Welcome to Thursday, August 27, 2026, and National Burger Day. Here’s a bacon cheeseburger I had in Hawaii (Oahu) in 2019 and, as is common with Hawaiian plate lunches, the vegetable was macaroni and cheese. Note that there’s also pineapple on the burger.
It’s also National Banana Lovers Day, National Pots de Crème Day, and World Rock Paper Scissors Day.
To celebrate the last holiday above, here’s my latest hero, basketball player Sophie Cunningham, playing Rock Paper Scissors with a young fan, with an athletic shoe being the prize:
And, apropos, here’s the famous moment when Cunningham pointed at an opponent (DeWanna Bonner) for 22 seconds, indicating that Bonner should have received a foul along with Cunningham’s teammate Caitlin Clark. Cunningham got a foul for pointing, too. This is destined to become a historical meme on the Internet. Cunningham pulls no punches (except when she’s retaliating on the court), has a potty mouth, but most of all, I admire her for insisting that only biological women should be competing in women’s athletics.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 27 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The WSJ describes the new Iranian Shahed drone, a cheap but effective killing machine made with China’s help, and which is devastating Ukraine and bedevling the Middle East. (A Wikipedia page describes them as well.)
In early July, terrifying shrieks were heard across Kyiv. As part of a wider attack on the Ukrainian capital, Russia had launched cheap one-way drones powered by turbojet engines instead of propellers.
The Shahed drones, now more like missiles, were capable of flying up to around 300 miles an hour—roughly three times as fast as older versions. Some 30 people were killed in the attack, which also included ballistic and cruise missiles.
It was the latest innovation in one-way attack drones and, like others, it only became possible thanks to China, whose factories provided the engines, according to Ukrainian officials who examined some of them.
Washington’s main strategic rival has long served as arguably the most important clearinghouse for Shahed components, including engine parts, servomotors and gyroscopes, according to current and former U.S. officials and analysts.
It is part of a complex global supply chain that analysts say enabled an isolated country—Iran—to pioneer and share one of the most transformative military innovations of the era: cheap, flying, killing machines that have bedeviled the U.S. and its allies, added to the civilian toll in Ukraine and undermined America’s military edge in the Middle East.
China’s foreign ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment. It previously said it strictly regulates the export of “dual use” components, which can serve both civilian and military purposes. It rejects unilateral U.S. sanctions that punish unauthorized trading of such parts, saying they violate international law.
The Shahed—a deceptively simple and destructive flying wedge of fiberglass, microchips and explosives costing as little as $20,000—helps show how weapons proliferation has changed, and why tapping global supply chains is now so important.
In the past, technological innovations in warfare tended to come from major powers that had their own industrial bases, enabling them to produce their weapons at scale. The AK-47 rifle is a good example: It was developed by Russian designers, influenced by a German assault rifle, then mass-produced by the Soviet Union’s sprawling factories.
In today’s world, however, any country with an idea for a weapon—even a middle power such as Iran—can turn to cheap parts suppliers abroad, especially in China.
To develop Shaheds, Iran employed a design pioneered by the U.S. and West Germany. To actually make them, however, Tehran had to source parts from across the globe, including Western nations as well as China. Yet even the Western parts tended to get moved through shell companies in mainland China or Hong Kong to disguise their origin, and over time, many were replaced by components made there, according to former U.S. officials, Ukrainian officials and analysts.
. . . The Shahed and its variants continue to wreak havoc. Shahed drones helped devastate a U.S. base in Bahrain at the start of the war with Iran, fueling Navy logistics problems. Ukraine’s air force says Russia has launched Shaheds each night this month. Such drones have also forced the U.S. and its allies to burn through pricey interceptors.
Here’s a vido about the Shaheds, which are bigger than I thought:
The use of drones has revolutionized warfare; they are are kamikaze bombs that can kill without endangering the “pilots”.
*Over at the Free Press, Caitlin Flanagan pays homage to Dolly Parton, who died on Tuesday, “Dolly Parton, pure product of America.”
The thing about Dolly—the reason Annie and I loved her so much, and from the very beginning—was that that woman could sing. She could really, really sing. If you don’t know what we fell in love with, stop everything and listen to her recording of “Mule Skinner Blues (Blue Yodel No. 8).” Any questions you might have about how she got so far in her life will be answered. At the root of that massive career that came to stand for so many things was a great voice and a childhood drenched in one of the great American art forms: bluegrass music.
. . . She was also a great songwriter. She wrote her two most famous songs, “I Will Always Love You” (which was made famous by Whitney Houston in the film The Bodyguard) and “Jolene” on the same day in 1973. Parton had performed duets with country and western singer Porter Wagoner on his regional television show for seven years and suddenly it was over and she never explained why. But those two songs—about begging another woman not to steal her man and about undying love for someone who has left her—explain all you need to know about that foundational experience.
. . . Her 1977 album, Here You Come Again, included a song called “Two Doors Down,” which became a tremendous hit and won her a Grammy. And with that, America gave up any inclination to marginalize her, and she was accepted into the select group of celebrities who are welcome anywhere and recognized by just about everyone. She wore them down with her talent and her willingness to be in on the joke of her own persona. As the years passed, she became not just accepted but widely beloved.
It’s tempting to recognize the entirety of her public performance as a kind of drag: the huge wigs and elaborate costumes, her enormous bosom, in combination with her playful willingness to engage with talk show hosts on the level of her obvious, and in some ways ludicrous, sexuality. And yet, there never, ever seemed to be some other, more authentic side of her. Like a great star of the past she never, ever appeared without being fully made-up and extravagantly dressed.
Dolly Parton was a pure product of America. She was Scots Irish, part of a population that came to this country very early in its history, the majority during the 18th century, and she maintained a great pride in that heritage—of the Great Smoky Mountains and of surviving poverty and of helping to preserve its customs and products.
Try to think of anyone who has made as deep and long-lasting a mark on American culture as Dolly Parton. She was a child of the Deep South who was pro-gay; she assiduously avoided getting caught up in anything “political,” so it was easy to ascribe to her whatever opinions you had about the country; and as far as I know, she never got caught up in public fights of any kind.
*The NYT obituary of Dolly Parton reveals that, as many suspected, she died of cancer or its complications (article archived here). I’ve put in a few bits from the (very good) obituary, clearly prepared in advance, that might be new to you, as they were to me:
Dolly Parton, a rags-to-rhinestones daughter of Appalachia who for six decades ruled country music and beyond with an outsize personality and down-home wit that enshrined her as one of America’s most cherished originals, died on Tuesday in Nashville. She was 80.
Her death was announced by her family. A spokesman said that she died after a brief battle with cancer and that she had been admitted to the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville on Friday. Concerns about Ms. Parton’s health arose last year when she postponed a Las Vegas residency, and intensified to the point that she took to social media in October to announce, “I ain’t dead yet.” This May, she canceled the residency but said that she had responded well to treatment after her immune and digestive systems had, as she put it, “got all out of whack” in recent years.
And, like Brian Wilson, she simply had to write, and was doing it constantly:
“Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast,” she told The Times in 2002. “I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder. I write every day, even when I’m on a plane, in the tub or on the bus. It burns in me.”
She continued: “Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out. Not everything I write is good, but it’s all good for me — like therapy.”
. . .The Partons were so poor that Dolly’s father had to pay the doctor who attended her birth with a sack of cornmeal. Ms. Parton may have grown up without plumbing, heat, electricity and other modern conveniences, but she always insisted that she also grew up happy, and that music offered her a refuge from want.
. . . When she was 5 or so, she wrote her first song, a ditty about a corncob doll with corn-silk hair called “Little Tiny Tasseltop.” She started singing on radio and on TV at 10, on the “Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour” in Knoxville, securing bookings with the help of her uncle Bill Owens, who also bought her her first guitar. The two would go on to write many songs together.
. . . Endowed with a surfeit of creativity and an unflagging work ethic, Ms. Parton admitted in interviews to sleeping as few as three hours a night. She was nominated for more than 50 Grammy Awards, 10 of which she won, along with being recognized for lifetime achievement by the Recording Academy in 2011. A show about her life, “Dolly: A True Original Musical,” is scheduled to open on Broadway in early 2027.
There are nearly four thousand comments on her obituary, and the NYT even posted a few at the end of her obituary:
The NYT also lists 15 “essential songs of Dolly Parton,” and it’s a pretty good list (archived here).
The Yiddish word “mensch” has no gender, and Dolly surely was one.
*The Washington Post asked five writers to describe what medical innovation inspires them most (the article was apparently prompted by the new “personalized” cancer vaccine that attacks melanoma). Here are the answers (article archived here):
Robert Gebelhoff: Stem cell research
If only humans were more like starfish. Oyster farmers learned the hard way that if you slice up one of these ocean dwellers, some of the pieces will regenerate into entirely new animals. Imagine harnessing that superpower to regrow diseased or injured body parts at will. This is not entirely in the realm of science fiction. Scientists have already made extraordinary progress in manufacturing tissue for medical purposes. I’d put money down on this frontier producing multiple breakthroughs in the next decade.
Damir Marusic: Advances in robotics
While many of the headline-grabbing medical stories recently have focused on artificial intelligence, I’m more intrigued by the strides being made in robotics — particularly the prospect that machines might soon be aiding us both inside and outside our bodies.
Stanford researchers are developing a millimeter-scale micro-robot that could be injected into the bloodstream, swim through arteries and treat strokes. Guided magnetically, the prototype can compress clots down to a fraction of their original size, potentially bringing a lifesaving treatment to hospitals that lack specialized stroke surgeons. Meanwhile, robotic exoskeletons are becoming lighter and cheaper. Originally built mainly for rehabilitation, they could eventually help people with paralysis, weakened muscles or simply aging knees move more naturally and independently.
Jim Geraghty: T cell immunotherapy
Back in 2025, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists for their work in identifying and defining regulatory T cells. Those are white blood cells within your immune system that control your body’s response to foreign substances; the Nobel committee summarized T cells as your “immune system’s security guards.” If you have high-functioning T cells, your body does a good job of identifying cells that are potentially harmful, and you tend to not get cancer and live for a long time, even past 100 years.
. . . But this summer, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Orca-T, the first immunotherapy based on regulatory T cells, to treat adults with certain high-risk blood cancers. If we can harness the power of these high-functioning T cells, everyone could have a healthy immune system.
Leana S. Wen: GLP-1 drugs
It’s impossible to have a conversation about transformative health innovations without mentioning GLP-1 drugs. They have already revolutionized the treatment of diabetes and obesity, which is no small feat considering that about 40 percent of American adults have obesity, a condition that increases
But what excites me most is that we are still at the beginning of understanding what these drugs can do. Researchers are studying their potential to treat conditions ranging from addiction to neurodegenerative diseases. And their success is catalyzing conversations about optimizing health as we age so that people don’t just live longer but extend the years they can live well.
Dominic Pino: Investment in future breakthroughs
I am excited not just by Moderna’s melanoma vaccine, which looks like it could save lives, but also by last week’s enormous surge in Moderna shareholders’ wealth. Hear me out.
The pharmaceutical company’s stock price more than doubled on the news that the vaccine had succeeded in a clinical trial. That should encourage other companies to develop even more cures and medical breakthroughs going forward.
Pino’s isn’t really a medical breakthrough, but to him it disproves the notion that “big pharma” doesn’t really want to develop cures because it makes more dosh selling treatments. I suppose for my part I’d add mRNA vaccines.
*The Atlantic has an article (free link) on a bizarre phenomenon in American life: delayed toilet training. While the norm now is two years old, it’s increasing, and a large number of kids aren’t toilet-trained when the enter public schools in the U.S. or U.K. (roughly agess 4-6). What’s going on?
The time has come to admit it: The United States has a potty-training problem. In Utah, a law came into effect last year mandating that, with some exceptions, children will not be allowed to enroll in public school without first being toilet trained. Kansas lawmakers introduced a similar bill in January, and at least one district in Florida is considering a policy change that could force kindergartners to stay home until they are out of diapers.
These directives have come about because growing numbers of children are showing up to school unprepared to use the toilet. And U.S. schools aren’t the only ones confronting this issue. In the United Kingdom, the nationally representative School Readiness Survey found that last year, more than a quarter of children were not toilet trained when they began primary school (which most children do the September after they turn 4). Felicity Gillespie, the chief executive of Kindred Squared, the organization that commissions the annual survey, told me this means that teachers “can never really get into the curriculum, because they’re constantly having to take kids out and change their nappies.”
. . . The shift toward delayed potty training, I learned while reporting this article, has been under way for quite a long time. And the sources I spoke with pointed to a few factors driving it. One is that easy access to disposable diapers—which reduce the mess involved in having a child who can’t reliably make it to the toilet—has made the need for training less pressing. Another is that many families with working parents are short on the considerable time needed for monitoring trips to the bathroom. But from Gillespie’s perspective, the root of the issue is that parents are taking a child-led approach to what should be a “100 percent parent-led activity,” she said. “You don’t sit and wait for a child to say, ‘Do you know what? I think I’d like to try wearing pants today.’”
A desire to empower children as decision makers in their own lives, as well as an underlying wariness about parental authority, manifests in many trending parenting philosophies—and is perhaps most recognizable in “gentle” or “respectful” parenting, which emphasizes guidance and persuasion over rules and instruction. Broadly, this approach is rooted in an admirable desire to respect children as humans. The author of The Sovereign Child, a 2025 book that advocates for rules-free parenting, describes a general philosophy of “taking children seriously.” What it amounts to, though, is going to great lengths to avoid just telling your kid what to do.
Potty training offers a strong case study in how easily the child-led approach can break down amid the realities of modern life.
The rest of this scatological explains a rising philosophy of letting the kid tell you when it’s ready to use the toilet: “child-led toilet training”. This is the result:
According to data from the 1950s, a large majority of kids, 80 percent, had completed bowel training by 24 months; only 5 percent were still bowel training after 34 months. Even within a sample of 1950s children whose parents were advised by Brazelton to use his child-oriented approach, 98 percent were daytime potty trained by age 3. Over the next few decades, this timeline was pushed back. A 2001 study found that close to zero percent of kids had completed potty training by 24 months, and only about half had done so by 36 months. Still, that study found that almost all kids had started training before their third birthday. These days, only 21 percent of kids begin potty training before they hit 2—and about a quarter do not begin until after they turn 3.
I can’t remember when I was “bowel trained”, and my parents aren’t around to ask.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s in the way:
Andrzej: Darling, you’re blocking my view of the calendar.
Hili: And what about it?
In Polish:
Ja: Kochanie, zasłaniasz mi kalendarz.
Hili: I co z tego?
*******************
From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:
From CinEmma:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
From Masih. Let’s be clear, she has no beef with Iranians cutting their hair in grief, as this woman does. Masih just doesn’t like performative Western feminism around Iran:
A woman cuts her hair at her sister’s funeral in #Iran, because the regime shot her sister in the head for the crime of peacefully protesting and demanding freedom.
Her name was Melika Dastyab.
She was 21, a musician, economics student and she was dead by security forces while… pic.twitter.com/jJz8G65OgL— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 26, 2026
From Luana, who sees Islamism as one of the biggest threats to the West. A man goes undercover as a Muslim to interview Muslims:
A man disguised as a Muslim to interview Muslims.
If you want to know Muslims’ position on Islamic terrorism, watch this clip. pic.twitter.com/hct8jtl3wF
— Beloved of God (@Edenlife9) August 26, 2026
From Melissa Chen:
You guys realize that the leftist reaction to the Jason Arday case is going to incentivize more and more people to just “self-ID” as autistic or neurodivergent right?
Why? Because it instantly unlocks two-tier judgment. There will be massive upside to identify as…
— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) August 22, 2026
From Malcolm; zenlike cats. I especially like the last one:
“I’ve lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.”#InternationalCatDay #Caturday #CatsOfTwitter pic.twitter.com/rQhobujoIC
— Jeffrey Ⓥ (@LiftForever67) August 8, 2026
The Number Ten Cat is still in mourning for Dolly Parton:
We should put this sign on every politician’s desk pic.twitter.com/56E20gG3dO
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 26, 2026
One from my feed. Do they want their mail?
Nothing really special to see, just a flock of turkeys following the mailman around. pic.twitter.com/ZcqMHybIzA
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 26, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was ten years old. https://t.co/OFCgKM2b11
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 27, 2026
Finally, one from Doctor Cobb; a storm, a sunrise, and an aurora from the ISS (you can see a longer version here). Click on the screenshot to see the video tweet, as I can’t embed it:
The encopretic generation! How has it come to this?
Many of today’s parents just aren’t parenting, and have no idea of how to do it. Some also seem to regard it as an imposition that takes away from their video games or whatever is the main focus of their life. The tales I hear from my child psychiatrist wife would make your hair curl.
I think it’s more staring at their phone than video games. Not, of course, that those two are mutually exclusive.
I equate this with a parallel phenomena that occurs when prosecutors decline to prosecute lawbreakers or school administrators decline to suspend troublemakers because of some perceived racial or other social justice cause. Namely, it’s giving an excuse for avoidance of a difficult task (some may call it laziness) by couching it in the guise of some higher philosophical meaning.
There’s a worthwhile commentary on the Arday affair by Roland Fryer in the WSJ (Link). It amounts to, yes, one should take chances on people from disadvantaged backgrounds with weaker grades (as he himself was), if you think they have potential — but when you do that you then you need to hold them to the same high standards.
I agree with that idea, though I’d ask him about what ages it’s appropriate to make the shift.
(Recall that Roland Fryer was the Harvard academic who found, contrary to his expectations, that the fact that US police shoot more blacks is entirely accounted for by the much higher black crime rate, and so is not due to bias; out-of-her-depth diversity hire Claudine Gay, then president of Harvard, threw a temper tantrum and tried to end his career.)
To channel Tony Soprano: “In this house Roland Fryer is a hero!”
best to you Coel,
D.A.
NYC
In my engineering career, I’ve hired new grads who didn’t have the highest grades but who could better describe engineering concepts during the interview. The internship system also works well for sorting these differences in my field; it is a relatively low-risk way to find out who will succeed in the environment and who won’t.
One advantage for hiring the more disadvantaged is that oftentimes those kids had previous work experience, which gave them a leg up in the office over those who were experiencing getting a paycheck for the first time. I don’t know if this same experience is seen in academia, but I can understand Fryer’s point.
The Roland Fryer case deserves a little more detail. You mention his controversial work on race and policing, but you do not mention that what got him into trouble at Harvard was a charge of sexual harassment. Claudine Gay was not president of Harvard at the time — she was the FAS Dean, and I am unaware of her throwing any “temper tantrum”.
Gay might have been a “diversity” choice for this or that role, but her performance as FAS Dean was excellent. When she became president of Harvard, as Alvin Tillery noted, her publication record, while not great, was the fourth best among the most recent Harvard presidents, and she had the second highest citation record, trailing only Larry Summers.
The original charges were not that serious, amounting to the charge that he ran a lab where informal behaviour, such as cracking sexist jokes, was tolerated. Ok, so perhaps he shouldn’t have. But the original investigators recommended nothing more than sensitivity training. It was Gay who then massively upped the punishment. Many suspect that the entire thing was an attempt to get Fryer owing to dislike of his research.
Yes, you’re right, she was then Dean, not university head, but it certainly was her who imposed a draconian punishment. I also don’t necessarily trust citation counts within an ideologically-captured field; for example Judith Butler has oodles of citations.
While Claudine Gay had the authority to impose sanctions, it was a full committee that supported the 2 year administrative leave, based also on a finding of irregularities in lab spending and finances. What’s your point? His punishment was too harsh? OK. It happens. See also the case of John Comaroff.
I suspect that any comparison between Gay and Judith Butler will be met with derision. My point was that Claudine Gay was on an administrative track at Harvard, and was doing well on it. She was president for too short a time for us to know whether she would have been a successful president.
Roland Fryer is a guy who does good work, and interesting work—as opposed to his nemesis, Claudine Gay. He is also a gentleman—he could have expressed what he undoubtably felt when Gay fell from her pedestal, but he remained silent (as far as I know).
Given her plagiarism and her very weak c.v., the fact that she remains a full professor at Harvard is a further sign of the problem of academia that led to the Arday scandal. To me, the issue is not that she got the position of Dean or President (especially the latter), but the fact that she was promoted up the academic ladder with such a weak c.v., and believed me, that is not a common practice at Hahhvahhd, not at Stanford, where she began her academic career. Nor does she have an excuse that she came from a disadvantaged background; she had an elite, prep-school education. (Roland Fryer, who she persecuted, is the opposite: he does come from a disadvantaged background, and he has an impressive c.v.).
A couple of quick notes.
First, and as Alvin Tillery noted, Gay’s CV was stronger than half of the last 7 Harvard Presidents.
Second, Harvard recruited her to a full prof position — she was not “promoted up the academic ladder” at Harvard, though she was at Stanford. In my experience, which includes Harvard and Chicago, quick advancement is often offered on the basis of quality rather than quantity of work. My old friend at Chicago, the late linguist Michael Silverstein, for example, was hired right out of graduate school to a tenured associate prof position, recognizing his talents on the basis of only a few publications at that point. Presumably the same judgment was made by Stanford of Gay.
Third, Harvard found no violations of the standards for misconduct in the charges of plagiarism. That can be disputed — and was — but “plagiarism” is an ambiguous claim, and it does appear that many of the charges, especially by Rufo, were politically motivated.
Fourth, Gay resigned from the Harvard Presidency, and considering that she was not officially found to have violated any standards, there is no reason why she should not remain a faculty member.
I have known people who were hired at associate professor because of notable publications. It does happen. Usually because those publications are monumental advances or involve considerable original thinking. I suggest that anyone thinking that any of these involve Claudine Gay’s publications should simply read them and make their own decisions.
And Gay resigned because she was incapable or unwilling to make a simple judgement about an issue that was affecting the university. that may have been the fault of the lawyers who were coaching her—nevertheless her failure was unworthy of a university president—0not the mention a moral human being.
Another sad loss – Tim Curry, also at the age of 80. He wasn’t in the same league as Dolly, but he was of the same type: a beloved, talented, and flamboyant performer who had no enemies.
I need to be pedantic, only because I see the German language being corrupted by the notion that the gender of a word must be in conformity to the sex of the person the word might refer to. This is false. “Mensch” in German has the masculine gender. I believe that’s true also for the same word in Yiddish. But Dolly Parton most certainly is very logically a “Mensch” even if the word has a masculine gender. In German: “Diese Frau ist ein Mensch” is entirely logical and unremarkable; the gender of the word is unrelated to the sex of the person. Sadly, the Germans have in the past decade taken to feminizing all sorts of (masculine) gendered words, on the logic that women feel left out somehow. This is done by adding “in” to the end of such words. “Leserin” “Bürgerin” “Studentin” etc. And when addressing such persons as a group, the Germans have taken to then using both the masculine original word, as well as the feminized version, to be more “inclusive.” i.e. “Liebe Studenten und Studentinnen” where the original word suffices actually to refer to both sexes. It is a performative corruption of German in service of “inclusion.” What’s funny is that the Germans have not yet elected to corrupt the word “Mensch” itself. There is no “Menschin.” Jerry, your concern about the gender of “Mensch” triggered this message. Please accept my apologies!
Not exactly. Historically, the masculine form was used to refer to everone in a group whereas the feminine form was used only if no males were present. Whatever one thinks of the current policy, “Leserin” has always been a legitimate word. No-one uses “Menschin” and even the most woke/inclusive/whatever don’t see a need to. (A really bad example: “Mitgliederinnen” for female members (of a ckub or whatever). The singular, “Mitglied”, is neutral, so there is no reason at all to come up with a feminine form. The plural is “Mitglieder”. Someone apparely mistook the “er”, which is sometimes a masculine ending, and (according to the usual rules) added “in” to make it feminine, and then “nen” to make it plural.)
I can live with “Leserinnen und Leser” or “Studenten und Studentinnen”. I don’t think that “Studierende” (present participle used as a noun) is a good alternative since it actually has a different meaning. I also dont like “Leser+innen” or “LeserInnen”; if it’s that important, write out both forms. And certainly don’t try to speak “Leser+innen” with a pause or whatever.
Fazit: Yes, the woke sometimes butcher the language, but there is a spectrum of absurdities, as usual from the benign to the ridiculous.
(The + should be an asterisk; the website thinks that it indicates emphasis and produces italics.)
Brings to mind Latinx, and other corruptions by the earnest Left. In English we have abandoned the -ess ending formerly used to mark a great female poet or actor. We can debate whether that is progress or not, but I miss those words. Why not be a villainess?
Is “actress” no longer used? That’s news to me, but I might have missed it.
I’ve recently seen “actor” used in reference to a female receiving a cinematic award, but I can’t remember where, exactly. It was not a typo. The Germans are currently all up in arms about how to refer to anyone and every one, while also respecting their “gender.” Meanwhile the English are getting rid of the gendered/sexed versions of words. I read somewhere that in the DDR (the formerly communist East Germany), Lehrer was not uncommonly used to refer to females, even though Lehrerin has been in use for as long as I can remember (1960s onwards) in the West. The irritation comes from the increasingly common conversion of ever more nouns to some feminized form… with Phillip Helbig’s “Mitgliederinnen” being a perfect example.
Not within my area of expertise, so I asked Perplexity.ai, “When was the female word Lehrerin introduced in German? It responded:
What is new is the introduction of awkward politically correct gender-inclusive nouns written as, for example, Lehrer:in (male or female teacher) or Lehrer:innen (the plural form), and pronounced, annoyingly, with a glottal stop at the “:”. As a workaround, I am told, there has been increased use of alternative gender-neutral nouns, such as Lehrkraft (male or female teacher) or Lehrkräfte (male or female teachers).
ETA: Posted before I read Phillip Helbig’s comment.
Well, I mean, if we’re going to let kids decide if they want hormones and sexual re-assignment surgery, why wouldn’t we let them decide when they want to stop sh*tting themselves? They know best, right?
The gulf between the topics of youth gender medicine and toddler toilet training is perhaps best bridged by the online community of gender enthusiasts known as adult baby diaper lovers.
As an official old curmudgeon, I can tell you that I do not look forward to the day when I have to wear a diaper to go out of the house. I ain’t there yet, but it’s a pretty common problem for the aged.
Sad to report that the ABDL community are mostly middle-aged men (not elderly) who cosplay as infants or toddlers, often for sexual gratification 🙁
Toilet training delay is just part of the broader syndrome of delayed development. Children in the U.S. now take much longer to be allowed to walk to the bus unaided, to ride their bikes, to go on a date, to graduate from college, to leave their parents’ home, to get a job (with parents attending their job interviews), to marry, and to buy a first home. They even demand to be protected throughout from scary words, which they regard as violent. It’s human neoteny extended through social contagion.
Yes I agree, Norman, but these “deficiencies” I see as less as society gone soft but rather as a society grown very wealthy (which we have if you look at the numbers over your and my lifetimes) and more compassionate. Even if we are, indeed, softer.
The opposite problem would be.. terrible.
I do wish the kids would get off my lawn tho!
🙂
D.A.
NYC
A classic textbook on systems physiology had written it the section on the digestive system something to the effect of:
“The ability to distinguish between one’s own flatulence and defecation is one of the pillars of civilized society.” This was referring to one’s own bodily needs, of course.
(I can’t remember the exact quote, and am too lazy to go upstairs and open the book.)
It seems that delaying toilet training is delaying the participation of the children in society. No one wants their kid playing with someone who poops in the sandbox. Or maybe they are simply channeling Rousseau, going back to nature and all that.
I am no expert on Yiddish. But the colloquial use of “mensch” means a good human being, and is applied equally to male and female. And “menshlichkeit” (sp?) refers to good behavior. I don’t know if these are grammatically correct for use regarding women, but it is certainly colloquially correct.
I recall that one of Dean Martin’s rules for life in old age was “never trust a fart”.
Don’t I know it about kids and getting to school! Our local school is on the next block, and all the kids have to do is walk around the block, then down a cement path between houses to be on the school grounds. Do they do that? Nope. They stand on the corners waiting for the bus, with their parents right there with them. Every day.
I walked to school over many blocks, starting in Kindergarten.
Todays’ parents would all say ‘you can’t trust people … these days. But it isn’t any different today.
In my day (🙂), walking to elementary school in suburban Chicago winters was often fun — the adventures of calf-deep snow and slippery footing, the way everything looked so fresh and white, and the general weirdness of it all. (No, youngsters, we did not have to walk uphill both ways into the wind.)
And re less-authoritarian but non-stupid parenting, I most highly recommend P.E.T., Parent Effectiveness Training (1976), which is based on a well-worked-out model of human relationships in general: P.E.T. When I read it as a non-parent adult it truly changed my life for the better. YMMV of course.
Wow they’ve really upped the shaheed tech.
Not a lot we can do as we need to share (and divide) the world between the Red Chinese and ourselves.
The question is “on what terms?”
I think Israel is ahead of the game (go figure!) with their new laser weapon which, btw, was (in my opinion) a big impetus for Sinwar/Hamas to start Oct. 7, fearing Hamas
missile inventory would be obsolete soon.
History tells us the winners are the guys with the best tech, right back before the Spanish Armada v England. And now.
I think Sophie Cunningham wins this round b/c she’s in the right and also… adorable.
D.A.
NYC
“. Over the next few decades, this timeline was pushed back. A 2001 study found that close to zero percent of kids had completed potty training by 24 months, and only about half had done so by 36 months. ” Even more basic than social media and cellphones, this fact provides, at last, a comprehensive, plausible explanation of the great awokening in 2010-2023.
But I bet those diapered kindergartners know how to use an iPad.
In fact, that may well be all they know. It’s not like their parents are sitting and reading to or singing with them.
“These directives have come about because growing numbers of children are showing up to school unprepared to use the toilet.”
So, these parents apparently think that the teacher will just stop lessons to attend to this? And they will somehow manage to do this for numerous students?
Has some malignant, IQ-sapping virus been sweeping through the population in the past decade or so? The sheer idiocy of a growing number of people is very concerning.
The NYT list is good but leaves out what might be Dolly Parton’s finest song, “My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy”:
“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” (JM).
😪
It’s even worse than that. IMO any non-poor group in the West can buy almost everything needed to make such a drone, except the explosives, from ordinary retail outlets. A built engine would need to be specially sourced; or the components to make it would mostly be available, and the technologies to fashion the other components (metal casting, 3D printing, machine tools) are readily accessible. ISTM the same applies to the launch system. “Watch the skies!”