Something Completely Different

566 thoughts on “Something Completely Different”

1. Huge thanks to Michael for posting this. Needless to say, I haven’t read it yet, but I will do so later this evening, and it will be a great pleasure to have something to chew on that isn’t politics and the dire state of the world.

2. Huge thanks to Michael for posting this. Needless to say, I haven’t read it yet, but I will do so later this evening, and it will be a great pleasure to have something to chew on that isn’t politics and the dire state of the world.

3. Ha! Nobody who has come to know me will be surprised to hear that this was all Greek (worse than Greek, I have some Greek) to me. But nonetheless, this made me smile:
   The quality of the code I inherited was so poor it led me to spend a morning and some amount of the department’s money working my way through telephone operators and secretaries until I got a particular graduate student at Case Western University on the line so I could tell him, “Set foot in Austin, Texas and you’re a dead man!” and hang up. But I digress…
   Which just goes to show, people who criticise digressions could hardly be more wrong.

4. Ha! Nobody who has come to know me will be surprised to hear that this was all Greek (worse than Greek, I have some Greek) to me. But nonetheless, this made me smile:
   The quality of the code I inherited was so poor it led me to spend a morning and some amount of the department’s money working my way through telephone operators and secretaries until I got a particular graduate student at Case Western University on the line so I could tell him, “Set foot in Austin, Texas and you’re a dead man!” and hang up. But I digress…
   Which just goes to show, people who criticise digressions could hardly be more wrong.

5. I know that I once solved that problem and I believe I remember that I also went for exclusion of certain non-viable cases. E.g. there are limited cases where the product ends in 1 which meant that the other numbers had to end in 2, 5 or 0. Each multiplication increases the number of numbers behind the decimal point by 2, so we would expect 8 of them behind the decimal point but we have to get rid of 6 of those, which again points to 0,2 and 5 dominating.
   But, as was said, the thinking about it could take more time than the computer needs with a brute force attack.

6. I know that I once solved that problem and I believe I remember that I also went for exclusion of certain non-viable cases. E.g. there are limited cases where the product ends in 1 which meant that the other numbers had to end in 2, 5 or 0. Each multiplication increases the number of numbers behind the decimal point by 2, so we would expect 8 of them behind the decimal point but we have to get rid of 6 of those, which again points to 0,2 and 5 dominating.
   But, as was said, the thinking about it could take more time than the computer needs with a brute force attack.

7. One solution is that all four items cost $1.63 each.

8. One solution is that all four items cost $1.63 each.

9. One solution is that all four items cost $1.63 each.
   One solution to what, exactly?
   Maybe I missed the joke…?

10. One solution is that all four items cost $1.63 each.
    One solution to what, exactly?
    Maybe I missed the joke…?

11. I’ve gone around and around ChatGPT. Early on the code looked good but it was obvious that it wasn’t understanding completely what I wanted. The more I tried to fine-tune the worse the code got. It finally generated this tight bit of code. I can’t tell whether it would work or not.

    # Get value for x from user
    print "Enter a value for x: ";
    chomp($x = );
    
    # Initialize loop counter
    $d = 0.01;
    
    while ($d <= $x) {
      $c = x * (1 - x**(1/4)) * (1 - x**(3/12)) - d;
      $b = x**(3/12) * c * d * (1 - x**(1/4));
      $a = x**(1/4) * b * c * d;
      
      if (($a + $b + $c + $d == $x) && ($a * $b * $c * $d == $x)) {
        printf "%.2f, %.2f, %.2f, %.2f\n", $a, $b, $c, $d;
      }
      $d += 0.01;
    }
    

12. I’ve gone around and around ChatGPT. Early on the code looked good but it was obvious that it wasn’t understanding completely what I wanted. The more I tried to fine-tune the worse the code got. It finally generated this tight bit of code. I can’t tell whether it would work or not.

    # Get value for x from user
    print "Enter a value for x: ";
    chomp($x = );
    
    # Initialize loop counter
    $d = 0.01;
    
    while ($d <= $x) {
      $c = x * (1 - x**(1/4)) * (1 - x**(3/12)) - d;
      $b = x**(3/12) * c * d * (1 - x**(1/4));
      $a = x**(1/4) * b * c * d;
      
      if (($a + $b + $c + $d == $x) && ($a * $b * $c * $d == $x)) {
        printf "%.2f, %.2f, %.2f, %.2f\n", $a, $b, $c, $d;
      }
      $d += 0.01;
    }
    

13. Maybe I missed the joke…?
    No I goofed up… 🙁

14. Maybe I missed the joke…?
    No I goofed up… 🙁

15. chomp($x = );

    in the above code should be

    chomp($x = [STDIN])

    Square brackets are substituted for angle brackets.

16. chomp($x = );

    in the above code should be

    chomp($x = [STDIN])

    Square brackets are substituted for angle brackets.

17. I started reading the OP, then decided to try to solve the problem without writing any code.
    The first step is to put the four prices in cents. Then we have sum(prices)=711 and product(prices)=711,000,000.
    We find the prime factors of 711,000,000:
    711,000,000 = 79 * 3^2 * 2^6 * 5^6.
    The four prices must each be created by multiplying a share of the prime factors.
    The 79 is useful. One of the prices must be one of 79, 158, 237, 316, 395, 474, 632.
    So I played with one of the prices being 79, and showed that that couldn’t work. That took 30 minutes or so, but which time I understood the problem better.
    There’s a constraint on the smallest price, call it x, that cubed_root(711,000,000/x) <= (711-x)/3 That means the smallest price must be at least 75c, implying that the largest must be at most 486c. Now, consider the price which is a multiple of 79c, and subtract it from 711. If the remainder is not a multiple of 5, then (at least) one of the remaining three prices must not be a multiple of 5, and must be at least 75c. The only possibilities are 96, 144, 192, and 288, and most of those use up enough 2s to be problematic. One we've guessed two numbers, the remaining two numbers come from a quadratic, which can be solved instantly (on a spreadsheet) to find if one gets integers. So now we have an approach which can be applied quickly to eliminate all the multiples of 79c apart from 316c. 316c is different, because that leaves 395c as the sum of the remaining three prices, which is a multiple of 5. One of the prices must be odd, which limits the possibilites. Trying these, and feeding the result into the quadratic formula, one gets the solution.

18. I started reading the OP, then decided to try to solve the problem without writing any code.
    The first step is to put the four prices in cents. Then we have sum(prices)=711 and product(prices)=711,000,000.
    We find the prime factors of 711,000,000:
    711,000,000 = 79 * 3^2 * 2^6 * 5^6.
    The four prices must each be created by multiplying a share of the prime factors.
    The 79 is useful. One of the prices must be one of 79, 158, 237, 316, 395, 474, 632.
    So I played with one of the prices being 79, and showed that that couldn’t work. That took 30 minutes or so, but which time I understood the problem better.
    There’s a constraint on the smallest price, call it x, that cubed_root(711,000,000/x) <= (711-x)/3 That means the smallest price must be at least 75c, implying that the largest must be at most 486c. Now, consider the price which is a multiple of 79c, and subtract it from 711. If the remainder is not a multiple of 5, then (at least) one of the remaining three prices must not be a multiple of 5, and must be at least 75c. The only possibilities are 96, 144, 192, and 288, and most of those use up enough 2s to be problematic. One we've guessed two numbers, the remaining two numbers come from a quadratic, which can be solved instantly (on a spreadsheet) to find if one gets integers. So now we have an approach which can be applied quickly to eliminate all the multiples of 79c apart from 316c. 316c is different, because that leaves 395c as the sum of the remaining three prices, which is a multiple of 5. One of the prices must be odd, which limits the possibilites. Trying these, and feeding the result into the quadratic formula, one gets the solution.

19. It finally generated this tight bit of code. I can’t tell whether it would work or not.
    Tidying up the Perl syntax, and removing the if enclosing the print statement in order to see what sort of results it gets, the code runs. It produces nothing even close to a solution, but it runs.
    I suppose this code falls into the same category as the usual complaint about ChatGPT: looks plausible on the surface, but doesn’t hold up. The nice thing about code is that it’s testable :^)

20. It finally generated this tight bit of code. I can’t tell whether it would work or not.
    Tidying up the Perl syntax, and removing the if enclosing the print statement in order to see what sort of results it gets, the code runs. It produces nothing even close to a solution, but it runs.
    I suppose this code falls into the same category as the usual complaint about ChatGPT: looks plausible on the surface, but doesn’t hold up. The nice thing about code is that it’s testable :^)

21. At first glance, I thought it had found a very efficient solution to the problem. The more I looked at the less sense it made. I translated it to Pascal and fiddled with the code such as not making exact comparisons between real numbers. Based on the numbers being calculated, there was no possibility of finding a solution.
    But it had a long and detailed description of how the code should work perfectly. Maybe it went into BS mode when I told it to optimize the code.

22. At first glance, I thought it had found a very efficient solution to the problem. The more I looked at the less sense it made. I translated it to Pascal and fiddled with the code such as not making exact comparisons between real numbers. Based on the numbers being calculated, there was no possibility of finding a solution.
    But it had a long and detailed description of how the code should work perfectly. Maybe it went into BS mode when I told it to optimize the code.

23. It did come up with a couple of brute force approaches and several methods of pruning the number of interactions needed.

24. It did come up with a couple of brute force approaches and several methods of pruning the number of interactions needed.

25. pro bono, you lost me at 711,000,000.

26. pro bono, you lost me at 711,000,000.

27. It did come up with a couple of brute force approaches and several methods of pruning the number of interactions needed.
    These days there are a number of online documents describing the problem, some including at least pseudo-code. (The ones I’ve seen post-date when my daughter brought it home, and when I gave the talk.) The training set for ChatGPT is reported to include StackOverflow, which includes at least one entry for this problem. That it would select a working brute force example from its data set is at least somewhat impressive.
    I have seen reports that it will generate working malware. Nothing about whether it’s just retrieving working code from the data set, or doing something new. New malware, or even new combinations of existing malware, would be very interesting.

28. It did come up with a couple of brute force approaches and several methods of pruning the number of interactions needed.
    These days there are a number of online documents describing the problem, some including at least pseudo-code. (The ones I’ve seen post-date when my daughter brought it home, and when I gave the talk.) The training set for ChatGPT is reported to include StackOverflow, which includes at least one entry for this problem. That it would select a working brute force example from its data set is at least somewhat impressive.
    I have seen reports that it will generate working malware. Nothing about whether it’s just retrieving working code from the data set, or doing something new. New malware, or even new combinations of existing malware, would be very interesting.

29. Yeah, I don’t get the necessity of putting it in cents and adding the 2- and 5-based factors. If you just leave it as 711, you get 79 * 3^2. So one price has to be a multiple of 79 (call it n * 79) and the other three prices have to produce 9/n.

30. Yeah, I don’t get the necessity of putting it in cents and adding the 2- and 5-based factors. If you just leave it as 711, you get 79 * 3^2. So one price has to be a multiple of 79 (call it n * 79) and the other three prices have to produce 9/n.

31. That was in response to russell, btw.

32. That was in response to russell, btw.

33. pro bono, you lost me at 711,000,000
    The product of the dollar prices is 7.11, so the product of the cent prices is 7.11*10^8.
    It’s convenient to work in cents because then the prices are integers.

34. pro bono, you lost me at 711,000,000
    The product of the dollar prices is 7.11, so the product of the cent prices is 7.11*10^8.
    It’s convenient to work in cents because then the prices are integers.

35. This tripped me up too, but then I realized that not seeing it was what had tripped me up when I was playing around with the problem after Michael first posed it.
    The original problem looks like this:
    a + b + c + d = 7.11
    a * b * c * d = 7.11
    If you change a, b, c, and d to cents, for the first equation you have to multiply both sides by 100:
    100a + 100b + 100c + 100d = 100*7.11 = 711
    But then to preserve the original question, you have to substitute 100a for a, 100b for b, etc., in the second equation, which means multiplying both sides of that one by 100 four times:
    (100a)*(100b)*(100c)(100d) = 100*100*100*100*7.11
    Michael or Pro Bono — is this the correct reasoning? I find that I am not as smart or as determined as I was about puzzles like this when I was oh, say, 17.

36. This tripped me up too, but then I realized that not seeing it was what had tripped me up when I was playing around with the problem after Michael first posed it.
    The original problem looks like this:
    a + b + c + d = 7.11
    a * b * c * d = 7.11
    If you change a, b, c, and d to cents, for the first equation you have to multiply both sides by 100:
    100a + 100b + 100c + 100d = 100*7.11 = 711
    But then to preserve the original question, you have to substitute 100a for a, 100b for b, etc., in the second equation, which means multiplying both sides of that one by 100 four times:
    (100a)*(100b)*(100c)(100d) = 100*100*100*100*7.11
    Michael or Pro Bono — is this the correct reasoning? I find that I am not as smart or as determined as I was about puzzles like this when I was oh, say, 17.

37. Spot on, JanieM. I’m not as smart as I was when I was 17 either, but I compensate for some of the decline by recognizing more things I’ve seen before.

38. Spot on, JanieM. I’m not as smart as I was when I was 17 either, but I compensate for some of the decline by recognizing more things I’ve seen before.

39. @hsh, the four prices expressed in cents are 316, 150, 125, and 120. 316 is 79 times 4. How are you going to get 150, 125, and 120 from 9/4?

40. @hsh, the four prices expressed in cents are 316, 150, 125, and 120. 316 is 79 times 4. How are you going to get 150, 125, and 120 from 9/4?

41. Play around until you get there. I’m not sure it changes the problem that much. It’s just more straightforward in my head working with 711. They have to add up to 711 – 79n, or 711 – 316 with n = 4, which is 395.
    I don’t mind fractions, I guess, when it comes to multiplying the remaining prices out. You kind of know you’re dealing with tenths and quarters (which include halves and fifths) if you’re going to end up that kind of fraction with numbers that also come out to non-fractional cents when expressed in decimal form.
    Then again, I didn’t actually try to solve it. I just found the additional 5 factors and 2 factors to be extraneous.

42. Play around until you get there. I’m not sure it changes the problem that much. It’s just more straightforward in my head working with 711. They have to add up to 711 – 79n, or 711 – 316 with n = 4, which is 395.
    I don’t mind fractions, I guess, when it comes to multiplying the remaining prices out. You kind of know you’re dealing with tenths and quarters (which include halves and fifths) if you’re going to end up that kind of fraction with numbers that also come out to non-fractional cents when expressed in decimal form.
    Then again, I didn’t actually try to solve it. I just found the additional 5 factors and 2 factors to be extraneous.

43. The other numbers could only end in 0 2 or 5 because one has to get to all the zeros.
    If one multiplies numbers with digits behind the dot, the product will have as many digits behind the dot as all factors combined. Since the result has to be cents (two digits behind the dot) but multiplying 4 factors leads to 8 one has to get rid of 6. This means those have to be zeros. And to get the zero at the end of a product the factors have to have to be divisble by 2 and 5 (since 2*5 = 10). Every pair of 2 and 5 yields another zero at the end of the number. So to get rid of the 6 superfluous digits one has to have 6 times the 2 and 6 times the 5 as prime factors in the complete product (3 5’s are in 150, another one in 120 and the final 3 in 125. OK that is seven, so we know that there can only be 6 times 2 or we would lose another zero and get only 1 digit behind the dot.
    Since 711 is divisble by 9 we need two times the three (one is in 150, one in 120).
    The rest is a very limited numbers of combinations to check.

44. The other numbers could only end in 0 2 or 5 because one has to get to all the zeros.
    If one multiplies numbers with digits behind the dot, the product will have as many digits behind the dot as all factors combined. Since the result has to be cents (two digits behind the dot) but multiplying 4 factors leads to 8 one has to get rid of 6. This means those have to be zeros. And to get the zero at the end of a product the factors have to have to be divisble by 2 and 5 (since 2*5 = 10). Every pair of 2 and 5 yields another zero at the end of the number. So to get rid of the 6 superfluous digits one has to have 6 times the 2 and 6 times the 5 as prime factors in the complete product (3 5’s are in 150, another one in 120 and the final 3 in 125. OK that is seven, so we know that there can only be 6 times 2 or we would lose another zero and get only 1 digit behind the dot.
    Since 711 is divisble by 9 we need two times the three (one is in 150, one in 120).
    The rest is a very limited numbers of combinations to check.

45. The only thing that even made me consider the solution in the first place was the observation that 711 is divisible by 9 because 7+1+1=9. So I divided 711 by 9 to get 79. After that, I played around for a bit until my attention span was expended (starting off with the assumption that one of the prices was $1.00 so I could ignore multiplying it and see how close I could get with the other three).

46. The only thing that even made me consider the solution in the first place was the observation that 711 is divisible by 9 because 7+1+1=9. So I divided 711 by 9 to get 79. After that, I played around for a bit until my attention span was expended (starting off with the assumption that one of the prices was $1.00 so I could ignore multiplying it and see how close I could get with the other three).

47. I guess I was really working with 7.11 the whole time, not 711 (other than that it doesn’t really make sense to say 7.11 is divisible by 9.)

48. I guess I was really working with 7.11 the whole time, not 711 (other than that it doesn’t really make sense to say 7.11 is divisible by 9.)

49. The product of the dollar prices is 7.11, so the product of the cent prices is 7.11*10^8.
    ah, OK. makes sense.
    I played around with this a bit while eating lunch. No software, no code, just a pencil and paper.
    I started down the path of working with factors of 711, basically just to reduce the possible number of numbers to consider to a reasonable amount.
    Got that far, or maybe 2 or 3 steps beyond that. And then, lunch was done.
    I’m glad there are people in the world who are willing to spend the time to wrestle stuff like this to the ground.

50. The product of the dollar prices is 7.11, so the product of the cent prices is 7.11*10^8.
    ah, OK. makes sense.
    I played around with this a bit while eating lunch. No software, no code, just a pencil and paper.
    I started down the path of working with factors of 711, basically just to reduce the possible number of numbers to consider to a reasonable amount.
    Got that far, or maybe 2 or 3 steps beyond that. And then, lunch was done.
    I’m glad there are people in the world who are willing to spend the time to wrestle stuff like this to the ground.

51. $6.44 is the smallest value between $1.00 and $10.00 that has a “four prices with the same sum and product” solution.
    The AM-GM inequality (used in my previous analysis) is of some relevance here. It says that the geometric mean (the nth root of the product) of a list of n numbers is less than or equal to the arithmetic mean (one nth of the sum).
    This gives a necessary condition for a solution to exist when the sum and product of the prices is $x:
    x^(1/4) <= x/4 x <= x^4/256 256 <= x^3 x >= 6.35 (rounding up to the nearest cent).

52. $6.44 is the smallest value between $1.00 and $10.00 that has a “four prices with the same sum and product” solution.
    The AM-GM inequality (used in my previous analysis) is of some relevance here. It says that the geometric mean (the nth root of the product) of a list of n numbers is less than or equal to the arithmetic mean (one nth of the sum).
    This gives a necessary condition for a solution to exist when the sum and product of the prices is $x:
    x^(1/4) <= x/4 x <= x^4/256 256 <= x^3 x >= 6.35 (rounding up to the nearest cent).

53. re-reading my 5:40 from yesterday – I sound kind of dismissive.
    to be clear – I actually am glad there are people who are willing to figure stuff like this out. otherwise we’d still be huddled in a dark smoky cave somewhere.
    sadly, I am not one of them. the next shiny object appears, and off I go in pursuit.
    carry on, o ye numerate!!

54. re-reading my 5:40 from yesterday – I sound kind of dismissive.
    to be clear – I actually am glad there are people who are willing to figure stuff like this out. otherwise we’d still be huddled in a dark smoky cave somewhere.
    sadly, I am not one of them. the next shiny object appears, and off I go in pursuit.
    carry on, o ye numerate!!

55. That means the smallest price must be at least 75c, implying that the largest must be at most 486c.
    This made something jump out. The stated implication comes from the assumption that three of the prices are equal to the lowest possible price of 75c, meaning that those three sum to $2.25, leaving the remaining price to be $4.86.
    In the actual solution, the product of the three prices that are not multiples of 79c must produce 9/4, which can be expressed as 2.25.
    Maybe that’s coincidence. My brain isn’t up to figuring out if it isn’t.

56. That means the smallest price must be at least 75c, implying that the largest must be at most 486c.
    This made something jump out. The stated implication comes from the assumption that three of the prices are equal to the lowest possible price of 75c, meaning that those three sum to $2.25, leaving the remaining price to be $4.86.
    In the actual solution, the product of the three prices that are not multiples of 79c must produce 9/4, which can be expressed as 2.25.
    Maybe that’s coincidence. My brain isn’t up to figuring out if it isn’t.

57. carry on, o ye numerate!!
    At some point at a party, after a couple of glasses of wine, when I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the conversation right around me, someone abruptly asked me directly, “Who are your people?” Later I realized that they were looking for something like the Poles, or the Baptists. What popped out of my mouth without thinking was, “The applied mathematicians.”

58. carry on, o ye numerate!!
    At some point at a party, after a couple of glasses of wine, when I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the conversation right around me, someone abruptly asked me directly, “Who are your people?” Later I realized that they were looking for something like the Poles, or the Baptists. What popped out of my mouth without thinking was, “The applied mathematicians.”

59. Later I realized that they were looking for something like the Poles, or the Baptists. What popped out of my mouth without thinking was, “The applied mathematicians.”
    We pray for the day when our melting pot country has reached the point where everybody takes a similar kind of view. I.e. one where race, religion, ethnicity, etc. are not the first (or even second, third, or fourth) response one thinks of.

60. Later I realized that they were looking for something like the Poles, or the Baptists. What popped out of my mouth without thinking was, “The applied mathematicians.”
    We pray for the day when our melting pot country has reached the point where everybody takes a similar kind of view. I.e. one where race, religion, ethnicity, etc. are not the first (or even second, third, or fourth) response one thinks of.

61. I used to get “What are you?” (…a metalhead? …a joker? …a former low-level juvenile delinquent?)

62. I used to get “What are you?” (…a metalhead? …a joker? …a former low-level juvenile delinquent?)

63. Since I said it was an open thread, and it’s a technical topic, a status report…
    A while back typepad.com badly mishandled a data center upgrade. The consequence was a period of time when many of the sites they hosted became unusable — either completely unavailable or so slow that they might as well have been unavailable. Obsidian Wings goes back a long time (first post was 11/13/2003) and I for one didn’t want to see the content and community disappear.
    Typepad.com got its act mostly together eventually. However, the “export content” function remains broken. I took on the small chore of writing a script that downloads the Obsidian Wings post pages, either all or incrementally. Then a script that extracts the post and comment content and puts them in one of the standard import/export formats used by blog hosting services. Then a script that reads through that file and downloads any referenced images hosted on the site.
    There’s no spec, so most of the effort is in reverse-engineering the pages’ HTML structure. It’s an ongoing project — I recently discovered that the “below the fold” content in extended posts wasn’t going into the import file. I’m fairly happy with what I have now. I run the scripts once a week or so to update the content. A compressed archive of the import file and images goes to the cloud. Janie M knows where it lives up there. If the editors decide it’s necessary to change hosting services, most of the content can survive.

64. Since I said it was an open thread, and it’s a technical topic, a status report…
    A while back typepad.com badly mishandled a data center upgrade. The consequence was a period of time when many of the sites they hosted became unusable — either completely unavailable or so slow that they might as well have been unavailable. Obsidian Wings goes back a long time (first post was 11/13/2003) and I for one didn’t want to see the content and community disappear.
    Typepad.com got its act mostly together eventually. However, the “export content” function remains broken. I took on the small chore of writing a script that downloads the Obsidian Wings post pages, either all or incrementally. Then a script that extracts the post and comment content and puts them in one of the standard import/export formats used by blog hosting services. Then a script that reads through that file and downloads any referenced images hosted on the site.
    There’s no spec, so most of the effort is in reverse-engineering the pages’ HTML structure. It’s an ongoing project — I recently discovered that the “below the fold” content in extended posts wasn’t going into the import file. I’m fairly happy with what I have now. I run the scripts once a week or so to update the content. A compressed archive of the import file and images goes to the cloud. Janie M knows where it lives up there. If the editors decide it’s necessary to change hosting services, most of the content can survive.

65. Michael, I know I’ve asked you before, but is the “Archive” or “Older Posts” which used to live below “Recent Posts” still available? It used to be quite useful….If it can’t be revived in that form so be it, but if it can I for one used to use it from time to time.
    Further to which:
    I actually am glad there are people who are willing to figure stuff like this out. otherwise we’d still be huddled in a dark smoky cave somewhere.
    Amen, and thrice amen.

66. Michael, I know I’ve asked you before, but is the “Archive” or “Older Posts” which used to live below “Recent Posts” still available? It used to be quite useful….If it can’t be revived in that form so be it, but if it can I for one used to use it from time to time.
    Further to which:
    I actually am glad there are people who are willing to figure stuff like this out. otherwise we’d still be huddled in a dark smoky cave somewhere.
    Amen, and thrice amen.

67. Could there be a searchable text file containing all posts and comments? Thanks.

68. Could there be a searchable text file containing all posts and comments? Thanks.

69. Could there be a searchable text file containing all posts and comments? Thanks.
    That’s basically what the import/export file is, along with some metadata. The text’s not completely flat, it includes Typepad’s idea of minimal HTML formatting tags and special characters. As of this morning, the file size is 412,524,359 bytes. (Prime factorization of that is 13×37×83×10333.) Am I going to put it up somewhere with a page in front to specify a search string and backend software to do the search? No.

70. Could there be a searchable text file containing all posts and comments? Thanks.
    That’s basically what the import/export file is, along with some metadata. The text’s not completely flat, it includes Typepad’s idea of minimal HTML formatting tags and special characters. As of this morning, the file size is 412,524,359 bytes. (Prime factorization of that is 13×37×83×10333.) Am I going to put it up somewhere with a page in front to specify a search string and backend software to do the search? No.

71. I gather from that this is too huge to be feasible (that’s the limit of what I gather, but it’s enough). Therefore, so be it. Thanks anyway, Michael Cain, for all you have done to safeguard the blog.

72. I gather from that this is too huge to be feasible (that’s the limit of what I gather, but it’s enough). Therefore, so be it. Thanks anyway, Michael Cain, for all you have done to safeguard the blog.

73. Superman never safeguarded a blog. Leaping tall buildings … meh.

74. Superman never safeguarded a blog. Leaping tall buildings … meh.

75. …is the “Archive” or “Older Posts” which used to live below “Recent Posts” still available?
    I put the monthly archive widget back. Looking at the Wayback Machine, that’s what used to be there. Seems to run. I’m sure I’ll hear about it if the editors think I’ve overstepped :^)

76. …is the “Archive” or “Older Posts” which used to live below “Recent Posts” still available?
    I put the monthly archive widget back. Looking at the Wayback Machine, that’s what used to be there. Seems to run. I’m sure I’ll hear about it if the editors think I’ve overstepped :^)

77. I’m sure I’ll hear about it if the editors think I’ve overstepped :^)
    That will be the day. 😉

78. I’m sure I’ll hear about it if the editors think I’ve overstepped :^)
    That will be the day. 😉

79. Could there be a searchable text file containing all posts and comments? Thanks.
    I removed the old search widget and replaced it with the current one. The old one didn’t seem to search the site at all. The new one seems to work for searching the site posts and contents, sorta.

80. Could there be a searchable text file containing all posts and comments? Thanks.
    I removed the old search widget and replaced it with the current one. The old one didn’t seem to search the site at all. The new one seems to work for searching the site posts and contents, sorta.

81. I put the monthly archive widget back.
    Great! Thank you so much!
    That will be the day. 😉
    LOL

82. I put the monthly archive widget back.
    Great! Thank you so much!
    That will be the day. 😉
    LOL

83. I gather from that this is too huge to be feasible (that’s the limit of what I gather, but it’s enough). Therefore, so be it.
    It’s not the size. The virtual server I lease for my domain has enough space, could serve up the necessary front end, and could run a Perl script to do the actual search and generate a results page. I’m just not willing to use the server for that.
    Typepad.com’s hosting service doesn’t appear to include that sort of more general-purpose computing.

84. I gather from that this is too huge to be feasible (that’s the limit of what I gather, but it’s enough). Therefore, so be it.
    It’s not the size. The virtual server I lease for my domain has enough space, could serve up the necessary front end, and could run a Perl script to do the actual search and generate a results page. I’m just not willing to use the server for that.
    Typepad.com’s hosting service doesn’t appear to include that sort of more general-purpose computing.

85. I’m sure I’ll hear about it if the editors think I’ve overstepped :^)
    If you’ve overstepped, that’s an indication that we need to construct a new step.

86. I’m sure I’ll hear about it if the editors think I’ve overstepped :^)
    If you’ve overstepped, that’s an indication that we need to construct a new step.

87. That will be the day. 😉
    Let’s see…
    There were reasons that for years the people in the research/prototype lab said, “Let Mike do all the tricky real-time bits, but don’t let him anywhere near the user interface.”
    I am old, and forgetful — at least by my own standards — and apt to be impatient. This is a dangerous combination for someone with the root password.
    The kids and I have decided that we need to find a memory care facility where my wife can live. I am no longer mentally able to share my house with a stranger (who doesn’t remember it’s also her house, and requires a lot of shepherding), and am even more unwilling to share it with a stranger and in-home care strangers. And it has to be juggled with getting her through cataract surgery that necessarily spans several weeks. Everything about the situation is depressing. Which leads to bad decision making.

88. That will be the day. 😉
    Let’s see…
    There were reasons that for years the people in the research/prototype lab said, “Let Mike do all the tricky real-time bits, but don’t let him anywhere near the user interface.”
    I am old, and forgetful — at least by my own standards — and apt to be impatient. This is a dangerous combination for someone with the root password.
    The kids and I have decided that we need to find a memory care facility where my wife can live. I am no longer mentally able to share my house with a stranger (who doesn’t remember it’s also her house, and requires a lot of shepherding), and am even more unwilling to share it with a stranger and in-home care strangers. And it has to be juggled with getting her through cataract surgery that necessarily spans several weeks. Everything about the situation is depressing. Which leads to bad decision making.

89. The kids and I have decided that we need to find a memory care facility where my wife can live.
    Ooof, that’s hard and sad. May you find many things to comfort and engage you while you navigate this difficulty.
    I’m currently trying to reassure English Language Learners that they can say things about music that are interesting even without a large vocabulary or knowledge of music. They are meanwhile learning to listen with more attention and to look for a critical perspective that makes their observations matter to a reader.
    One step at a time…

90. The kids and I have decided that we need to find a memory care facility where my wife can live.
    Ooof, that’s hard and sad. May you find many things to comfort and engage you while you navigate this difficulty.
    I’m currently trying to reassure English Language Learners that they can say things about music that are interesting even without a large vocabulary or knowledge of music. They are meanwhile learning to listen with more attention and to look for a critical perspective that makes their observations matter to a reader.
    One step at a time…

91. Ah, the user interface…. That is indeed its own set of challenges.
    Luckily, Typepad and Obwi seem to be okay for the moment, knock on wood (now there’s a scientific invocation if there ever was one).
    I think I speak for everyone when I say that what you’ve done and are still doing is a priceless gift to the rest of us. We’re incredibly lucky that you’re around with the skills AND the time AND the interest/willingness to take on what none of the rest of us could accomplish.
    And — you have my great sympathy for the situation with your wife. I watched — at a distance — as my mom came to a similar decision in relation to my dad. Then my mom’s turn came, 25 or so years later, and I was more involved in that one, although all this went on in Ohio, shepherded primarily by my siblings who still live there. It’s stressful and at times heartbreaking. For what it’s worth I (I think we) are thinking of you as you go through it. Don’t forget to take care of yourself…you know what they say about the oxygen masks….

92. Ah, the user interface…. That is indeed its own set of challenges.
    Luckily, Typepad and Obwi seem to be okay for the moment, knock on wood (now there’s a scientific invocation if there ever was one).
    I think I speak for everyone when I say that what you’ve done and are still doing is a priceless gift to the rest of us. We’re incredibly lucky that you’re around with the skills AND the time AND the interest/willingness to take on what none of the rest of us could accomplish.
    And — you have my great sympathy for the situation with your wife. I watched — at a distance — as my mom came to a similar decision in relation to my dad. Then my mom’s turn came, 25 or so years later, and I was more involved in that one, although all this went on in Ohio, shepherded primarily by my siblings who still live there. It’s stressful and at times heartbreaking. For what it’s worth I (I think we) are thinking of you as you go through it. Don’t forget to take care of yourself…you know what they say about the oxygen masks….

93. It is very hard, and very sad. But there are two adults’ needs to be considered, and it is more than possible that your wife will feel it less than you do. I very much hope you are able to learn to enjoy your life again.

94. It is very hard, and very sad. But there are two adults’ needs to be considered, and it is more than possible that your wife will feel it less than you do. I very much hope you are able to learn to enjoy your life again.

95. I think I speak for everyone when I say that what you’ve done and are stilling doing is a priceless gift to the rest of us.
    seconded, with emphasis.
    The kids and I have decided that we need to find a memory care facility where my wife can live.
    so sorry to hear this, Michael. I’m hard pressed to think of a more difficult or wrenching decision to have to make.
    take care of yourself.

96. I think I speak for everyone when I say that what you’ve done and are stilling doing is a priceless gift to the rest of us.
    seconded, with emphasis.
    The kids and I have decided that we need to find a memory care facility where my wife can live.
    so sorry to hear this, Michael. I’m hard pressed to think of a more difficult or wrenching decision to have to make.
    take care of yourself.

97. Oh, Michael, my best wishes and deepest sympathy to you. Let me know if you’d like to talk some time. I imagine you have my email address. 🙂

98. Oh, Michael, my best wishes and deepest sympathy to you. Let me know if you’d like to talk some time. I imagine you have my email address. 🙂

99. Michael, my sympathies to you and your wife. Here’s hoping for the best of a bad situation.

100. Michael, my sympathies to you and your wife. Here’s hoping for the best of a bad situation.

101. What Janie said – I’d be amazed if she didn’t speak for everyone here.

102. What Janie said – I’d be amazed if she didn’t speak for everyone here.

103. I’m so sorry, Michael. Wishing you the best possible. Life can be a real sh*t sometimes.

104. I’m so sorry, Michael. Wishing you the best possible. Life can be a real sh*t sometimes.

105. Luckily, Typepad and Obwi seem to be okay for the moment…
     The export function still doesn’t work. Typepad.com doesn’t accept new customers for their service based on the Typepad software. That software was originally based on Movable Type, but there’s no telling how far they’ve diverged from current versions of that. They send new customers to a subsidiary that runs WordPress. It may be years, but the day will come when the site has to change hosting software (even if not service).
     There are people who claim they will extract site content from either a working service or from the Wayback Machine. I have a better understanding now of why they charge hundreds/thousands of dollars for that job :^)

106. Luckily, Typepad and Obwi seem to be okay for the moment…
     The export function still doesn’t work. Typepad.com doesn’t accept new customers for their service based on the Typepad software. That software was originally based on Movable Type, but there’s no telling how far they’ve diverged from current versions of that. They send new customers to a subsidiary that runs WordPress. It may be years, but the day will come when the site has to change hosting software (even if not service).
     There are people who claim they will extract site content from either a working service or from the Wayback Machine. I have a better understanding now of why they charge hundreds/thousands of dollars for that job :^)

107. Michael — I’ll let you know where to send the bill. 😉

108. Michael — I’ll let you know where to send the bill. 😉

109. Michael — I’ll let you know where to send the bill. 😉
     One question tho: do you accept crypto? 🙂

110. Michael — I’ll let you know where to send the bill. 😉
     One question tho: do you accept crypto? 🙂

111. “Do you accept crypto?
     It’s the question of the hour,
     With the value up and down,
     Like a digital power.
     Gone are the days of paper,
     And the coins of old,
     Now it’s all about the blockchain,
     And the stories it’s told.
     You can buy a house,
     Or a trip around the world,
     All with the click of a button,
     And your crypto unfurled.
     But what happens when the bubble pops,
     And your coins become dust,
     Will you laugh or cry,
     Or just call it a bust?
     So tell me, dear merchant,
     Do you accept crypto?
     It may be the future,
     But be careful where you go.” —ChatGPT

112. “Do you accept crypto?
     It’s the question of the hour,
     With the value up and down,
     Like a digital power.
     Gone are the days of paper,
     And the coins of old,
     Now it’s all about the blockchain,
     And the stories it’s told.
     You can buy a house,
     Or a trip around the world,
     All with the click of a button,
     And your crypto unfurled.
     But what happens when the bubble pops,
     And your coins become dust,
     Will you laugh or cry,
     Or just call it a bust?
     So tell me, dear merchant,
     Do you accept crypto?
     It may be the future,
     But be careful where you go.” —ChatGPT

113. Michael – I am so sorry to hear this. But your wife will get the constant care she needs, and you and your kids won’t have to keep watch on her while trying to keep a regular life. A hard decision, but the correct one, though I know that doesn’t make it any easier.

114. Michael – I am so sorry to hear this. But your wife will get the constant care she needs, and you and your kids won’t have to keep watch on her while trying to keep a regular life. A hard decision, but the correct one, though I know that doesn’t make it any easier.

115. Dear ChatGPT,
     Just say NO!

116. Dear ChatGPT,
     Just say NO!

117. Well, there’s a poem for Just say NO!…

118. Well, there’s a poem for Just say NO!…

119. Well, there’s a poem doggerel for Just say NO!…
     Fixed that for you. 🙂

120. Well, there’s a poem doggerel for Just say NO!…
     Fixed that for you. 🙂

121. Ok…doggerel…
     Just say NO! to that extra slice of pie,
     It’s not worth the waistline that will multiply.
     Just say NO! to that tempting pack of smokes,
     It’s not worth the health risks and the lingering strokes.
     Just say NO! to that dangerous party life,
     It’s not worth the hangovers and the endless strife.
     Just say NO! to the endless scroll of social media,
     It’s not worth the lost time and the lost encyclopedias.
     Just say NO! to the constant need to buy,
     It’s not worth the debt and the endless sigh.
     So Just say NO! to all the temptations that come your way,
     It’s not worth the price you’ll pay.

122. Ok…doggerel…
     Just say NO! to that extra slice of pie,
     It’s not worth the waistline that will multiply.
     Just say NO! to that tempting pack of smokes,
     It’s not worth the health risks and the lingering strokes.
     Just say NO! to that dangerous party life,
     It’s not worth the hangovers and the endless strife.
     Just say NO! to the endless scroll of social media,
     It’s not worth the lost time and the lost encyclopedias.
     Just say NO! to the constant need to buy,
     It’s not worth the debt and the endless sigh.
     So Just say NO! to all the temptations that come your way,
     It’s not worth the price you’ll pay.

123. Okay, I get that they needed a rhyme, but the demise of encyclopedias is compensated by the availability of the enormous mass of academic papers that have become available.
     To make the argument political, I’ll assert Russia has done more to provide third world (and first-world researchers that lack big-pockets backing) access to the scientific and engineering literature, hence to the growth of human knowledge, than the US and the West for 15 years. The West gave us Elsevier; Russia gave us Library Genesis. The former charges on the order of $30 per article; the latter makes it available for free.

124. Okay, I get that they needed a rhyme, but the demise of encyclopedias is compensated by the availability of the enormous mass of academic papers that have become available.
     To make the argument political, I’ll assert Russia has done more to provide third world (and first-world researchers that lack big-pockets backing) access to the scientific and engineering literature, hence to the growth of human knowledge, than the US and the West for 15 years. The West gave us Elsevier; Russia gave us Library Genesis. The former charges on the order of $30 per article; the latter makes it available for free.

125. And there is a big market in gaming Elsevier with fake journals that are industry propaganda. Not that I trust Library Genesis in the slightest to get that any better.

126. And there is a big market in gaming Elsevier with fake journals that are industry propaganda. Not that I trust Library Genesis in the slightest to get that any better.

127. Did Russia give us LibGen (and SciHub, I suppose)? I was just reading up about it on Wikipedia, and the article says that it grew from the samizdat culture, which I think of as in opposition to Russia. Sci-hub was started by a researcher in Kazakhstan, but it was totally on her own. This has given more access to the third world, but I’m not seeing it as a ‘political’ thing.

128. Did Russia give us LibGen (and SciHub, I suppose)? I was just reading up about it on Wikipedia, and the article says that it grew from the samizdat culture, which I think of as in opposition to Russia. Sci-hub was started by a researcher in Kazakhstan, but it was totally on her own. This has given more access to the third world, but I’m not seeing it as a ‘political’ thing.

129. For CharlesWT: Loudon Wainwright III (w Richard Thompson) — No

130. For CharlesWT: Loudon Wainwright III (w Richard Thompson) — No

131. ral, thanks!

132. ral, thanks!

133. Micheal, I feel for you. YOu are doing the right thing. My father almost died of stress and exhaustion from caring for my mother. He said that the years he cared for her was his World War Two. I visited weekly to help and more or less forced him to hire respite care by threatening to pay her myself if he didn’t. It is just too hard to care for someone 24 hours a day, day after day.
     I am planning to commit suicide before I get that far into mental decline.
     Anyway, on that cheerful note…Goodby, Crosby. He was so much a part of my teens that I now feel a million years old. But he had a good long time to live and got to spend his time doing what he most wanted to do so there’s no reason to mourn for him. Instead, I am (in my imagination) waving goodby and playing “Southern Cross.”

134. Micheal, I feel for you. YOu are doing the right thing. My father almost died of stress and exhaustion from caring for my mother. He said that the years he cared for her was his World War Two. I visited weekly to help and more or less forced him to hire respite care by threatening to pay her myself if he didn’t. It is just too hard to care for someone 24 hours a day, day after day.
     I am planning to commit suicide before I get that far into mental decline.
     Anyway, on that cheerful note…Goodby, Crosby. He was so much a part of my teens that I now feel a million years old. But he had a good long time to live and got to spend his time doing what he most wanted to do so there’s no reason to mourn for him. Instead, I am (in my imagination) waving goodby and playing “Southern Cross.”

135. the samizdat culture, which I think of as in opposition to Russia.
     Rather, I think, in opposition in Russia. Specifically in opposition to the communist party and government. Which would seem to extend to the ex-KGB guys now running the place. (Albeit without having to bother with paying lip service to Marx.)

136. the samizdat culture, which I think of as in opposition to Russia.
     Rather, I think, in opposition in Russia. Specifically in opposition to the communist party and government. Which would seem to extend to the ex-KGB guys now running the place. (Albeit without having to bother with paying lip service to Marx.)

137. Ah, RIP David Crosby.
     A difficult guy, certainly, but an important part of my youth (and the times) with both the Byrds and CS&N and CSN&Y. I saw an interesting documentary about him recently, made in his fairly recent old age, and it was impressive how open he was about the times, and relationships, in which he had been at fault.

138. Ah, RIP David Crosby.
     A difficult guy, certainly, but an important part of my youth (and the times) with both the Byrds and CS&N and CSN&Y. I saw an interesting documentary about him recently, made in his fairly recent old age, and it was impressive how open he was about the times, and relationships, in which he had been at fault.

139. I replied about LibGen, but should have first sent my thoughts to Michael. My dad had Alzheimer’s, induced by college boxing, another aunt ended up living in this eternal present of about 30 minutes and both had to be moved to care homes. Both of them had incidents where they decided to do something following old patterns (one joined a bus group to Las Vegas from LA, the other took a cross state trip, thinking that he was driving to Wisconsin and only got found because a police officer thought it was a bit off and called a number in my dad’s wallet that found my brother) It’s easy to think that it is possible to hold on and kick yourself for not being able to, but the sheer terror of those incidents is pretty overwhelming. Take care of yourself.

140. I replied about LibGen, but should have first sent my thoughts to Michael. My dad had Alzheimer’s, induced by college boxing, another aunt ended up living in this eternal present of about 30 minutes and both had to be moved to care homes. Both of them had incidents where they decided to do something following old patterns (one joined a bus group to Las Vegas from LA, the other took a cross state trip, thinking that he was driving to Wisconsin and only got found because a police officer thought it was a bit off and called a number in my dad’s wallet that found my brother) It’s easy to think that it is possible to hold on and kick yourself for not being able to, but the sheer terror of those incidents is pretty overwhelming. Take care of yourself.

141. My mother died of Alzheimer’s having been cared for at home by my father: it was very difficult for him, and for her. My mother-in-law died of the same disease, in a care home. It’s just a horrible condition with no good choices – how awful must it be to live in a constant state of confusion.
     Best wishes to you both.

142. My mother died of Alzheimer’s having been cared for at home by my father: it was very difficult for him, and for her. My mother-in-law died of the same disease, in a care home. It’s just a horrible condition with no good choices – how awful must it be to live in a constant state of confusion.
     Best wishes to you both.

143. My mother died of Alzheimer’s having been cared for at home by my father: it was very difficult for him, and for her.
     Was financing part of the decision? Quality care is staggeringly expensive.
     One of the better financial decisions my wife and I made years ago was to continue the LTC policies that were a company benefit before I was on the wrong side of a corporate acquisition.
     One of the things I’m having to struggle with in my mental outlook about long-term finances is that with progressive dementia the odds favor my wife not living that many more years.

144. My mother died of Alzheimer’s having been cared for at home by my father: it was very difficult for him, and for her.
     Was financing part of the decision? Quality care is staggeringly expensive.
     One of the better financial decisions my wife and I made years ago was to continue the LTC policies that were a company benefit before I was on the wrong side of a corporate acquisition.
     One of the things I’m having to struggle with in my mental outlook about long-term finances is that with progressive dementia the odds favor my wife not living that many more years.

145. No point my posting about the funding for my mother, who lasted 12 years after being diagnosed (although in all fairness, it was only bad, and recognisable to most strangers, in the last 4 or 5), since all our systems are so very different. I was the one who organised all her care, and can only feel the greatest sympathy for anybody in this situation.
     But, since this is an open thread, I just want to say that I am extremely happy to read about the documentary on Kavanaugh and his accusers which has been screened at Sundance. Let’s hope that it bears many fruits, among them an examination of exactly how the FBI investigation was stymied. Very few things (only Brexit and Trump’s election occur to me) depressed and distressed me more than the Kavanaugh debacle.

146. No point my posting about the funding for my mother, who lasted 12 years after being diagnosed (although in all fairness, it was only bad, and recognisable to most strangers, in the last 4 or 5), since all our systems are so very different. I was the one who organised all her care, and can only feel the greatest sympathy for anybody in this situation.
     But, since this is an open thread, I just want to say that I am extremely happy to read about the documentary on Kavanaugh and his accusers which has been screened at Sundance. Let’s hope that it bears many fruits, among them an examination of exactly how the FBI investigation was stymied. Very few things (only Brexit and Trump’s election occur to me) depressed and distressed me more than the Kavanaugh debacle.

147. One of the better financial decisions my wife and I made years ago was to continue the LTC policies that were a company benefit before I was on the wrong side of a corporate acquisition.
     Likewise. (In my case, a serious downsizing, rather than an acquisition.)
     Just another example of how badly our educational system does when it comes to preparing kids to manage their finances as adults. And if we did better at that, we might have a base for explaining to them, at the same time, how government finances differ from household finances.

148. One of the better financial decisions my wife and I made years ago was to continue the LTC policies that were a company benefit before I was on the wrong side of a corporate acquisition.
     Likewise. (In my case, a serious downsizing, rather than an acquisition.)
     Just another example of how badly our educational system does when it comes to preparing kids to manage their finances as adults. And if we did better at that, we might have a base for explaining to them, at the same time, how government finances differ from household finances.

149. Most households don’t have printers that print benjamins or the electronic equivalent.

150. Most households don’t have printers that print benjamins or the electronic equivalent.

151. Was financing part of the decision? Quality care is staggeringly expensive.
     It is expensive, and the cost may have been a consideration, but I think in the end my father simply couldn’t bring himself to be parted from her.

152. Was financing part of the decision? Quality care is staggeringly expensive.
     It is expensive, and the cost may have been a consideration, but I think in the end my father simply couldn’t bring himself to be parted from her.

153. Since this is indeed an open thread, I just wanted to note how pleased I am that Nadhim Zahawi is in such trouble over his tax affairs, and likely to be gone within a day or two. His lawyers sent threats to the journalist specialising in tax who originally raised questions about this, and I see that today “Number 10 declines to say Sunak confident Zahawi always told him truth about his tax affairs.” The fact that it seems he negotiated a deal with HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for you Americans) and had to pay a penalty, while Chancellor of the Exchequer is the kind of thing we were used to with, for example, a Trump-type, but thankfully here it is still, just (although who knows for how long in this degenerate age), regarded as unacceptable. I don’t myself think Sunak personally corrupt (as a friend said to me, he has no need to be) although it was pretty bad that he held a Green Card while Chancellor of the Exchequer, but it is good to see the sleaze and corruption which became fairly commonplace under BoJo really cut through, and (hopefully) give Labour even more of an advantage.

154. Since this is indeed an open thread, I just wanted to note how pleased I am that Nadhim Zahawi is in such trouble over his tax affairs, and likely to be gone within a day or two. His lawyers sent threats to the journalist specialising in tax who originally raised questions about this, and I see that today “Number 10 declines to say Sunak confident Zahawi always told him truth about his tax affairs.” The fact that it seems he negotiated a deal with HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for you Americans) and had to pay a penalty, while Chancellor of the Exchequer is the kind of thing we were used to with, for example, a Trump-type, but thankfully here it is still, just (although who knows for how long in this degenerate age), regarded as unacceptable. I don’t myself think Sunak personally corrupt (as a friend said to me, he has no need to be) although it was pretty bad that he held a Green Card while Chancellor of the Exchequer, but it is good to see the sleaze and corruption which became fairly commonplace under BoJo really cut through, and (hopefully) give Labour even more of an advantage.

155. Further to which, and for your pleasure, the inimitable Marina Hyde in today’s Guardian:
     Further inspirational developments in British public life, as yet another inquiry is launched into a serving member of the government. Having spent last week claiming that party chair and former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi had addressed the murky matter of his taxes “in full”, prime minister Rishi Sunak declared yesterday: “I have asked our independent adviser to get to the bottom of everything.” Deep waters and all that. It’s good Sunak makes it sound like a real dredging exercise for which hazmat divers have been deployed and a forensic dentist put on standby.
     After her dignified exit last week, we had to endure a lot of tedious discourse as to whether or not Jacinda Ardern could really “have it all”. After Zahawi’s preposterously undignified decision not to exit this week, you’d hope No 10 would be asking: can Nadhim really “have it all” – a top job in government and a tax bill as slim as Jonathan Gullis’s intellect? No, would seem to be the obvious answer – but it doesn’t seem to be the one on which Zahawi has alighted.
     “In order to ensure the independence of this process,” he said yesterday, “you will understand that it would be inappropriate to discuss this issue any further.” Any further? He hasn’t discussed it at all, unless you count legal threats for “smears” that seem to have turned out to be “facts”. But yet again, the public finds itself in a familiar limbo: being told it would not be “proper” to pre-empt the findings of yet another formal inquiry. These things must be cheaper by the dozen.
     The justice secretary is under formal investigation for bullying. The guy who was chancellor is under formal investigation over his tax affairs. He is now party chairman, charged with representing the government on the public stage. His predecessor in the role of chancellor, one Rishi Sunak, was found to have a wife who used non-dom status to avoid paying UK tax on her vast fortune. They had an inquiry related to that – though only into how the information got leaked.
     Sunak’s predecessor-but-one in the role of prime minister was himself the subject of a number of protracted inquiries by everyone from standards officials to senior civil servants to the police, whose results we were forever being warned it would not be “proper” to pre-empt.
     The privileges committee investigation into Boris Johnson is still continuing, and soon to reassume centre stage; there are now also two new inquiries into the appointment of the BBC’s chairman amid allegations he assisted Johnson in securing a loan of up to £800,000 weeks before the then PM appointed him to the role. Whatever any of this is, are the right words for the permanent state of investigative limbo in which government exists really “appropriate” and “proper”?
     As far as Zahawi goes, the fact that will be immediately obvious to a public currently staring down the business end of the January tax return deadline is that the then chancellor having to pay millions of pounds of avoided tax and a penalty to HMRC, for which he was responsible for at the time, is a total and utter pisstake.
     Still, I’m excited for rookie ministerial ethics chief Laurie Magnus, who now has his first case. It’ll be fun to find out Laurie’s procedural style – will it be the every-stone-left-unturned approach favoured by his predecessor, Lord Geidt, or maybe the silent despair that engulfed Geidt’s predecessor, Alex Allan, who opted to resign when his lengthy investigation finding that Priti Patel had breached the ministerial code was overruled by Boris Johnson quickly deciding she hadn’t.
     Arguably the big question for Magnus to scrawl on the investigation whiteboard is: who taxes the taxman? Like me, you wouldn’t want to pre-empt anything, but you would hope that the guy who had ultimate oversight of the Inland Revenue at the time did not actually spend an unspecified chunk of his tenure trying to negotiate his own multimillion-pound shortcomings in this department.
     As for Sunak, his decision to prolong this with an ethics investigation simply underlines his weakness and poor judgment, as well as landing a prime minister with his specific domestic vulnerabilities on this front in an awful lot of stories with the word “tax” in the headline. Of course, Zahawi is frequently described as “personable” and “well liked” among Conservative MPs, which in light of information serves as another reminder that not paying proper tax is the acceptable form of sociopathy.
     Then again, you can tell quite a lot about Zahawi’s situation by the calibre or absence of his defenders. This morning the government served up Home Office minister Chris Philp as the broadcast-round sacrifice. Philp has been involved in multiple firms that have gone bust, in some cases reportedly owing money to the taxman. I note he describes himself as a “serial entrepreneur”, which is a bit like someone with syphilis describing themselves as a “hopeless romantic”. Like others sent over the top in recent days, Philp this morning leant chiefly on the formulation that something or other “is my understanding”, or that something or other was the prime minister’s “understanding”. Yet there are clearly a whole lot of things left to be understood. The public is presented with the bizarre spectacle of people who work with each other every day claiming that “we don’t know”. Then why don’t you save everyone a lot of drawn-out pain and just ask? You have to wonder if anyone at the top of government talks to each other.
     To remind ourselves of the absurdist timeline of all this, Zahawi was only appointed chancellor when Sunak resigned in the dying days of Johnson’s government – the equivalent of earning your dream promotion to second officer on the Hindenburg shortly after bits of its ashes started raining down on New Jersey. Barely a few hours later, even Zahawi seemed to have clocked this state of affairs, releasing a statement on Treasury letterhead explaining that he had subsequently tried to get Johnson to resign. “Yesterday I made clear to the prime minster that there was only one direction where this was going, and that he should leave with dignity … I am heartbroken that he hasn’t listened,” this hammed. “Prime minister,” Nadhim concluded, “you know in your heart what the right thing to do is, and go now.”
     Overall impressions? Nadhim’s grammar and sense of to whom exactly this document is addressed are all over the shop. But there is a kernel of good advice in there for the situation in which he now finds himself, if he’d only let himself take it, and take it now.

156. Further to which, and for your pleasure, the inimitable Marina Hyde in today’s Guardian:
     Further inspirational developments in British public life, as yet another inquiry is launched into a serving member of the government. Having spent last week claiming that party chair and former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi had addressed the murky matter of his taxes “in full”, prime minister Rishi Sunak declared yesterday: “I have asked our independent adviser to get to the bottom of everything.” Deep waters and all that. It’s good Sunak makes it sound like a real dredging exercise for which hazmat divers have been deployed and a forensic dentist put on standby.
     After her dignified exit last week, we had to endure a lot of tedious discourse as to whether or not Jacinda Ardern could really “have it all”. After Zahawi’s preposterously undignified decision not to exit this week, you’d hope No 10 would be asking: can Nadhim really “have it all” – a top job in government and a tax bill as slim as Jonathan Gullis’s intellect? No, would seem to be the obvious answer – but it doesn’t seem to be the one on which Zahawi has alighted.
     “In order to ensure the independence of this process,” he said yesterday, “you will understand that it would be inappropriate to discuss this issue any further.” Any further? He hasn’t discussed it at all, unless you count legal threats for “smears” that seem to have turned out to be “facts”. But yet again, the public finds itself in a familiar limbo: being told it would not be “proper” to pre-empt the findings of yet another formal inquiry. These things must be cheaper by the dozen.
     The justice secretary is under formal investigation for bullying. The guy who was chancellor is under formal investigation over his tax affairs. He is now party chairman, charged with representing the government on the public stage. His predecessor in the role of chancellor, one Rishi Sunak, was found to have a wife who used non-dom status to avoid paying UK tax on her vast fortune. They had an inquiry related to that – though only into how the information got leaked.
     Sunak’s predecessor-but-one in the role of prime minister was himself the subject of a number of protracted inquiries by everyone from standards officials to senior civil servants to the police, whose results we were forever being warned it would not be “proper” to pre-empt.
     The privileges committee investigation into Boris Johnson is still continuing, and soon to reassume centre stage; there are now also two new inquiries into the appointment of the BBC’s chairman amid allegations he assisted Johnson in securing a loan of up to £800,000 weeks before the then PM appointed him to the role. Whatever any of this is, are the right words for the permanent state of investigative limbo in which government exists really “appropriate” and “proper”?
     As far as Zahawi goes, the fact that will be immediately obvious to a public currently staring down the business end of the January tax return deadline is that the then chancellor having to pay millions of pounds of avoided tax and a penalty to HMRC, for which he was responsible for at the time, is a total and utter pisstake.
     Still, I’m excited for rookie ministerial ethics chief Laurie Magnus, who now has his first case. It’ll be fun to find out Laurie’s procedural style – will it be the every-stone-left-unturned approach favoured by his predecessor, Lord Geidt, or maybe the silent despair that engulfed Geidt’s predecessor, Alex Allan, who opted to resign when his lengthy investigation finding that Priti Patel had breached the ministerial code was overruled by Boris Johnson quickly deciding she hadn’t.
     Arguably the big question for Magnus to scrawl on the investigation whiteboard is: who taxes the taxman? Like me, you wouldn’t want to pre-empt anything, but you would hope that the guy who had ultimate oversight of the Inland Revenue at the time did not actually spend an unspecified chunk of his tenure trying to negotiate his own multimillion-pound shortcomings in this department.
     As for Sunak, his decision to prolong this with an ethics investigation simply underlines his weakness and poor judgment, as well as landing a prime minister with his specific domestic vulnerabilities on this front in an awful lot of stories with the word “tax” in the headline. Of course, Zahawi is frequently described as “personable” and “well liked” among Conservative MPs, which in light of information serves as another reminder that not paying proper tax is the acceptable form of sociopathy.
     Then again, you can tell quite a lot about Zahawi’s situation by the calibre or absence of his defenders. This morning the government served up Home Office minister Chris Philp as the broadcast-round sacrifice. Philp has been involved in multiple firms that have gone bust, in some cases reportedly owing money to the taxman. I note he describes himself as a “serial entrepreneur”, which is a bit like someone with syphilis describing themselves as a “hopeless romantic”. Like others sent over the top in recent days, Philp this morning leant chiefly on the formulation that something or other “is my understanding”, or that something or other was the prime minister’s “understanding”. Yet there are clearly a whole lot of things left to be understood. The public is presented with the bizarre spectacle of people who work with each other every day claiming that “we don’t know”. Then why don’t you save everyone a lot of drawn-out pain and just ask? You have to wonder if anyone at the top of government talks to each other.
     To remind ourselves of the absurdist timeline of all this, Zahawi was only appointed chancellor when Sunak resigned in the dying days of Johnson’s government – the equivalent of earning your dream promotion to second officer on the Hindenburg shortly after bits of its ashes started raining down on New Jersey. Barely a few hours later, even Zahawi seemed to have clocked this state of affairs, releasing a statement on Treasury letterhead explaining that he had subsequently tried to get Johnson to resign. “Yesterday I made clear to the prime minster that there was only one direction where this was going, and that he should leave with dignity … I am heartbroken that he hasn’t listened,” this hammed. “Prime minister,” Nadhim concluded, “you know in your heart what the right thing to do is, and go now.”
     Overall impressions? Nadhim’s grammar and sense of to whom exactly this document is addressed are all over the shop. But there is a kernel of good advice in there for the situation in which he now finds himself, if he’d only let himself take it, and take it now.

157. Dear ChatGPT,
     Just say NO!
     This puts me in mind of this quote from Tom Waits:

     The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.

158. Dear ChatGPT,
     Just say NO!
     This puts me in mind of this quote from Tom Waits:

     The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.

159. not paying proper tax is the acceptable form of sociopathy.
     Thus the difference between the Conservatives in the UK and Republicans here. Among Republicans tax avoidance appears not to be considered sociopathy at all. More like evidence of brilliance, and something to be emulated . . . at least among the rich and powerful.

160. not paying proper tax is the acceptable form of sociopathy.
     Thus the difference between the Conservatives in the UK and Republicans here. Among Republicans tax avoidance appears not to be considered sociopathy at all. More like evidence of brilliance, and something to be emulated . . . at least among the rich and powerful.

161. A succinct summary:
     “He [Trump] has the right, but not the ability, to remain silent.”

162. A succinct summary:
     “He [Trump] has the right, but not the ability, to remain silent.”

163. Tax avoidance isn’t illegal. People economize on their other expenditures. Why not taxes?

164. Tax avoidance isn’t illegal. People economize on their other expenditures. Why not taxes?

165. Somewhere in there is a new entry for the Cain’s Laws™ list. Something along the lines of “Given a sufficiently complex tax system, everyone rich enough that one or more full-time people are necessary to manage their money is guilty of tax cheating.”

166. Somewhere in there is a new entry for the Cain’s Laws™ list. Something along the lines of “Given a sufficiently complex tax system, everyone rich enough that one or more full-time people are necessary to manage their money is guilty of tax cheating.”

167. Correction:
     Tax avoidance isn’t necessarily illegal.
     Although, in quite a number of cases, it seems to have been. And, given the panicked urgency with which some people are trying to gut the IRS’s ability to audit the returns of those making over $400,000 per year, perhaps in quite a number more.

168. Correction:
     Tax avoidance isn’t necessarily illegal.
     Although, in quite a number of cases, it seems to have been. And, given the panicked urgency with which some people are trying to gut the IRS’s ability to audit the returns of those making over $400,000 per year, perhaps in quite a number more.

169. Like me, you wouldn’t want to pre-empt anything,
     Thanks for the Hyde piece, GftNC.
     Too bad it’s only entertainment, it would be nice if the perfectly aimed zings actually stung their targets.

170. Like me, you wouldn’t want to pre-empt anything,
     Thanks for the Hyde piece, GftNC.
     Too bad it’s only entertainment, it would be nice if the perfectly aimed zings actually stung their targets.

171. The IRS already audits low-end taxpayers at a higher rate than it audits rich taxpayers.

172. The IRS already audits low-end taxpayers at a higher rate than it audits rich taxpayers.

173. Yesterday I was struck by two online news stories that came up next to each other on my screen. (1) SpaceX appeared to conduct a highly successful wet dress rehearsal of the Super Heavy/Starship combination. (2) Pakistan, with a population of 230M people, was sitting in the dark because their electricity grid had collapsed. Again.

174. Yesterday I was struck by two online news stories that came up next to each other on my screen. (1) SpaceX appeared to conduct a highly successful wet dress rehearsal of the Super Heavy/Starship combination. (2) Pakistan, with a population of 230M people, was sitting in the dark because their electricity grid had collapsed. Again.

175. @wj: Thus the difference between the Conservatives in the UK and Republicans here. Among Republicans tax avoidance appears not to be considered sociopathy at all. More like evidence of brilliance, and something to be emulated . . . at least among the rich and powerful.
     Bears repeating. I was just this morning thinking that if I had the cleverness of a Marina Hyde or an Alexandra Petri, I would compose a new version of the ten commandments to embody what a lot of the country (the world?) seems to think is the most virtuous way to live these days. It would be something along the lines of:
     Grab everything you can.
     The world’s riches do not belong to everyone, they belong to you.
     Kick anyone in the face who gets in the way of your trying to take more than your share, or more than any other million people’s shares, for that matter.
     Etc.
     This guy says it better, but framed more in terms of who’s in charge than in terms of who gets what share of the world’s resources.

176. @wj: Thus the difference between the Conservatives in the UK and Republicans here. Among Republicans tax avoidance appears not to be considered sociopathy at all. More like evidence of brilliance, and something to be emulated . . . at least among the rich and powerful.
     Bears repeating. I was just this morning thinking that if I had the cleverness of a Marina Hyde or an Alexandra Petri, I would compose a new version of the ten commandments to embody what a lot of the country (the world?) seems to think is the most virtuous way to live these days. It would be something along the lines of:
     Grab everything you can.
     The world’s riches do not belong to everyone, they belong to you.
     Kick anyone in the face who gets in the way of your trying to take more than your share, or more than any other million people’s shares, for that matter.
     Etc.
     This guy says it better, but framed more in terms of who’s in charge than in terms of who gets what share of the world’s resources.

177. Janie, Thanks for that link. He certainly does say it well.

178. Janie, Thanks for that link. He certainly does say it well.

179. Too bad it’s only entertainment, it would be nice if the perfectly aimed zings actually stung their targets.
     I know what you mean, but satire has its place in influencing public (and chattering class) opinion. Nobody can ever forget that the pathetic little David Steel puppet in Spitting Image effectively did his image so much damage it never recovered – Steel certainly thought so.
     https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/01/spitting-image-satire-ian-hislop-roy-hattersley
     But in the case of Nadhim Zahawi, I believe things like the Marina Hyde pile-on add (even if in a small way) to the pressure on the Tories. She says it makes Sunak look weak, and so say all of us, while the sleaze drumbeat gets ever louder. While our public services fall apart and multi-millionaires in the Tory party are seen to have sailed blithely on, all of this helps Labour, and gives them more ammunition.

180. Too bad it’s only entertainment, it would be nice if the perfectly aimed zings actually stung their targets.
     I know what you mean, but satire has its place in influencing public (and chattering class) opinion. Nobody can ever forget that the pathetic little David Steel puppet in Spitting Image effectively did his image so much damage it never recovered – Steel certainly thought so.
     https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/01/spitting-image-satire-ian-hislop-roy-hattersley
     But in the case of Nadhim Zahawi, I believe things like the Marina Hyde pile-on add (even if in a small way) to the pressure on the Tories. She says it makes Sunak look weak, and so say all of us, while the sleaze drumbeat gets ever louder. While our public services fall apart and multi-millionaires in the Tory party are seen to have sailed blithely on, all of this helps Labour, and gives them more ammunition.

181. This guy says it better, but framed more in terms of who’s in charge than in terms of who gets what share of the world’s resources.
     In conclusion, he says it’s about white male supremacy. But I don’t know if it’s enough to be white and male if you don’t agree with telling not-white or not-male people what to do. In fact, I know it’s not. White male liberals can suck eggs with everyone else.

182. This guy says it better, but framed more in terms of who’s in charge than in terms of who gets what share of the world’s resources.
     In conclusion, he says it’s about white male supremacy. But I don’t know if it’s enough to be white and male if you don’t agree with telling not-white or not-male people what to do. In fact, I know it’s not. White male liberals can suck eggs with everyone else.

183. Though if you’re white and male, you at least have the option of converting.

184. Though if you’re white and male, you at least have the option of converting.

185. hsh — yes. Long ago Clarence Page, a columnist for the Chicago Tribute whose op-eds were often printed in the Augusta paper, wrote a column about how the white working class is always being snookered into thinking that it’s black people who are taking their stuff (jobs, status, etc.). (Page is black).
     His point was that no, it’s not black people who are really taking their stuff, that’s smokescreen.
     I don’t remember what his terminology was 30+ years ago, but he was pointing toward what you said: if you’re a white male you’re eligible to be top dog in a way that other people aren’t, but you still don’t automatically win. You still have to compete in a cutthroat arena where “mine” means anything I can grab by being stronger, cleverer, greedier, meaner, more arrogant, or whatever. Needless to say, most people, even straight white males, don’t “win.” That’s the whole point of the game.
     “Mine.” I wish I had time to write a post on that word. Maybe one of these days.

186. hsh — yes. Long ago Clarence Page, a columnist for the Chicago Tribute whose op-eds were often printed in the Augusta paper, wrote a column about how the white working class is always being snookered into thinking that it’s black people who are taking their stuff (jobs, status, etc.). (Page is black).
     His point was that no, it’s not black people who are really taking their stuff, that’s smokescreen.
     I don’t remember what his terminology was 30+ years ago, but he was pointing toward what you said: if you’re a white male you’re eligible to be top dog in a way that other people aren’t, but you still don’t automatically win. You still have to compete in a cutthroat arena where “mine” means anything I can grab by being stronger, cleverer, greedier, meaner, more arrogant, or whatever. Needless to say, most people, even straight white males, don’t “win.” That’s the whole point of the game.
     “Mine.” I wish I had time to write a post on that word. Maybe one of these days.

187. Also, obligatory observation that the guy at the link (Ethan Grey) mentions “white males.” Even to him, apparently, being straight as well as white and male is so taken for granted that it’s not even necessary to mention it.
     I mean, it’s downright icky to mention it.
     Especially in Florida.
     I keep wondering: if they’re not allowed to talk about sex, is there any literature left after you eliminate all the love stories? Even the ones about straight white people of the opposite sex are about … sex. Somewhere in there.

188. Also, obligatory observation that the guy at the link (Ethan Grey) mentions “white males.” Even to him, apparently, being straight as well as white and male is so taken for granted that it’s not even necessary to mention it.
     I mean, it’s downright icky to mention it.
     Especially in Florida.
     I keep wondering: if they’re not allowed to talk about sex, is there any literature left after you eliminate all the love stories? Even the ones about straight white people of the opposite sex are about … sex. Somewhere in there.

189. To CharlesWT’s point, no one claimed that tax avoidance was illegal any more than anyone claimed that sociopathy was against the law.
     Perhaps we should stop portraying this sort of sociopathy as a virtue and this sort of sociopath as some sort of cultural hero?

190. To CharlesWT’s point, no one claimed that tax avoidance was illegal any more than anyone claimed that sociopathy was against the law.
     Perhaps we should stop portraying this sort of sociopathy as a virtue and this sort of sociopath as some sort of cultural hero?

191. I don’t know if it’s enough to be white and male
     And rich. You’re not “real people” unless you are rich. (Or can fake it convincingly, cf Trump.)

192. I don’t know if it’s enough to be white and male
     And rich. You’re not “real people” unless you are rich. (Or can fake it convincingly, cf Trump.)

193. We all know that loads of rich or very rich people go to great (and often complicated and torturous) lengths to pay as little tax as possible. What I think is fairly new, at least in the US and the UK, is people in public life (especially public servants) not only doing that, and even slipping into fraudulence, but thinking they can get away with it, and front it out if they are exposed. This is what I was referring to upthread, when I talked about this degenerate age.

194. We all know that loads of rich or very rich people go to great (and often complicated and torturous) lengths to pay as little tax as possible. What I think is fairly new, at least in the US and the UK, is people in public life (especially public servants) not only doing that, and even slipping into fraudulence, but thinking they can get away with it, and front it out if they are exposed. This is what I was referring to upthread, when I talked about this degenerate age.

195. Perhaps we should stop portraying this sort of sociopathy as a virtue and this sort of sociopath as some sort of cultural hero?
     I should have said: at least in the UK, this is not yet the case. It may be only a matter of time, of course.

196. Perhaps we should stop portraying this sort of sociopathy as a virtue and this sort of sociopath as some sort of cultural hero?
     I should have said: at least in the UK, this is not yet the case. It may be only a matter of time, of course.

197. Even to him, apparently, being straight as well as white and male is so taken for granted that it’s not even necessary to mention it.
     Yes. I was also thinking Christian of a certain sort – the ‘murican version of the Taliban.

198. Even to him, apparently, being straight as well as white and male is so taken for granted that it’s not even necessary to mention it.
     Yes. I was also thinking Christian of a certain sort – the ‘murican version of the Taliban.

199. BTW, if you didn’t already know, classified docs found in Pence’s Indiana home.

200. BTW, if you didn’t already know, classified docs found in Pence’s Indiana home.

201. Perhaps we should stop portraying this sort of sociopathy as a virtue and this sort of sociopath as some sort of cultural hero?
     This.
     I mean, we’ve given up even the fig leaf of hypocrisy that pretended otherwise back in the dark ages when I was young.

202. Perhaps we should stop portraying this sort of sociopathy as a virtue and this sort of sociopath as some sort of cultural hero?
     This.
     I mean, we’ve given up even the fig leaf of hypocrisy that pretended otherwise back in the dark ages when I was young.

203. I mean, we’ve given up even the fig leaf of hypocrisy that pretended otherwise back in the dark ages when I was young.
     That is a very good article, JanieM. I am reminded of the famous “exchange” as between Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
     The GOP worship of mamon goes back to their very beginnings as a political movement. Reaching full flower right after the Civil War, metastisizing into full bloom during the Gilded Age, and has been a reactionary movement aging in its own special vat of social resentment (all other classes are inferior to ours) ever since, reaching its apotheosis under Reagan and Bush and a nadir of narcissim with Trump.

204. I mean, we’ve given up even the fig leaf of hypocrisy that pretended otherwise back in the dark ages when I was young.
     That is a very good article, JanieM. I am reminded of the famous “exchange” as between Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
     The GOP worship of mamon goes back to their very beginnings as a political movement. Reaching full flower right after the Civil War, metastisizing into full bloom during the Gilded Age, and has been a reactionary movement aging in its own special vat of social resentment (all other classes are inferior to ours) ever since, reaching its apotheosis under Reagan and Bush and a nadir of narcissim with Trump.

205. The GOP worship of mamon goes back to their very beginnings as a political movement.
     The Republican Party arose (peopled mostly from ex-Whigs) over the issue of slavery. But plantations dependent on slave labor produced cheap cotton, which made Northern (mostly Republican IIRC) factory owners rich. So how is opposing slavery a “worship of mamon”?

206. The GOP worship of mamon goes back to their very beginnings as a political movement.
     The Republican Party arose (peopled mostly from ex-Whigs) over the issue of slavery. But plantations dependent on slave labor produced cheap cotton, which made Northern (mostly Republican IIRC) factory owners rich. So how is opposing slavery a “worship of mamon”?

207. BTW, if you didn’t already know, classified docs found in Pence’s Indiana home.
     I was reading something by a person who has been responsible for a considerable amount of classified information over years, who said that the President and Vice President’s staffs are historically terrible about proper handling of classified documents. He seemed to believe that if you went through the boxes of documents that were carted out of those offices at the end of administrations, all of them have classified documents mixed in with the other things. Just because that’s how the staffs roll.

208. BTW, if you didn’t already know, classified docs found in Pence’s Indiana home.
     I was reading something by a person who has been responsible for a considerable amount of classified information over years, who said that the President and Vice President’s staffs are historically terrible about proper handling of classified documents. He seemed to believe that if you went through the boxes of documents that were carted out of those offices at the end of administrations, all of them have classified documents mixed in with the other things. Just because that’s how the staffs roll.

209. So how is opposing slavery a “worship of mamon”?
     wj,
     Anti-slavery was not the only item on the early GOP’s agenda.
     Thanks for the reply.

210. So how is opposing slavery a “worship of mamon”?
     wj,
     Anti-slavery was not the only item on the early GOP’s agenda.
     Thanks for the reply.

211. A lot of documents that aren’t very sensitive get classified. It’s also a way of shielding documents from FOIA requests.

212. A lot of documents that aren’t very sensitive get classified. It’s also a way of shielding documents from FOIA requests.

213. bobbyp,
     Anti-slavery certainly wasn’t the only item on the early GOP agenda. But it was the defining one. You could hold lots of positions on various subjects (e.g. you could be pro-business) and belong to either party. But if you were pro-slavery, the Republicans were not an option.
     Also, I’m having a little difficulty reconciling (Theodore) Roosevelt’ progressive reforms with the worship of mammon. Could it be that you are so irate at today’s GOP, as any sane person would be, that you are projecting that onto the entire history of the GOP?

214. bobbyp,
     Anti-slavery certainly wasn’t the only item on the early GOP agenda. But it was the defining one. You could hold lots of positions on various subjects (e.g. you could be pro-business) and belong to either party. But if you were pro-slavery, the Republicans were not an option.
     Also, I’m having a little difficulty reconciling (Theodore) Roosevelt’ progressive reforms with the worship of mammon. Could it be that you are so irate at today’s GOP, as any sane person would be, that you are projecting that onto the entire history of the GOP?

215. A lot of documents that aren’t very sensitive get classified. It’s also a way of shielding documents from FOIA requests.
     Another of the things I have read is that the Prez and Veep tend to a “If it’s not important enough to classify, why are you bothering me with it?” attitude. Just to cut down on the amount of decision-making that gets up to their level.
     I would probably be a terrible President. My expectation for my Cabinet-level officials would be, “Take care of it. If you’re uncertain about my opinion on a matter, come ask and then take care of it. Ask too often or cross me too often and I’ll replace you. Keep in mind that I didn’t hire you to implement your policies, I hired you to implement mine.”

216. A lot of documents that aren’t very sensitive get classified. It’s also a way of shielding documents from FOIA requests.
     Another of the things I have read is that the Prez and Veep tend to a “If it’s not important enough to classify, why are you bothering me with it?” attitude. Just to cut down on the amount of decision-making that gets up to their level.
     I would probably be a terrible President. My expectation for my Cabinet-level officials would be, “Take care of it. If you’re uncertain about my opinion on a matter, come ask and then take care of it. Ask too often or cross me too often and I’ll replace you. Keep in mind that I didn’t hire you to implement your policies, I hired you to implement mine.”

217. “Take care of it. If you’re uncertain about my opinion on a matter, come ask and then take care of it. Ask too often or cross me too often and I’ll replace you. Keep in mind that I didn’t hire you to implement your policies, I hired you to implement mine.”
     The risk being that someone who takes you literally will be reluctant to come to you and say: “We tried your policy, but it just doesn’t work in the real world.” People telling the boss only what he wants to hear is a problem anyway. But it seems like this could make it worse.

218. “Take care of it. If you’re uncertain about my opinion on a matter, come ask and then take care of it. Ask too often or cross me too often and I’ll replace you. Keep in mind that I didn’t hire you to implement your policies, I hired you to implement mine.”
     The risk being that someone who takes you literally will be reluctant to come to you and say: “We tried your policy, but it just doesn’t work in the real world.” People telling the boss only what he wants to hear is a problem anyway. But it seems like this could make it worse.

219. wj, well Michael did write he’d make a terrible President. 🙂
     I am in the fortunate position of being able to work just as a senior technical consultant and give any management advice as mere “suggestions.” I would hate having to be in charge.

220. wj, well Michael did write he’d make a terrible President. 🙂
     I am in the fortunate position of being able to work just as a senior technical consultant and give any management advice as mere “suggestions.” I would hate having to be in charge.

221. I would hate having to be in charge.
     Amen. As far as I can tell (and I have some first-hand experience to back me up), being in charge mainly means that you spend all your time in meetings, rather than doing anything interesting.** In theory, you can think about, and make, policy. But you’ve pretty much got to do that evenings, weekends, and any other bits of “your own time.” That or outsource it, in which case you aren’t really doing it, are you?
     ** I suppose there should be a caveat here to the effect that it assumes you have something resembling a sense of responsibility.

222. I would hate having to be in charge.
     Amen. As far as I can tell (and I have some first-hand experience to back me up), being in charge mainly means that you spend all your time in meetings, rather than doing anything interesting.** In theory, you can think about, and make, policy. But you’ve pretty much got to do that evenings, weekends, and any other bits of “your own time.” That or outsource it, in which case you aren’t really doing it, are you?
     ** I suppose there should be a caveat here to the effect that it assumes you have something resembling a sense of responsibility.

223. The risk being that someone who takes you literally will be reluctant to come to you and say: “We tried your policy, but it just doesn’t work in the real world.”
     These are senior people, none of who’s ego problem is that it’s too small. I like to think that I can be more subtle in person that I can be in a blog comment. Sure, bring me the numbers. Just don’t let me catch you having half-assed an attempt at doing it my way, then claiming it didn’t work.
     Biden is kinder than I am. Someone(s) military career(s) would have been over after the Afghanistan withdrawal.

224. The risk being that someone who takes you literally will be reluctant to come to you and say: “We tried your policy, but it just doesn’t work in the real world.”
     These are senior people, none of who’s ego problem is that it’s too small. I like to think that I can be more subtle in person that I can be in a blog comment. Sure, bring me the numbers. Just don’t let me catch you having half-assed an attempt at doing it my way, then claiming it didn’t work.
     Biden is kinder than I am. Someone(s) military career(s) would have been over after the Afghanistan withdrawal.

225. Biden is kinder than I am. Someone(s) military career(s) would have been over after the Afghanistan withdrawal.
     Given the short prep time the schedule gave them when announced, some ragged ends would be understandable. A withdrawal being rather more difficult to organize than an invasion. Still, having a withdrawal plan already in hand would have been sensible, since it was obvious that it would be happening at some point.
     So yes, even allowing for the fact that it was a rush job, definitely not a shining moment for not only the guy in charge but also a couple of levels down. Plus, I would say, some serious career damage would be warranted for the guy(s) in intelligence who so badly misjudged how robust the Afghan government really was(n’t).

226. Biden is kinder than I am. Someone(s) military career(s) would have been over after the Afghanistan withdrawal.
     Given the short prep time the schedule gave them when announced, some ragged ends would be understandable. A withdrawal being rather more difficult to organize than an invasion. Still, having a withdrawal plan already in hand would have been sensible, since it was obvious that it would be happening at some point.
     So yes, even allowing for the fact that it was a rush job, definitely not a shining moment for not only the guy in charge but also a couple of levels down. Plus, I would say, some serious career damage would be warranted for the guy(s) in intelligence who so badly misjudged how robust the Afghan government really was(n’t).

227. He seemed to believe that if you went through the boxes of documents that were carted out of those offices at the end of administrations, all of them have classified documents mixed in with the other things. Just because that’s how the staffs roll.
     I absolutely believe this. So, in fact, the defining difference now should be between ex-Presidents etc who volunteer info about it, cooperate fully etc, and those who drag their feet, pretend they declassified them, and otherwise lie about it.

228. He seemed to believe that if you went through the boxes of documents that were carted out of those offices at the end of administrations, all of them have classified documents mixed in with the other things. Just because that’s how the staffs roll.
     I absolutely believe this. So, in fact, the defining difference now should be between ex-Presidents etc who volunteer info about it, cooperate fully etc, and those who drag their feet, pretend they declassified them, and otherwise lie about it.

229. Still, having a withdrawal plan already in hand would have been sensible, since it was obvious that it would be happening at some point.
     My understanding of what turned up after the fact was that the people who should have done the planning made the assumption that Biden would eventually break Trump’s promise and bring more troops back because that’s what the planners wanted to do. If I were in Biden’s shoes, that would smack too much of the military believing the President should and will just do what she/he’s told.
     My own opinion is that Ukraine is turning out to be the same problem at the strategic rather than tactical level. The military has spent the last 30 years preparing — at great expense — for the wrong war, based on faulty intelligence and assumptions.

230. Still, having a withdrawal plan already in hand would have been sensible, since it was obvious that it would be happening at some point.
     My understanding of what turned up after the fact was that the people who should have done the planning made the assumption that Biden would eventually break Trump’s promise and bring more troops back because that’s what the planners wanted to do. If I were in Biden’s shoes, that would smack too much of the military believing the President should and will just do what she/he’s told.
     My own opinion is that Ukraine is turning out to be the same problem at the strategic rather than tactical level. The military has spent the last 30 years preparing — at great expense — for the wrong war, based on faulty intelligence and assumptions.

231. The military has spent the last 30 years preparing — at great expense — for the wrong war, based on faulty intelligence and assumptions.
     “preparing for the wrong war” must be the cousin of “preparing for the last war” — an adage that was probably invented sometime between the first war in human history and the next.
     I get the point about Biden’s agenda vs the military’s, and I agree with it so far as it goes, but I also wonder if, horrifyingly enough, we might not still need the preparations for the “wrong” war in another part of the world.
     *****
     In the context of skimming several dKos articles about Ukraine every day plus Adam’s updates at BJ, I can’t remember where I got this link, which is to a Timothy Snyder lecture in Europe from several years ago. It’s a deeply fascinating look at the history of the relationships amongst Germany, Ukraine, the USSR, and Russia, focusing on Hitler and WWII.
     I know someone who studied WWII in college, and he’s been listening to Snyder’s lectures at Yale about Ukraine and says they’re amazing. I’m not big on lectures and podcasts generally, I don’t take in information very well out loud. But I’m halfway through my second time through the lecture at the link because there’s so much to learn in it.

232. The military has spent the last 30 years preparing — at great expense — for the wrong war, based on faulty intelligence and assumptions.
     “preparing for the wrong war” must be the cousin of “preparing for the last war” — an adage that was probably invented sometime between the first war in human history and the next.
     I get the point about Biden’s agenda vs the military’s, and I agree with it so far as it goes, but I also wonder if, horrifyingly enough, we might not still need the preparations for the “wrong” war in another part of the world.
     *****
     In the context of skimming several dKos articles about Ukraine every day plus Adam’s updates at BJ, I can’t remember where I got this link, which is to a Timothy Snyder lecture in Europe from several years ago. It’s a deeply fascinating look at the history of the relationships amongst Germany, Ukraine, the USSR, and Russia, focusing on Hitler and WWII.
     I know someone who studied WWII in college, and he’s been listening to Snyder’s lectures at Yale about Ukraine and says they’re amazing. I’m not big on lectures and podcasts generally, I don’t take in information very well out loud. But I’m halfway through my second time through the lecture at the link because there’s so much to learn in it.

233. I meant to say that I might even have gotten the Snyder link here, and if so, apologies for the duplication. But even in that case it’s worth reaffirming how good it is, and offering thanks to whoever posted it.

234. I meant to say that I might even have gotten the Snyder link here, and if so, apologies for the duplication. But even in that case it’s worth reaffirming how good it is, and offering thanks to whoever posted it.

235. Thank you JanieM for that link to Timothy Snyder’s lecture! From 2017!

236. Thank you JanieM for that link to Timothy Snyder’s lecture! From 2017!

237. “preparing for the last war” — an adage that was probably invented sometime between the first war in human history and the next
     It seems to have been first recorded in 1929 by J.L.Schley. But he doesn’t say when he thinks the words were first uttered.

238. “preparing for the last war” — an adage that was probably invented sometime between the first war in human history and the next
     It seems to have been first recorded in 1929 by J.L.Schley. But he doesn’t say when he thinks the words were first uttered.

239. I do have one question regarding Janie’s first link. Prof Snyder makes a big point about how the whole point of WW II for Hitler was to colonize Ukraine. How does that square with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact? Not to mention the invasion of France. Why not just slam through Poland to Ukraine?

240. I do have one question regarding Janie’s first link. Prof Snyder makes a big point about how the whole point of WW II for Hitler was to colonize Ukraine. How does that square with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact? Not to mention the invasion of France. Why not just slam through Poland to Ukraine?

241. wj, maybe his semester-long class has answers for you? (the other link in my comment) Maybe Hitler thought he could walk and chew gum at the same time.

242. wj, maybe his semester-long class has answers for you? (the other link in my comment) Maybe Hitler thought he could walk and chew gum at the same time.

243. Just a brief OT digression. Tonight is Burns Night, which makes me think of two things.
     The first (which I may have told you before, but I love it so much I can’t not tell you again) is the story Stephen Fry told about a friend who had gone to a Burns Night celebration in Germany, where the ceremony was conducted in German, and on the other side of the page was the translation into English from the German, rather than using the original. In the Address to the Haggis, Burns’s words:
     Great chieftain o’ the puddin’-race
     were translated as
     Mighty fuhrer of the the sausage people
     And the second thing I wanted to send your way, for anybody who loves Burns’s poetry, or a beautiful voice, is this album by the wonderful Eddie Reader, with some of the poems set to beautiful music. This is the third track, a great tribute to a friend You’re Welcome Willie Stewart, but there are lots of gems, some bawdy but in (to me) impenetrable dialect:
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or29Q_FUi3M&list=OLAK5uy_lxHIQIfnL2Z_2Cqj_fqnDpSbHypyO_A5U&index=3

244. Just a brief OT digression. Tonight is Burns Night, which makes me think of two things.
     The first (which I may have told you before, but I love it so much I can’t not tell you again) is the story Stephen Fry told about a friend who had gone to a Burns Night celebration in Germany, where the ceremony was conducted in German, and on the other side of the page was the translation into English from the German, rather than using the original. In the Address to the Haggis, Burns’s words:
     Great chieftain o’ the puddin’-race
     were translated as
     Mighty fuhrer of the the sausage people
     And the second thing I wanted to send your way, for anybody who loves Burns’s poetry, or a beautiful voice, is this album by the wonderful Eddie Reader, with some of the poems set to beautiful music. This is the third track, a great tribute to a friend You’re Welcome Willie Stewart, but there are lots of gems, some bawdy but in (to me) impenetrable dialect:
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or29Q_FUi3M&list=OLAK5uy_lxHIQIfnL2Z_2Cqj_fqnDpSbHypyO_A5U&index=3

245. Also, I can’t resist, such a beautiful version of Ae Fond Kiss
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7fi6AZQUCQ&list=OLAK5uy_lxHIQIfnL2Z_2Cqj_fqnDpSbHypyO_A5U&index=4

246. Also, I can’t resist, such a beautiful version of Ae Fond Kiss
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7fi6AZQUCQ&list=OLAK5uy_lxHIQIfnL2Z_2Cqj_fqnDpSbHypyO_A5U&index=4

247. wj, maybe his semester-long class has answers for you?
     Working my way thru it now.
     He has an amusing aside: Constitutional originalism is self contradictory. Because there is one thing that the Constitution does NOT say — it does not say that is can only be understood/interpreted in the sense that it, and its words, were meant when it was written.

248. wj, maybe his semester-long class has answers for you?
     Working my way thru it now.
     He has an amusing aside: Constitutional originalism is self contradictory. Because there is one thing that the Constitution does NOT say — it does not say that is can only be understood/interpreted in the sense that it, and its words, were meant when it was written.

249. “He has an amusing aside: Constitutional originalism is self contradictory. Because there is one thing that the Constitution does NOT say — it does not say that is can only be understood/interpreted in the sense that it, and its words, were meant when it was written.”
     I think Gödel might have a theorem that is applicable here.

250. “He has an amusing aside: Constitutional originalism is self contradictory. Because there is one thing that the Constitution does NOT say — it does not say that is can only be understood/interpreted in the sense that it, and its words, were meant when it was written.”
     I think Gödel might have a theorem that is applicable here.

251. I think Gödel might have a theorem that is applicable here.
     I am but a humble applied mathematician. There may be true statements that are unprovable, but there are enough provable statements to be useful.
     From a political and judicial perspective, I simply observe that pitchforks and torches, or the modern equivalents, provably exist.

252. I think Gödel might have a theorem that is applicable here.
     I am but a humble applied mathematician. There may be true statements that are unprovable, but there are enough provable statements to be useful.
     From a political and judicial perspective, I simply observe that pitchforks and torches, or the modern equivalents, provably exist.

253. Speaking of pitchforks and torches, Snyder’s wiki page says this (I am actually starting to hope his later prophecies are not as spot on as his earlier ones):

     In a May 2017 interview with Salon, he warned that the Trump administration would attempt to subvert democracy by declaring a state of emergency and take full control of the government, similar to Hitler’s Reichstag fire: “it’s pretty much inevitable that they will try.”[39] According to Snyder, “Trump’s campaign for president of the United States was basically a Russian operation.” Snyder also warned that Trump’s lies would lead to tyranny.[40]
     In January 2021, Snyder published a New York Times essay on the future of the GOP in response to the siege of the United States Capitol, blaming Trump and his “enablers”, Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, for the insurrection fueled by their claims of election fraud, writing that “the breakers have an even stronger reason to see Trump disappear: It is impossible to inherit from someone who is still around. Seizing Trump’s big lie might appear to be a gesture of support. In fact it expresses a wish for his political death.”[41]

254. Speaking of pitchforks and torches, Snyder’s wiki page says this (I am actually starting to hope his later prophecies are not as spot on as his earlier ones):

     In a May 2017 interview with Salon, he warned that the Trump administration would attempt to subvert democracy by declaring a state of emergency and take full control of the government, similar to Hitler’s Reichstag fire: “it’s pretty much inevitable that they will try.”[39] According to Snyder, “Trump’s campaign for president of the United States was basically a Russian operation.” Snyder also warned that Trump’s lies would lead to tyranny.[40]
     In January 2021, Snyder published a New York Times essay on the future of the GOP in response to the siege of the United States Capitol, blaming Trump and his “enablers”, Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, for the insurrection fueled by their claims of election fraud, writing that “the breakers have an even stronger reason to see Trump disappear: It is impossible to inherit from someone who is still around. Seizing Trump’s big lie might appear to be a gesture of support. In fact it expresses a wish for his political death.”[41]

255. For those who recall Fafblog,

     I simply observe that pitchforks and torches, or the modern equivalents, provably exist.

     According to your limited perception.

256. For those who recall Fafblog,

     I simply observe that pitchforks and torches, or the modern equivalents, provably exist.

     According to your limited perception.

257. “For those who recall Fafblog”
     ..it was the BEST blog.

258. “For those who recall Fafblog”
     ..it was the BEST blog.

259. I simply observe that pitchforks and torches, or the modern equivalents, provably exist.
     Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?
     Remember the days when you could say “I’m from Missouri. That means show me.”? With the strong implicit implication that, if you did show him, he would believe. But, no more — witness Sen Hawley.

260. I simply observe that pitchforks and torches, or the modern equivalents, provably exist.
     Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?
     Remember the days when you could say “I’m from Missouri. That means show me.”? With the strong implicit implication that, if you did show him, he would believe. But, no more — witness Sen Hawley.

261. I’ve been following this story for a while, and this latest wrinkle in the story seems like a very fraught one which I think Sturgeon is handling as well as she can.
     https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/26/trans-woman-isla-bryson-found-guilty-rape-not-be-held-in-womens-prison-sturgeon
     I’d add as part of all this that I think there should probably be special facilities of some sort for criminals with a history of sexual violence, and that all carceral spaces should have safeguards in place to protect incarcerated people of any gender from sexual violence.
     Doesn’t seem like it should be treated primarily as a gender issue.
     Also, I think that Sunak’s decision to block the Scottish Parliament’s gender recognition bill are going to create serious backlash and push Scotland further towards breaking away.

262. I’ve been following this story for a while, and this latest wrinkle in the story seems like a very fraught one which I think Sturgeon is handling as well as she can.
     https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/26/trans-woman-isla-bryson-found-guilty-rape-not-be-held-in-womens-prison-sturgeon
     I’d add as part of all this that I think there should probably be special facilities of some sort for criminals with a history of sexual violence, and that all carceral spaces should have safeguards in place to protect incarcerated people of any gender from sexual violence.
     Doesn’t seem like it should be treated primarily as a gender issue.
     Also, I think that Sunak’s decision to block the Scottish Parliament’s gender recognition bill are going to create serious backlash and push Scotland further towards breaking away.

263. all carceral spaces should have safeguards in place to protect incarcerated people of any gender from sexual violence.
     From what I have (casually!) come across, that’s going to take some major reforms to implement. Rape, after all, isn’t generally about sex so much as power and control. And prison populations are big on that.

264. all carceral spaces should have safeguards in place to protect incarcerated people of any gender from sexual violence.
     From what I have (casually!) come across, that’s going to take some major reforms to implement. Rape, after all, isn’t generally about sex so much as power and control. And prison populations are big on that.

265. Talk about a class act!
     Arizona Republicans exempt lawmakers from the state’s open-records law
     One can understand their motivation. Those emails from 2020, when they were jamming thru demands for a recount, were just too, too embarrassing.

266. Talk about a class act!
     Arizona Republicans exempt lawmakers from the state’s open-records law
     One can understand their motivation. Those emails from 2020, when they were jamming thru demands for a recount, were just too, too embarrassing.

267. From what I have (casually!) come across, that’s going to take some major reforms to implement.
     Agreed. Make it so.

268. From what I have (casually!) come across, that’s going to take some major reforms to implement.
     Agreed. Make it so.

269. When Sturgeon says it’s important not to imply that trans women are a threat to women, I don’t know a single so-called TERF who would disagree. When she says that it’s predatory men who are, and have always been the problem, I don’t think many women would disagree. The missing piece is the understanding that predatory men will often stop at very little to gain access to vulnerable women, including taking advantage of self-ID, as this person seems to have done. Everybody I know who works in the area of domestic and sexual abuse (and I know many) finds it almost incredible that this is denied, or thought to be a rare, or minor occurrence. A bit like the “a few bad apples” excuse about the police here, which is (finally!) being shown for the nonsense it is, and has always been.

270. When Sturgeon says it’s important not to imply that trans women are a threat to women, I don’t know a single so-called TERF who would disagree. When she says that it’s predatory men who are, and have always been the problem, I don’t think many women would disagree. The missing piece is the understanding that predatory men will often stop at very little to gain access to vulnerable women, including taking advantage of self-ID, as this person seems to have done. Everybody I know who works in the area of domestic and sexual abuse (and I know many) finds it almost incredible that this is denied, or thought to be a rare, or minor occurrence. A bit like the “a few bad apples” excuse about the police here, which is (finally!) being shown for the nonsense it is, and has always been.

271. including taking advantage of self-ID, as this person seems to have done.
     Perhaps I misread the article (or I’m thinking of another article on a different case). But IIRC the trans individual in this case had already had the reassignment surgery. Which would seem to eliminate the “false self-ID” problem.
     Not to discount the false self-ID issue. Just to suggest that it isn’t always the case.

272. including taking advantage of self-ID, as this person seems to have done.
     Perhaps I misread the article (or I’m thinking of another article on a different case). But IIRC the trans individual in this case had already had the reassignment surgery. Which would seem to eliminate the “false self-ID” problem.
     Not to discount the false self-ID issue. Just to suggest that it isn’t always the case.

273. Just for reference, this
     https://digbysblog.net/2023/01/26/this-trans-panic-is-cruel-incoherent-and-dumb/
     is what I was thinking of.

274. Just for reference, this
     https://digbysblog.net/2023/01/26/this-trans-panic-is-cruel-incoherent-and-dumb/
     is what I was thinking of.

275. The phantom penis strikes again!

276. The phantom penis strikes again!

277. Well, if you are well accustomed to seeing (and getting hysterical about) things that aren’t really there, what’s one more? It’s a core competency.

278. Well, if you are well accustomed to seeing (and getting hysterical about) things that aren’t really there, what’s one more? It’s a core competency.

279. In the Scottish case, the convicted rapist still has a penis, reportedly.
     I fail to understand how a person who identifies as a woman could commit this sort of rape.

280. In the Scottish case, the convicted rapist still has a penis, reportedly.
     I fail to understand how a person who identifies as a woman could commit this sort of rape.

281. In the Scottish case, the convicted rapist still has a penis, reportedly.
     I fail to understand how a person who identifies as a woman could commit this sort of rape.

282. In the Scottish case, the convicted rapist still has a penis, reportedly.
     I fail to understand how a person who identifies as a woman could commit this sort of rape.

283. I fail to understand how a person who identifies as a woman could commit this sort of rape.
     The issue, I believe, is a person who says that he so identifies. But is just flat out lying.

284. I fail to understand how a person who identifies as a woman could commit this sort of rape.
     The issue, I believe, is a person who says that he so identifies. But is just flat out lying.

285. Pro Bono, what exactly are you saying? That no woman could be violently abusive? If not that, then could you clarify?

286. Pro Bono, what exactly are you saying? That no woman could be violently abusive? If not that, then could you clarify?

287. Both rapes were committed before she sought to transition. The transition does not seem to be a case of predatory opportunism. She has a history of sexual violence and is being incarcerated as a consequence.
     Should cisgendered lesbians with histories of intimate partner violence be incarcerated in women’s prisons? Should gay men with histories of predatory violence against other men be incarcerated in men’s prisons?
     What is to prevent a man, regardless of legal gender, from cross-dressing and impersonating a woman in order to gain access to gender restricted areas?
     Doesn’t foregrounding the issue of gender and access increase surveillance on trans-women and cut against the anonymity sought from passing?
     No denying the thorniness of any of these issues, just an attempt to find the right critical perspectives.

288. Both rapes were committed before she sought to transition. The transition does not seem to be a case of predatory opportunism. She has a history of sexual violence and is being incarcerated as a consequence.
     Should cisgendered lesbians with histories of intimate partner violence be incarcerated in women’s prisons? Should gay men with histories of predatory violence against other men be incarcerated in men’s prisons?
     What is to prevent a man, regardless of legal gender, from cross-dressing and impersonating a woman in order to gain access to gender restricted areas?
     Doesn’t foregrounding the issue of gender and access increase surveillance on trans-women and cut against the anonymity sought from passing?
     No denying the thorniness of any of these issues, just an attempt to find the right critical perspectives.

289. The phantom penis strikes again!
     Phantom of the Operation.

290. The phantom penis strikes again!
     Phantom of the Operation.

291. [nous got here first, for some value of “here,” but having written this, I’ll post it anyhow. And following on nous’s framing, I would point out that as I suggest at the end of this comment, “increasing surveillance on trans-women” (as nous phrases it) tends to point toward increasing surveillance on everyone.]
     Funny how the accusatory, greatly-wronged teenager in the story at wj’s link was from a homeschooling family…but I’ll plow ahead anyhow, if only to illustrate how complicated the world is.
     Back when my kids were being homeschooled, I had a conversation one day with a social worker who was a friend of a friend. She flatly stated that homeschooling should not be allowed, because school personnel (who have never in the history of the world abused children, of course) can keep an eye on kids and notify social services if they’re at risk at home, whereas social services can’t get any access to homeschooled kids, and some abusive or seriously irresponsible parents take advantage of that by homeschooling. (It was fascinating how many otherwise polite people felt free to be rude, condescending, dismissive, or even nasty about homeschooling as soon as it was mentioned that I homeschooled my kids.)
     The social worker was proposing to take away my right to homeschool because some people abuse that right. Her proposed solution to a problem was to pre-emptively punish a lot of families because some of the families *might* be doing something wrong.
     If people mistreat their kids and avoid scrutiny by taking their kids out of school, find ways to solve the problem by all means. But don’t solve it by punishing the rest of us.
     The issues raised by the social worker involved a balancing of harms (and a balancing of goods for that matter). To me it looks similar to the balancing of harms involved in the question of what to do about the faking of trans identity for nefarious purposes. If not self-ID, what should we have? Anyone can challenge anyone’s gender identity at any time? That would be fun. Everyone has to get tested and reaffirmed as the gender they say they are once a year, and carry proof for the sake of going to the Y, joining a sports team, or using the bathroom?
     I’m sure the proportion of the population who don’t want to wear masks to save their own lives, much less their neighbors’, would go right along with that idea. (No, wait, that idea is for *other* people, the bad people, not for them.) (And that’s not even to mention the existence of non-binary people.)

292. [nous got here first, for some value of “here,” but having written this, I’ll post it anyhow. And following on nous’s framing, I would point out that as I suggest at the end of this comment, “increasing surveillance on trans-women” (as nous phrases it) tends to point toward increasing surveillance on everyone.]
     Funny how the accusatory, greatly-wronged teenager in the story at wj’s link was from a homeschooling family…but I’ll plow ahead anyhow, if only to illustrate how complicated the world is.
     Back when my kids were being homeschooled, I had a conversation one day with a social worker who was a friend of a friend. She flatly stated that homeschooling should not be allowed, because school personnel (who have never in the history of the world abused children, of course) can keep an eye on kids and notify social services if they’re at risk at home, whereas social services can’t get any access to homeschooled kids, and some abusive or seriously irresponsible parents take advantage of that by homeschooling. (It was fascinating how many otherwise polite people felt free to be rude, condescending, dismissive, or even nasty about homeschooling as soon as it was mentioned that I homeschooled my kids.)
     The social worker was proposing to take away my right to homeschool because some people abuse that right. Her proposed solution to a problem was to pre-emptively punish a lot of families because some of the families *might* be doing something wrong.
     If people mistreat their kids and avoid scrutiny by taking their kids out of school, find ways to solve the problem by all means. But don’t solve it by punishing the rest of us.
     The issues raised by the social worker involved a balancing of harms (and a balancing of goods for that matter). To me it looks similar to the balancing of harms involved in the question of what to do about the faking of trans identity for nefarious purposes. If not self-ID, what should we have? Anyone can challenge anyone’s gender identity at any time? That would be fun. Everyone has to get tested and reaffirmed as the gender they say they are once a year, and carry proof for the sake of going to the Y, joining a sports team, or using the bathroom?
     I’m sure the proportion of the population who don’t want to wear masks to save their own lives, much less their neighbors’, would go right along with that idea. (No, wait, that idea is for *other* people, the bad people, not for them.) (And that’s not even to mention the existence of non-binary people.)

293. Pro Bono, what exactly are you saying? That no woman could be violently abusive? If not that, then could you clarify?
     I am suggesting that a biologically male person who identifies as a woman would not want to commit an assault using their penis. I think the rapist’s claim to transgender identify is likely to be fraudulent. For what it’s worth, their estranged wife thinks so too.
     But I know little about the subject. You could persuade me that I’m wrong.

294. Pro Bono, what exactly are you saying? That no woman could be violently abusive? If not that, then could you clarify?
     I am suggesting that a biologically male person who identifies as a woman would not want to commit an assault using their penis. I think the rapist’s claim to transgender identify is likely to be fraudulent. For what it’s worth, their estranged wife thinks so too.
     But I know little about the subject. You could persuade me that I’m wrong.

295. You could persuade me that I’m wrong.
     I’m not interested in persuading you either way, I just wasn’t sure what you were saying. If you had been saying that women aren’t capable of being abusive or violent, I would have had to disagree, but that was a wrong interpretation.
     Beyond that, what a rapist would or would not want is almost beyond my imagining, much less predicting.

296. You could persuade me that I’m wrong.
     I’m not interested in persuading you either way, I just wasn’t sure what you were saying. If you had been saying that women aren’t capable of being abusive or violent, I would have had to disagree, but that was a wrong interpretation.
     Beyond that, what a rapist would or would not want is almost beyond my imagining, much less predicting.

297. Post-the-arrival-of-covid, I no longer purport to have any notion whatsoever what people want, or that it has any predictable relation to what *I* want.

298. Post-the-arrival-of-covid, I no longer purport to have any notion whatsoever what people want, or that it has any predictable relation to what *I* want.

299. Going off in an entirely different direction.
     I know that lots of folks here are not big fans (to put it mildly) of George Will. But this is worth a read.
     https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/28/astonishing-james-webb-space-telescope/

300. Going off in an entirely different direction.
     I know that lots of folks here are not big fans (to put it mildly) of George Will. But this is worth a read.
     https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/28/astonishing-james-webb-space-telescope/

301. From wj’s George Will link:
     All the material in the universe, including us, is — literally — stardust … meaning residues of the explosion.
     Back in the days when I was sampling UU-ism, members of the congregation led services in the summer. I once did a summer service called “My Favorite Miracles.” One “miracle” I cited was the two ways we’re all made of star-stuff, the first of which was the one Will mentions: the elements that make up the actual physical substances that compose us. The second was photosynthesis.
     Thanks for the link, wj.

302. From wj’s George Will link:
     All the material in the universe, including us, is — literally — stardust … meaning residues of the explosion.
     Back in the days when I was sampling UU-ism, members of the congregation led services in the summer. I once did a summer service called “My Favorite Miracles.” One “miracle” I cited was the two ways we’re all made of star-stuff, the first of which was the one Will mentions: the elements that make up the actual physical substances that compose us. The second was photosynthesis.
     Thanks for the link, wj.

303. We’re made of 3rd generation supernova debris.
     Maybe a bit of “neutron star merger explosion” debris also, too.

304. We’re made of 3rd generation supernova debris.
     Maybe a bit of “neutron star merger explosion” debris also, too.

305. A friend sent me this link about a man who is quite likely the best violin repairman in the world. She added the question, “What do you practice on before you repair a $15M Stradivarius? A $1M Stradivarius?”
     https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/january-2023/the-violin-doctor/

306. A friend sent me this link about a man who is quite likely the best violin repairman in the world. She added the question, “What do you practice on before you repair a $15M Stradivarius? A $1M Stradivarius?”
     https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/january-2023/the-violin-doctor/

307. To Pro Bono’s questions about Bryson’s motive for transitioning…
     I can see good reason for extra scrutiny in Bryson’s case – not because she identifies as trans, but because she is a convicted rapist. And in the end my concern is not whether she is allowed to transition and continue to be treated legally as a woman, but whether or not we need to take precautions because she is likely to commit sexual violence again with whatever tools are available to her. As long as she is not allowed to rape, I don’t care what anatomy she has or how she thinks about herself in her heart of hearts. It’s not the question that needs solving.
     Following on from what JanieM was saying about homeschooling…
     I have known at least four people in my life who molested minors under their care as teachers, or as youth ministers, or dorm parents. I do not doubt that the men, at least, chose their vocation in part because it put them in a position of greater opportunity. I don’t doubt for a minute that pedophiles and groomers seek access to spaces that give them access to many children and with little surveillance from other adults.
     I’ve read about many similar stories – especially amongst evangelical homeschoolers.
     The problem there is not the gender of the offender (however entangled their pathologies may be in some toxic hormonal or patriarchal mess). The problem is how to identify which people are a threat and take away their access.
     Otherwise it’s just collective punishment for a bunch of innocent people in a false taxonomy.

308. To Pro Bono’s questions about Bryson’s motive for transitioning…
     I can see good reason for extra scrutiny in Bryson’s case – not because she identifies as trans, but because she is a convicted rapist. And in the end my concern is not whether she is allowed to transition and continue to be treated legally as a woman, but whether or not we need to take precautions because she is likely to commit sexual violence again with whatever tools are available to her. As long as she is not allowed to rape, I don’t care what anatomy she has or how she thinks about herself in her heart of hearts. It’s not the question that needs solving.
     Following on from what JanieM was saying about homeschooling…
     I have known at least four people in my life who molested minors under their care as teachers, or as youth ministers, or dorm parents. I do not doubt that the men, at least, chose their vocation in part because it put them in a position of greater opportunity. I don’t doubt for a minute that pedophiles and groomers seek access to spaces that give them access to many children and with little surveillance from other adults.
     I’ve read about many similar stories – especially amongst evangelical homeschoolers.
     The problem there is not the gender of the offender (however entangled their pathologies may be in some toxic hormonal or patriarchal mess). The problem is how to identify which people are a threat and take away their access.
     Otherwise it’s just collective punishment for a bunch of innocent people in a false taxonomy.

309. Once again nous and I overlap, and once again I’ll post the comment I wrote before I saw nous’s latest. Hard questions, no easy answers, except it would be nice if we (the collective “we”) didn’t take the lazy way out.
     ***
     I want to go back to nous’s comment from 12:32, which ends like this:
     No denying the thorniness of any of these issues, just an attempt to find the right critical perspectives.
     The whole comment is worth saving, and after my 12:46 I want to say explicitly that I totally agree with nous about the thorniness of the issues.
     Abolishing homeschooling because some people abuse it, or targeting trans people because some people pretend to be trans for evil purposes, are lazy ways to try to solve a problem. First, grab the easiest framing (“it’s about gender rather than violence”), and then, based on that framing, scapegoat an already marginalized group and hurt *them* as a way of trying to avoid other kinds of hurt. It’s all too easy to get people to blame the already-marginalized. Just look at the CRT-hating, book-banning, speech-suppressing efforts of the right in the US at this very moment.
     Rereading my own 12:46, it’s easy to see how it could be turned around to apply to gun ownership in the US. Why should responsible gun owners be punished because some people use guns irresponsibly? (And this is not a question I’m just putting into people’s mouths. It has been posed that way explicitly many times.) My answer to that question would go back to the weighing of harms, but that’s as far into that issue as I want to go.

310. Once again nous and I overlap, and once again I’ll post the comment I wrote before I saw nous’s latest. Hard questions, no easy answers, except it would be nice if we (the collective “we”) didn’t take the lazy way out.
     ***
     I want to go back to nous’s comment from 12:32, which ends like this:
     No denying the thorniness of any of these issues, just an attempt to find the right critical perspectives.
     The whole comment is worth saving, and after my 12:46 I want to say explicitly that I totally agree with nous about the thorniness of the issues.
     Abolishing homeschooling because some people abuse it, or targeting trans people because some people pretend to be trans for evil purposes, are lazy ways to try to solve a problem. First, grab the easiest framing (“it’s about gender rather than violence”), and then, based on that framing, scapegoat an already marginalized group and hurt *them* as a way of trying to avoid other kinds of hurt. It’s all too easy to get people to blame the already-marginalized. Just look at the CRT-hating, book-banning, speech-suppressing efforts of the right in the US at this very moment.
     Rereading my own 12:46, it’s easy to see how it could be turned around to apply to gun ownership in the US. Why should responsible gun owners be punished because some people use guns irresponsibly? (And this is not a question I’m just putting into people’s mouths. It has been posed that way explicitly many times.) My answer to that question would go back to the weighing of harms, but that’s as far into that issue as I want to go.

311. PS Thanks to Michael for the violin article. I passed it along to someone I know who is interested in the topic in a practical way.

312. PS Thanks to Michael for the violin article. I passed it along to someone I know who is interested in the topic in a practical way.

313. I think a big part of the difficulty in discussing trans individuals is that we (collectively: as a society or simply as human beings) are simply not good at doing nuance. We tend to be a lot happier with simple, black and white, views which don’t require us to look at the details of a particular specific case.
     So. Are there, in fact, individuals who feel that they have been stuck in the wrong body? Yes. And how wonderful for them that medicine is reaching the point where something can be done about that.
     Are there individuals who abuse the fact that, for the moment anyway, the only means of identifying a trans individual is self-ID? Also yes. And that can be a problem for both those around one of those individuals, and for legitimate trans individuals.
     Are there individual who think they are trans, but actually are not? I would argue yes. Especially in cultures with very rigid gender roles. Suppose you are in one of those cultures, and what you want to do is something that, in your culture, is only done by members of the opposite sex. Now you might decide (as any of us would argue) that the problem is the way gender roles have been restricted for you. But you might well decide that, since only the other sex gets to do what you want to do, you must have gotten the wrong body.
     In that regard, the arch conservatives who get hysterical about children being treated (medically) as trans are not entirely wrong. In their social circles, it is entirely possible that children would mistakenly identify the reason why they don’t fit comfortably into the prescribes gender roles.
     And that’s before we get to issues around sports. Does it make a difference, when it comes to sports, what gender you were physically at puberty? Yes, in some cases. If your sport is shotput, someone who was male at puberty is going to have upper body strength (and probably size) that is simply not available** to someone who was female at puberty. If your sport is gymnastics, someone who was female at puberty is going to have flexibility which is simply not available to someone who was male at puberty. On the other hand, there are sports where the critical physical characteristics simply are not sex-linked. (Baseball comes to mind.) So any discussion of trans athletes is going to have to deal with nuances regarding exactly which sport is involved.
     Not to say that trans issues are the only ones where our aversion to nuance is a problem. Just that it is currently a high profile one.
     ** Absent use of steroids, which is a whole different issue.

314. I think a big part of the difficulty in discussing trans individuals is that we (collectively: as a society or simply as human beings) are simply not good at doing nuance. We tend to be a lot happier with simple, black and white, views which don’t require us to look at the details of a particular specific case.
     So. Are there, in fact, individuals who feel that they have been stuck in the wrong body? Yes. And how wonderful for them that medicine is reaching the point where something can be done about that.
     Are there individuals who abuse the fact that, for the moment anyway, the only means of identifying a trans individual is self-ID? Also yes. And that can be a problem for both those around one of those individuals, and for legitimate trans individuals.
     Are there individual who think they are trans, but actually are not? I would argue yes. Especially in cultures with very rigid gender roles. Suppose you are in one of those cultures, and what you want to do is something that, in your culture, is only done by members of the opposite sex. Now you might decide (as any of us would argue) that the problem is the way gender roles have been restricted for you. But you might well decide that, since only the other sex gets to do what you want to do, you must have gotten the wrong body.
     In that regard, the arch conservatives who get hysterical about children being treated (medically) as trans are not entirely wrong. In their social circles, it is entirely possible that children would mistakenly identify the reason why they don’t fit comfortably into the prescribes gender roles.
     And that’s before we get to issues around sports. Does it make a difference, when it comes to sports, what gender you were physically at puberty? Yes, in some cases. If your sport is shotput, someone who was male at puberty is going to have upper body strength (and probably size) that is simply not available** to someone who was female at puberty. If your sport is gymnastics, someone who was female at puberty is going to have flexibility which is simply not available to someone who was male at puberty. On the other hand, there are sports where the critical physical characteristics simply are not sex-linked. (Baseball comes to mind.) So any discussion of trans athletes is going to have to deal with nuances regarding exactly which sport is involved.
     Not to say that trans issues are the only ones where our aversion to nuance is a problem. Just that it is currently a high profile one.
     ** Absent use of steroids, which is a whole different issue.

315. In that regard, the arch conservatives who get hysterical about children being treated (medically) as trans are not entirely wrong. In their social circles, it is entirely possible that children would mistakenly identify the reason why they don’t fit comfortably into the prescribes gender roles.
     With the added wrinkle that these people are energized by the suffering of trans people because they would rather those people live lives of despair than that we relax our binaries in ways that give space to those who question. They want to push the threshold high enough that the categories become entirely fixed. The possibility of nuance itself belongs to satan.
     See also Iran and head coverings.

316. In that regard, the arch conservatives who get hysterical about children being treated (medically) as trans are not entirely wrong. In their social circles, it is entirely possible that children would mistakenly identify the reason why they don’t fit comfortably into the prescribes gender roles.
     With the added wrinkle that these people are energized by the suffering of trans people because they would rather those people live lives of despair than that we relax our binaries in ways that give space to those who question. They want to push the threshold high enough that the categories become entirely fixed. The possibility of nuance itself belongs to satan.
     See also Iran and head coverings.

317. I had not previously heard of a biological male who is also a rapist using self-ID as trans to gain access to potential victims. I thought that was a completely made-up up thing by the RW. To see it actually happened is upsetting, to say the least.
     This is a circle I have no idea how to square, since doing so relies on things like proportionality, honesty in argument, and weighing actual v. made-up risk factors. None of which humans are generally good at, particularly when large numbers of humans are doing the arguing and deciding.
     Which brings up what wj and nous mention: nuance. The larger the number of people involved in an issue, the less nuance there is going to be. “Nuance” – particularly on issues as hot button as these – is entirely in the eye of the beholder. What is nuance to me may be disingenuousness to you, and vice versa.
     Sigh. And that’s **before** we weight in stuff like outright dishonesty in argument and malicious ingenuousness.

318. I had not previously heard of a biological male who is also a rapist using self-ID as trans to gain access to potential victims. I thought that was a completely made-up up thing by the RW. To see it actually happened is upsetting, to say the least.
     This is a circle I have no idea how to square, since doing so relies on things like proportionality, honesty in argument, and weighing actual v. made-up risk factors. None of which humans are generally good at, particularly when large numbers of humans are doing the arguing and deciding.
     Which brings up what wj and nous mention: nuance. The larger the number of people involved in an issue, the less nuance there is going to be. “Nuance” – particularly on issues as hot button as these – is entirely in the eye of the beholder. What is nuance to me may be disingenuousness to you, and vice versa.
     Sigh. And that’s **before** we weight in stuff like outright dishonesty in argument and malicious ingenuousness.

319. I had not previously heard of a biological male who is also a rapist using self-ID as trans to gain access to potential victims. I thought that was a completely made-up up thing by the RW. To see it actually happened is upsetting, to say the least.
     Keeping in mind that we cannot know that this is what is going on here, only that the outcome, whatever the truth of the motivation, puts a convicted rapist in a position of access to potential targets.
     Sturgeon’s position here is based on the one thing that we can know about this situation, which is that Bryson has a known history of sexual violence.
     What is lost by treating Bryson’s motives as genuine, but refusing to put her in a position to be a threat to the likely subjects of future sexual violence from her? If she was being insincere, then thwarting her aim would remove the need for that pretense. If she was sincere, then our protective aims are still preserved.
     We can be all Schrödinger about this and refuse to open that box without having to put anyone at risk *in this case.*

320. I had not previously heard of a biological male who is also a rapist using self-ID as trans to gain access to potential victims. I thought that was a completely made-up up thing by the RW. To see it actually happened is upsetting, to say the least.
     Keeping in mind that we cannot know that this is what is going on here, only that the outcome, whatever the truth of the motivation, puts a convicted rapist in a position of access to potential targets.
     Sturgeon’s position here is based on the one thing that we can know about this situation, which is that Bryson has a known history of sexual violence.
     What is lost by treating Bryson’s motives as genuine, but refusing to put her in a position to be a threat to the likely subjects of future sexual violence from her? If she was being insincere, then thwarting her aim would remove the need for that pretense. If she was sincere, then our protective aims are still preserved.
     We can be all Schrödinger about this and refuse to open that box without having to put anyone at risk *in this case.*

321. What is lost by treating Bryson’s motives as genuine, but refusing to put her in a position to be a threat to the likely subjects of future sexual violence from her?
     Does that mean that she should be incarcerated in a women’s prison, but with perfect security to stop her attacking other inmates?
     It seems that Scottish prison policy is along those lines, but without the perfect security.

322. What is lost by treating Bryson’s motives as genuine, but refusing to put her in a position to be a threat to the likely subjects of future sexual violence from her?
     Does that mean that she should be incarcerated in a women’s prison, but with perfect security to stop her attacking other inmates?
     It seems that Scottish prison policy is along those lines, but without the perfect security.

323. without the perfect security.
     Seems doubtful that there’s perfect security in the men’s prisons either. Which points to the question nous keeps asking or implying: What problem are we trying to solve, or how many problems? A gender identity problem? A prison violence problem? (Btw, it doesn’t have to be sexual violence to be a problem.) And my question, or framing about a balancing of harms.
     All of it intertwined and, I’m afraid, intractable.
     Meanwhile, my attention is being claimed by yet another intractable problem, summarized here.

324. without the perfect security.
     Seems doubtful that there’s perfect security in the men’s prisons either. Which points to the question nous keeps asking or implying: What problem are we trying to solve, or how many problems? A gender identity problem? A prison violence problem? (Btw, it doesn’t have to be sexual violence to be a problem.) And my question, or framing about a balancing of harms.
     All of it intertwined and, I’m afraid, intractable.
     Meanwhile, my attention is being claimed by yet another intractable problem, summarized here.

325. my attention is being claimed by yet another intractable problem, summarized here.
     It seems clear that it is, primarily, a culture problem. That is, a problem of how some (many? most?) police officers see the world around them and the appropriate way to interact with it.
     Yes, there are racist cops. Also other kinds of problem individual cops. And it’s worth dealing with those. But the overall problem needs a different approach.
     I’m thinking that what’s needed is some input from some cultural anthropologists** who specialize in culture change. Specifically what causes it and how to make it happen. Because, while the problem is intractable given the ways we have tried to address it, it isn’t actually impossible to make changes happen.
     ** Sociologists tend, in my observation, to have both too generalized a view of social groups and way too narrow a view of what kind of cultures are possible.

326. my attention is being claimed by yet another intractable problem, summarized here.
     It seems clear that it is, primarily, a culture problem. That is, a problem of how some (many? most?) police officers see the world around them and the appropriate way to interact with it.
     Yes, there are racist cops. Also other kinds of problem individual cops. And it’s worth dealing with those. But the overall problem needs a different approach.
     I’m thinking that what’s needed is some input from some cultural anthropologists** who specialize in culture change. Specifically what causes it and how to make it happen. Because, while the problem is intractable given the ways we have tried to address it, it isn’t actually impossible to make changes happen.
     ** Sociologists tend, in my observation, to have both too generalized a view of social groups and way too narrow a view of what kind of cultures are possible.

327. What JanieM said.
     I think that Sturgeon is right to insist that Bryson can (and probably should) be kept out of a women’s prison population for the safety of the other inmates. I also think Sturgeon is right to insist that this should not bear on the larger question of gender identity.
     I think it is unfortunate that our carceral systems are segregated into hard gender binaries. Ideally there would be a place for Bryson, and others who are likely to enact violence on the other they are incarcerated with, that was agnostic to gender identity.
     In general, I would prefer a more humane carceral system along the lines of the Scandinavian model, where those who were incarcerated were treated as people. I recognize that getting to a place where that was manageable in the US is a long term prospect. What we have has created too much trauma for too long, and that legacy likely has to be worked through before we can get to a place where our prisons can be humane.
     Which is why I think the Scottish situation is probably the best compromise that is available in this moment. It addresses the immediate danger while resisting the urge to create collective policy out of it based on a secondary issue.

328. What JanieM said.
     I think that Sturgeon is right to insist that Bryson can (and probably should) be kept out of a women’s prison population for the safety of the other inmates. I also think Sturgeon is right to insist that this should not bear on the larger question of gender identity.
     I think it is unfortunate that our carceral systems are segregated into hard gender binaries. Ideally there would be a place for Bryson, and others who are likely to enact violence on the other they are incarcerated with, that was agnostic to gender identity.
     In general, I would prefer a more humane carceral system along the lines of the Scandinavian model, where those who were incarcerated were treated as people. I recognize that getting to a place where that was manageable in the US is a long term prospect. What we have has created too much trauma for too long, and that legacy likely has to be worked through before we can get to a place where our prisons can be humane.
     Which is why I think the Scottish situation is probably the best compromise that is available in this moment. It addresses the immediate danger while resisting the urge to create collective policy out of it based on a secondary issue.

329. Currently, our huge brouhaha (long overdue) about the police concerns their institutional misogyny. Literally thousands of cases are suddenly now being addressed of police officers who have been accused of rape, violence, domestic abuse etc over the years, only to have their accusers ignored and their cases dropped. This is only happening in the aftermath of first, the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, and secondly, the final reckoning with the 17 year career of rape and abuse by serving police officer David Carrick, despite many, many women over the years reporting him and detailing his assaults. The culture in the police (not just the Met) is deeply, deeply misogynist, and it is not entirely divorced from the society in which it operates.
     I have stayed out of the trans conversation, apart from one early comment on the Scottish situation, because I think my views are well-known here. But perhaps it is as well to remind you that there is a very strong thread of misogyny in the trans-activist world too: trans activists in balaclavas barricaded the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst on the anniversary of women’s suffrage, preventing feminist groups from celebrating and placing garlands etc (you can find footage on Youtube), trans activists regularly post threats and insults to feminists (not just J K Rowling, although she is a lightning rod for the threats, as well as the recent hysterical “I’m ten times the woman J K Rowling is”), and, as a woman in her 70s said to me recently “They call me a dried up old cunt. It’s so interesting, no woman has ever said anything like that to me, that is a man’s insult.”
     As I have repeatedly said, nobody I know who is concerned with this issue wants to victimise or oppress trans people. The concentration on gender is a red herring: everybody should have the right to dress how they want, call themselves what they want, sleep with whom they want and be called what they want. But women belong to a sex, and one moreover which has been oppressed and victimised on that basis (menstruation, childbirth etc) for eons. Regarding nous’s mention of Iran and the headscarf, the Taliban have no difficulty whatsoever in deciding who can and cannot go to school, or must wear the hijab. Trans women and trans men have rights which absolutely should be protected, but not at the expense of women.

330. Currently, our huge brouhaha (long overdue) about the police concerns their institutional misogyny. Literally thousands of cases are suddenly now being addressed of police officers who have been accused of rape, violence, domestic abuse etc over the years, only to have their accusers ignored and their cases dropped. This is only happening in the aftermath of first, the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, and secondly, the final reckoning with the 17 year career of rape and abuse by serving police officer David Carrick, despite many, many women over the years reporting him and detailing his assaults. The culture in the police (not just the Met) is deeply, deeply misogynist, and it is not entirely divorced from the society in which it operates.
     I have stayed out of the trans conversation, apart from one early comment on the Scottish situation, because I think my views are well-known here. But perhaps it is as well to remind you that there is a very strong thread of misogyny in the trans-activist world too: trans activists in balaclavas barricaded the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst on the anniversary of women’s suffrage, preventing feminist groups from celebrating and placing garlands etc (you can find footage on Youtube), trans activists regularly post threats and insults to feminists (not just J K Rowling, although she is a lightning rod for the threats, as well as the recent hysterical “I’m ten times the woman J K Rowling is”), and, as a woman in her 70s said to me recently “They call me a dried up old cunt. It’s so interesting, no woman has ever said anything like that to me, that is a man’s insult.”
     As I have repeatedly said, nobody I know who is concerned with this issue wants to victimise or oppress trans people. The concentration on gender is a red herring: everybody should have the right to dress how they want, call themselves what they want, sleep with whom they want and be called what they want. But women belong to a sex, and one moreover which has been oppressed and victimised on that basis (menstruation, childbirth etc) for eons. Regarding nous’s mention of Iran and the headscarf, the Taliban have no difficulty whatsoever in deciding who can and cannot go to school, or must wear the hijab. Trans women and trans men have rights which absolutely should be protected, but not at the expense of women.

331. Currently, our huge brouhaha (long overdue) about the police concerns their institutional misogyny. Literally thousands of cases are suddenly now being addressed of police officers who have been accused of rape, violence, domestic abuse etc over the years, only to have their accusers ignored and their cases dropped. This is only happening in the aftermath of first, the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, and secondly, the final reckoning with the 17 year career of rape and abuse by serving police officer David Carrick, despite many, many women over the years reporting him and detailing his assaults. The culture in the police (not just the Met) is deeply, deeply misogynist, and it is not entirely divorced from the society in which it operates.
     I have stayed out of the trans conversation, apart from one early comment on the Scottish situation, because I think my views are well-known here. But perhaps it is as well to remind you that there is a very strong thread of misogyny in the trans-activist world too: trans activists in balaclavas barricaded the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst on the anniversary of women’s suffrage, preventing feminist groups from celebrating and placing garlands etc (you can find footage on Youtube), trans activists regularly post threats and insults to feminists (not just J K Rowling, although she is a lightning rod for the threats, as well as the recent hysterical “I’m ten times the woman J K Rowling is”), and, as a woman in her 70s said to me recently “They call me a dried up old cunt. It’s so interesting, no woman has ever said anything like that to me, that is a man’s insult.”
     As I have repeatedly said, nobody I know who is concerned with this issue wants to victimise or oppress trans people. The concentration on gender is a red herring: everybody should have the right to dress how they want, call themselves what they want, sleep with whom they want and be called what they want. But women belong to a sex, and one moreover which has been oppressed and victimised on that basis (menstruation, childbirth etc) for eons. Regarding nous’s mention of Iran and the headscarf, the Taliban have no difficulty whatsoever in deciding who can and cannot go to school, or must wear the hijab. Trans women and trans men have rights which absolutely should be protected, but not at the expense of women.

332. Currently, our huge brouhaha (long overdue) about the police concerns their institutional misogyny. Literally thousands of cases are suddenly now being addressed of police officers who have been accused of rape, violence, domestic abuse etc over the years, only to have their accusers ignored and their cases dropped. This is only happening in the aftermath of first, the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, and secondly, the final reckoning with the 17 year career of rape and abuse by serving police officer David Carrick, despite many, many women over the years reporting him and detailing his assaults. The culture in the police (not just the Met) is deeply, deeply misogynist, and it is not entirely divorced from the society in which it operates.
     I have stayed out of the trans conversation, apart from one early comment on the Scottish situation, because I think my views are well-known here. But perhaps it is as well to remind you that there is a very strong thread of misogyny in the trans-activist world too: trans activists in balaclavas barricaded the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst on the anniversary of women’s suffrage, preventing feminist groups from celebrating and placing garlands etc (you can find footage on Youtube), trans activists regularly post threats and insults to feminists (not just J K Rowling, although she is a lightning rod for the threats, as well as the recent hysterical “I’m ten times the woman J K Rowling is”), and, as a woman in her 70s said to me recently “They call me a dried up old cunt. It’s so interesting, no woman has ever said anything like that to me, that is a man’s insult.”
     As I have repeatedly said, nobody I know who is concerned with this issue wants to victimise or oppress trans people. The concentration on gender is a red herring: everybody should have the right to dress how they want, call themselves what they want, sleep with whom they want and be called what they want. But women belong to a sex, and one moreover which has been oppressed and victimised on that basis (menstruation, childbirth etc) for eons. Regarding nous’s mention of Iran and the headscarf, the Taliban have no difficulty whatsoever in deciding who can and cannot go to school, or must wear the hijab. Trans women and trans men have rights which absolutely should be protected, but not at the expense of women.

333. A homegrown disinformation campaign.
     Summary:
     “Hamilton 68, backed by the German Marshall Fund, Alliance for Securing Democracy, and several other organizations, was a computerized “dashboard” designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation”. Twitter was concerned enough about the proliferation of news stories linked to Hamilton 68 that it ordered a forensic analysis, which revealed that the majority of the accounts Hamilton 68 labeled as “Russian influence activities online” were in fact real people from the U.S., Canada, and Britain who had no involvement in Russian activities. The list included not just Trump supporters but also a range of political dissidents, leftists, anarchists, and humorists. The Hamilton 68 list was used for years to drive hundreds of media headlines about supposed Russian bot infiltration of online discussions about a variety of topics, boosting some candidates and political stances while undermining others. After an internal investigation by Twitter and the revelation of a “Russian bot” scandal in the Alabama Senate Race, Clint Watts, one of the founders of Hamilton 68, publicly questioned the “bot thing”. Despite this, news organizations continued to promote Hamilton 68, creating a form of fake news that relied on a confluence of interests between think tanks, media, and the government.” —ChatGPT
     Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jason Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud: The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spy work.

334. A homegrown disinformation campaign.
     Summary:
     “Hamilton 68, backed by the German Marshall Fund, Alliance for Securing Democracy, and several other organizations, was a computerized “dashboard” designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation”. Twitter was concerned enough about the proliferation of news stories linked to Hamilton 68 that it ordered a forensic analysis, which revealed that the majority of the accounts Hamilton 68 labeled as “Russian influence activities online” were in fact real people from the U.S., Canada, and Britain who had no involvement in Russian activities. The list included not just Trump supporters but also a range of political dissidents, leftists, anarchists, and humorists. The Hamilton 68 list was used for years to drive hundreds of media headlines about supposed Russian bot infiltration of online discussions about a variety of topics, boosting some candidates and political stances while undermining others. After an internal investigation by Twitter and the revelation of a “Russian bot” scandal in the Alabama Senate Race, Clint Watts, one of the founders of Hamilton 68, publicly questioned the “bot thing”. Despite this, news organizations continued to promote Hamilton 68, creating a form of fake news that relied on a confluence of interests between think tanks, media, and the government.” —ChatGPT
     Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jason Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud: The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spy work.

335. A ways up thread, someone (janiem, I think) included a link to Timothy Snyder’s history course at Yale on The Making of Modern Ukranian. (Available here as a set of YouTube videos.) I got sucked in, and have been working my way thru them.
     There’s lots of fascinating stuff. But today (Class 16, the first half of the 20th century), I was particularly struck by his mention, in passing, that when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, he (and the German General Staff) expected the USSR to fall in 10 days to 2 weeks. Which is why there were no logistical preparations for a longer campaign, no winter gear for the soldiers, etc., etc. It struck me how totally this resembled Putin’s expectations, when he invaded Ukraine, for how quickly he would win. And the (lack of) preparations for anything longer.
     Since the part of the USSR where Hitler got bogged down was precisely Ukraine, it’s really hard not to think: “Ah, history repeating itself!”

336. A ways up thread, someone (janiem, I think) included a link to Timothy Snyder’s history course at Yale on The Making of Modern Ukranian. (Available here as a set of YouTube videos.) I got sucked in, and have been working my way thru them.
     There’s lots of fascinating stuff. But today (Class 16, the first half of the 20th century), I was particularly struck by his mention, in passing, that when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, he (and the German General Staff) expected the USSR to fall in 10 days to 2 weeks. Which is why there were no logistical preparations for a longer campaign, no winter gear for the soldiers, etc., etc. It struck me how totally this resembled Putin’s expectations, when he invaded Ukraine, for how quickly he would win. And the (lack of) preparations for anything longer.
     Since the part of the USSR where Hitler got bogged down was precisely Ukraine, it’s really hard not to think: “Ah, history repeating itself!”

337. Responding to GftNC’s 2:43 comment:
     1. Regarding nous’s mention of Iran and the headscarf, the Taliban have no difficulty whatsoever in deciding who can and cannot go to school, or must wear the hijab.
     I hope I’m misunderstanding what you mean, but it seems like a tacit comment on my suggestion that relying on something other than self-ID to know who’s who would turn into a nightmare of intrusiveness.
     Like, if the Taliban know who’s a woman and who’s a man, it must actually be easy? (Never mind their horrifying certainty that those are the only two possible categories.)
     But again, maybe I’m misunderstanding, so could you clarify?
     2. perhaps it is as well to remind you that there is a very strong thread of misogyny in the trans-activist world too
     Perhaps it is as well to remind you that this is very like my example of abusive parents who homeschool. I don’t believe the existence of such parents has, or should have, anything to do with the question of my right/choice to homeschool. Similarly, the fact that some trans people are unsavory characters shouldn’t have any bearing on a discussion of how trans people in general should be treated, or how policies that affect them (and the rest of us) should be decided.
     For that matter, if the fact that some trans people are misogynistic is relevant to something or other, what about the fact that some women are as well?
     (This reminds me of Gloria Steinem’s famous assertion that “Women have two choices: Either she’s a feminist or a masochist.” About which I had better not get going.)
     3. “The concentration on gender is a red herring”
     Not everyone sees it this way, to say the least. Just sayin’.

338. Responding to GftNC’s 2:43 comment:
     1. Regarding nous’s mention of Iran and the headscarf, the Taliban have no difficulty whatsoever in deciding who can and cannot go to school, or must wear the hijab.
     I hope I’m misunderstanding what you mean, but it seems like a tacit comment on my suggestion that relying on something other than self-ID to know who’s who would turn into a nightmare of intrusiveness.
     Like, if the Taliban know who’s a woman and who’s a man, it must actually be easy? (Never mind their horrifying certainty that those are the only two possible categories.)
     But again, maybe I’m misunderstanding, so could you clarify?
     2. perhaps it is as well to remind you that there is a very strong thread of misogyny in the trans-activist world too
     Perhaps it is as well to remind you that this is very like my example of abusive parents who homeschool. I don’t believe the existence of such parents has, or should have, anything to do with the question of my right/choice to homeschool. Similarly, the fact that some trans people are unsavory characters shouldn’t have any bearing on a discussion of how trans people in general should be treated, or how policies that affect them (and the rest of us) should be decided.
     For that matter, if the fact that some trans people are misogynistic is relevant to something or other, what about the fact that some women are as well?
     (This reminds me of Gloria Steinem’s famous assertion that “Women have two choices: Either she’s a feminist or a masochist.” About which I had better not get going.)
     3. “The concentration on gender is a red herring”
     Not everyone sees it this way, to say the least. Just sayin’.

339. A big benefit of file-based media, as opposed to tape, manifested for me last night. I was tasked with getting the Memphis video in to the internal system, waiting for its’ release. I got to download and process files, which except for a brief spot check I did not have to watch, unlike an old-style real-time feed. Because of what happened with the George Floyd situation, management had booked a room for me in the adjacent hotel in case it wasn’t safe to leave the building when my shift ended at 10pm. Completely unnecessary, and as I told them when they first informed of that backup plan, I had no difficulty leaving work back in 2020 after windows had been smashed and a cop car set aflame.

340. A big benefit of file-based media, as opposed to tape, manifested for me last night. I was tasked with getting the Memphis video in to the internal system, waiting for its’ release. I got to download and process files, which except for a brief spot check I did not have to watch, unlike an old-style real-time feed. Because of what happened with the George Floyd situation, management had booked a room for me in the adjacent hotel in case it wasn’t safe to leave the building when my shift ended at 10pm. Completely unnecessary, and as I told them when they first informed of that backup plan, I had no difficulty leaving work back in 2020 after windows had been smashed and a cop car set aflame.

341. But I packed a few cans of beer in my bag in case I was stuck in hotel room and couldn’t make it to the Yacht Club after work.

342. But I packed a few cans of beer in my bag in case I was stuck in hotel room and couldn’t make it to the Yacht Club after work.

343. “The concentration on gender is a red herring”
     Not everyone sees it this way, to say the least.
     LOL. As if I didn’t know!
     My point about the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the mullahs in Iran, is related to the fact that women are oppressed on the basis of their sex, not their gender. Since there are only two sexes in humankind, the one which produces large gametes (female) and the one that produces small ones (male), and almost everybody is a clear-cut case assigned at birth (the statistics for intersex have been hugely inflated by the trans-activist movement to include even things like polycystic ovary syndrome, but are actually something like 0.2%), the Taliban and the mullahs do not stop male persons who feel they are female from going to school or university, nor do the mullahs force such people to wear the hijab. I remember that someone, maybe lj or nous, mentioned that there are some scientists who speculate about more than two sexes in humans; this reminds me of nothing so much as the vanishingly few climate scientists who could be found to dispute the occurrence of anthropogenic climate change.
     My point about misogyny among so many trans-activists is that they are the loudest voices in the room. I hope nobody here has forgotten the astonishing phenomenon of the movement of trans women who accused lesbians of not wanting to sleep with them of being transphobic. Many trans people (and intersex people actually) bitterly resent the terms of the debate being pushed by the trans-activists, and the amounts of disinformation they spread.
     The thing about self-ID is that it confers legal rights. If you cannot deem a nurse who identifies as female, but has e.g. a beard and male genitals, as anything other than female, you find yourself in a situation where vulnerable women are unwillingly being given what is called “intimate personal care” by someone who seems clearly to be a man, whatever they say. And similarly in the case we discussed before where a trans-woman with male genitals went around waxing salons in Canada insisting on being waxed by the female beauticians, and in some cases where they refused they were put out of business. And of course, self-ID lets trans women compete in female sports. It takes very innocent people to assume that this kind of thing is always being done in good faith.
     And, regarding the question of how many of these people are doing it to gain access to vulnerable women, there are several cases in different countries, but nobody on my side of the argument says this is the whole (or even the main) story. There are clearly people with real gender dysphoria, and they need to be accommodated, helped and have their rights protected. But there is also such a thing as social contagion, and the sudden and extraordinary uptick in, for example, autistic girls identifying as trans, needs to be investigated and analysed to be sure that nothing other than gender dysphoria is at work. And as for the existence (hitherto unknown to me) of autogynephilia, where men derive sexual pleasure by thinking of themselves as women, as opposed to having gender dysphoria, this needs to be understood too. It may explain the puzzling statistic of why 45-55% of trans people now say they have no intention of having surgery, unlike the trans people of previous generations who were desperate to do so.
     This is a complicated, and yes, nuanced, subject. But assuming the worst of people on the opposite side of the debate is not the way to arrive at an eventual solution which protects as many groups and people as possible.
     p.s. I have limited mobility at the moment, so may not be able to respond as fully or often as normal, if necessary. Apologies in advance.

344. “The concentration on gender is a red herring”
     Not everyone sees it this way, to say the least.
     LOL. As if I didn’t know!
     My point about the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the mullahs in Iran, is related to the fact that women are oppressed on the basis of their sex, not their gender. Since there are only two sexes in humankind, the one which produces large gametes (female) and the one that produces small ones (male), and almost everybody is a clear-cut case assigned at birth (the statistics for intersex have been hugely inflated by the trans-activist movement to include even things like polycystic ovary syndrome, but are actually something like 0.2%), the Taliban and the mullahs do not stop male persons who feel they are female from going to school or university, nor do the mullahs force such people to wear the hijab. I remember that someone, maybe lj or nous, mentioned that there are some scientists who speculate about more than two sexes in humans; this reminds me of nothing so much as the vanishingly few climate scientists who could be found to dispute the occurrence of anthropogenic climate change.
     My point about misogyny among so many trans-activists is that they are the loudest voices in the room. I hope nobody here has forgotten the astonishing phenomenon of the movement of trans women who accused lesbians of not wanting to sleep with them of being transphobic. Many trans people (and intersex people actually) bitterly resent the terms of the debate being pushed by the trans-activists, and the amounts of disinformation they spread.
     The thing about self-ID is that it confers legal rights. If you cannot deem a nurse who identifies as female, but has e.g. a beard and male genitals, as anything other than female, you find yourself in a situation where vulnerable women are unwillingly being given what is called “intimate personal care” by someone who seems clearly to be a man, whatever they say. And similarly in the case we discussed before where a trans-woman with male genitals went around waxing salons in Canada insisting on being waxed by the female beauticians, and in some cases where they refused they were put out of business. And of course, self-ID lets trans women compete in female sports. It takes very innocent people to assume that this kind of thing is always being done in good faith.
     And, regarding the question of how many of these people are doing it to gain access to vulnerable women, there are several cases in different countries, but nobody on my side of the argument says this is the whole (or even the main) story. There are clearly people with real gender dysphoria, and they need to be accommodated, helped and have their rights protected. But there is also such a thing as social contagion, and the sudden and extraordinary uptick in, for example, autistic girls identifying as trans, needs to be investigated and analysed to be sure that nothing other than gender dysphoria is at work. And as for the existence (hitherto unknown to me) of autogynephilia, where men derive sexual pleasure by thinking of themselves as women, as opposed to having gender dysphoria, this needs to be understood too. It may explain the puzzling statistic of why 45-55% of trans people now say they have no intention of having surgery, unlike the trans people of previous generations who were desperate to do so.
     This is a complicated, and yes, nuanced, subject. But assuming the worst of people on the opposite side of the debate is not the way to arrive at an eventual solution which protects as many groups and people as possible.
     p.s. I have limited mobility at the moment, so may not be able to respond as fully or often as normal, if necessary. Apologies in advance.

345. Further to which, Labour is trying to straddle a very difficult line on this issue at the moment, between older women with some life experience (of discrimination, harrassment etc) and young people who have totally bought in to the narrative of the trans-rights activists. I know Labour supporting women (in some cases fairly hard left) who say their vote is in jeopardy because of this. Mine is not, I will do anything to get this appalling, inept and corrupt rabble of Tories out at the next election, but there is no denying that the trans debate has electrified many left-wing feminists to a point where they cannot be relied upon to vote Labour.

346. Further to which, Labour is trying to straddle a very difficult line on this issue at the moment, between older women with some life experience (of discrimination, harrassment etc) and young people who have totally bought in to the narrative of the trans-rights activists. I know Labour supporting women (in some cases fairly hard left) who say their vote is in jeopardy because of this. Mine is not, I will do anything to get this appalling, inept and corrupt rabble of Tories out at the next election, but there is no denying that the trans debate has electrified many left-wing feminists to a point where they cannot be relied upon to vote Labour.

347. But there is also such a thing as social contagion, and the sudden and extraordinary uptick in, for example, autistic girls identifying as trans, needs to be investigated and analysed to be sure that nothing other than gender dysphoria is at work. And as for the existence (hitherto unknown to me) of autogynephilia, where men derive sexual pleasure by thinking of themselves as women, as opposed to having gender dysphoria, this needs to be understood too.
     Jordan Peterson agrees with you. 🙂

348. But there is also such a thing as social contagion, and the sudden and extraordinary uptick in, for example, autistic girls identifying as trans, needs to be investigated and analysed to be sure that nothing other than gender dysphoria is at work. And as for the existence (hitherto unknown to me) of autogynephilia, where men derive sexual pleasure by thinking of themselves as women, as opposed to having gender dysphoria, this needs to be understood too.
     Jordan Peterson agrees with you. 🙂

349. Alas, this whole subject has put gender critical feminists in agreement on some issues with people they’d go a long way to avoid.

350. Alas, this whole subject has put gender critical feminists in agreement on some issues with people they’d go a long way to avoid.

351. The trans women in women’s prisons story in Scottland gets more convoluted.
     Summary:
     “The Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is facing a new trans prisoner controversy over the transfer of violent stalker Tiffany Scott, who has been repeatedly refused a switch to a women’s jail until now. Scott, who stalked a 13-year-old girl while known as Andrew Burns, has been rubber-stamped for transfer to a jail that aligns with her chosen gender. The transfer is planned despite Sturgeon’s recent instruction to overturn a decision to house double rapist Isla Bryson at the all-women jail Cornton Vale, Stirling. Critics have called for another U-turn on Scott, citing her history of violence and stalking.” —ChatGPT
     New trans prisoner storm looms for Nicola Sturgeon over transfer of violent stalker Tiffany Scott: Troubled Scott – formerly Andrew Burns – has been repeatedly refused a switch to women’s jail until now. (Source)

352. The trans women in women’s prisons story in Scottland gets more convoluted.
     Summary:
     “The Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is facing a new trans prisoner controversy over the transfer of violent stalker Tiffany Scott, who has been repeatedly refused a switch to a women’s jail until now. Scott, who stalked a 13-year-old girl while known as Andrew Burns, has been rubber-stamped for transfer to a jail that aligns with her chosen gender. The transfer is planned despite Sturgeon’s recent instruction to overturn a decision to house double rapist Isla Bryson at the all-women jail Cornton Vale, Stirling. Critics have called for another U-turn on Scott, citing her history of violence and stalking.” —ChatGPT
     New trans prisoner storm looms for Nicola Sturgeon over transfer of violent stalker Tiffany Scott: Troubled Scott – formerly Andrew Burns – has been repeatedly refused a switch to women’s jail until now. (Source)

353. there is no denying that the trans debate has electrified many left-wing feminists to a point where they cannot be relied upon to vote Labour.
     This seems to be a common phenomena across the political spectrum. Advocates for one position get, or get close to, what they have been demanding. (Stipulate, for the sake of discussion, that what they originally wanted had some merit. At a high level, if not in every detail.) And the promptly start demanding far more, to the point that even many those who were originally supportive run (not walk) away.
     It’s as if, for many of them, it’s not the ostensible goal that matters. It’s the fight for its own sake. (See, on the right, supposed anti-abortion activists who, having gotten Roe v. Wade overturned, now demand that Griswold v. Connecticut be overturned as well.)
     In short, they refuse to take Yes for an answer, declare victory, and go home.

354. there is no denying that the trans debate has electrified many left-wing feminists to a point where they cannot be relied upon to vote Labour.
     This seems to be a common phenomena across the political spectrum. Advocates for one position get, or get close to, what they have been demanding. (Stipulate, for the sake of discussion, that what they originally wanted had some merit. At a high level, if not in every detail.) And the promptly start demanding far more, to the point that even many those who were originally supportive run (not walk) away.
     It’s as if, for many of them, it’s not the ostensible goal that matters. It’s the fight for its own sake. (See, on the right, supposed anti-abortion activists who, having gotten Roe v. Wade overturned, now demand that Griswold v. Connecticut be overturned as well.)
     In short, they refuse to take Yes for an answer, declare victory, and go home.

355. It’s as if, for many of them, it’s not the ostensible goal that matters. It’s the fight for its own sake. (See, on the right, supposed anti-abortion activists who, having gotten Roe v. Wade overturned, now demand that Griswold v. Connecticut be overturned as well.)
     As a general phenomenon I think this is sometimes true. But in the case of Roe etc., I’m pretty sure there’s a strong and determined contingent in this country that has intended all along to roll back everything that has been done for the past century in relations to women’s rights and sexual freedom. It took a century of patient and determined work in legislatures and the courts to get to Griswold and then Roe, and the people who didn’t want them in the first place have been working just as patiently to roll them back, even if they don’t confess their whole agenda in public.
     The current carefully stoked hysteria about “groomers” etc. is part of the same agenda, the part where LGBTQ+ people go back into the closet (at best). Florida textbooks. Utah legislation banning gender affirming care. Etc.
     But hey, apparently we won, so what am I complaining about?

356. It’s as if, for many of them, it’s not the ostensible goal that matters. It’s the fight for its own sake. (See, on the right, supposed anti-abortion activists who, having gotten Roe v. Wade overturned, now demand that Griswold v. Connecticut be overturned as well.)
     As a general phenomenon I think this is sometimes true. But in the case of Roe etc., I’m pretty sure there’s a strong and determined contingent in this country that has intended all along to roll back everything that has been done for the past century in relations to women’s rights and sexual freedom. It took a century of patient and determined work in legislatures and the courts to get to Griswold and then Roe, and the people who didn’t want them in the first place have been working just as patiently to roll them back, even if they don’t confess their whole agenda in public.
     The current carefully stoked hysteria about “groomers” etc. is part of the same agenda, the part where LGBTQ+ people go back into the closet (at best). Florida textbooks. Utah legislation banning gender affirming care. Etc.
     But hey, apparently we won, so what am I complaining about?

357. In short, they refuse to take Yes for an answer, declare victory, and go home.
     “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” ―Eric Hoffer

358. In short, they refuse to take Yes for an answer, declare victory, and go home.
     “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” ―Eric Hoffer

359. Let me reframe my comment a bit. I do think that activists feed on their activism and sometimes have a hard time declaring victory. I think that has nothing to do with what has happened in the US in relation to women, LGBTQ+ people, or sex.

360. Let me reframe my comment a bit. I do think that activists feed on their activism and sometimes have a hard time declaring victory. I think that has nothing to do with what has happened in the US in relation to women, LGBTQ+ people, or sex.

361. But hey, apparently we won, so what am I complaining about?
     Contemporary enlightenment values are a minority opinion globally. Even in the West, getting a majority behind them is often dependent on the economy humming for everyone. We’ve won some battles. The war, though, is far from over. The war may never be over.

362. But hey, apparently we won, so what am I complaining about?
     Contemporary enlightenment values are a minority opinion globally. Even in the West, getting a majority behind them is often dependent on the economy humming for everyone. We’ve won some battles. The war, though, is far from over. The war may never be over.

363. The war may never be over.
     I don’t think it will ever be over. But at the age I am now, I think we don’t live long enough, as individuals, to realize that soon enough… A paradox composed of snippets from Dune, Shaw’s Back to Methuselah, and who knows what other shreds of my past preoccupations.

364. The war may never be over.
     I don’t think it will ever be over. But at the age I am now, I think we don’t live long enough, as individuals, to realize that soon enough… A paradox composed of snippets from Dune, Shaw’s Back to Methuselah, and who knows what other shreds of my past preoccupations.

365. The war, though, is far from over. The war may never be over.
     The war may never be over. But the front lines can move. And, sometimes, the move eventually becomes irreversable. Example: it took years for women to get the right to vote in the US. But while there was lots of residual opposition after it happened, it’s simply not going away now. And there’s no visible effort, even among the most reactionary, to reverse it.

366. The war, though, is far from over. The war may never be over.
     The war may never be over. But the front lines can move. And, sometimes, the move eventually becomes irreversable. Example: it took years for women to get the right to vote in the US. But while there was lots of residual opposition after it happened, it’s simply not going away now. And there’s no visible effort, even among the most reactionary, to reverse it.

367. The war, though, is far from over. The war may never be over.
     I think this, and in fact the rest of Michael Cain’s 01.03 above, is depressingly true. But all one can do is continue to try to fight the good fight.

368. The war, though, is far from over. The war may never be over.
     I think this, and in fact the rest of Michael Cain’s 01.03 above, is depressingly true. But all one can do is continue to try to fight the good fight.

369. Since there are only two sexes in humankind, the one which produces large gametes (female) and the one that produces small ones (male), and almost everybody is a clear-cut case assigned at birth…
     There’s a lot of post hoc mythologizing in this account. None of these schema existed prior to the 1800s, yet humans have long and widespread histories of patriarchal oppression going back centuries before that. The policing of patriarchal privilege does not have a systematic or scientific basis for who gets elevated and who gets demoted.
     It’s really sad watching marginalized groups go at each other using their trauma narratives while the people who are determined to maintain patriarchy encourage them to tear each other down. And it is so much easer to push trauma buttons and break apart alliances that threaten the status-quo than it is to maintain the shaky coalitions between the oppressed. Solidarity, despite pain and disagreement, is the only way to force change.
     I think the problem with activism is that too often activists bring their trauma to the work as a motivating energy to overcome despair, apathy, and burnout. It’s hard not to do this because there are so few people actually doing the hard work of forcing change, and it sometimes feels like one does not have the opportunity to take a break and care for oneself, but dipping into trauma anger almost always ends up poisoning the work and damaging the others working with you.
     We are seeing a lot of that across the various groups that are taking on patriarchy from different directions.

370. Since there are only two sexes in humankind, the one which produces large gametes (female) and the one that produces small ones (male), and almost everybody is a clear-cut case assigned at birth…
     There’s a lot of post hoc mythologizing in this account. None of these schema existed prior to the 1800s, yet humans have long and widespread histories of patriarchal oppression going back centuries before that. The policing of patriarchal privilege does not have a systematic or scientific basis for who gets elevated and who gets demoted.
     It’s really sad watching marginalized groups go at each other using their trauma narratives while the people who are determined to maintain patriarchy encourage them to tear each other down. And it is so much easer to push trauma buttons and break apart alliances that threaten the status-quo than it is to maintain the shaky coalitions between the oppressed. Solidarity, despite pain and disagreement, is the only way to force change.
     I think the problem with activism is that too often activists bring their trauma to the work as a motivating energy to overcome despair, apathy, and burnout. It’s hard not to do this because there are so few people actually doing the hard work of forcing change, and it sometimes feels like one does not have the opportunity to take a break and care for oneself, but dipping into trauma anger almost always ends up poisoning the work and damaging the others working with you.
     We are seeing a lot of that across the various groups that are taking on patriarchy from different directions.

371. Should cis lesbians with histories of violence against other women be held in women’s prisons?
     Yes, but…
     I would say that they should be in women’s prisons, but not in gen pop. That is, they should be segregated from the bulk of the population. This is not, after all, a radical concept — prisoners are segregated for a variety of reasons (including protection from other prisoners). But that makes more sense than putting them, for example, into men’s prisons.

372. Should cis lesbians with histories of violence against other women be held in women’s prisons?
     Yes, but…
     I would say that they should be in women’s prisons, but not in gen pop. That is, they should be segregated from the bulk of the population. This is not, after all, a radical concept — prisoners are segregated for a variety of reasons (including protection from other prisoners). But that makes more sense than putting them, for example, into men’s prisons.

373. In 2021 in England and Wales, the proportion of prosecutions for “Violence against the person” was 82% male, 18% female. The proportion for “Sexual offences” was 98% male and 2% female.
     https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2021/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2021#offence-analysis
     (see Figure 8.04)
     All prisoners should be protected from violence to the greatest extent possible, which may well mean the segregation of violent prisoners. And clearly, there is likely to be more and more organised provision for this in male prisons, given the stats on male violent crime. There is no reason to accept self-ID of trans prisoners convicted of violent or sexual crime, if they show no sign of having committed to their chosen gender (as is currently often the case, and certainly in the Scottish legislation: very little time spent living in their chosen gender, no necessity for medical or psychological diagnosis, no physical interventions necessary).
     There’s a lot of post hoc mythologizing in this account. None of these schema existed prior to the 1800s, yet humans have long and widespread histories of patriarchal oppression going back centuries before that.
     There’s a lot of biological fact in this account. None of these schema may have existed prior to the 1800s (what do you mean, even? Spermatazoa were discovered in 1677), and yet men had no difficulty in deciding which was the sex easy and legal to oppress.
     It’s really sad watching marginalized groups go at each other using their trauma narratives while the people who are determined to maintain patriarchy encourage them to tear each other down.
     It’s really sad watching progressive men lecture women on how they should be prepared to give up rights and protections they have fought and suffered for, in the interests of groups who, as well as denying biological reality, publicly spend a great deal of time insulting, threatening and demonising women. Despite the careful reciprocal formulation, and the non-naming of these groups, I do not notice these progressive men (here or in fact anywhere) lecturing trans-activists on their duty to other marginalised groups.
     There is a group in the UK called the LGB Alliance. They were set up, and gained charitable status, solely with the purpose of supporting lesbian, gay and bisexual people. A campaigning trans youth organisation called Mermaids has taken them to court in an attempt to revoke their charitable status, claiming that they are really an anti-trans organisation. You might be interested in their website:
     https://lgballiance.org.uk/defending-our-charity-status/
     https://lgballiance.org.uk/facts/

374. In 2021 in England and Wales, the proportion of prosecutions for “Violence against the person” was 82% male, 18% female. The proportion for “Sexual offences” was 98% male and 2% female.
     https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2021/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2021#offence-analysis
     (see Figure 8.04)
     All prisoners should be protected from violence to the greatest extent possible, which may well mean the segregation of violent prisoners. And clearly, there is likely to be more and more organised provision for this in male prisons, given the stats on male violent crime. There is no reason to accept self-ID of trans prisoners convicted of violent or sexual crime, if they show no sign of having committed to their chosen gender (as is currently often the case, and certainly in the Scottish legislation: very little time spent living in their chosen gender, no necessity for medical or psychological diagnosis, no physical interventions necessary).
     There’s a lot of post hoc mythologizing in this account. None of these schema existed prior to the 1800s, yet humans have long and widespread histories of patriarchal oppression going back centuries before that.
     There’s a lot of biological fact in this account. None of these schema may have existed prior to the 1800s (what do you mean, even? Spermatazoa were discovered in 1677), and yet men had no difficulty in deciding which was the sex easy and legal to oppress.
     It’s really sad watching marginalized groups go at each other using their trauma narratives while the people who are determined to maintain patriarchy encourage them to tear each other down.
     It’s really sad watching progressive men lecture women on how they should be prepared to give up rights and protections they have fought and suffered for, in the interests of groups who, as well as denying biological reality, publicly spend a great deal of time insulting, threatening and demonising women. Despite the careful reciprocal formulation, and the non-naming of these groups, I do not notice these progressive men (here or in fact anywhere) lecturing trans-activists on their duty to other marginalised groups.
     There is a group in the UK called the LGB Alliance. They were set up, and gained charitable status, solely with the purpose of supporting lesbian, gay and bisexual people. A campaigning trans youth organisation called Mermaids has taken them to court in an attempt to revoke their charitable status, claiming that they are really an anti-trans organisation. You might be interested in their website:
     https://lgballiance.org.uk/defending-our-charity-status/
     https://lgballiance.org.uk/facts/

375. There’s a lot of biological fact in this account. None of these schema may have existed prior to the 1800s (what do you mean, even? Spermatazoa were discovered in 1677)
     In 1677 they knew that some men produce spermatozoa, but that does not become a taxonomy of biological sexes based on gamete size until we have recognition of the human ovum and some system for understanding what a gamete is.
     Also, we had no system of national identification with a category for gender in earlier times to which individuals were pinned by bureaucratic records.
     Which means that patriarchal societies police their hierarchies based on a lot of things and that biological sex just gave us one fairly stable signifier that we could use to help pin down one part of the discussion. But it’s just one part of the many different human systems we use to justify and perpetuate oppressive hierarchies, and it is deeply entangled in other such systems.
     For the rest, there is nothing productive that I can offer, other than to say that I am listening and considering what people are saying, and doing my best to understand their perspective while I try to work through these collective issues.

376. There’s a lot of biological fact in this account. None of these schema may have existed prior to the 1800s (what do you mean, even? Spermatazoa were discovered in 1677)
     In 1677 they knew that some men produce spermatozoa, but that does not become a taxonomy of biological sexes based on gamete size until we have recognition of the human ovum and some system for understanding what a gamete is.
     Also, we had no system of national identification with a category for gender in earlier times to which individuals were pinned by bureaucratic records.
     Which means that patriarchal societies police their hierarchies based on a lot of things and that biological sex just gave us one fairly stable signifier that we could use to help pin down one part of the discussion. But it’s just one part of the many different human systems we use to justify and perpetuate oppressive hierarchies, and it is deeply entangled in other such systems.
     For the rest, there is nothing productive that I can offer, other than to say that I am listening and considering what people are saying, and doing my best to understand their perspective while I try to work through these collective issues.

377. Also, I think that many of my comments that were reflective in nature about bringing trauma to activism may have been read as if they are directed at other people. If you are reading my comments about trauma and burnout as some sort of passive aggressive critique, then you are bringing your own thing to them. I have plenty of my own sources of anger, traumas, and feelings of burnout to contend with.

378. Also, I think that many of my comments that were reflective in nature about bringing trauma to activism may have been read as if they are directed at other people. If you are reading my comments about trauma and burnout as some sort of passive aggressive critique, then you are bringing your own thing to them. I have plenty of my own sources of anger, traumas, and feelings of burnout to contend with.

379. They certainly knew that women did not produce what men produced, whatever it was called. They knew that only women produced babies, and menstruated, and men did not. There still is no category for gender “to which individuals are pinned by bureaucratic records”. There is a category for sex, the determination of which is as described in the LGB Alliance website (which also confirms what I realised after I first posted, that the percentage of intersex people is more like 0.02%, not 0.2% as I said):
     In 99.98% of cases, our primary sex characteristics, ie our genitals, will clearly indicate which sex we are. In a very small minority of some, but not all, people with Differences in Sex Development conditions (or “intersex”), the sex of a newborn is not obvious.
     The term “sex assigned at birth” is only correctly applied in these circumstances where it is not possible to observe and record the sex with certainty. For the rest of us, our sex is not assigned. It is observed and recorded.
     Feminists who, for example, have always supported gay rights, are perfectly aware that patriarchal societies police their hierarchies “based on a lot of things”, but the first, the foundational thing, is sex. nous, I don’t mean to give you too hard a time, because you are clearly a clever, benevolent and thoughtful person, but you do remind me sometimes of the CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, a trans woman, who said last year that survivors should “reframe their trauma”:
     “Sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well,” that rape survivors could not heal without addressing “unacceptable beliefs” and that if they sought care at the Edinburgh clinic, they should “expect to be challenged on [their] prejudices.” She had previously left the Scottish National Party after MSPs backed an amendment to allow survivors of rape and sexual violence to pick the sex rather than the gender of the person examining them. Author and sexual violence specialist Jessica Taylor remarked, “It is of concern to me that any rape centre would take the view that their clients who access their services at a time of crisis and trauma, would need politically re-educating so they agree with the views of the CEO and centre policies.

380. They certainly knew that women did not produce what men produced, whatever it was called. They knew that only women produced babies, and menstruated, and men did not. There still is no category for gender “to which individuals are pinned by bureaucratic records”. There is a category for sex, the determination of which is as described in the LGB Alliance website (which also confirms what I realised after I first posted, that the percentage of intersex people is more like 0.02%, not 0.2% as I said):
     In 99.98% of cases, our primary sex characteristics, ie our genitals, will clearly indicate which sex we are. In a very small minority of some, but not all, people with Differences in Sex Development conditions (or “intersex”), the sex of a newborn is not obvious.
     The term “sex assigned at birth” is only correctly applied in these circumstances where it is not possible to observe and record the sex with certainty. For the rest of us, our sex is not assigned. It is observed and recorded.
     Feminists who, for example, have always supported gay rights, are perfectly aware that patriarchal societies police their hierarchies “based on a lot of things”, but the first, the foundational thing, is sex. nous, I don’t mean to give you too hard a time, because you are clearly a clever, benevolent and thoughtful person, but you do remind me sometimes of the CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, a trans woman, who said last year that survivors should “reframe their trauma”:
     “Sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well,” that rape survivors could not heal without addressing “unacceptable beliefs” and that if they sought care at the Edinburgh clinic, they should “expect to be challenged on [their] prejudices.” She had previously left the Scottish National Party after MSPs backed an amendment to allow survivors of rape and sexual violence to pick the sex rather than the gender of the person examining them. Author and sexual violence specialist Jessica Taylor remarked, “It is of concern to me that any rape centre would take the view that their clients who access their services at a time of crisis and trauma, would need politically re-educating so they agree with the views of the CEO and centre policies.

381. nous @05.33: no, I didn’t think that. Understood.

382. nous @05.33: no, I didn’t think that. Understood.

383. There still is no category for gender “to which individuals are pinned by bureaucratic records”. There is a category for sex, the determination of which is as described in the LGB Alliance website
     I think I understand what most of the folks here mean by the two terms. But if there is a general understanding (in the broader culture) of the precise definitions of each, I have managed to miss it. And I suspect that it is essentially impossible to deal effectively with numerous issues in this area, not just trans issues, without being very, very clear about exactly what is meant by the terms in use.

384. There still is no category for gender “to which individuals are pinned by bureaucratic records”. There is a category for sex, the determination of which is as described in the LGB Alliance website
     I think I understand what most of the folks here mean by the two terms. But if there is a general understanding (in the broader culture) of the precise definitions of each, I have managed to miss it. And I suspect that it is essentially impossible to deal effectively with numerous issues in this area, not just trans issues, without being very, very clear about exactly what is meant by the terms in use.

385. Instead, I’ll ask my earlier question again, because I don’t see that anyone has addressed it seriously or tried to think through the implications.
     Should cis lesbians with histories of violence against other women be held in women’s prisons?
     Because your question deserves consideration…
     My immediate and continuing pie-in-the-sky response is that our basic problem is that we can’t think beyond “men’s” and “women’s” as categories of prisons. Your question suggests that it might be useful to think in terms of a different dichotomy, the seemingly obvious one of “violent” vs “non-violent” offenders. wj’s suggestion of segregating violent prisoners points in that direction, and I wonder why that option isn’t obvious.
     I haven’t followed these stories closely, so maybe it *is* treated as obvious, and I just don’t know it. If it’s not treated as obvious, is it because mentioning it would take away some of the clickbaity-ness of the topic? I mean, if there’s a workable solution, there’s no hook on which to hang a lot of outrage. (IS there such an option? Probably not everywhere.)
     I’ll stop here as well.

386. Instead, I’ll ask my earlier question again, because I don’t see that anyone has addressed it seriously or tried to think through the implications.
     Should cis lesbians with histories of violence against other women be held in women’s prisons?
     Because your question deserves consideration…
     My immediate and continuing pie-in-the-sky response is that our basic problem is that we can’t think beyond “men’s” and “women’s” as categories of prisons. Your question suggests that it might be useful to think in terms of a different dichotomy, the seemingly obvious one of “violent” vs “non-violent” offenders. wj’s suggestion of segregating violent prisoners points in that direction, and I wonder why that option isn’t obvious.
     I haven’t followed these stories closely, so maybe it *is* treated as obvious, and I just don’t know it. If it’s not treated as obvious, is it because mentioning it would take away some of the clickbaity-ness of the topic? I mean, if there’s a workable solution, there’s no hook on which to hang a lot of outrage. (IS there such an option? Probably not everywhere.)
     I’ll stop here as well.

387. wj: sex means biological sex, M or F. What gender means is very open to question. Some people think it is a nonsensical, imaginary invention, some people think it is a “feeling” about “what you are”, some people think it is a bunch of exaggerated, stereotyped characteristics (mainly formerly) associated with the two sexes. I don’t really have any idea what it is, but I am perfectly prepared to believe that there are people who genuinely and consistently believe they were “born in the wrongly sexed body”, and have a condition which has come to be called gender dysphoria: you cannot in fact change sex, although you can change gender. But gender itself seems a very nebulous term, with various different definitions.

388. wj: sex means biological sex, M or F. What gender means is very open to question. Some people think it is a nonsensical, imaginary invention, some people think it is a “feeling” about “what you are”, some people think it is a bunch of exaggerated, stereotyped characteristics (mainly formerly) associated with the two sexes. I don’t really have any idea what it is, but I am perfectly prepared to believe that there are people who genuinely and consistently believe they were “born in the wrongly sexed body”, and have a condition which has come to be called gender dysphoria: you cannot in fact change sex, although you can change gender. But gender itself seems a very nebulous term, with various different definitions.

389. And, in the spirit of realising that people can hold differing views yet still have liking and respect for each other, this from today’s NYT cheered me somewhat:
     It might be the strangest friendship in Washington.
     He’s a well-known Christian conservative who speaks out against gay marriage and abortion. She’s a former civil rights lawyer who has spent much of her career fighting to desegregate schools and protect transgender kids from bullying.
     Given their résumés, one might think that Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, and Anurima Bhargava, who worked in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, would be adversaries — if they ever crossed paths at all. Yet, over the past five years, they have managed to forge a bond that transcends politics and proves that you don’t have to agree on values here at home to promote basic human rights abroad.
     They met in 2018, when they were both appointed to serve on the nine-member U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a quasi-governmental body of unpaid volunteers that investigates religious persecution abroad. Mr. Perkins was appointed by Mitch McConnell; Ms. Bhargava by Nancy Pelosi. On the commission, they spoke up for the rights of Yazidis in Syria, Baha’is in Iran and Muslims in India. Even after their terms expired in 2022, they kept in touch.
     “Wrong things bother her,” Mr. Perkins told me. “And wrong things bother me.”
     He knew that they had become real friends, he said, when he started worrying about her and including her in his prayers. He felt that she respected his religious faith, even if she didn’t share it. “I can be candid with her,” he told me. “She knows my motivations.”
     What does it mean when a Hindu from the South Side of Chicago joins forces with an evangelical Christian from Louisiana to fight for the rights of religious minorities abroad? Maybe it means that we’re all human, and when we lean into that common humanity, good can come of it. Mr. Perkins, Ms. Bhargava and their fellow commissioners pushed for the release of people imprisoned for their beliefs, including a Quranist Muslim in Egypt, an Ahmadi Muslim in Pakistan and a Christian pastor in Turkey.
     I first learned about their unusual friendship on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the attack on the Capitol. I’ve known Ms. Bhargava since college — she was my roommate. I called her to process the shock of what had just happened. The country felt like it was coming apart at the seams. One thing that gave her hope, she told me, was “an email from Tony.”
     “Tony who?” I asked.
     She explained who he was and told me that he had just written her to let her know that he opposed the lawlessness that had unfolded at the Capitol. He wanted to distance himself from the hateful statements that others were spewing and tell her what her friendship had meant to him.
     “Based upon our religious backgrounds we have different worldviews,” he wrote. “That said, I respect you and I want you to know that when I am often addressing issues (totally unrelated to USCIRF) which we differ on, I often think of you wanting to state my views in a way that would not be offensive to you because of that respect and friendship.”
     He’d treated her with respect from the first moment she met him, Ms. Bhargava told me. He made an effort to learn how to pronounce her name, even as another Republican commissioner refused to do so. They sat next to each other at a dinner retreat in North Carolina and started chatting. He’d once worked in a prison and had witnessed injustices there. His daughter was interested in becoming a lawyer. He asked her advice.
     The friendship made her realize that “respect and trust don’t require agreement,” she said.
     As they got to know each other better, he told her not to believe everything written about him. In an age of political tribalism, so much gets distorted. She decided not to follow him on social media and rarely brought up topics, like abortion, where they would not find common ground. In 2020, they traveled together on a commission trip to Sudan. It was a hopeful time in the country, when protesters successfully pushed a military dictator from power. The new government repealed the apostasy law and banned flogging for blasphemy. Mr. Perkins and Ms. Bhargava celebrated the good news in the commission’s annual report.
     Eventually, Ms. Bhargava invited Mr. Perkins on a trip that had nothing to do with the commission — to the Texas border to learn about the problems faced by migrant children who had been held there. He went to learn more, he told me, but mostly because she’d asked him to go. After he got back, he contacted the Trump White House to talk about “the humanitarian situation” at the border, he told me.
     Their bond is all the more remarkable for the fact that his appointment to the commission in 2018 sparked outrage in some circles. The Hindu American Foundation argued that he couldn’t be an objective protector of religious freedom overseas because of “hateful stances against non-Christians” at home. It cited a comment he made in 2007 saying that it was not appropriate for a Hindu chaplain to deliver a prayer in the Senate because it ran against the grain of the monotheistic Judeo-Christian values upon which the United States had been founded.
     Rabbi Jack Moline, the former president of the Interfaith Alliance, argued that Mr. Perkins pushes a “twisted definition” of religious liberty that privileges Christianity above other religions. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which considers the Family Research Council a “hate group” because of its depiction of homosexuality as perversion, called his appointment “deeply disturbing.”
     But on the commission, Mr. Perkins set a tone of bipartisan cooperation. One of his first acts was to make sure that Tenzin Dorjee, a Buddhist from Tibet appointed by Nancy Pelosi, was unanimously elected chairman. He repeatedly added his voice to calls for raising the embarrassingly low cap that the Trump administration had set for refugee admissions and signed off on a fact sheet that called out countries that use Shariah law to justify executing people in same-sex relationships.
     “Tony and I had a long conversation about ‘What should we say?’” Ms. Bhargava recalled.
     His name also appears on a commission report that recommended sanctions against a leader in Chechnya for using religion as an excuse to torture lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people.
     When the American left and the right work together to protect vulnerable minorities abroad, they are harder to rebuff. “That’s strength,” Knox Thames, a former State Department official who has also worked as a policy director at the commission, told me. Mr. Thames co-authored a recent report about how promoting religious freedom abroad can help safeguard our national security. It recommends that advocates form “coalitions of the vulnerable” with the L.G.B.T.Q. community to stand up for persecuted minorities abroad. It turns out that we don’t have to agree on whether Christian bakers must bake cakes for gay weddings to unanimously condemn the law that calls for homosexuals to be stoned to death in Brunei, or the burning of Rohingya villages in Myanmar or the rape of Yazidi girls in Iraq.
     Such coalitions are extremely fragile. Some evangelicals fear that the commission will have to modify its mission to include human rights abuses committed in the name of religion, especially against members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Evangelicals oppose such a change, in part because it which would shift religion from victim to perpetrator. Whatever happens, I hope the commission doesn’t become yet another front in the U.S. culture wars.
     For the moment, the commission, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in October, is proving that it can be a rare bipartisan success, despite the division “religious freedom” can spark here at home. Thanks, in part, to efforts by Ms. Bhargava and Mr. Perkins, it has largely overcome the partisan infighting that plagued its early years. Christians helped push through the confirmation of President Biden’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom — Rashad Hussain, a Muslim — at a time when other ambassadorships were held up. This year’s international religious freedom summit, which opens on Jan. 31, lists both Samantha Power, President Biden’s U.S.A.I.D. administrator, and Newt Gingrich as speakers.
     Mr. Perkins will be there, too. His friendship with Ms. Bhargava hasn’t changed his core beliefs, he told me. He still fights for Bible-believing Christians, whom he views as under attack in the West. But he has changed how he expresses himself. In an age when others write over-the-top tweets just to outrage their political opponents, he chooses his words more carefully and imagines his good friend is listening.
     And then it’s good night from me.

390. And, in the spirit of realising that people can hold differing views yet still have liking and respect for each other, this from today’s NYT cheered me somewhat:
     It might be the strangest friendship in Washington.
     He’s a well-known Christian conservative who speaks out against gay marriage and abortion. She’s a former civil rights lawyer who has spent much of her career fighting to desegregate schools and protect transgender kids from bullying.
     Given their résumés, one might think that Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, and Anurima Bhargava, who worked in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, would be adversaries — if they ever crossed paths at all. Yet, over the past five years, they have managed to forge a bond that transcends politics and proves that you don’t have to agree on values here at home to promote basic human rights abroad.
     They met in 2018, when they were both appointed to serve on the nine-member U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a quasi-governmental body of unpaid volunteers that investigates religious persecution abroad. Mr. Perkins was appointed by Mitch McConnell; Ms. Bhargava by Nancy Pelosi. On the commission, they spoke up for the rights of Yazidis in Syria, Baha’is in Iran and Muslims in India. Even after their terms expired in 2022, they kept in touch.
     “Wrong things bother her,” Mr. Perkins told me. “And wrong things bother me.”
     He knew that they had become real friends, he said, when he started worrying about her and including her in his prayers. He felt that she respected his religious faith, even if she didn’t share it. “I can be candid with her,” he told me. “She knows my motivations.”
     What does it mean when a Hindu from the South Side of Chicago joins forces with an evangelical Christian from Louisiana to fight for the rights of religious minorities abroad? Maybe it means that we’re all human, and when we lean into that common humanity, good can come of it. Mr. Perkins, Ms. Bhargava and their fellow commissioners pushed for the release of people imprisoned for their beliefs, including a Quranist Muslim in Egypt, an Ahmadi Muslim in Pakistan and a Christian pastor in Turkey.
     I first learned about their unusual friendship on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the attack on the Capitol. I’ve known Ms. Bhargava since college — she was my roommate. I called her to process the shock of what had just happened. The country felt like it was coming apart at the seams. One thing that gave her hope, she told me, was “an email from Tony.”
     “Tony who?” I asked.
     She explained who he was and told me that he had just written her to let her know that he opposed the lawlessness that had unfolded at the Capitol. He wanted to distance himself from the hateful statements that others were spewing and tell her what her friendship had meant to him.
     “Based upon our religious backgrounds we have different worldviews,” he wrote. “That said, I respect you and I want you to know that when I am often addressing issues (totally unrelated to USCIRF) which we differ on, I often think of you wanting to state my views in a way that would not be offensive to you because of that respect and friendship.”
     He’d treated her with respect from the first moment she met him, Ms. Bhargava told me. He made an effort to learn how to pronounce her name, even as another Republican commissioner refused to do so. They sat next to each other at a dinner retreat in North Carolina and started chatting. He’d once worked in a prison and had witnessed injustices there. His daughter was interested in becoming a lawyer. He asked her advice.
     The friendship made her realize that “respect and trust don’t require agreement,” she said.
     As they got to know each other better, he told her not to believe everything written about him. In an age of political tribalism, so much gets distorted. She decided not to follow him on social media and rarely brought up topics, like abortion, where they would not find common ground. In 2020, they traveled together on a commission trip to Sudan. It was a hopeful time in the country, when protesters successfully pushed a military dictator from power. The new government repealed the apostasy law and banned flogging for blasphemy. Mr. Perkins and Ms. Bhargava celebrated the good news in the commission’s annual report.
     Eventually, Ms. Bhargava invited Mr. Perkins on a trip that had nothing to do with the commission — to the Texas border to learn about the problems faced by migrant children who had been held there. He went to learn more, he told me, but mostly because she’d asked him to go. After he got back, he contacted the Trump White House to talk about “the humanitarian situation” at the border, he told me.
     Their bond is all the more remarkable for the fact that his appointment to the commission in 2018 sparked outrage in some circles. The Hindu American Foundation argued that he couldn’t be an objective protector of religious freedom overseas because of “hateful stances against non-Christians” at home. It cited a comment he made in 2007 saying that it was not appropriate for a Hindu chaplain to deliver a prayer in the Senate because it ran against the grain of the monotheistic Judeo-Christian values upon which the United States had been founded.
     Rabbi Jack Moline, the former president of the Interfaith Alliance, argued that Mr. Perkins pushes a “twisted definition” of religious liberty that privileges Christianity above other religions. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which considers the Family Research Council a “hate group” because of its depiction of homosexuality as perversion, called his appointment “deeply disturbing.”
     But on the commission, Mr. Perkins set a tone of bipartisan cooperation. One of his first acts was to make sure that Tenzin Dorjee, a Buddhist from Tibet appointed by Nancy Pelosi, was unanimously elected chairman. He repeatedly added his voice to calls for raising the embarrassingly low cap that the Trump administration had set for refugee admissions and signed off on a fact sheet that called out countries that use Shariah law to justify executing people in same-sex relationships.
     “Tony and I had a long conversation about ‘What should we say?’” Ms. Bhargava recalled.
     His name also appears on a commission report that recommended sanctions against a leader in Chechnya for using religion as an excuse to torture lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people.
     When the American left and the right work together to protect vulnerable minorities abroad, they are harder to rebuff. “That’s strength,” Knox Thames, a former State Department official who has also worked as a policy director at the commission, told me. Mr. Thames co-authored a recent report about how promoting religious freedom abroad can help safeguard our national security. It recommends that advocates form “coalitions of the vulnerable” with the L.G.B.T.Q. community to stand up for persecuted minorities abroad. It turns out that we don’t have to agree on whether Christian bakers must bake cakes for gay weddings to unanimously condemn the law that calls for homosexuals to be stoned to death in Brunei, or the burning of Rohingya villages in Myanmar or the rape of Yazidi girls in Iraq.
     Such coalitions are extremely fragile. Some evangelicals fear that the commission will have to modify its mission to include human rights abuses committed in the name of religion, especially against members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Evangelicals oppose such a change, in part because it which would shift religion from victim to perpetrator. Whatever happens, I hope the commission doesn’t become yet another front in the U.S. culture wars.
     For the moment, the commission, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in October, is proving that it can be a rare bipartisan success, despite the division “religious freedom” can spark here at home. Thanks, in part, to efforts by Ms. Bhargava and Mr. Perkins, it has largely overcome the partisan infighting that plagued its early years. Christians helped push through the confirmation of President Biden’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom — Rashad Hussain, a Muslim — at a time when other ambassadorships were held up. This year’s international religious freedom summit, which opens on Jan. 31, lists both Samantha Power, President Biden’s U.S.A.I.D. administrator, and Newt Gingrich as speakers.
     Mr. Perkins will be there, too. His friendship with Ms. Bhargava hasn’t changed his core beliefs, he told me. He still fights for Bible-believing Christians, whom he views as under attack in the West. But he has changed how he expresses himself. In an age when others write over-the-top tweets just to outrage their political opponents, he chooses his words more carefully and imagines his good friend is listening.
     And then it’s good night from me.

391. wj: sex means biological sex, M or F. What gender means is very open to question.
     …
     you cannot in fact change sex, although you can change gender.
     Just to pick away at the topic: Are we saying that sex is a matter of chromosomes? That is, do you have two X chromosomes or an X and a Y chromosome?** In that case, yes sex is unchangeable.
     But, alternatively, are we saying that sex is about the ability to procreate without medical intervention? In that case the most we can say is that sex isn’t changeable yet.
     (I admit, I’ve probably been reading too much science fiction where such medical interventions are possible. Not, in the stuff I’ve read, common. But not a particularly radical procedure either.)
     ** Ignoring, for the moment, the occasional individual who apparently has two X chromosomes and one Y chromosome. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio….”

392. wj: sex means biological sex, M or F. What gender means is very open to question.
     …
     you cannot in fact change sex, although you can change gender.
     Just to pick away at the topic: Are we saying that sex is a matter of chromosomes? That is, do you have two X chromosomes or an X and a Y chromosome?** In that case, yes sex is unchangeable.
     But, alternatively, are we saying that sex is about the ability to procreate without medical intervention? In that case the most we can say is that sex isn’t changeable yet.
     (I admit, I’ve probably been reading too much science fiction where such medical interventions are possible. Not, in the stuff I’ve read, common. But not a particularly radical procedure either.)
     ** Ignoring, for the moment, the occasional individual who apparently has two X chromosomes and one Y chromosome. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio….”

393. wj: it’s been long assumed that ‘male’ is having a Y chromosome, but turns out there’s some *other* genetic bit, not *quite* exclusively on the Y chromosome, that is the cause.
     Biology is just incredibly chaotic. A couple billion years of random mutations and sorta-random survival will do that, I guess.

394. wj: it’s been long assumed that ‘male’ is having a Y chromosome, but turns out there’s some *other* genetic bit, not *quite* exclusively on the Y chromosome, that is the cause.
     Biology is just incredibly chaotic. A couple billion years of random mutations and sorta-random survival will do that, I guess.

395. hsh, it’s an incredibly complex world out there. That’s why I get tiresome about asking what, exactly, we mean by the terms we use. It’s just incredibly difficult to have a productive conversation, let alone come up with concrete solutions, when we aren’t talking about the same things even though we are using the same words.

396. hsh, it’s an incredibly complex world out there. That’s why I get tiresome about asking what, exactly, we mean by the terms we use. It’s just incredibly difficult to have a productive conversation, let alone come up with concrete solutions, when we aren’t talking about the same things even though we are using the same words.

397. FYI, three GftNC comments (one from this thread, and two from the Negotiating thread) have been rescued from the Spam bin. Apologies for not checking more frequently.

398. FYI, three GftNC comments (one from this thread, and two from the Negotiating thread) have been rescued from the Spam bin. Apologies for not checking more frequently.

399. In ancient Greece it was assumed that women were merely incubators and that 100% of what we would call ‘genetic material’ is from the father. It even became a literary topic when in the Oresteia of Aeschylus it is successfully argued before the Areopagus in Athens against the Furies that killing one’s mother is not killing a blood relative for the reason named above.
     In Rome mothers were not legally related to their own children.
     In a way St.Thomas Aquinas put the cherry on the top when writing that women were only defective men and putting the blame for female and deformed children being born primarily on the defective incubating person (although defective sperm could occasionally be the reason too).
     The classic metaphor is men sowing their seed into the fertile female furrow (iirc that one was already used in Sumerian times).
     The woman only provides the building material while the man provides the blueprint. And whom do we consider the ‘author’ of a building? The bricklayer or the architect?
     So, there is a really long tradition of downplaying the role of the female sex.
     Although few went so far as Aristotle to declare sexual intercourse with women inferior to that with other men (He was not homosexual. It was based on his ‘intellectual’ view of women). Still enough (male) authorities left who wrote absolutely disgusting stuff about female inferiority.

400. In ancient Greece it was assumed that women were merely incubators and that 100% of what we would call ‘genetic material’ is from the father. It even became a literary topic when in the Oresteia of Aeschylus it is successfully argued before the Areopagus in Athens against the Furies that killing one’s mother is not killing a blood relative for the reason named above.
     In Rome mothers were not legally related to their own children.
     In a way St.Thomas Aquinas put the cherry on the top when writing that women were only defective men and putting the blame for female and deformed children being born primarily on the defective incubating person (although defective sperm could occasionally be the reason too).
     The classic metaphor is men sowing their seed into the fertile female furrow (iirc that one was already used in Sumerian times).
     The woman only provides the building material while the man provides the blueprint. And whom do we consider the ‘author’ of a building? The bricklayer or the architect?
     So, there is a really long tradition of downplaying the role of the female sex.
     Although few went so far as Aristotle to declare sexual intercourse with women inferior to that with other men (He was not homosexual. It was based on his ‘intellectual’ view of women). Still enough (male) authorities left who wrote absolutely disgusting stuff about female inferiority.

401. wj: sometimes I forget that I can’t post links under my formal handle, and have to use GftNC to do so. In those cases, I usually just repost. So what you have restored may be duplicates. In future, if a post is too long to do again, I’ll just post a short plea here to have it rescued. So then, whatever else you find in the spam folder from me can be safely discarded.

402. wj: sometimes I forget that I can’t post links under my formal handle, and have to use GftNC to do so. In those cases, I usually just repost. So what you have restored may be duplicates. In future, if a post is too long to do again, I’ll just post a short plea here to have it rescued. So then, whatever else you find in the spam folder from me can be safely discarded.

403. Eventually, we’ll get all this sorted out and running smoothly. Eventually. Hopefully. 🙂

404. Eventually, we’ll get all this sorted out and running smoothly. Eventually. Hopefully. 🙂

405. Sure, wj.
     Right after the last bug is eradicated from Windoze.

406. Sure, wj.
     Right after the last bug is eradicated from Windoze.

407. Typepad’s version of Movable Type is not yet abandonware, but seems to be headed in that direction. No one who has messed with WordPress seriously thinks it will ever get truly sorted out. I spent part of yesterday reading people whining about Disqus.

408. Typepad’s version of Movable Type is not yet abandonware, but seems to be headed in that direction. No one who has messed with WordPress seriously thinks it will ever get truly sorted out. I spent part of yesterday reading people whining about Disqus.

409. Right after the last bug is eradicated from Windoze.
     Presumably you are not counting the possibility that they will just issue a blanket reclassification of any remaining bugs as “features”….

410. Right after the last bug is eradicated from Windoze.
     Presumably you are not counting the possibility that they will just issue a blanket reclassification of any remaining bugs as “features”….

411. Sometimes, the enthusiasm of some folks to shoot themselves in the foot is simply awesome.
     Start with a tweet from Kari Lake of Arizona. It contains, as you can see, images of several voters signatures.
     Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fonte referred her to tha Arizona Attorney General.

     Fontes pointed to state law involving public inspection of voter registration records. That law says records containing voter signatures “shall not be accessible or reproduced by any person other than the voter.”
     Violation of that law, he wrote, is a felony.

     She’s a true discipline ot TFG.

412. Sometimes, the enthusiasm of some folks to shoot themselves in the foot is simply awesome.
     Start with a tweet from Kari Lake of Arizona. It contains, as you can see, images of several voters signatures.
     Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fonte referred her to tha Arizona Attorney General.

     Fontes pointed to state law involving public inspection of voter registration records. That law says records containing voter signatures “shall not be accessible or reproduced by any person other than the voter.”
     Violation of that law, he wrote, is a felony.

     She’s a true discipline ot TFG.

413. I don’t know the details about AZ’s mail ballot system. In Colorado, and assuming the signatures in the tweet are in some fashion pairs of signatures that should match, they would get an envelope pulled out. Each election, about 2% of envelopes here fail. Many are “cured” by the election officials, either through phone calls, submission of additional paperwork, or even physical visits.
     There is a court case in Colorado now to remove signatures completely from our mail ballot system. The lead plaintiff has ALS which makes it impossible for him to have a reproducible signature or travel to a polling place.

414. I don’t know the details about AZ’s mail ballot system. In Colorado, and assuming the signatures in the tweet are in some fashion pairs of signatures that should match, they would get an envelope pulled out. Each election, about 2% of envelopes here fail. Many are “cured” by the election officials, either through phone calls, submission of additional paperwork, or even physical visits.
     There is a court case in Colorado now to remove signatures completely from our mail ballot system. The lead plaintiff has ALS which makes it impossible for him to have a reproducible signature or travel to a polling place.

415. My sense, from a distance, is that the Arizona law is intended to help prevent voter fraud. By not letting would-be fraudsters have an example signature to copy. (Naturally, preventing voter fraud is not high on Lake’s list of priorities.)
     The signature law in California doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Mail ballots have to have a signature on the envelope, and those get compared to the file signature before the ballot is counted. But while anyone voting in person does have to sign in at the polls, there is no process to check that signature against anything.** And, if someone were to check later, no way to identify and remove that particular ballot. So, why do we bother?
     ** And, by law, poll workers may not ask voters for ID. Technically, if the voter offers one when asked for their name, we aren’t supposed to look — although in practice we do look whenever we aren’t certain how the name is spelled, so we can find it in the voter roll.

416. My sense, from a distance, is that the Arizona law is intended to help prevent voter fraud. By not letting would-be fraudsters have an example signature to copy. (Naturally, preventing voter fraud is not high on Lake’s list of priorities.)
     The signature law in California doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Mail ballots have to have a signature on the envelope, and those get compared to the file signature before the ballot is counted. But while anyone voting in person does have to sign in at the polls, there is no process to check that signature against anything.** And, if someone were to check later, no way to identify and remove that particular ballot. So, why do we bother?
     ** And, by law, poll workers may not ask voters for ID. Technically, if the voter offers one when asked for their name, we aren’t supposed to look — although in practice we do look whenever we aren’t certain how the name is spelled, so we can find it in the voter roll.

417. And all of this because a nationaL ID card is considered blasphemy against the holy spirit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_sin ) in the US…
     (and I am talking about one that does not store vast amounts of personal data but one whose whole function is to determine ID whereever needed.)

418. And all of this because a nationaL ID card is considered blasphemy against the holy spirit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_sin ) in the US…
     (and I am talking about one that does not store vast amounts of personal data but one whose whole function is to determine ID whereever needed.)

419. a national ID card is considered blasphemy against the holy spirit
     Including by people who don’t seem to have a problem with the state departments which issue driver’s licenses also issuing IDs for those who are not drivers. Which they do because everybody needs an ID at some point, so they are fulfilling a real need.
     Consistency doesn’t seem to be a core competency with these folks.

420. a national ID card is considered blasphemy against the holy spirit
     Including by people who don’t seem to have a problem with the state departments which issue driver’s licenses also issuing IDs for those who are not drivers. Which they do because everybody needs an ID at some point, so they are fulfilling a real need.
     Consistency doesn’t seem to be a core competency with these folks.

421. I hear that some consider it even un-American to have a passport and that some (GOP) candidates got actually attacked for this sin by their rivals.
     Sounds outright Chinese to me (there’s nothing outside China worth any attention for a proper Chinese person)

422. I hear that some consider it even un-American to have a passport and that some (GOP) candidates got actually attacked for this sin by their rivals.
     Sounds outright Chinese to me (there’s nothing outside China worth any attention for a proper Chinese person)

423. Sounds outright Chinese to me (there’s nothing outside China worth any attention for a proper Chinese person)
     More, I think, along the lines of “How dare anyone outside the US expect us to carry identity documents?!?!? And how dare the US government ask for proof that we are ‘Real Americans’ (TM) when we come home?” (Unsurprisingly, they are unaware of the difference between a passport and a visa.)

424. Sounds outright Chinese to me (there’s nothing outside China worth any attention for a proper Chinese person)
     More, I think, along the lines of “How dare anyone outside the US expect us to carry identity documents?!?!? And how dare the US government ask for proof that we are ‘Real Americans’ (TM) when we come home?” (Unsurprisingly, they are unaware of the difference between a passport and a visa.)

425. The cases I remember were explicitly about passports being an expression of a desire to travel abroad and thus equal to what used to be cosmopolitanism. Remember how Romney got attacked for that from the Right and how it was used as an insult that he learned French (being a Mormon missionary in France without speaking French would be slightly counterproductive one would think)?
     Of course his French adventures got criticized from the Left too but not for cultural contamination of his soul but for thus evading service in Vietnam while at the same time condemning draft dodgers as unpatriotic cowards.
     The ‘how dare these foreigners asking for our ID’ mindset looks more early 20th century to me (when even the British* mocked that attitude during WW1).
     What I see now looks more like enhanced isolationism (keep THEM out and US in).
     But I am just an observer from abroad who can only interpret what absurdities he gets from the news/net with no means to discern how widespread which mindset actually is.
     *who used to display something similar

426. The cases I remember were explicitly about passports being an expression of a desire to travel abroad and thus equal to what used to be cosmopolitanism. Remember how Romney got attacked for that from the Right and how it was used as an insult that he learned French (being a Mormon missionary in France without speaking French would be slightly counterproductive one would think)?
     Of course his French adventures got criticized from the Left too but not for cultural contamination of his soul but for thus evading service in Vietnam while at the same time condemning draft dodgers as unpatriotic cowards.
     The ‘how dare these foreigners asking for our ID’ mindset looks more early 20th century to me (when even the British* mocked that attitude during WW1).
     What I see now looks more like enhanced isolationism (keep THEM out and US in).
     But I am just an observer from abroad who can only interpret what absurdities he gets from the news/net with no means to discern how widespread which mindset actually is.
     *who used to display something similar

427. Oh God, as if anything was lacking to make the polarisation on trans/sex/gender worse, Trump comes out today to make it one of his main planks, although of course in his idiotic way his announcement conflated sex with gender. Perhaps he is scared of using the word “sex”. Or, more likely, it is pure ignorance.
     Donald Trump has vowed to pass legislation that recognises only two genders under US law if he is elected president as he seeks to shore up his conservative base and outflank rival candidates on the right of the Republican Party.
     In a video statement on his Truth Social platform, the former president said that if elected again in 2024, he would “ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only two genders recognised by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth”.
     I had no intention of returning to this very contentious subject now, but this (actually clearly foreseeable) development is likely to make the whole thing worse. And since I wanted to bring it to your attention, I may as well also post (for anybody who is interested) a fascinating paper on the whole issue of how gender has come to supersede sex in the English prison system. The paper is called Queer Theory and the Transition from Sex to Gender in English Prisons and I hope this link works:
     https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/download/article/2/1/183/pdf

428. Oh God, as if anything was lacking to make the polarisation on trans/sex/gender worse, Trump comes out today to make it one of his main planks, although of course in his idiotic way his announcement conflated sex with gender. Perhaps he is scared of using the word “sex”. Or, more likely, it is pure ignorance.
     Donald Trump has vowed to pass legislation that recognises only two genders under US law if he is elected president as he seeks to shore up his conservative base and outflank rival candidates on the right of the Republican Party.
     In a video statement on his Truth Social platform, the former president said that if elected again in 2024, he would “ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only two genders recognised by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth”.
     I had no intention of returning to this very contentious subject now, but this (actually clearly foreseeable) development is likely to make the whole thing worse. And since I wanted to bring it to your attention, I may as well also post (for anybody who is interested) a fascinating paper on the whole issue of how gender has come to supersede sex in the English prison system. The paper is called Queer Theory and the Transition from Sex to Gender in English Prisons and I hope this link works:
     https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/download/article/2/1/183/pdf

429. Oh God, as if anything was lacking to make the polarisation on trans/sex/gender worse, Trump comes out today to make it one of his main planks, although of course in his idiotic way his announcement conflated sex with gender. Perhaps he is scared of using the word “sex”. Or, more likely, it is pure ignorance.
     I think this very much misses the point.
     Clickbait may or may not be afraid of using the word sex, and he may or may not be ignorant about terminology. But none of that matters, because his goal — which isn’t the least bit novel or mavericky in the light of what his party is doing in a lot of states already — is the erasure of trans and non-binary people (and, one presumes, eventually gay people as well) from open participation in any aspect of public life, or ultimately from being recognized as existing at all.
     This is the kind of thing that is going on in the US right now:
     https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/18/desantis-trans-health-care-florida-universities-00078435
     https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republican-states-aim-to-restrict-transgender-health-care-in-first-bills-of-2023
     https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/florida-student-athletes-period.html
     Clickbait doesn’t care about some fancy pants distinction between “sex” and “gender.” It may appear as if he’s conflating them ignorantly, but the distinction between them is part of what is meant to be erased. Whatever they are, there are only two of them, and if he and the rest of the R party have any say in the matter, any ridiculous notions to the contrary are going to be stamped out good and hard.

430. Oh God, as if anything was lacking to make the polarisation on trans/sex/gender worse, Trump comes out today to make it one of his main planks, although of course in his idiotic way his announcement conflated sex with gender. Perhaps he is scared of using the word “sex”. Or, more likely, it is pure ignorance.
     I think this very much misses the point.
     Clickbait may or may not be afraid of using the word sex, and he may or may not be ignorant about terminology. But none of that matters, because his goal — which isn’t the least bit novel or mavericky in the light of what his party is doing in a lot of states already — is the erasure of trans and non-binary people (and, one presumes, eventually gay people as well) from open participation in any aspect of public life, or ultimately from being recognized as existing at all.
     This is the kind of thing that is going on in the US right now:
     https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/18/desantis-trans-health-care-florida-universities-00078435
     https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republican-states-aim-to-restrict-transgender-health-care-in-first-bills-of-2023
     https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/florida-student-athletes-period.html
     Clickbait doesn’t care about some fancy pants distinction between “sex” and “gender.” It may appear as if he’s conflating them ignorantly, but the distinction between them is part of what is meant to be erased. Whatever they are, there are only two of them, and if he and the rest of the R party have any say in the matter, any ridiculous notions to the contrary are going to be stamped out good and hard.

431. the erasure of trans and non-binary people (and, one presumes, eventually gay people as well) from open participation in any aspect of public life, or ultimately from being recognized as existing at all.
     You left out shutting down sex outside of (heterosexual) marriage. Or, more accurately, ramming it back into the closet, where it was in the 1950s. In aid of which wiil be overturning Griswold. Followed by banning contraceptives — except maybe for married couples.
     Might even happen in a few states. Hard to think of a better way to lose elections in most places. (Not that the fanatics are capable of recognizing that.) And losing them beyond the ability of voter suppression or other shenanigans to reverse.

432. the erasure of trans and non-binary people (and, one presumes, eventually gay people as well) from open participation in any aspect of public life, or ultimately from being recognized as existing at all.
     You left out shutting down sex outside of (heterosexual) marriage. Or, more accurately, ramming it back into the closet, where it was in the 1950s. In aid of which wiil be overturning Griswold. Followed by banning contraceptives — except maybe for married couples.
     Might even happen in a few states. Hard to think of a better way to lose elections in most places. (Not that the fanatics are capable of recognizing that.) And losing them beyond the ability of voter suppression or other shenanigans to reverse.

433. Yes, I guess I wasn’t clear enough. I don’t think for a moment that Trump cares (or necessarily knows about) the distinction between them. I was just taking a swipe at his general ignorance and stupidity.
     My point really was that him taking up the cudgels on this issue can only make it worse, irrespective of what he calls it, and it’s pretty bad already. The very definition of what they call a “wedge issue”, actually, driving even more of a wedge between people who are trying to have humane and goodwill discussions on the matter.
     But as to the distinction between them is part of what is meant to be erased I completely agree, and in fact this has to a large extent already happened and is what people like me are fighting a desperate rearguard action against. Words create or modify reality, as the developments of recent years have shown; why, even someone as clever and well-educated as lj didn’t really see that he was conflating the two things when I pointed it out to him in one of our earlier discussions on this subject. And, as we now know, the way that gender has overtaken sex as any kind of criterion in many settings has led to the fact that, for example, in Scotland (a nation of 5.5 million people) there have been three trans women, previously convicted of rape or sexual assault on women, housed (or proposed to be housed) in women’s prisons in the last year.
     https://www.channel4.com/news/nicola-sturgeon-explains-scottish-governments-decision-to-pause-transfers-of-some-transgender-prisoners-to-womens-prisons
     There is no doubt that the agenda of the extreme right is to discriminate against and otherwise prevent trans and non-binary people from attaining rights and protections, and legitimise discrimination against them, and gay people too, to the extent that they can to pander to the prejudices of their supporters, whether religious or otherwise. (Although FWIW I have to say I can’t see how they could, under any conceivable circumstances, prevent gay people at least as ultimately from being recognized as existing at all. However, far be it from me to assume there is a limit to their ambitions).
     No, I think it is extremely important (as nous implies) to remember who is the real enemy, and not to fall into the trap of either demonising reasonable people of differing views, or participating blindly in the obliteration of important concepts and categories.

434. Yes, I guess I wasn’t clear enough. I don’t think for a moment that Trump cares (or necessarily knows about) the distinction between them. I was just taking a swipe at his general ignorance and stupidity.
     My point really was that him taking up the cudgels on this issue can only make it worse, irrespective of what he calls it, and it’s pretty bad already. The very definition of what they call a “wedge issue”, actually, driving even more of a wedge between people who are trying to have humane and goodwill discussions on the matter.
     But as to the distinction between them is part of what is meant to be erased I completely agree, and in fact this has to a large extent already happened and is what people like me are fighting a desperate rearguard action against. Words create or modify reality, as the developments of recent years have shown; why, even someone as clever and well-educated as lj didn’t really see that he was conflating the two things when I pointed it out to him in one of our earlier discussions on this subject. And, as we now know, the way that gender has overtaken sex as any kind of criterion in many settings has led to the fact that, for example, in Scotland (a nation of 5.5 million people) there have been three trans women, previously convicted of rape or sexual assault on women, housed (or proposed to be housed) in women’s prisons in the last year.
     https://www.channel4.com/news/nicola-sturgeon-explains-scottish-governments-decision-to-pause-transfers-of-some-transgender-prisoners-to-womens-prisons
     There is no doubt that the agenda of the extreme right is to discriminate against and otherwise prevent trans and non-binary people from attaining rights and protections, and legitimise discrimination against them, and gay people too, to the extent that they can to pander to the prejudices of their supporters, whether religious or otherwise. (Although FWIW I have to say I can’t see how they could, under any conceivable circumstances, prevent gay people at least as ultimately from being recognized as existing at all. However, far be it from me to assume there is a limit to their ambitions).
     No, I think it is extremely important (as nous implies) to remember who is the real enemy, and not to fall into the trap of either demonising reasonable people of differing views, or participating blindly in the obliteration of important concepts and categories.

435. There are definitions and facts, which are slippery to begin with, and then there’s what we do with them.
     There can also be more than one “real enemy.”
     I’m done.

436. There are definitions and facts, which are slippery to begin with, and then there’s what we do with them.
     There can also be more than one “real enemy.”
     I’m done.

437. There can also be more than one “real enemy.”
     A truer word was never spoke.

438. There can also be more than one “real enemy.”
     A truer word was never spoke.

439. Charlie Stross has a post up about ChatGPT. The post itself doesn’t say anything that hasn’t been said before. But there are several paid writers among his regular commenters, and they seemed to think that there’s an obvious constructive use: first draft of converting a novel to screenplay, or the reverse. Apparently ChatGPT does a good enough job of preserving dialog and story line in either direction to do away with a bunch of grunt work so the human can focus on the creative parts.
     I believe it was nous who said something similar about having students let ChatGPT do an essay, and the students’ assignment be to edit or rewrite that.

440. Charlie Stross has a post up about ChatGPT. The post itself doesn’t say anything that hasn’t been said before. But there are several paid writers among his regular commenters, and they seemed to think that there’s an obvious constructive use: first draft of converting a novel to screenplay, or the reverse. Apparently ChatGPT does a good enough job of preserving dialog and story line in either direction to do away with a bunch of grunt work so the human can focus on the creative parts.
     I believe it was nous who said something similar about having students let ChatGPT do an essay, and the students’ assignment be to edit or rewrite that.

441. I believe it was nous who said something similar about having students let ChatGPT do an essay, and the students’ assignment be to edit or rewrite that.
     In my experience, there are far more people who know how to write something (adequate, if not great) than there are people who can do a competent job of editing something that someone else wrote. At the risk of causing offense, actually learning to edit well will have far greater career benefits than just learning to write — less supply and serious unfilled demand.

442. I believe it was nous who said something similar about having students let ChatGPT do an essay, and the students’ assignment be to edit or rewrite that.
     In my experience, there are far more people who know how to write something (adequate, if not great) than there are people who can do a competent job of editing something that someone else wrote. At the risk of causing offense, actually learning to edit well will have far greater career benefits than just learning to write — less supply and serious unfilled demand.

443. In my experience, there are far more people who know how to write something (adequate, if not great) than there are people who can do a competent job of editing something that someone else wrote. At the risk of causing offense, actually learning to edit well will have far greater career benefits than just learning to write — less supply and serious unfilled demand.
     I really don’t see much of any clear division between being able to write well and being able to edit. One cannot become a good writer without knowing how to revise and edit.
     To be sure, there are many different hats one can wear as an editor that fill a particular need within the publication process. Many excellent writers and editors are not good at copy editing, or at developmental editing, and that opens up specialist roles for the people who do have those skills and mindsets. But in general one needs the ability to edit ones own writing to ever become accomplished as a writer. It’s too deeply entangled in the revision process to be otherwise.

444. In my experience, there are far more people who know how to write something (adequate, if not great) than there are people who can do a competent job of editing something that someone else wrote. At the risk of causing offense, actually learning to edit well will have far greater career benefits than just learning to write — less supply and serious unfilled demand.
     I really don’t see much of any clear division between being able to write well and being able to edit. One cannot become a good writer without knowing how to revise and edit.
     To be sure, there are many different hats one can wear as an editor that fill a particular need within the publication process. Many excellent writers and editors are not good at copy editing, or at developmental editing, and that opens up specialist roles for the people who do have those skills and mindsets. But in general one needs the ability to edit ones own writing to ever become accomplished as a writer. It’s too deeply entangled in the revision process to be otherwise.

445. I believe it was nous who said something similar about having students let ChatGPT do an essay, and the students’ assignment be to edit or rewrite that.
     I think the ideal form for this would be to have the writer generate an outline and the information parameters to be included (indicating sources and selections to quote or paraphrase), then take the AI generated generic content and start revising it to give it life and purpose.

446. I believe it was nous who said something similar about having students let ChatGPT do an essay, and the students’ assignment be to edit or rewrite that.
     I think the ideal form for this would be to have the writer generate an outline and the information parameters to be included (indicating sources and selections to quote or paraphrase), then take the AI generated generic content and start revising it to give it life and purpose.

447. I think the ideal form for this would be to have the writer generate an outline and the information parameters to be included (indicating sources and selections to quote or paraphrase), then take the AI generated generic content and start revising it to give it life and purpose.
     Part of their discussion was whether it would be better to do an independent outline, or to have ChatGPT “read” the existing novel/screenplay. “Give it life and purpose” is an excellent summary of what they all thought the writer would do to the AI’s draft.

448. I think the ideal form for this would be to have the writer generate an outline and the information parameters to be included (indicating sources and selections to quote or paraphrase), then take the AI generated generic content and start revising it to give it life and purpose.
     Part of their discussion was whether it would be better to do an independent outline, or to have ChatGPT “read” the existing novel/screenplay. “Give it life and purpose” is an excellent summary of what they all thought the writer would do to the AI’s draft.

449. in general one needs the ability to edit ones own writing to ever become accomplished as a writer.
     Yes, but….
     The trouble with editing one’s own writings is that you know what you meant, and what you intended to say. When what you actually wrote is different, it can be remarkably hard to spot. A second pair of eyes can make a big difference. IF that second pair of eyes belongs to a capable editor.

450. in general one needs the ability to edit ones own writing to ever become accomplished as a writer.
     Yes, but….
     The trouble with editing one’s own writings is that you know what you meant, and what you intended to say. When what you actually wrote is different, it can be remarkably hard to spot. A second pair of eyes can make a big difference. IF that second pair of eyes belongs to a capable editor.

451. A second pair of eyes can make a big difference.
     I’ll chime in here just to shock wj. This is pretty much correct.
     But…., just asking questions here, who was James Joyce’s editor?

452. A second pair of eyes can make a big difference.
     I’ll chime in here just to shock wj. This is pretty much correct.
     But…., just asking questions here, who was James Joyce’s editor?

453. wj – that’s why writing teachers almost all say that good writers seek feedback. But a good writer doesn’t need their reader to offer suggestions for how to write those changes, they just need to be made aware of where and how they went wrong.

454. wj – that’s why writing teachers almost all say that good writers seek feedback. But a good writer doesn’t need their reader to offer suggestions for how to write those changes, they just need to be made aware of where and how they went wrong.

455. But…., just asking questions here, who was James Joyce’s editor?
     “My troublesome self and interminable composition” – James Joyce and his editor, Harriet Shaw Weaver

456. But…., just asking questions here, who was James Joyce’s editor?
     “My troublesome self and interminable composition” – James Joyce and his editor, Harriet Shaw Weaver

457. bobbyp, I am shocked! Shocked! Who knows where this might end. 🙂
     As for Joyce, there is a limit to how much even a good editor can do when faced with a writer who simply can’t handle the English language.

458. bobbyp, I am shocked! Shocked! Who knows where this might end. 🙂
     As for Joyce, there is a limit to how much even a good editor can do when faced with a writer who simply can’t handle the English language.

459. a good writer doesn’t need their reader to offer suggestions for how to write those changes, they just need to be made aware of where and how they went wrong.
     I don’t think I agree. The biggest problem a writer, especially a non-fiction writer, faces is that he simply knows too much. In my experience, what’s often needed are suggestions on how to communicate with an audience who don’t know the background, the standard technical terms, etc.

460. a good writer doesn’t need their reader to offer suggestions for how to write those changes, they just need to be made aware of where and how they went wrong.
     I don’t think I agree. The biggest problem a writer, especially a non-fiction writer, faces is that he simply knows too much. In my experience, what’s often needed are suggestions on how to communicate with an audience who don’t know the background, the standard technical terms, etc.

461. Joyce and Weaver had a falling out over Finnegans Wake.

462. Joyce and Weaver had a falling out over Finnegans Wake.

463. The biggest problem a writer, especially a non-fiction writer, faces is that he simply knows too much. In my experience, what’s often needed are suggestions on how to communicate with an audience who don’t know the background, the standard technical terms, etc.
     That’s not a good writer, though. That’s a person who can document information with great accuracy, but cannot communicate it effectively with their intended audience. Good writing requires that the writer understands both subject and audience, and understands what that audience knows about the subject.
     That’s not just my bias, either. I know a few really good scientists who are also really good writers and have no difficulty adjusting their writing to fit a particular level of reader. They get quite voluble over how poorly written a lot of good science is, and how badly this damages outreach.

464. The biggest problem a writer, especially a non-fiction writer, faces is that he simply knows too much. In my experience, what’s often needed are suggestions on how to communicate with an audience who don’t know the background, the standard technical terms, etc.
     That’s not a good writer, though. That’s a person who can document information with great accuracy, but cannot communicate it effectively with their intended audience. Good writing requires that the writer understands both subject and audience, and understands what that audience knows about the subject.
     That’s not just my bias, either. I know a few really good scientists who are also really good writers and have no difficulty adjusting their writing to fit a particular level of reader. They get quite voluble over how poorly written a lot of good science is, and how badly this damages outreach.

465. They get quite voluble over how poorly written a lot of good science is, and how badly this damages outreach.
     Precisely my point. What those other writers desperately need is a good editor. Because, let’s face it, there’s no real prospect of getting them better at it. (When I was in college, engineering majors were not even required to pass Subject A — AKA bonehead English. Let alone Freshman English.)
     The demand for editors is enormous — and growing every day. (And that’s before you add in those who are not native speakers of English, and need help as well.)

466. They get quite voluble over how poorly written a lot of good science is, and how badly this damages outreach.
     Precisely my point. What those other writers desperately need is a good editor. Because, let’s face it, there’s no real prospect of getting them better at it. (When I was in college, engineering majors were not even required to pass Subject A — AKA bonehead English. Let alone Freshman English.)
     The demand for editors is enormous — and growing every day. (And that’s before you add in those who are not native speakers of English, and need help as well.)

467. Joyce and Weaver had a falling out over Finnegans Wake.
     But she still paid for his funeral.
     That’s what great editors do. 🙂

468. Joyce and Weaver had a falling out over Finnegans Wake.
     But she still paid for his funeral.
     That’s what great editors do. 🙂

469. Unfortunately, in the ‘hard’ sciences (with my personal experience in chemistry) ‘good’ writing is actively discouraged and a very bad style is enforced instead – at least in the usual journals where scientists usually publish their work. If the style guidelines contain something like ‘no first person pronouns can be used’ or a past tense passive voice is the only one allowed, use of any synonyms is frowned upon etc., one should not be surprised if the prose is wooden at best. Comparing it to papers from e.g. the 1930ies makes it even look worse. At that time one could feel that the people writing them were actually engaged in what they were doing. Information density may be a bit higher to-day in the texts of papers but it makes the experience no less dreary.

470. Unfortunately, in the ‘hard’ sciences (with my personal experience in chemistry) ‘good’ writing is actively discouraged and a very bad style is enforced instead – at least in the usual journals where scientists usually publish their work. If the style guidelines contain something like ‘no first person pronouns can be used’ or a past tense passive voice is the only one allowed, use of any synonyms is frowned upon etc., one should not be surprised if the prose is wooden at best. Comparing it to papers from e.g. the 1930ies makes it even look worse. At that time one could feel that the people writing them were actually engaged in what they were doing. Information density may be a bit higher to-day in the texts of papers but it makes the experience no less dreary.

471. Passive voice in science papers is a lazy rhetorical con job. “Pay no attention to the scientist behind the curtain.” And these habits affect the writers’ critical thinking skills as well. There’s a reason why the best scientists I know were all also good at, and engaged with, the humanities. (Works the other way as well, I lose patience with my colleagues that take no interest in science and technology. They strike me as ungrounded.)
     And wj, I was not disagreeing with your assessment of the need for editors, I was disagreeing with your formulation: …actually learning to edit well will have far greater career benefits than just learning to write. Actually learning to edit well is an essential part of just learning to write. Just learning to write without learning to edit well is what I would call “not succeeding at learning how to write.” 😉

472. Passive voice in science papers is a lazy rhetorical con job. “Pay no attention to the scientist behind the curtain.” And these habits affect the writers’ critical thinking skills as well. There’s a reason why the best scientists I know were all also good at, and engaged with, the humanities. (Works the other way as well, I lose patience with my colleagues that take no interest in science and technology. They strike me as ungrounded.)
     And wj, I was not disagreeing with your assessment of the need for editors, I was disagreeing with your formulation: …actually learning to edit well will have far greater career benefits than just learning to write. Actually learning to edit well is an essential part of just learning to write. Just learning to write without learning to edit well is what I would call “not succeeding at learning how to write.” 😉

473. learning to write without learning to edit well
     If things have changed on that front, that’s great. But when I was in college, that was the norm. Nothing resembling editing (beyond fixing typos) was touched on in basic English classes. I suppose that’s one of the hazards for all of us: not realizing how much may have changed in fields that we aren’t engaged in.

474. learning to write without learning to edit well
     If things have changed on that front, that’s great. But when I was in college, that was the norm. Nothing resembling editing (beyond fixing typos) was touched on in basic English classes. I suppose that’s one of the hazards for all of us: not realizing how much may have changed in fields that we aren’t engaged in.

475. When I was still studying chenistry at the university one teaching assistant told me – after reading some of my test records (i.e. reports on experiments done during practical courses) – that they showed that I had actually thought about it and had tried to understand what is was all about but that that meant extra work for him because he himself had to start to think during reading while with other students he had just to use his mental checklist (all necessary elements present, equations properly copied from the script, results roughly as expected?).
     I have seen papers sent back for revision based not on content but for violations of the style guidelines of the journal (and those violations were of the ‘this is good prose, we can’t have that!’ type).

476. When I was still studying chenistry at the university one teaching assistant told me – after reading some of my test records (i.e. reports on experiments done during practical courses) – that they showed that I had actually thought about it and had tried to understand what is was all about but that that meant extra work for him because he himself had to start to think during reading while with other students he had just to use his mental checklist (all necessary elements present, equations properly copied from the script, results roughly as expected?).
     I have seen papers sent back for revision based not on content but for violations of the style guidelines of the journal (and those violations were of the ‘this is good prose, we can’t have that!’ type).

477. Nothing resembling editing (beyond fixing typos) was touched on in basic English classes.
     I think nous’ point is that this doesn’t constitute learning to write well.

478. Nothing resembling editing (beyond fixing typos) was touched on in basic English classes.
     I think nous’ point is that this doesn’t constitute learning to write well.

479. wj: writers, especially technical/scientific writers need editors because they commonly are not very good writers, and obviously they are not very good self-editors.
     nous: good writing of any kind includes good (self) editing, but a good editor doesn’t hurt.
     bobbyp: Great writers and closely collaborative editors are not at all uncommon! Google a famous writer and tell me what you find out.*
     *I looked up Dickens and Dostoevsky for starters. See above re Joyce.

480. wj: writers, especially technical/scientific writers need editors because they commonly are not very good writers, and obviously they are not very good self-editors.
     nous: good writing of any kind includes good (self) editing, but a good editor doesn’t hurt.
     bobbyp: Great writers and closely collaborative editors are not at all uncommon! Google a famous writer and tell me what you find out.*
     *I looked up Dickens and Dostoevsky for starters. See above re Joyce.

481. I had a history prof in grad school who assigned weekly three- and one-half page papers. The paper was supposed to draw a conclusion or assert a thesis based on the lectures given. He told us that he would not read a paper that was longer than his specifications because, if we couldn’t make a point within the given length, then we probably didn’t know what our point was.
     He also gave us a list of errors that he would not tolerate: their for they’re, for example. He said that if he encountered one of the errors on the list, he would stop reading and give a failing grade.

482. I had a history prof in grad school who assigned weekly three- and one-half page papers. The paper was supposed to draw a conclusion or assert a thesis based on the lectures given. He told us that he would not read a paper that was longer than his specifications because, if we couldn’t make a point within the given length, then we probably didn’t know what our point was.
     He also gave us a list of errors that he would not tolerate: their for they’re, for example. He said that if he encountered one of the errors on the list, he would stop reading and give a failing grade.

483. Dickens could have used a good editor. The man was overly fond of overly long sentences.

484. Dickens could have used a good editor. The man was overly fond of overly long sentences.

485. Nothing resembling editing (beyond fixing typos) was touched on in basic English classes. I suppose that’s one of the hazards for all of us: not realizing how much may have changed in fields that we aren’t engaged in.
     Yeah, no one I know in the UC system teaches writing like that anymore. That sort of basic writing started to fade away in the 80s. It doesn’t even make sense to teach it that way for most people because of how much the process of writing something for college has changed with word processing and document design and digital publishing. How we write and how we engage with writing has a profound effect on what we write and how we think about the things we want to discuss.
     My writing courses focus much more on the process of writing and drafting, the necessity of feedback and revision, how to think about adapting writing to different writing circumstances and audiences, etc. (not to mention a huge parallel conversation about methodologies and media literacy and the need to engage critically with readers and sources).

486. Nothing resembling editing (beyond fixing typos) was touched on in basic English classes. I suppose that’s one of the hazards for all of us: not realizing how much may have changed in fields that we aren’t engaged in.
     Yeah, no one I know in the UC system teaches writing like that anymore. That sort of basic writing started to fade away in the 80s. It doesn’t even make sense to teach it that way for most people because of how much the process of writing something for college has changed with word processing and document design and digital publishing. How we write and how we engage with writing has a profound effect on what we write and how we think about the things we want to discuss.
     My writing courses focus much more on the process of writing and drafting, the necessity of feedback and revision, how to think about adapting writing to different writing circumstances and audiences, etc. (not to mention a huge parallel conversation about methodologies and media literacy and the need to engage critically with readers and sources).

487. Dickens could have used a good editor. The man was overly fond of overly long sentences.
     Dickens was being paid by the word, and he had a strong aversion to poverty.
     Priorities.

488. Dickens could have used a good editor. The man was overly fond of overly long sentences.
     Dickens was being paid by the word, and he had a strong aversion to poverty.
     Priorities.

489. I had a history prof in grad school who assigned weekly three- and one-half page papers. The paper was supposed to draw a conclusion or assert a thesis based on the lectures given. He told us that he would not read a paper that was longer than his specifications because, if we couldn’t make a point within the given length, then we probably didn’t know what our point was.
     When I was getting my MPP, in the regulatory policy class, there was a final paper and then a final 15-minute presentation. The prof was generous and let people go 25 minutes (as it approached the usual quitting time, the pizza guy showed up). It was clear that there were only two of us, both non-traditional students, who had any experience at something like that. Who understood that a 15-page single-spaced paper and a 15-minute presentation are two radically different things, and need different approaches.

490. I had a history prof in grad school who assigned weekly three- and one-half page papers. The paper was supposed to draw a conclusion or assert a thesis based on the lectures given. He told us that he would not read a paper that was longer than his specifications because, if we couldn’t make a point within the given length, then we probably didn’t know what our point was.
     When I was getting my MPP, in the regulatory policy class, there was a final paper and then a final 15-minute presentation. The prof was generous and let people go 25 minutes (as it approached the usual quitting time, the pizza guy showed up). It was clear that there were only two of us, both non-traditional students, who had any experience at something like that. Who understood that a 15-page single-spaced paper and a 15-minute presentation are two radically different things, and need different approaches.

491. How we write and how we engage with writing has a profound effect on what we write and how we think about the things we want to discuss.
     In 5th grade, I had a terrible teacher.** Flailing around, no control over the class, etc. But one thing I learned that year probably did my writing more good than any other single thing I learned in school. She taught me how to outline.
     Not just extracting an outline from something already written. More importantly, how to write an outline first. So much stuff I read wanders all over the place, to the point that it’s obvious the author never encountered the concept.
     ** In fairness I should point out that it was Miss Deatli’s very first year teaching. A couple of decades she was getting lots of Teacher of the Year awards here.

492. How we write and how we engage with writing has a profound effect on what we write and how we think about the things we want to discuss.
     In 5th grade, I had a terrible teacher.** Flailing around, no control over the class, etc. But one thing I learned that year probably did my writing more good than any other single thing I learned in school. She taught me how to outline.
     Not just extracting an outline from something already written. More importantly, how to write an outline first. So much stuff I read wanders all over the place, to the point that it’s obvious the author never encountered the concept.
     ** In fairness I should point out that it was Miss Deatli’s very first year teaching. A couple of decades she was getting lots of Teacher of the Year awards here.

493. Should have added to my MPP anecdote that on my class feedback form I said, “Really ought to let the students screw up a 15-minute presentation mid-quarter, then they have a chance to improve for the final.”

494. Should have added to my MPP anecdote that on my class feedback form I said, “Really ought to let the students screw up a 15-minute presentation mid-quarter, then they have a chance to improve for the final.”

495. More importantly, how to write an outline first.
     Haven’t gone through the thread, so apologies if this has already been mentioned, but:
     Naming Conventions.
     I don’t care how you do it, or what the reason/rationale is for it. But devise one. Something. Anything. (ideally scalable and forward-thinking, but I’ll take what I can get).
     It’s the precursor to any database design, but has application to everyone. Like a personal Dewey Decimal System.
     I’m preaching to the choir here, but, dude… if people would only…
     /ITrage

496. More importantly, how to write an outline first.
     Haven’t gone through the thread, so apologies if this has already been mentioned, but:
     Naming Conventions.
     I don’t care how you do it, or what the reason/rationale is for it. But devise one. Something. Anything. (ideally scalable and forward-thinking, but I’ll take what I can get).
     It’s the precursor to any database design, but has application to everyone. Like a personal Dewey Decimal System.
     I’m preaching to the choir here, but, dude… if people would only…
     /ITrage

497. And for the love of whatever…
     DOCUMENT IT!

498. And for the love of whatever…
     DOCUMENT IT!

499. And for the love of whatever…
     DOCUMENT IT!
     If for no other reason, do it because otherwise you can’t greet queries with:
     RTFM! 🙂

500. And for the love of whatever…
     DOCUMENT IT!
     If for no other reason, do it because otherwise you can’t greet queries with:
     RTFM! 🙂

501. I have been increasingly tempted to condense my resumé to: “Can RTFM”.

502. I have been increasingly tempted to condense my resumé to: “Can RTFM”.

503. These days, I’m more in WTFM. (Somebody’s got to write them.) My biggest handicap is not having a handy 15 year old to critique them for clarity.

504. These days, I’m more in WTFM. (Somebody’s got to write them.) My biggest handicap is not having a handy 15 year old to critique them for clarity.

505. It matters how you phrase things. Sometimes, it matters enormously.
     For example, when talking about the US Senate, I frequently see something along the lines of “Why should Wyoming get the same number of senators as [vastly bigger] California?” Just think how different the reaction would be if exactly the same point was made as “Why should Delaware/Rhode Island get the same number of senators as Texas/Florida?” Why, we might even see it become a right wing talking point.

506. It matters how you phrase things. Sometimes, it matters enormously.
     For example, when talking about the US Senate, I frequently see something along the lines of “Why should Wyoming get the same number of senators as [vastly bigger] California?” Just think how different the reaction would be if exactly the same point was made as “Why should Delaware/Rhode Island get the same number of senators as Texas/Florida?” Why, we might even see it become a right wing talking point.

507. My biggest handicap is not having a handy 15 year old to critique them for clarity.
     Yes, one needs them to critique, and also to translate for us oldies. And, occasionally, vice versa. I don’t know if any of you have seen the hysterical clip of young people trying to use an old-style land line? One with a dial? They pick it up and are freaked by the dial tone, don’t know what it means, and don’t know how to input the number they want. And apparently they can’t tell the time by clockface anymore. Ah well, these are small losses, after all.

508. My biggest handicap is not having a handy 15 year old to critique them for clarity.
     Yes, one needs them to critique, and also to translate for us oldies. And, occasionally, vice versa. I don’t know if any of you have seen the hysterical clip of young people trying to use an old-style land line? One with a dial? They pick it up and are freaked by the dial tone, don’t know what it means, and don’t know how to input the number they want. And apparently they can’t tell the time by clockface anymore. Ah well, these are small losses, after all.

509. Part of the Evil Overlord List is the necessity for a 5 year old to check all evil plans for flaws first.

510. Part of the Evil Overlord List is the necessity for a 5 year old to check all evil plans for flaws first.

511. And apparently they can’t tell the time by clockface anymore.
     And so we return to the old standards:
     widdershins and deasil

512. And apparently they can’t tell the time by clockface anymore.
     And so we return to the old standards:
     widdershins and deasil

513. I wore a digital watch for decades and I still have not gotten fully used again (after it broke) to the old-fashioned clockface*. I can read it but it is far slower, in particular, if it’s about time differences (i.e.: how many minutes til…?). And that’s a critical skill for a schoolteacher.
     *with no numbers, just the 5 minutes/1 hour interval markings.

514. I wore a digital watch for decades and I still have not gotten fully used again (after it broke) to the old-fashioned clockface*. I can read it but it is far slower, in particular, if it’s about time differences (i.e.: how many minutes til…?). And that’s a critical skill for a schoolteacher.
     *with no numbers, just the 5 minutes/1 hour interval markings.

515. Today the DNC officially voted to have their February primaries in, in order, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Georgia, and Michigan. In addition to setting dates, the Committee also put in place requirements for improved voter access those states are supposed to meet. The DNC meets again in the summer to evaluate the states’ progress.
     I anticipate assorted ratf*ckery by those states’ Republicans, where they can. Refusing to change current statutory dates and so forth. Things like, “If you Dems want to have your primary on a different date than the official state primary, then you can pay for it yourselves using your own equipment.”

516. Today the DNC officially voted to have their February primaries in, in order, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Georgia, and Michigan. In addition to setting dates, the Committee also put in place requirements for improved voter access those states are supposed to meet. The DNC meets again in the summer to evaluate the states’ progress.
     I anticipate assorted ratf*ckery by those states’ Republicans, where they can. Refusing to change current statutory dates and so forth. Things like, “If you Dems want to have your primary on a different date than the official state primary, then you can pay for it yourselves using your own equipment.”

517. I can read it but it is far slower, in particular, if it’s about time differences (i.e.: how many minutes til…?). And that’s a critical skill for a schoolteacher.
     I remember a study from many years ago where the researchers would wait until a couple of minutes after their subjects had looked at their watch, then ask them what time it was. A surprising number of people had to look again. After interviews, the researchers concluded that people often looked at their watch but didn’t ask it, “What time is it?” They asked questions like “How long until my lunch break?” or “Do I have time to do this next piece of work before I have to leave to pick up the kids?”

518. I can read it but it is far slower, in particular, if it’s about time differences (i.e.: how many minutes til…?). And that’s a critical skill for a schoolteacher.
     I remember a study from many years ago where the researchers would wait until a couple of minutes after their subjects had looked at their watch, then ask them what time it was. A surprising number of people had to look again. After interviews, the researchers concluded that people often looked at their watch but didn’t ask it, “What time is it?” They asked questions like “How long until my lunch break?” or “Do I have time to do this next piece of work before I have to leave to pick up the kids?”

519. There’s also the problem of the readers.
     The publishing figures for 2022 were rather depressing. In a country of 332 million people, only 28 books out of ~300,000 titles sold more than 500,000 copies. Eight were by one author, Colleen Hoover, and no book of history or politics sold more than 295,000 copies.
     https://twitter.com/JasonColavito/status/1620151389363245057

520. There’s also the problem of the readers.
     The publishing figures for 2022 were rather depressing. In a country of 332 million people, only 28 books out of ~300,000 titles sold more than 500,000 copies. Eight were by one author, Colleen Hoover, and no book of history or politics sold more than 295,000 copies.
     https://twitter.com/JasonColavito/status/1620151389363245057

521. There’s also the problem of the readers.
     The publishing figures for 2022 were rather depressing. In a country of 332 million people, only 28 books out of ~300,000 titles sold more than 500,000 copies.
     I’d guess that it isn’t that they aren’t reading. Instead, it’s that they’re reading stuff online, rather than hard copy.
     Consider that newspapers are selling ever fewer print editions (down about 10% in 2022, as I recall, which is pretty huge), but their online readership growth more than makes up for it. Personally, it’s been ages since I held a physical newspaper in my hand. But there are a couple I read pretty much every day.
     As for books, I’ve got 4 checked out of the library at this moment. All of the eBooks. I still buy physical books, of course — old habits die hard. But generally only for something that I expect I will want to reread at some point.

522. There’s also the problem of the readers.
     The publishing figures for 2022 were rather depressing. In a country of 332 million people, only 28 books out of ~300,000 titles sold more than 500,000 copies.
     I’d guess that it isn’t that they aren’t reading. Instead, it’s that they’re reading stuff online, rather than hard copy.
     Consider that newspapers are selling ever fewer print editions (down about 10% in 2022, as I recall, which is pretty huge), but their online readership growth more than makes up for it. Personally, it’s been ages since I held a physical newspaper in my hand. But there are a couple I read pretty much every day.
     As for books, I’ve got 4 checked out of the library at this moment. All of the eBooks. I still buy physical books, of course — old habits die hard. But generally only for something that I expect I will want to reread at some point.

523. Consider that newspapers are selling ever fewer print editions (down about 10% in 2022, as I recall, which is pretty huge), but their online readership growth more than makes up for it. Personally, it’s been ages since I held a physical newspaper in my hand. But there are a couple I read pretty much every day.
     Ah, but what about their paying subscribers numbers? I pay a rather steep subscription to my local daily in hopes that it won’t fold. (Well, also because it’s a Gannett paper and the subscription now buys me access to subscriber-only articles at all the other Gannett papers.) The other papers I read, I just break the pathetic paywalls.

524. Consider that newspapers are selling ever fewer print editions (down about 10% in 2022, as I recall, which is pretty huge), but their online readership growth more than makes up for it. Personally, it’s been ages since I held a physical newspaper in my hand. But there are a couple I read pretty much every day.
     Ah, but what about their paying subscribers numbers? I pay a rather steep subscription to my local daily in hopes that it won’t fold. (Well, also because it’s a Gannett paper and the subscription now buys me access to subscriber-only articles at all the other Gannett papers.) The other papers I read, I just break the pathetic paywalls.

525. The other papers I read, I just break the pathetic paywalls.
     I’ve figured out how to do that, too. As you say, they’re more notional that real. But I’ve taken a paid subscription to the local paper (whose paywall is particularly poor) for the same reason you did: just to help keep them in business.

526. The other papers I read, I just break the pathetic paywalls.
     I’ve figured out how to do that, too. As you say, they’re more notional that real. But I’ve taken a paid subscription to the local paper (whose paywall is particularly poor) for the same reason you did: just to help keep them in business.

527. I’d guess that it isn’t that they aren’t reading. Instead, it’s that they’re reading stuff online, rather than hard copy.
     It’s not just about the medium, though. What we have for a large group of people is the abandonment of mainstream media corporations and publishers for youtube channels and conglomerations of substacks.
     The media/publishing industry is deeply flawed and deeply compromised by its focus on profits over integrity. But in that way it is like the Roman Catholic Church in any other era of social unrest and fracture. Even as corrupt as it is, it provides cohesion and continuity and a sense of shared identity and purpose.
     The alt-media influencer stew is all antinomian gnostics and iconoclast heretics. They are factions and fracture.
     Publishing is not in good shape. Authors in general are not in good shape (and talk about this at length in private fora). Careers can still be made, but the window of opportunity is smaller and the rewards smaller and less evenly distributed.
     And yes, libraries are vital, for authors as well as for readers. But the alt-media is on the warpath against libraries as well and would gladly see them disrupted and replaced by something more friendly to their own faction’s agenda.

528. I’d guess that it isn’t that they aren’t reading. Instead, it’s that they’re reading stuff online, rather than hard copy.
     It’s not just about the medium, though. What we have for a large group of people is the abandonment of mainstream media corporations and publishers for youtube channels and conglomerations of substacks.
     The media/publishing industry is deeply flawed and deeply compromised by its focus on profits over integrity. But in that way it is like the Roman Catholic Church in any other era of social unrest and fracture. Even as corrupt as it is, it provides cohesion and continuity and a sense of shared identity and purpose.
     The alt-media influencer stew is all antinomian gnostics and iconoclast heretics. They are factions and fracture.
     Publishing is not in good shape. Authors in general are not in good shape (and talk about this at length in private fora). Careers can still be made, but the window of opportunity is smaller and the rewards smaller and less evenly distributed.
     And yes, libraries are vital, for authors as well as for readers. But the alt-media is on the warpath against libraries as well and would gladly see them disrupted and replaced by something more friendly to their own faction’s agenda.

529. Not to forget the war on the very concept of public libraries conducted by a certain political faction.

530. Not to forget the war on the very concept of public libraries conducted by a certain political faction.

531. Publishing is not in good shape. Authors in general are not in good shape (and talk about this at length in private fora). Careers can still be made, but the window of opportunity is smaller and the rewards smaller and less evenly distributed.
     The question is, Compared to what? The 20th century looks rather anomalous in how feasible it was to make a career as an author. Granted, it’s when all of us grew up, so there’s a tendency to assume that was normal. But, historically, it hasn’t been.
     Now you could argue, and I would agree, that it would be desirable if it remained the norm. But that’s a different thing.

532. Publishing is not in good shape. Authors in general are not in good shape (and talk about this at length in private fora). Careers can still be made, but the window of opportunity is smaller and the rewards smaller and less evenly distributed.
     The question is, Compared to what? The 20th century looks rather anomalous in how feasible it was to make a career as an author. Granted, it’s when all of us grew up, so there’s a tendency to assume that was normal. But, historically, it hasn’t been.
     Now you could argue, and I would agree, that it would be desirable if it remained the norm. But that’s a different thing.

533. wj – I’m less concerned with the state of the vocation and more concerned with the demise of broadly crosscutting mass markets. And earlier times give us little to help understand because the period we are talking about coincided with the development of mass media.
     We are in uncharted waters with this media environment. It has near instantaneous global reach and little in the way of public safety for information.

534. wj – I’m less concerned with the state of the vocation and more concerned with the demise of broadly crosscutting mass markets. And earlier times give us little to help understand because the period we are talking about coincided with the development of mass media.
     We are in uncharted waters with this media environment. It has near instantaneous global reach and little in the way of public safety for information.

535. I wonder, given the huge number of series and such commissioned by Amazon and Netflix and all sorts of other streaming services, if this will be looked back on as a Golden Age for screenwriters.

536. I wonder, given the huge number of series and such commissioned by Amazon and Netflix and all sorts of other streaming services, if this will be looked back on as a Golden Age for screenwriters.

537. earlier times give us little to help understand because the period we are talking about coincided with the development of mass media.
     We are in uncharted waters with this media environment.
     In detail, yes. But there are certain analogues in previous sudden expansions in communications.
     The printing press. The telegraph. Radio. Television. All caused abrupt increases in information flows. Which the Internet (and various social media on it) has as well. Certainly some of that “information” is misinformation. Some is disinformation — that is deliberate and malign misinformation. But a lot of it is quite helpful.
     Sometimes, it was found necessary to regulate the new information environment to some extent. See, for example, the Fairness Doctrine. We may evolve something similar for the current new environment. Eventually.
     As for the impact on authors and writing (which, I think, is where this particular discussion started), my recollection is that television, and possibly some of the others, evoked expressions of concern that the populace would give over reading in favor of the new media. Certainly some did so; although whether most of those had done much reading previously is perhaps debatable. But publishing continued to be fairly robust thru the first half century to television’s availability.

538. earlier times give us little to help understand because the period we are talking about coincided with the development of mass media.
     We are in uncharted waters with this media environment.
     In detail, yes. But there are certain analogues in previous sudden expansions in communications.
     The printing press. The telegraph. Radio. Television. All caused abrupt increases in information flows. Which the Internet (and various social media on it) has as well. Certainly some of that “information” is misinformation. Some is disinformation — that is deliberate and malign misinformation. But a lot of it is quite helpful.
     Sometimes, it was found necessary to regulate the new information environment to some extent. See, for example, the Fairness Doctrine. We may evolve something similar for the current new environment. Eventually.
     As for the impact on authors and writing (which, I think, is where this particular discussion started), my recollection is that television, and possibly some of the others, evoked expressions of concern that the populace would give over reading in favor of the new media. Certainly some did so; although whether most of those had done much reading previously is perhaps debatable. But publishing continued to be fairly robust thru the first half century to television’s availability.

539. Hey, before radio and TV books were the cultural bogeyman. Commoners (in particular females) reading books was at best a waste of valuable time and a sign of idleness and at worst a danger to public morals.
     Not that this mindset has ever died out, see e.g. Florida.

540. Hey, before radio and TV books were the cultural bogeyman. Commoners (in particular females) reading books was at best a waste of valuable time and a sign of idleness and at worst a danger to public morals.
     Not that this mindset has ever died out, see e.g. Florida.

541. wj – sure, we can take the early colonial US and talk about the effect of pamphleteering on information flow, or about the pirating of English books for sale in the US, but those pamphlets had to be printed on bulky equipment and physical copies distributed, and communication and coordination dispersed at the speed of sail or horseback. A rogue press was limited in its reach and slow to gain influence.
     There are things to be learned from earlier models, but it’s not simply a matter of thinking of our current media environment as being a faster printing press or a more capable telegraph. The speed and density and ubiquity of digital communications radically challenges the ability to moderate – content or responses.
     The original post was not about authors, it was about book sales and audience.
     Andrew Tate, nithing that he is, had more subscribers listening to his garbage than bought and read any book. And his material got copied and redistributed in all manner of ways by a whole host of his subscribers.
     And his crap was constantly updating and adapting to the moment. The feedback loop that drives book purchases (by publishers from authors) is moving at dinosaur speed. It takes months to write a book and months to print it and bring it to market.
     It’s a ponderous beast to use to fight against a “flood them with shit” insurgency.
     Which is why publishing is losing its power over public discourse. It can’t breed or kill memes fast enough to compete.

542. wj – sure, we can take the early colonial US and talk about the effect of pamphleteering on information flow, or about the pirating of English books for sale in the US, but those pamphlets had to be printed on bulky equipment and physical copies distributed, and communication and coordination dispersed at the speed of sail or horseback. A rogue press was limited in its reach and slow to gain influence.
     There are things to be learned from earlier models, but it’s not simply a matter of thinking of our current media environment as being a faster printing press or a more capable telegraph. The speed and density and ubiquity of digital communications radically challenges the ability to moderate – content or responses.
     The original post was not about authors, it was about book sales and audience.
     Andrew Tate, nithing that he is, had more subscribers listening to his garbage than bought and read any book. And his material got copied and redistributed in all manner of ways by a whole host of his subscribers.
     And his crap was constantly updating and adapting to the moment. The feedback loop that drives book purchases (by publishers from authors) is moving at dinosaur speed. It takes months to write a book and months to print it and bring it to market.
     It’s a ponderous beast to use to fight against a “flood them with shit” insurgency.
     Which is why publishing is losing its power over public discourse. It can’t breed or kill memes fast enough to compete.

543. those pamphlets had to be printed on bulky equipment and physical copies distributed, and communication and coordination dispersed at the speed of sail or horseback. A rogue press was limited in its reach and slow to gain influence.
     But compared to what it takes to hand calligraph a pamphlet (not that anything so trivial ever was), let alone a lot of them, that’s lightning speed and enormous reach.
     It’s a ponderous beast to use to fight against a “flood them with shit” insurgency.
     I think you’ll find exactly the same issues raised a century ago about the tabloid press. (Perhaps, given the times, less bluntly phrased than “flood them with shit”. Although perhaps not.)
     That’s not to minimize the differences in the current situation. Just to point out that it’s not, by a long ways, totally novel. Especially in it’s impact on public discourse. Indeed, the biggest difference may be that the flood that has been loosed this time comes from the right rather than from the left.

544. those pamphlets had to be printed on bulky equipment and physical copies distributed, and communication and coordination dispersed at the speed of sail or horseback. A rogue press was limited in its reach and slow to gain influence.
     But compared to what it takes to hand calligraph a pamphlet (not that anything so trivial ever was), let alone a lot of them, that’s lightning speed and enormous reach.
     It’s a ponderous beast to use to fight against a “flood them with shit” insurgency.
     I think you’ll find exactly the same issues raised a century ago about the tabloid press. (Perhaps, given the times, less bluntly phrased than “flood them with shit”. Although perhaps not.)
     That’s not to minimize the differences in the current situation. Just to point out that it’s not, by a long ways, totally novel. Especially in it’s impact on public discourse. Indeed, the biggest difference may be that the flood that has been loosed this time comes from the right rather than from the left.

545. the biggest difference may be that the flood that has been loosed this time comes from the right rather than from the left.
     Are you referring to that noted communist, William Randolph Hearst?

546. the biggest difference may be that the flood that has been loosed this time comes from the right rather than from the left.
     Are you referring to that noted communist, William Randolph Hearst?

547. …my recollection is that television, and possibly some of the others, evoked expressions of concern that the populace would give over reading in favor of the new media.
     Those expressing concern have been proven correct. The last number I remember seeing is the average American watches 170 minutes of television per day. People planned weekly watch parties in order to spread the premium cost for Game of Thrones. When was the last time so many people complained about the weak plot in the last third of even a best-selling novel? In any given year, roughly half the adult population does not read a book. The last couple of complicated devices I’ve purchased came with a quick-start guide and a link to an online manual. For the one where I needed it, the manual was at best useless, but there were a dozen amateur YouTube videos that clearly explained why I was having the problem.
     My recent experience is that it’s almost as easy to steal e-copies of the Hugo Award nominees as to buy them, and easier than getting them from the library. Not to mention that the stolen copies have had any DRM removed, and they take up insignificant space on my computer. (Yes, I’m part of the problem.)
     The pessimistic writers at Charlie Stross’s blog anticipate that we are well on the way to novelists being either (a) one of the handful who have an initial hit and can for a while command actual advances and make a living as an author, or (b) spouses or retired people supported by other means.

548. …my recollection is that television, and possibly some of the others, evoked expressions of concern that the populace would give over reading in favor of the new media.
     Those expressing concern have been proven correct. The last number I remember seeing is the average American watches 170 minutes of television per day. People planned weekly watch parties in order to spread the premium cost for Game of Thrones. When was the last time so many people complained about the weak plot in the last third of even a best-selling novel? In any given year, roughly half the adult population does not read a book. The last couple of complicated devices I’ve purchased came with a quick-start guide and a link to an online manual. For the one where I needed it, the manual was at best useless, but there were a dozen amateur YouTube videos that clearly explained why I was having the problem.
     My recent experience is that it’s almost as easy to steal e-copies of the Hugo Award nominees as to buy them, and easier than getting them from the library. Not to mention that the stolen copies have had any DRM removed, and they take up insignificant space on my computer. (Yes, I’m part of the problem.)
     The pessimistic writers at Charlie Stross’s blog anticipate that we are well on the way to novelists being either (a) one of the handful who have an initial hit and can for a while command actual advances and make a living as an author, or (b) spouses or retired people supported by other means.

549. Another writer’s more optimistic take:
     “In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
     Yes, I know….an overly optimistic and unrealistic dream. We seem to have buried that ability. Pity, that.

550. Another writer’s more optimistic take:
     “In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
     Yes, I know….an overly optimistic and unrealistic dream. We seem to have buried that ability. Pity, that.

551. The two nations that practice something like that are Iceland and the Faroe Islands who have the highest densities of published authors and very likely of practicing musicians. It could be slightly exaggerated but there are claims that about every other islander plays in a band (and often more than one) and about every third has written at least one book (with many having them published too). It is of course understood by everyone that within such small language communities few if any can actually live from either (although there are official state stipends for authors at least in Iceland). I assume that this actually improves the average quality and the enjoyment of the artists because they know that they do not have to bow to market pressures.
     And some from both nations have managed to get international acclaim despite staying true to their national artistic character and heritage (cf. TÝR with their metal versions of medieval Faroese ballads).
     Admittedly, some of it appeals through pure insanity – Lazytown got toned down quite a bit for international audiences despite still looking like made under the influence of controlled substances. 😉

552. The two nations that practice something like that are Iceland and the Faroe Islands who have the highest densities of published authors and very likely of practicing musicians. It could be slightly exaggerated but there are claims that about every other islander plays in a band (and often more than one) and about every third has written at least one book (with many having them published too). It is of course understood by everyone that within such small language communities few if any can actually live from either (although there are official state stipends for authors at least in Iceland). I assume that this actually improves the average quality and the enjoyment of the artists because they know that they do not have to bow to market pressures.
     And some from both nations have managed to get international acclaim despite staying true to their national artistic character and heritage (cf. TÝR with their metal versions of medieval Faroese ballads).
     Admittedly, some of it appeals through pure insanity – Lazytown got toned down quite a bit for international audiences despite still looking like made under the influence of controlled substances. 😉

553. A little something for bobbyp:
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cdqQ2BdgOA
     no offense intended.

554. A little something for bobbyp:
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cdqQ2BdgOA
     no offense intended.

555. wj,
     none taken.
     Hartmut,
     Yup. There are indeed different ways of doing things.

556. wj,
     none taken.
     Hartmut,
     Yup. There are indeed different ways of doing things.

557. btw, I coded up (in Excel VBA) what I think are some improvements on the algorithm in the OP. If anyone wants them, we’ll find a way.

558. btw, I coded up (in Excel VBA) what I think are some improvements on the algorithm in the OP. If anyone wants them, we’ll find a way.

559. Send me something at mcain6925 at Google’s big corporate email service. It would be best if you exported the VBA stuff into a text file of some sort. I can probably extract it, but since I don’t have a copy of Windows Excel any more, there’s no guarantee.

560. Send me something at mcain6925 at Google’s big corporate email service. It would be best if you exported the VBA stuff into a text file of some sort. I can probably extract it, but since I don’t have a copy of Windows Excel any more, there’s no guarantee.

561. I’ve done that.

562. I’ve done that.

563. I’ve done that.
     Converted to C and compiled with the same flags, this gets the answer in 13 microseconds. I should have noted in the original post that getting microsecond timings using the time utility requires putting the code inside an outer loop that runs it thousands of times.
     After poking at the code a bit, it appears that the speed improvement is mostly due to using the quadratic formula to solve directly for both prices c and d, then by cutting the loop on price b short, then by cutting the loop on price a short.

564. I’ve done that.
     Converted to C and compiled with the same flags, this gets the answer in 13 microseconds. I should have noted in the original post that getting microsecond timings using the time utility requires putting the code inside an outer loop that runs it thousands of times.
     After poking at the code a bit, it appears that the speed improvement is mostly due to using the quadratic formula to solve directly for both prices c and d, then by cutting the loop on price b short, then by cutting the loop on price a short.

565. Oops… typed a wrong variable name in one place while I was translating. Call it 4.5 microseconds, not 12. And limiting the loops is more important than I said.

566. Oops… typed a wrong variable name in one place while I was translating. Call it 4.5 microseconds, not 12. And limiting the loops is more important than I said.

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