HereAndGone
2mo ago
That's the argument that annoys me in the same way as when "but intersex people!" is used. A case where puberty is gone wrong and needs medical intervention to be halted is not the same thing as normal puberty, in the same way as a syndrome where there is an intersex condition is not the same thing as normal development of primary and secondary sexual characteristics.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
In humans the best we have seems to be this study in which a 3-year course of puberty blockers in girls with precocious puberty is associated with a 7-point reduction in IQ from what they scored before beginning the puberty blockers.
I think that would be hard to disentangle from "are there associated problems with precocious puberty that affect the brain?" since presumably the IQ tests happened before the precocious puberty set in which is when the puberty blockers would be needed. I think that if the wiring for when puberty should begin is so mistimed, it wouldn't be surprising if other problems came to the fore as well.
If the cause can be traced to the hypothalamus or pituitary, the cause is considered central. Other names for this type are complete or true precocious puberty.
Causes of central precocious puberty can include:
- hypothalamic hamartoma produces pulsatile gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH)
- Langerhans cell histiocytosis
- McCune–Albright syndrome
Central precocious puberty can also be caused by brain tumors, infection (most commonly tuberculous meningitis, especially in developing countries), trauma, hydrocephalus, and Angelman syndrome. Precocious puberty is associated with advancement in bone age, which leads to early fusion of epiphyses, thus resulting in reduced final height and short stature.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
HereAndGone
2mo ago
I do think the FDA has a thankless task. First, the very real risk of litigation means that if they fast-track anything and it ends up that oops, when it comes to millions of real world patients, the very rare side effects do crop up in noticeable numbers, then somebody is going to take a lawsuit to sue the pants off everyone. Hence, the risk-averse nature of "let's make really really sure this doesn't curl your hair" when it comes to the approval process.
Second, when it does fast-track something, for every person who goes "yay! warpspeed hastened through the covid vaccines!", you will have another person writing how the vaccines murdered and are murdering thousands of healthy young people by causing them to drop dead of cardiac events, and they'll reference studies like this one, so damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Not to mention the whole Aduhelm controversy, where the drug has been discontinued after it got fast-tracked due to a combination of the drug company getting Alzheimer patient support and activist organisations to put pressure on and behind the scenes politicking, where it caused upheaval within the FDA and besmirched its reputation.
That's the trap we all fall into. We have some vague notion that a hundred or five hundred years ago, things weren't the same as they are now (though modern adaptations of classic works do seem to be trying their hardest to persuade us all that Regency Englishmen and women behaved just like late 20th century/early 21st century people. Ditto for genre/historical novels where the heroes, but more usually the heroines, have all the values of 21st century liberals around everything from race to sex, and the villains of course have the values of their time).
But when it comes to thirty/forty/fifty years ago, we think that's close enough that things were Just Like Now, and we forget how much social change happens in quite a little time.
EDIT: Don't be too hard on yourself, I'm old enough that I've lived through the change from "garlic is a rare, foreign, and untrusted ingredient that is not suitable for our plain but wholesome national cookery" to "now we have three new sushi joints started up in the town" 😁
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Once you start quoting Chesterton, it's hard to stop 😁 I love his description of newspaper interviews; first, what the headlines put him down as saying:
Another innocent complication is that the interviewer does sometimes translate things into his native language. It would not seem odd that a French interviewer should translate them into French; and it is certain that the American interviewer sometimes translates them into American. Those who imagine the two languages to be the same are more innocent than any interviewer. To take one out of the twenty examples, some of which I have mentioned elsewhere, suppose an interviewer had said that I had the reputation of being a nut. I should be flattered but faintly surprised at such a tribute to my dress and dashing exterior. I should afterwards be sobered and enlightened by discovering that in America a nut does not mean a dandy but a defective or imbecile person. And as I have here to translate their American phrase into English, it may be very defensible that they should translate my English phrases into American. Anyhow they often do translate them into American. In answer to the usual question about Prohibition I had made the usual answer, obvious to the point of dullness to those who are in daily contact with it, that it is a law that the rich make knowing they can always break it. From the printed interview it appeared that I had said, 'Prohibition! All matter of dollar sign.' This is almost avowed translation, like a French translation. Nobody can suppose that it would come natural to an Englishman to talk about a dollar, still less about a dollar sign — whatever that may be. It is exactly as if he had made me talk about the Skelt and Stevenson Toy Theatre as 'a cent plain, and two cents coloured' or condemned a parsimonious policy as dime-wise and dollar-foolish. Another interviewer once asked me who was the greatest American writer. I have forgotten exactly what I said, but after mentioning several names, I said that the greatest natural genius and artistic force was probably Walt Whitman. The printed interview is more precise; and students of my literary and conversational style will be interested to know that I said, 'See here, Walt Whitman was your one real red-blooded man.' Here again I hardly think the translation can have been quite unconscious; most of my intimates are indeed aware that I do not talk like that, but I fancy that the same fact would have dawned on the journalist to whom I had been talking.
Second, the difference between the experience of being interviewed (where the reporter is courteous) and the way interviews are written up:
Then again there is a curious convention by which American interviewing makes itself out much worse than it is. The reports are far more rowdy and insolent than the conversations. This is probably a part of the fact that a certain vivacity, which to some seems vitality and to some vulgarity, is not only an ambition but an ideal. It must always be grasped that this vulgarity is an ideal even more than it is a reality. It is an ideal when it is not a reality. A very quiet and intelligent young man, in a soft black hat and tortoise-shell spectacles, will ask for an interview with unimpeachable politeness, wait for his living subject with unimpeachable patience, talk to him quite sensibly for twenty minutes, and go noiselessly away. Then in the newspaper next morning you will read how he beat the bedroom door in, and pursued his victim on to the roof or dragged him from under the bed, and tore from him replies to all sorts of bald and ruthless questions printed in large black letters. I was often interviewed in the evening, and had no notion of how atrociously I had been insulted till I saw it in the paper next morning. I had no notion I had been on the rack of an inquisitor until I saw it in plain print; and then of course I believed it, with a faith and docility unknown in any previous epoch of history. An interesting essay might be written upon points upon which nations affect more vices than they possess; and it might deal more fully with the American pressman, who is a harmless clubman in private, and becomes a sort of highway-robber in print.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Oh, right: I was reading it as "three out of four" not "three or four". I get you now!
HereAndGone
2mo ago
If I'm taking this right, you think that getting swipes is more important than going on dates from the swipes? So 100 'yes hi' and nothing more is better than three dates from three 'yes hi' messages?
That seems to me to be a strange measure of success, but it does seem to fit the theory that "women don't go on dating apps to meet men, they go on dating apps to receive validation by getting swipes".
Is that what you are aiming for here? More swipes means more validation but you don't actually want to meet or date any of the people who matched?
Seriously, better photos will make an awful lot of difference. I've read some of the rationalist dating docs on the ACX dating threads and the photos made my heart sink, because by their self-description they were clearly nice, genuine people but the photos they picked made them look like the equivalent of wilted lettuce.
Both are lettuce, but which do you think looks better? This or this?
It is possible to revive wilted lettuce, just make the effort!
HereAndGone
2mo ago
I'm old enough that all his swipes about "oh, you're asexual" are water off a duck's back (plus I suspect I'm a good few years older than he is, even if he's in the age range 30-40, so it comes across as toddler tantrum) and you're happily married, so we don't have to wring our hands over our complete inability to understand what women like and why average men are, in fact, all smokin' hot studs.
Girls, women, ladies, if this is the quality of men you are dealing with in the search for love and romance, let me say I am very, very happy I never got into the entire thing ever.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
I'm not sure why you being a woman means you are innately blessed with the knowledge of what most or all women find attractive. Being a man did not endow me with the power to know what kinds of women most men were attracted to, nor did it give me any mystical or unique knowledge about attractiveness.
I can definitely agree with the final clause of that sentence 😁 Thanks for this entertainment on a humid Thursday afternoon round these parts!
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Like most people here you just don't comprehend male attractiveness and have a seriously skewed view of both what makes men attractive and just how attractive the average male is.
Straight woman attracted to men doesn't realise how attractive men are. Mate, I suggest you try the other side of the aisle, you may do better with gay guys with an attitude like this.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
So's the specific criticism, which appears to generalize to "this dude pattern-matches too closely to a woman to be husband material"- again, as much of a 'straight woman' thing as you can get.
Honey, if you're trying to attract straight women, then maybe knowing what straight women think would help?
"Gosh, I look like a 70s Greek porn star, why amn't I hip deep in pussy in 2025?" Who can fathom the mysterious whims of the female?
What I'm saying is yeah, Nikola is very attractive, but the way he styles and presents himself does not say "looking for long-term relationship, hopefully marriage and four kids", it's "I'm an international man of mystery who will rock your world tonight but I can't be tied down to one lady at a time, I have a girl in every port".
You know you'll have a fun time with Nikola, but you also know it's not going to last. Amicable breakup, he won't treat you badly, but he's not going to get married for another ten to fifteen years. Will Nikola have lots of matches and lots of hookups on dating apps? Absolutely. Will he be The One? Absolutely not.
For Niko, he does come across as genuinely nice, so much better chance of long-term or serious relationship there. The poloneck is not bad by itself, but it needs to be carefully considered as part of an entire ensemble. He's clearly slim, not very muscular, so he needs to dress in a way that does not make him look like a beanpole. For example, advice such as this.
I'm not a fan of the number three style, since I don't think jeans and jacket go well together, but for Niko something like number six would be better - more layers so makes him look less skinny - or number two, which is more casual and suits his age range better.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
If you want to succeed on Tinder or Hinge and you're not facially gifted, you MUST be jacked if you want any attention at all.
Unless you're gay yourself, you have no idea the little differences that make the difference to straight women. "Get muscles and be model-quality in the face" will do nothing if your photo has you looking like a goofball or dressed in sloppy band T-shirt and backwards baseball cap.
preferably the physique of someone on steroids or close.
Now you're just trolling. The "condom full of walnuts" look appeals to no-one but professional judges of bodybuilding. See this relevant Stonetoss.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
There is a difference between what men think is attractive and what women think is attractive. Women are picking up on personality cues from those photos, and whether they're correct or not, that makes or breaks the deal.
To men "Well he's tall, he's slim, he has fair hair, his face is good" is enough. To women "his hair is styled badly, his clothes are poorly put together, he looks awkward in this photo" send the signals as to whether he's confident and would be fun to spend time with, or if you'd have to listen to an hour-long lecture about maths or trains. (If you're a woman who wants to hear a lecture about maths or trains, go for it!)
Take Nikolas - he's the guy who has it all put together, he knows the image to present and that's why yeah he's successful on that app. Like I said, I would consider him fun but not long-term material, but there's no denying he'll slay. Compare him and Niko to see the difference between "good presentation".
HereAndGone
2mo ago
I presume you're familiar with the argument about representation, and sure the casting may not be historically accurate, but it's important for human-alien hybrids to see figures like them in popular culture. If Anne Boleyn can be black but have a white daughter, then a 10th century Rus princess can be played by a hybrid.
It's a fine balance. Open self-pity? No, that's not attractive. Angst, on the other hand? Can be catnip (listen, I love Athos from the Three Musketeers - all versions, book included, this is the BBC version - and he's the King of Angst).
See this 80s hit:
You can tell from expressions that he makes public
That he suffers from a badly broken heart
He smiles as he feeds the afternoon pigeons
But he cries as he walks the night streets of St. Mark
HereAndGone
2mo ago
But Christianity, as per those quotes from Scripture, put the same limitations on men. For Judaism (and Islam afterwards) divorce was the right of a man, easier for him to obtain, and the divorced woman was left in a parlous position. The Classical world at the time of early Christianity, such as Rome, had no qualms about men divorcing and remarrying multiple times. Polygamy may have been tolerated culturally in some societies, ease of sexual access for men was unquestioned (legal prostitution, mistresses, etc.)
Christianity came along and said no. One wife. No mistresses. Wives have the same right of sexual access to their husbands as husbands have to their wives. No sleeping around before/within marriage. No prostitution. No divorce.
Now, did Christians live up to that code? Of course not. But as a change from the prevailing attitudes, it was incredible. Even the stories of martyrs, like St Perpetua, defying the traditional authority of father and husband and family were amazing new changes in the status and freedom of women.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Surely we can put some 'pressure' on women to settle down earlier without making it a legal mandate?
Sure, but that relies on men wanting to settle down earlier, and in the halcyon days before liberalisation as described, men saw marriage and fatherhood as traps, as women trying to net a husband and tie a man down. Jokey references such as "the old ball and chain" may have been jokes, but also were a cultural assumption that wives were shackles (literally) on a man's freedom - to have sexual experiences, to travel, to drink/smoke/have fun, to enjoy being a bachelor.
The movement towards Free Love and Sexual Liberation was two-pronged; men wanted to be free of obligations as much as women wanted the sexual freedoms of men. The (to my ears) rather whiny lyrics of the 70s hit Lydia express this: the guy wants to be free but also wants a no-strings-attached woman and place to crash when he wants/needs it.
Lydia keeps my toothbrush in her apartment and she never complains.
Well, hardly ever. And then jokingly she says.
Boy, it's been so long since I held you, I nearly gave you up for dead. I nearly gave you up for dead. I nearly gave you up for dead.
Lydia, Lydia how come you understand?
I can offer you nothing at all. This is more than I had planned.
Lydia, Lydia I am at your command, at least until morning comes,
then, I must be off again.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
This is an example of not understanding the past. How could people be so stupid as to not know where spaghetti comes from?
Well if you don't eat spaghetti, it's not a common dish in any restaurant in your area, you haven't gone on foreign holidays, and all you know is the name of it as a food from abroad, how do you know where it comes from or how it's made? You don't care about it so you don't go to the bother of finding out "what is spaghetti and how is it made", all you've ever seen of it might be a packet of it on a shop shelf.
And this is the BBC, with the gravitas of its history behind it as the Reithian project to "to educate, inform and entertain" the public. You would no more expect a joke item on the Serious Current Affairs Programme than modern Americans would expect an Oscars musical number in the middle of the State of the Union address:
Panorama cameraman Charles de Jaeger dreamed up the story after remembering how teachers at his school in Austria teased his classmates for being so stupid that if they were told that spaghetti grew on trees, they would believe it. The editor of Panorama, Michael Peacock, told the BBC in 2014 how he gave de Jaeger a budget of £100 and sent him off. The report was made more believable through its voice-over by respected broadcaster Richard Dimbleby. Peacock said Dimbleby knew they were using his authority to make the joke work, and that Dimbleby loved the idea and went at it eagerly.
In an American context, imagine Walter Cronkite presenting a similar story.
It wasn't everybody, "hundreds" out of an audience of millions, which is probably reasonable to expect regarding general levels of public credulousness:
At the time, 7 million of the 15.8 million homes (about 44%) in Britain had television receivers. Pasta was not an everyday food in 1950s Britain, and it was known mainly from tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce and considered by many to be an exotic delicacy. An estimated eight million people watched the programme on 1 April 1957, and hundreds phoned in the following day to question the authenticity of the story or ask for more information about spaghetti cultivation and how they could grow their own spaghetti trees; the BBC told them to "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best".
Right now, there's probably some exotic foodstuff that in ten years will be introduced to us in the West, but which right now we're unfamiliar with, and if a trusted source (probably AI, the way things are going) said "this food item is harvested by pixies after being fertilised with unicorn dung", we'd fall for it. Hell, we're probably already falling for AI generated slop as evidenced by the posts above re: the Tim Walz fake quote.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Pass a law which makes it easy to exclude Chinese citizens who have not credibly renounced their citizenship
"Hello, you have now gotten all your family back home exiled, imprisoned, or executed. Love and kisses, the CCP".
Gosh, with this one neat trick, there will be no chance at all of the Chinese government setting it up so that certain trusted agents sure look like they have renounced their citizenship credibly and are now deeply embedded!
G.K. Chesterton, "What I Saw In America":
When I went to the American consulate to regularise my passports, I was capable of expecting the American consulate to be American. ...They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearance like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a freer form of the game called 'Confessions' which my friends and I invented in our youth; an examination paper containing questions like, 'If you saw a rhinoceros in the front garden, what would you do?' One of my friends, I remember, wrote, 'Take the pledge.' But that is another story, and might bring Mr. Pussyfoot Johnson on the scene before his time.
...But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, 'I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.' Or, 'I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into Mr. Harding at the earliest opportunity.' Or again, 'Yes, I am a polygamist all right, and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries.' There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Does seeing a man this sexually successful just make you insecure? Is it something deeper?
No more deep than I think he's not especially All That and could do himself some favours. If men think of certain women as fuckable for short-term fun but not wife material, women think the same about some men.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
It's not that individual women have no power, it's that the group "women" does not comprise a meaningful political bloc. Thus "female sociopolitical power will collapse"
Sociopolitical power in harem situations is wielded by being the mother of the heir. Look at Mohammed bin Salman - son of the third wife, so plainly she manoeuvred her way into getting her son made the heir:
He is the eldest of his mother's six children and the eighth child and seventh son of his father.
And Salman's father was the (reputed) twenty-fifth son of his father. The strongest alliances are those between children of the same mother (though of course this does not rule out intra-clan scheming to replace one likely successor with another, which is another theme in Chinese history when you have harems and multiple sons by multiple wives/concubines):
The Sudairi Seven is the commonly used name for a powerful alliance of seven full brothers within the Saudi royal family. They are also sometimes referred to as the Sudairi clan or the Sudairi faction. They are among the forty-five sons of the country's founder, King Abdulaziz. The King had more sons with their mother, Hussa bint Ahmed Al Sudairi, than he did with any of his other wives.
This has been the tradition: the sultan's mother and the sultan's favourite wife/concubine are the women with power, so it's worth scheming to make sure you're either the favourite of the current sultan, or the mother of his heir (best of all, of course, is to be both). That's one reason why monogamy makes for stronger dynastic lines - if there's only one legitimate wife and bastards by favourites, mistresses, or concubines have little to no hope of being in the line of succession, you cut way down on intra-family slaughter over succession (and the Wars of the Roses show how important reducing conflict over heirs is). If you look at the Al-Saud family, the succession bounces around between potential Heirs Presumptive who get replaced (and often imprisoned) as they rise and fall in favour, which means instability and public concern and unrest. By contrast, everyone knows that William is the heir of Charles, and it's not going to be "Charles decides to name one or another of his nephews, nieces, or grandkids as heir then changes his mind and names another".
That is the genuine problem for which I do have sympathy. However, the extreme cases around transgender issues and the activist rhetoric about "not owing anyone femininity" (which seems to translate to "keeping your feminine penis and testicles and your beard") make it difficult to maintain that sympathy, as well as the push for "so this means that nine year olds should be started on the transition path because of course every child who has concerns and problems around facing into puberty is trans and not at all perhaps suffering from different anxieties and problems that need to be addressed by therapy but don't mean telling them 'it's because you're really a girl or a boy, not a boy or a girl'".
Jesse Singal gets absolutely slaughtered on Bluesky for being a Nazi fascist supporter of trans genocide for being a conventional liberal who is positive on socially liberal issues but has concerns around the whole transitioning of kids and expressed such qualms. It's a genuine question of "when should you start medical - which means puberty blockers and hormones - transitioning versus social transitioning", because going too early does involve other problems later on, but if you are not 100% behind "this never happens and if it does, it's a good thing" then you are a trans genocider.
More options
Context Copy link