeks. But a cat is a lot smaller. The veterinarian did not mince his words when he lectured my mother for being a fool.

  10. The imputed expression of that hawk seems something like, “Well, isn’t that something?”

  11. Mindful of Da Roolz, and repeating myself (sorry), but I must stress…
    …
    ..
    .the “Gaza protests against Hamas” aren’t protesting Hamas or their annihilationist, Jihadist agenda. They’re not calling for peace or singing damn kumbaya: They’re protesting that Hamas LOST which has immiserated them, destroyed large swarths of their city and humiliated them. That’s it. THAT is the protest.

    The eliminationist, kill-the-joos (as per Koran and Arab society) agenda remains.
    It is their foundational, religious identity, their moral force and their main goal. We must get our heads around a civilization that values different things than we do.

    Not peace.

    D.A.
    NYC

    1. Once again David I disagree. I think those Palestinians with neurons to spare have come to the end of… their collective will and resolve to adhere to Hamas’s ideology. The rubble and the dead seem pretty convincing motivation to want it to stop. If nothing I’m hopeful. But like you I can’t read their minds.

      1. I was hopeful when I first heard of these protests, but I have a Facebook friend who speaks Arabic, and he is of David’s opinion.

  12. https://x.com/Evolutionistrue/status/1905592700545441949 ✨🐱✨

    https://x.com/CTVNews/status/1905027046700396940 🗞🤦‍♀😅

    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%81%96%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%83%8B%E3%82%AA%E7%A5%9E%E5%AD%A6%E9%99%A2 🇯🇵🗼⛪
    https://setaoka.com/index.html
    https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDWZwYFz6jH/

    There is a St. Antonio’s Catholic Church near my house. 🇯🇵🗼⛪
    But most Japanese Christians don’t believe in “miracles”. They just sing the chants and pray for peace. 🎶🙏🕊

    https://ameblo.jp/arcangelo-raphael/entry-10728529600.html ⛪🧸

    Also, this church makes “monk teddy bears”. 🧸🍀

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