johnfabian
3mo ago
Man, if only they had somehow tracked the guy who wrote those Wannsee minutes down. Maybe interrogated him, or had a big trial or something. What an incredibly insightful process that would have been. Shame it didn't happen.
Your hate is too obvious, it makes the shtick too visible. You need to apply a few more layers of lacquer or something. I don't get the point of it all either, it's too effortful to be merely the product of some kind of stubborn contrarianism. I know you're lying, you know you're lying, you know I know you're lying, what's the point?
johnfabian
4mo ago
Good thing they're not calling it the Cis- and Trans-jordan anymore, that would really confuse people
johnfabian
2mo ago
I'm a progressive! (circa 2014)
johnfabian
6mo ago
I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem.
Israel would not have this specific problem of Hamas launching attacks from Gaza (that up until now, had been quite comfortably handled). But they might have other problems: a revival of pan-Arabism, a withdrawal of US and western support, the fervent determination of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Egypt to pursue development of nuclear weapons, etc.
Brutal, overwhelming force might solve one problem, but if in the process that creates three more, you are no farther ahead than when you started.
Israel has long-term plans. God, after all, has promised them the Holy Land, and they see a long-term way to achieve it. Incrementally expanding settlements in the West Bank every year and fighting off a spirited attempt from Hezbollah/Hamas once a decade might be a slow way, but so far it looks like a sure way. They no longer face an existential threat. They've mollified and bought off their formal rivals, and in the process surpassed them. They have ironclad security guarantees and economic support from the world's most powerful countries. Why risk all of that?
johnfabian
3mo ago
If you accept the Revisionist interpretation, that the plan was for resettlement East ahead of the post-war creation of a Jewish state, then these plans by the AfD are absolutely comparable to what the Nazis did. And in particular, if it turns out the Wannsee conference really was all about resettlement as a plain reading of the minutes show, and not codewords for an extermination policy, then the Wannsee Conference is comparable to secret conferences planning for mass resettlement of migrants to their homelands or to a separate colony of some sort.
Is this where you pretend that Eichmann doesn't exist again? This is well trod territory by now. I'm trying to keep my wording compliant in order to avoid a warning by the mods, but your particular fixation wouldn't be so annoying if it were just merely dishonest - it's that you have to constantly bring it up as well.
johnfabian
9mo ago
Big week for nuclear power in Ontario
After France, I believe Ontario is the king of nuclear power generation: roughly 60% of the province's electricity is generated from its nuclear power plants. However there were growing issues: cost overruns and increased political opposition in the 1980s had prevented development of new reactors for decades, and the legal battles over just the initial environmental assessments of an attempt to build new reactors at the Darlington site beginning in 2006 meant the project ended up stillborn (the provincial government abandoned it in 2011, and the court scuffles went on for another five years past that). After that successive Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments were plenty happy to kick the can down the road: after all, getting new hydro or nuclear generation going is never something that's going to come online in time for next election, so it just all disappears beyond the political event horizon. Never mind the various projections anticipating a large and growing gap between generation and demand, a gap probably understated if electrification of heating/transport accelerates.
Then all of a sudden it becomes an issue because one of the major nuclear plants (Pickering) is all of a sudden due for retirement before the next election, and there's a mad scramble to fix things. But at least the positive is that it appears to have finally shaken decision-makers out of their reverie: 4,800 MW of new reactors at Bruce Power will see it reclaim its former status as the world's largest nuclear plant, and three new small modular reactors will add 1,200 MW more. The scale is considerable: just the three new SMRs will generate more electricity than Canada's ten largest windfarms combined.
And so far the response has been positive! Looking at Reddit comments might not necessarily be instructive of the general reaction but it's been nothing but relief so far. I've been scanning left-leaning legacy media (there isn't much left in Canada) and what criticism there has been so far has been mainly tepid concerns about cost (which are valid, controlling cost overruns are pretty important here).
It'll be interesting to see the federal response here. The current Minister of Environment, Steven Guilbeault, is a former Greenpeace guy and has been vocally anti-nuclear in the past. The regulatory hurdles these projects will have to mount are mainly federal and there is the potential for some kind of obstruction. On the other hand the current Trudeau government has been cautiously open, at least rhetorically, to new nuclear development and has been helping fund SMR development. We shall see how it pans out. In general public sentiment isn't an issue: the large majority of Ontario's population already lives close to a nuclear power plant and public support is high. The concern is how interest groups or specific influential individuals might use the legal system or regulatory requirements to kill by a thousand cuts.
I'm going to take this chance to indulge in just a little bit of optimism!
johnfabian
4mo ago
Also working "outside the home" was not the only kind of work - it's easy to think of being a homemaker in the 21st century as just essentially being a glorified doer-of-chores, but apart from the idle rich women who worked at home were near-constantly busy with domestic tasks. Before the advent of the commercial washing machine, laundry was an enormously labourious task. Sewing and mending clothing was the norm. Food preparation was much more involved and complicated. Work at home, depending where one lived, also involved a myriad of tasks ancillary to agriculture, or forms of cottage industry.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Britta Perry: a Culture War time capsule
One of the fun things about reading old books or watching old movies is how you can be reminded of the way society changes. Obviously this is a somewhat trite observation, but it doesn't really make it any less jarring when something very casually conflicts with the subtle messaging you get every day in the present. Community is one of my favourite TV shows; it ran from 2009-2015 which isn't that far in the past, but I saw a Reddit post the other day that made an interesting observation about the zeitgeist it represented and how quickly we've moved on from it.
The female lead of the series is Britta Perry (played by the wonderful Gillian Jacobs), and in the first dozenish or so episodes of the show she's very much a conventional sitcom love interest: responsible, compassionate, earnest, striver for social justice, the Better Eventual Half of our morally listless protagonist, etc. This of course was bland and boring, so the writers ended juking things up and turning her into a much more interesting character. Rather than being the noble (and unfunny) stock liberal progressive, she became the annoying and semi-incompetent stock liberal progressive. She continues to be smug and overbearing about the same subjects, but she's flipped as a killjoy instead of righteous.
And it's interesting to see what the writers of the time considered to be the most annoying tendencies of white, urban, female, bourgeois progressivism. Yes, of course she complains about the patriarchy, thinks all her media consumption is about making a statement, she has to work her pet causes into every conversation, and she hates cops. But she's also a crusader for civil liberties, a big fan of Julian Assange, outspoken in favour of free speech, and paranoid about government surveillance. Even her evangelical vegetarianism seems notably out of place in 2023.
And of course perhaps what's most glaringly obvious is the subjects she DOESN'T care about: there's barely a mention of race (except for once suggesting they include an Asian member for more diversity!), she famously cares more about animal cruelty than racism, and not only does she never dip her toe into anything resembling bisexuality or gender experimentation, she's even portrayed as mildly homophobic. Until the last episode there's nary a mention of transgender people except for the transfer dance being referred to as the "tranny dance" in season 1 (in 2009, any idea of transgender people being anything other than a punchline was not even dawning in the minds of progressive Hollywood writers).
So this was the stereotypical annoying liberal progressive circa 2010. No mentions of black bodies and trans spaces, a lot of worrying about civil liberties. I guess we never knew how good we had it. I'll leave you with a link to an illicit streaming website which is one of the few places you can watch one of the show's best episodes, which got erased from existence after George Floyd for the crime of adjacent-blackface and features annoying Britta at her best.
Happy 4th of July to our American friends! I've come to share a little bit of history that struck me, then and now, as one of the more compelling paeans of American greatness: the opinion of Germans of American soldiers in 1917-18.
When the USA fell into WWI mostly-unprepared, it had to rapidly acquaint itself with the realities of modern warfare and gamely struggled with it. Once the fighting ended the Army was very interested in sourcing the enemy's opinions of its performance so as to be better prepared for next time. What actually happened was the USA retreated again into isolationism and it had to relearn all the same lessons in 1941-42 again at great cost. But it did produce this great document: Candid Comment on the American Soldier of 1917-18 (and Kindred Topics) by The Germans.
While much of it is devoted to German opinions of American combat performance (the general conclusion was brave, but foolhardy), the more interesting elements to me are the German impressions of Americans as individuals. Many of the American soldiers were ethnically German themself, and the whole situation lended itself to German introspection on how their American cousins had diverged in between the great German national failures of 1848 and 1918. This was after all a great clash of the ideals of the former versus the structure of the latter (which was drawn into sharper contrast by the further civil conflict within Germany; there are repeated instances of praise for American rule versus that of the "Spartacists").
You can see some selected quotes on various topics here, but what I find particularly interesting are the various comments about American class distinctions, given the shock Germans had in comparing their Prussian norms with American freedoms. Some choice quotes:
He comments on the fact that the Americans were what might be called bad prisoners. A group of 14 were brought in one day and when asked about their units refused to talk. They refused to work and talked back to the [German] officers, much to the annoyance of the officers and the concealed delight of the men.
Braun has served in the German army as an enlisted man and keenly alive to conditions in the army. He makes an interesting comparison in the German and American systems of training officers and states that the German system was the direct downfall of the army. At the beginning of the war Germany was well supplied with experienced officers who were respected and looked up to by the men in spite of the harsh disciplinary measures. The casualties, however, among officers during the first year of the war were enormous and they at once started training new officers... The candidates were selected from among the sons of the most influential families, given a short training and then put in charge of Companies. They tried to impose the same rigid discipline that the regular officers had, but the enlisted men resented this to the extent of open rebellion and fought with their officers until there was no discipline left in the army... He said that the American training schools although modelled after the Germans turned out successful officers because the best fitted men were picked from the ranks.
He spoke of the great difference between the American and German armies and was very much surprised to learn that one could become a noncommissioned officer after spending six or eight months in the service. In peace time in the German army a soldier was given a Sergeantcy only after he had spent 10 or 12 years in service then if he continued faithful he was given a place near his home as a Postman or railroad employee.
The American army seems to me as fine a collection of individual physical specimen as I have ever seen. But from the standpoint of military discipline it is a mob, pure and simple. The men appear slouchy; the officers do not stand out from the men in appearance as they do in any European army. All seem to allow themselves to be victimized in prices by the tradespeople of this, I am most unhappy to admit, vanquished country. They seem to have no conception of the fact that we are their enemies, and deep down in our hearts we hate each and every one of them!
Hahn states that all the people in the town are admiring the clean-cut American soldiers. He states that the impression the American soldier is leaving, with the people of Germany, is the impression that Germany will have of America in years to come. He notices the contrast between the American and German armies in their forms of discipline, stating that if the German army had been as free with their men as the American Army is, they would not have had the success that was theirs at the beginning of the war.
The attitude of the American officer towards enlisted men is very different than in our army in which officers have always treated their men as cattle.
While on duty the relations between men and officers are very strict, but on the other hand, when off duty, they are without constraint. The officers sit in the same cafe rooms with their men. When one sees the supplies, the material, etc., one is obliged to laugh at the imagination of our marine heads who praised the U-boats as a victor over the Entente. Every man has his cloth coat and his waterproof coat, his leather shoes and rubber shoes, etc.
This man has been a proprietor of a cafe for eight years. He speaks very highly of the American soldier and thinks that it was luck for the people that Americans were chosen for this district. He thinks it is strange that the Americans, having spent so short a time in the army, can adapt themselves to any condition that presents itself. He remarked that on the day the soldiers came to this town all were surprised at the orderly way the Americans conducted themselves. He said that he had never known a regiment of German soldiers to come here and behave themselves in such an orderly manner. German soldiers were always brutal to servants and destroyed a great deal of property.
A few American prisoners were brought here in June 1918 and were not mistreated. The Americans were the Chief complainers when the food was bad which was always. The Americans occasionally received packages containing hard tack and other luxuries but their packages were usually rifled. After the entrance of the Americans several Italians desired to return to Italy and France and demanded their pay from the German contractor. This was refused. They appealed to the Americans. Three "doughboys" with fixed bayonets accompanied the Italians and prompt payment was made. He states that miners are now being treated well and receive thirteen marks a day.
In the town of RITTERSDORF the subject of separation of Church and State was very strongly advocated at a meeting of the German Democratic Party: an opportunity to defend the position of the Church in this question was seized by two Catholic priests in the audience, who contended that the ideals of good government and the ideal of the Church were identical. In reply, the speaker of the German Democratic Party stated there could be no better example of the results of a divided Church and State than the American soldiers billeted in the German homes; he asked the audience to compare the conduct, appearance and enlightenment of the American soldiers with the aspect of the German soldiers. The reply met with the approval of the audience and the priests were "hissed" out of the meeting.
This lady says that a good many of the inhabitants of Rengsdorf and the surrounding town have made up their minds to emigrate to America if they will be permitted to do so. She explains that this is due to the good impression made by the American soldiers who are occupying this region and also the fact that most of the middle class and lower class are much afraid of the impending war debt and indemnity.
I have had soldiers in quarter all winter. At first I had Germans. Later Americans came. To become acquainted with these "our enemies" as house companions is among other things so very instructive. I have changed in a good many of my opinions, and would like to go to America for a half year or so because it is certain that these people possess a secret method which raises the most common fellows into an individual who stands up boldly and moves about freely and unconcerned. I think we can learn some things there which later could be used to advantage here. I do not mean this personally, but as a better education nationally.
johnfabian
3mo ago
If the Western Allies had refused to ally with the Soviet Union, there would have been no war between Germany and Western Europe.
I cannot fathom what you mean by this. Like I cannot tell if you are being deliberately dishonest or if you have a perplexing, gigantic gap of knowledge. Who was the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed by? Who made a deal split Poland, and all Eastern Europe? Who was allied right up until the point tanks began crossing the border on June 22 1941? Because it sure as shit wasn't the western allies and the Soviets.
johnfabian
3mo ago
Liberalism is only successful because its adherents truly believe in it and cannot imagine anything else. The second it's regarded as anything other than an inevitable endpoint, or universal truth, is when it is going to fail.
I think you underestimate the strength of liberalism. In the darkest days of 1940-41 when it was Britain alone against Germany, many were happy to write it off as an annoyingly obstinate but ultimately dead ideology. Yet the liberal democracies ended up thrashing the autocracies; not only crushing them under the weight of the combined outputs of the arsenals of democracy but ultimately converting them as well.
Perhaps liberalism will wither and decay. Perhaps some other, superior, more evolutionarily fit ideology will take its place. But I'm not betting against it just yet.
johnfabian
1yr ago
It's that time of year again: The Masters, my favourite dose of noblesse oblige
I've seen it lamented numerous times here and elsewhere of the decline of noblesse oblige. I chalk it up to the internationalization of finance and wealth and the simultaneous decline in nationalism: the peers of the ultra-wealthy are the ultra-wealthy of other countries, not their neighbours or countrymen who they generally try to spend as little time as possible in the company of. God forbid that they might actually have to mix with the unwashed masses. Before you were obliged to in an attempt to forestall some peasant revolt from burning your estates, but now you've got private security defending all fourteen of your mansions, so what would really be the harm even if you lost one?
But at least in Augusta, Georgia there's some vestige of that lost spirit. Every year the Masters is held at the ultra-exclusive Augusta National Country Club, arguably the most prestigious golf tournament (give or take The Open) and the pinnacle of achievement of one of the hobbies of the elites. And every year the Masters goes overboard in creating a prestigious, elevated, and somewhat stiffly artificial environment. No expense is spared, no detail overlooked: the fairways are painted a verdant green, Rae's Creek is dyed its iconic dark blue, and the telecast features a chorus of (not-actually-present) birds so you can't hear the highway traffic. It's pure spectacle, and a treat to watch.
And you can watch it. Rather than hiking ticket prices to the eye-watering levels the open market would demand, the tournament distributes tickets via lottery ($140 for a day ticket, but if they hit the retail market they usually go for multiple thousands). And once you're on-site, the costs for food and drink are almost cartoonishly inexpensive. Oh, you couldn't secure tickets or are too far away? Well they built maybe the single-best website for watching sports: an infinitely customizable setup where you can watch whichever players or holes you wish. I've never used the app for mobile but people rave about it as well. These are both free of charge and have no region locks, and feature not one single advertisement or imposition upon the watcher. It's sporting entertainment at its ultimate best, built not for profit but purely for the prestige of being able to give it to the masses.
johnfabian
4mo ago
This is a non-spoiler detail: later in the show one of the drug dealers has a chief enforcer who was ex-Army/Marines, and it's implied he served in Iraq. All these complaints and suggestions are more or less embodied by this character.
johnfabian
2mo ago
At the start of the 20th century, if you were forced to pick a country that you think would carry out a Holocaust-level atrocity in the next fifty years, everyone would have picked Russia. (Not necessarily with Jews as the target, they were just the most obvious target). No other state in Christian Europe was nearly so repressive.
johnfabian
4mo ago
Yes, but the different colonies aren't separated by skin colour/race; as far as I can remember they all run the gamut. In that respect it maps better on to debates surrounding free trade and western "exploitation" of developing nations rather than racial identity politics within western countries, especially with the talk of Zarek and his ilk as "freedom fighters" vs. terrorists
johnfabian
3mo ago
The communists needed the liberals much more than the other way around. If the western allies had refused to help the Soviets at all and the Germans beat them, Berlin and Hamburg and Frankfurt are still piles of radioactive ash come September 1945.
johnfabian
4mo ago
A couple months ago I took this screenshot of the-then top posts for that day in /r/canada. Was an effective summary of the malaise we're in
Personal anecdote time: I ride Toronto public transit frequently. The TTC has not been in a good place for a while. Violent, mentally ill homeless have had free reign. Last year a woman was set on fire (she died), another was stabbed to death with an ice pick, and a close friend of mine is currently going through the trial of someone who tried to push her onto the subway tracks. A foreign student who had come to Canada a few months prior was shot to death completely at random at my subway exit (this will give you a very good idea of where I live if you know how to use google).
But things got noticeably worse in December when a number of the city's emergency homeless shelters they had set up for the duration of COVID shut down without replacements. Twice I had to intervene to stop a homeless man harassing women late at night. Just about every trip you'd take you saw at least one obviously deranged person. Things were really ugly.
So how did the mods at /r/toronto react, given that they control the information source on the city for many people? (Canadians I believe use reddit the most of any nationality) Why, No-Crime January! For the month of January all posts on crimes committed in the city would be removed, unless the mods specially approved them, with the not-so-subtle implication that this was to counter "conservative narratives" on violence in the city. This got immediate backlash, but it got even worse when January saw another big wave of transit attacks. This was enough to get foreign press attention, and city politicians approved for a one month (!) deployment of police patrols onto the TTC, with the predictable types kvetching about the harm this would do to "racialized people" (as if they would prefer the violent mentally ill to the presence of police). Of course the /r/toronto mods declared their "temporary experiment" to have been a huge success, and that the new no-crime policy would become a permanent rule.
I'm a big believer in public transit. I'm a big believer in walkable cities. I do not believe those visions are compatible with a philosophy of policing and mental health which leaves mentally ill people unchecked to ruin public spaces. I talk to a lot of people and the number of outwardly progressive people who have conceded (in secret) to me that they're thinking we need a return of insane asylums is notable. The problem, at least in the Canadian political environment, is who is going to do it? The Conservatives don't want to spend the money. The Liberals and NDP would face rebellion from their activist/NGO base. At present the inevitable situation seems that the problem will get worse and worse until the public reaction is so bad it demands a crackdown. People are itching for a return of order.
johnfabian
1mo ago
The sites died out because their format of pouring incandescent hot rage into your eyes has moved to youtube, tiktok, twitter, etc. Those offer either condensed format or visual augmentation, whereas for as bad as those former sites were for humanity they at least forced you to READ a bit.
The comments on youtube/tiktok/whatever are still largely unmoderated even if the more text-based social media sites are.
johnfabian
6mo ago
I read The Left Hand of Darkness earlier this year and was sort of surprised to see the amount of reading into it of exploration of trans topics. To me the novel did not really address what I could recognize as transgender/sexual themes. Rather Le Guin seemed much more interested in exploring masculinity/femininity as social constructs, and how a culture might be affected without "true" masculinity/femininity. Besides the toying with the reader of seeing the characters as male by default, the introspection seemed mostly to focus on what the cultures lacked in their essence by not being sexually dimorphic. E.g., Karhide is a society that simultaneously lacks female affection and childrearing, but also male obsession and capacity for war.
Maybe I have a sort of inherent bias against reading things as trans metaphors, but some of the reflections I read afterwards trying to tie the novel to contemporary trans politics seemed like rather clear misreads of the novel to me. Just my impression
johnfabian
5mo ago
Here's a fun historical hypothetical: say you wake up tomorrow and it's May 1944, and Dwight Eisenhower comes to you and says "TheMotte User X, you are our top expert on collateral damage. Our forthcoming invasion of Fortress Europe has to succeed, or else condemn millions more innocents to die at the hands of Nazi Germany. Our plan is to maximize our chances of victory by bombing enemy fortifications, re-supply, repair depots, airfields, road junctions, marshalling yards, rail bridges, training grounds, troop barracks, radio transmitters, telephone exchanges, fuel and ammo dumps, and more. Furthermore once on the ground, our soldiers will make use of their supreme material, technological, and doctrinal advantages in naval and land artillery to crush German resistance in all environments, be their urban, rural, or fortified. Inevitably this will result in the deaths of French civilians, who are not only innocent of Nazi crimes but victims of them, and our allies in this fight. So the crucial question I pose to you is: how many French civilian deaths are tolerable to ensure the success of Operation Overlord?"
What would your answer be? What would you consider reasonable? Could you come up with a specific number as a threshold for what you would deem acceptable civilian deaths? (Ideally don't look up the actual number before coming to an answer for yourself)
This is also not meant to be a direct analogy to any extant geopolitical crisis; its function is primarily a thought experiment and not a commentary upon or justification for acts of any specific government.
johnfabian
6mo ago
I think this will be bad for Bibi. It's one thing to have occasional rockets slip through the Iron Dome and kill a civilian or two per year. It's another thing to have this happen on his watch. The legitimacy of Likud is that their hardline approach delivers results with respect to the security of Israel. When the dust settles opinion might turn on him; I think this might happen regardless of whether there will be a general political shift.
I think the decision to slowroll settler expansion in the West Bank in exchange for petty violence from Palestinians was a very deliberate one, but this level of violence will probably force some kind of shift in Israeli strategy, one way or the other.
johnfabian
2mo ago
You actually support Diocletian's reforms? umm, yikes.
It's pretty wild to imagine how different history may have been if that vote had swung another half percent in the other direction.
The result would not have been Québec leaving Canada, but there probably would have been a marked increase in French/English antagonization, as well as presumably French/indigenous strife. The 1995 referendum question was much too vague; while the PQ fully intended that a 50+1 Yes vote would allow them to proceed with a negotiated or unilateral secession, how it would have played out in reality is doubtful. Subsequently the Supreme Court adjudged that provinces do have the right to secede, but it requires "a clear question and a clear answer" (neither of which the 1995 vote had), and that would oblige the federal government to negotiate an exit for whichever party was seceding.
But one could certainly imagine a lot more social strife and culture war if the vote totals had been reversed. For reference here is the referendum question:
Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign, after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership, within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?
I imagine that for many it was very much less than clear what this entailed. This was of course, by design.
Kim Stanley Robinson, science fiction, and the limits of what you can imagine
A couple times on this forum Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR, for short) has come up. He's an American science fiction writer who plies mainly in hard(er) science fiction, and especially likes to play with themes that explore the interactions between technology, culture, and economics. He takes some limitation of humans and imagines: what if it were not so? How would we change, what could we do, what new things would we discover about ourselves? He's a bit of a granola-eating utopian socialist so I'm sure some here would have certain ideological objections to his writing. But it's nice sometimes to read work from someone who has a fundamental sort of optimism for humanity, that we might one day be able to put aside our differences and Figure It All Out.
His "Mars trilogy" (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) might be his masterpiece, and extends his inquisitive nature. A depiction of the colonization of Mars over centuries, there is an endless series of problems for the characters to solve; some scientific in nature, but more than that organizational and cultural. The colonization of a virgin world yields all kinds of conflicts where there can be no true compromise between people with differing fundamental values. Alongside the geoengineering of Mars proceeds the genetic engineering of the human race, as scientists begin to unlock the ability to greatly extend the lifespan of humans. This might just have originated as a conceit by KSR to keep most of the characters across the centuries required for the geological drama to play out, but he dives fully into imaging all the upheaval such an advance would yield.
There are Luddites, reactionaries, those who wish to monopolize longevity for themselves, a great and deep anger from the masses at the prospect that immortality might be denied to them. There are myriad complications and problems; certain limits prove tricky to overcome. But technological progress is an unyielding wave, and by the end of the series humans dabble in every kind of imaginable self-customization, from the crucial to the trivial: yes, all sorts of environmental adaptations to Mars' ecosystems are quickly developed, but so are custom mixes of psychoactive drugs. People create physical backups of themselves so they can do dangerous sports. All sorts of modifications can be sought to fill the spiritual and emotional void. People delay their physical decrepitude indefinitely. Women put off having children into their 300s.
But what people don't do is change their sex. The trilogy was published between 1992 and 1996; KSR likely would not have understood the concept of "changing gender". Despite the near-infinite possibilities of changing one's physical form that is offered, no one seeks to transform themselves; no woman decides to father children, no man bears a child. There is no mention of purely cosmetic alterations to simply imitate the opposite sex, or become some even more complex sexual entity now that technology enables them to do so. No character ever feels any deep or emergent desire to push past this one final barrier, when all the others have already been crossed. And it's not like KSR is some prude or philosophically opposed to it; his more recent novels feature trans and non-binary characters, and in those that feature similar types of possibility with respect to genetic engineering people freely experiment with switching sexes even if they do not have some form of dysphoria. The simplest answer is that the notion that people would want to change their sex simply did not occur to him, and this is remarkable in the context of the books trying to imagine all the possible physical and societal limits that humans could push.
Most of the original hundred colonists are either American or Russian; one might speculate that if the books had been started five years earlier, the latter would have been Soviet, and if they had been started five years later, perhaps Chinese. To some extent this is the problem of all science fiction that deals in the near future (the the trilogy begins in the far-off future of 2026); it is far enough away to be unable to predict with certainty but close enough that mistakes seem obvious in hindsight. But I think this is also somewhat of a humbling notion that we just might not be as good at predicting societal changes as we might flatter ourselves to be. I used to feel that they were more strongly tied to material/economic forces; in recent years I've become less sure. When it comes to predicting the grand arc of human civilization it is a lot easier to look a fool than a wise man. I'm glad that there are people who are willing to ignore that and take a stab.
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