Just a reminder that comments on different topics are separated by “==” while those separated by “—” are parts of a thread. What is in braces - that is, “[ ]” - in italics is added here for context; if it’s regular type is was as per the original comment.
Speaking of which, comments and reactions are always encouraged.
Here we go….
2026-06-26
”It’s hilarious when Americans pity my Norwegian tax rate.”
I once asked my father, a WW2 veteran which I mention to establish his generation, if he would be willing to pay the income tax rates in Sweden. He immediately said yes on exactly the logic presented here: How much you pay in taxes isn’t important, it’s do you get back in services what it’s worth.
(I specifically remember him citing free education through college as an example.)
And I am going to remember (and steal) the description of the US health care system as “a GoFundMe waiting to happen.”
—
2026-06-26
[Troll: ”If Norway didn’t have control over North Sea oil reserves then your taxes would be four times as much”]
So IF Norway did not have income from North Sea oil, taxes would be higher.
Perhaps. And IF your grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.
And oh yeah, IF we didn’t have a government and economic system encouraging rapacious capitalism, we’d have nice things, too.
==
2026-06-27
The Shuffle [moving ICE prisoners around so family and legal aid can’t find them]
reminds me of the old police trick of repeatedly moving those they
arrested from one station house to another so neither their families nor
their attorneys knew where they were. There was/is a name for it; maybe
someone here can remind me of it.
==
2026-06-27
[A comment on a list of words
that can’t be used in NIH grant applications referred to variations on
“lactating or pregnant person” as “chilling absurdities.”]
Those actually aren’t absurd; they are intended to include trans men, who while being male by personal identity (i.e., gender) can still have or relate to issues involving having a female phenotype.
Please accept my apology if I have misunderstood you.
==
2026-06-28
The image
(of booksellers in Iraq who leave their stock out on the street
overnight, confident none will be stolen) reminded me of an experience
I’ve had a few times, with the first being the most profound, when I
walked into a bookstore and suddenly felt - well, stupid. Aware of a
world of knowledge I will never know, whole fields of thought, of
philosophy, of which I am unaware, whole realms of history I will never
hear of, entire fields of scientific undertaking and development at
which I have and will continue to have no understanding, assuming I’d
even have come across the name.
It actually can be a rather salutary experience as a corrective to the ego and a invitation to keep learning what I can.
==
2026-06-29
[Re SCOTUS overturning the Humphrey’s Executor decision: “A progressive president could accomplish a lot by systemically removing any Republican appointee.”]
Except that’s not the real danger. If DOGE (which I always pronounce “dodgy” because the whole enterprise was/is) proved anything, it was that you can destroy a program or an institution in a small fraction of the time it took to build it. That incoming administration would spend much of its time rebuilding what had been destroyed just to get back to where things had been - assuming it could.
The danger is not to potentially doing something progressive, it’s rather, to misquote Ben Franklin, “you have something progressive - if you can keep it.”
==
2026-06-30
[A report in Erin in the Morning about the SCOTUS decision allowing sports bans
on transgender girls/women produced a lot of discussion. One commenter,
looking to rebut another’s argument, said that if the other chose to
argue as they did, “every part of Title IX is null and void. All of it,
you don’t get to pick and choose.”]
I’ve been staying out of this since I think people are talking past each other - but I do have to insert that “you don’t get to pick and choose” is untrue. Striking down part of a law or regulation or rejecting it “as applied,” meaning it can be valid in other circumstances, is hardly unknown.
==
2026-06-30
[Responding to a different comment in the same article.]
I expect you realize that “T in excess of typical levels” intended to create fairness has been used to exclude cis women as well as trans women. Drawing rigid lines that are actually fair to all is no easy task.
—
2026-06-30
[“Why is it unfair or difficult to apply the same standard to cis women as trans women?”]
Um, I’m confused. The point, which I thought was clear but apparently wasn’t, is that a standard designed to allow for trans girls/women to play on women’s teams could also bar some cis women from that same opportunity and that it’s no easy task to develop a standard that would accomplish the former while avoiding the latter.
If you’re saying that some T level should be controlling in all cases, okay, but then you should say that explicitly and I don’t think anyone would be satisfied.
==
2026-06-30
[Yet another from responses to the same article,
referring to an example of people talking past each other. ”Studies
show no advantage after 2 years HRT.” “I said the same thing exactly.”]
Which I honestly think is a source of a lot of the verbal conflict here: You kept burying the damn lede underneath declarations that “male biological advantage is real.”
I think the idea that it’s not unreasonable in the pursuit of fairness for trans girls/women to go through a course of HRT in order to be able to compete would meet little objection.
One last thought: Cracks like “as if some woo-woo appeal to spirit gender should be persuasive to any sane person ? !!!” - which certainly comes across as claiming that psychology and neurology are “woo-woo” - certainly didn’t advance understanding of your position.
—
2026-07-01
[Summary
of the response: Didn’t bury the lede; idea of requiring course of HRT
got “no small bit” of rejection; “woo-woo” refers to “belief that people
are transgender for no physical reason.”]
I have no intention of continuing this, so this will be my last.
Burying the lead is exactly what you did. More than once. The lede is the central argument, the one you want people to see, the one intended to frame what follows. It’s precisely why the headline and opening paragraph of a story are so important.
Your first comment was “T in excess of typical levels for a gendered category [is cheating]. Biological reality must be acknowledged and addressed.” (If you don’t know that “biological reality” is a verbal calling card of the anti-trans crowd, I have cause to doubt you are “quite current” on the topic.)
When someone responded by noting the effects of hormones, you responded by calling them an “i***t,” which I think we can assume meant idiot, condescendingly claiming superior expertise - punctuated with “I award you no points” - and went on to declare “The ‘male’ athletic advantage is real.”
It was only at that point when you posted what I assume was your lede, that a prior course of HRT is a reasonable requirement for trans female athletes in traditionally female sports.
Yes, that is damn well burying the lede.
As for the “rejection,” what there was of it was based on the impression you gave by the way you initially approached the topic. If that many people misread your intention, you have to consider that perhaps the problem was not their lack of understanding buy your lack of clarity.
Finally, there is the statement “I refer to a belief that people are transgender for no physical reason.” I have absolutely no idea what that even means. It’s incoherent nonsense. Unless, that is, you are insisting that the brain isn’t “physical” and that, exactly as I suggested, you hold psychology and neurology to be “woo-woo” - in which case your “45 years of study” did you no good.
Yeah, I’m done with this.
==
2026-07-02
[New Jersey enacted a trans shield law.]
There was considerable disappointment when the NJ lege didn’t pass a shield law in the post-election session despite a promise from the party leadership to do it.
I was among those who concluded that the promise to act was to serve as a stopgap in case right-wing nutzoid Jack Ciattarelli won the governor’s race. Since he didn’t, the feeling in the lege was, “Well, there’s an EO in place and that’s been good enough so far, why raise the issue at all?”
I’m glad to see others kept with it and turned an order into law.
==
2026-07-02
I’m
glad you mentioned, if only in passing, the women’s national team. They
are, in fact, the most successful women’s national football team in the
world, having won the cup four times along with finishing second once
and third three times. The fact that gets so rarely mentioned just
demonstrates the male bias in US appreciation of sports.
==
2026-07-03
[Responding to a note, a biologist wrote, summarized: Nature isn’t binary; a spectrum is the norm; gender is a social construct.]
Just throwing this in because it’s a point I like to emphasize: Gender presentation is a social construct, but the concept of gender exists across time and culture, marking it as something inherent to being human. Which also serves to point out that sex and gender are not the same thing.
—
2026-07-04
[I’m
not sure I get your point. I didn’t say concept, I said and spoke from a
scientific, not a sociological, perspective. Could you explain more? ]
First, thank you for asking, both because it gives me the opening to blather on a bit and because, well, it’s always a little flattering to have a comment considered seriously.
Let me start by saying that I think that we too often and too easily fall back on the old habit of equating sex and gender as synonyms or as the former defining the latter. But they are not synonymous, which is why I raise the point. You may well be fully aware of that, but I still think the language we use matters.
So, yes, you did use the word “construct.” That is what I was addressing. Referring to gender as a “social construct” is a sociological argument that suggests that gender does not exist outside of social relations - that is, that it is a creation of society.
But the fact that the **idea of gender, the **idea of the masculine and the feminine, exists across human history and (as far as I’m aware) all human societies testifies to the fact that that idea is inherent to humans, as inherent as male and female phenotypes, as inherent as language.
However, and again like language, what forms the **expression of that part of us, in this case, gender expression, is indeed a social construct, determined by the standards and mores of the society in which we live and which instruct us in what is masculine and what is feminine (and what is approved or disapproved in each) in dress, behavior, speech, mannerisms, roles in family and broader society, and more. It tells us how we are supposed to act and more importantly, to be.
For most people, their genetically-driven phenotype (sex) and their internal personal sense of self (gender) align, or at least closely enough to avoid troubling stress from the incongruence. For some among us, they don’t. Which ultimately is the basis of the whole issue.
So my point, which I hope I’ve made clearer than my previous once-over, is that gender exists [I should have added “on its own] apart from sex and we should make a point of presenting it that way as a clearer description of why the whole discussion and defense of trans rights and health care needs to take place.
—
2026-07-04
[My words indicate these ideas, just in fewer words]
:shrug: Okay. I’ll leave it at this: Saying “gender,” not “gender expression” but “gender,” is a “social construct” is to say the concept of gender does not exist on its own but only as an creation of society, little different from clothing fashion.
==
2026-07-04
[Notoriously anti-trans judge Reed O’Connor put an FTC motion “on hold.”]
Maybe I’m just trying to entertain a dream, but I can’t help but wonder of O’Connor, after hearing from WPATH and Boasberg, decided he was kinda tired of being treated like The Orange Overlord’s legal errand boy. He may be a right-wing nutzoid, but he could still have some measure of self-respect.
==
2026-07-05
[USAF Major Jason Watson stood on the Capitol steps in full uniform with a sign reading “Impeach Convict Remove.”]
“you just cannot do what MAJ Watson did”
Yes you can. We know because he did it. He did it knowing there would be a cost, knowing he was risking his position, his career, likely his pension - and prison. Doing it because it seemed a way to make a difference, to have an impact, and doing it because sometimes the “call to conscience” outweighs the “call to duty.”
Yes, he could have just resigned. And Rosa Parks could have just sent a letter to the bus company.
But he didn’t and she didn’t and that’s why we’re talking about him and about courage and about civil disobedience and what are our real first duties and why we still know her name and what followed.
We never know in advance what spark will start a fire and history says his spank very likely will not light one now (few ever do). But he struck his with, I have absolutely no doubt, knowledge of the potential consequences because “Here I stand, I can do no other.”
And that deserves at the least honor and respect rather than arrogant condescension suggesting he acted without consideration of others, including any family.
==
2026-07-05
[Re a video of people reading the “preamble” to the Declaration of Independence]
Okay, I know it’s silly but it always irks me. What those folks read was not the “preamble” to the Declaration of Independence, it was rather (most of) the second paragraph. It was the core argument, not an introduction or preamble to it, and was followed by a bill of particulars.
If the Declaration has a preamble, it is the opening paragraph, which reads:
“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America. When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
==
2026-07-07
[A fundamentalist tries to claim the Bible describes evolution.]
Genesis 1:3-5: And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day. (NIV)
So much for “days don’t mean anything before the fourth one.”
Genesis 2:7: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (NIV
So much for “Adam had ancestors.”
This guy reinterprets words with the looseness of Humpty Dumpty - or the majority of SCOTUS.
==
2026-07-07
One sort of side but relevant thing: Please stop referring to the [US-Iran] MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] as if it was a settled pact. It is not.
A MOU is essentially an agreed list of what are the outstanding issues, what needs final settlement. It is not binding on either party; rather it is an indication of the direction they intend to take in a final, formal, pact. Neither the US nor Iran properly can be accused of “violating” an agreement to which they have made no legal commitment. So, bluntly, whatever it says about Iranian control over the Strait is entirely irrelevant to the present moment. Stop talking as if it was.
Oh, and to save some folks’ time: Do not even bother trying to claim I’m justifying the [renewed] attack [on Iran]. It would only demonstrate an inability to read what is clearly said, that I am addressing one particular point about the reporting.
==
2026-07-08
[Chris Geidner
commented on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s writings on the birthright
citizenship and transgender sports ban cases. One person asked “if ‘sex’
includes things other than biological sex, what exactly are those
things?”]
Sorry for the delayed response. No arguments, just some of my thoughts on this.
I’d say first that people in general and courts in particular should stop treating the words “sex” and “gender” as if they are synonymous. They are not.
But of course the fact that we have and continue to equate them means that we could just decide that the term “sex” in the law was intended to encompass gender identity - which is in fact what we had done and what this court undid, despite having decided essentially the opposite in an earlier case involving a different title.
Given that’s our situation, I’d say the issue isn’t what’s beyond “biological sex,” but the assumption that the word “sex” - even though we persist in equating it with “gender” - refers only to “biological sex,” which is than taken as a synonym for “means of reproduction.”
But that is a constructed and constricted meaning which separates sex from society and the impacts of each on the other, thus making “biological sex” a perhaps convenient but still a purely arbitrary basis of judgment.
Consider that neuroscience is classed as a multidisciplinary subdivision of biology. Which means that brain function, which is fundamental to and thus directly involves personal identity, is itself part of our biology.
Meanwhile, sociobiology sits in the area where sociology and biology overlap, regarding biology as fundamental to social interaction and identity, which are socially produced and regulated. That is, biology is fundamental to identity, but what defines that identity in a given society is socially generated and the study is of the interplay between them.
Bottom line: SCOTUS imposed a predetermined definition on a word and term that is disconnected from the science involved - and got it wrong.
(BTW, sociobiology got a bad rep when it emerged into popularity in 1975 because some of its adherents insisted that genes are controlling of social relations and so such things as then-accepted social roles for men and women were “natural” and trying to change them “defied reality.” Sound familiar? Thankfully, it has matured at least somewhat in the past 50 years, even though it still to my mind tends to focus too much on genetics as explanations for social relations.)
More to come, I expect. “See” you then.
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