the process of learning about the anglophone anti-trans movement is learning about Some Guys who wrote the dumbest shit 40 years ago, then with dawning horror you see those same names again and again in the present day like you've suddenly become an lovecraftian protagonist.
Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of many people. First and foremost, I thank my advisors Leah Somerville, Randy Buckner, and Steven Pinker for welcoming me to Harvard and for their years of outstanding mentorship. I am also indebted to my professors from the University of Southern California, including Frank Manis, who nurtured my passion for developmental psychology, and Megan Herting, whose mentorship introduced me to research on neuroendocrinology and sexual development. I am also grateful to my high school teacher, Mrs. E., for first introducing me to academic psychology. I am thankful that my studies have set me on a path connecting with brilliant researchers similarly fascinated by sex differences, including Carole Hooven, Alex Byrne, and Hollie Hammond. Through these friendships I am grateful to have been introduced to my committee members, Michael Bailey and Kenneth Zucker, whose support made this dissertation possible and whose feedback has been tremendously valuable. I am also indebted to the transgender people my work has allowed me to connect with and learn from through their lived experiences, especially my friend Ramblin. This is a sensitive topic and I appreciate those who have approached it with nuance and grace in the public forum, especially Lisa Littman, Helen Joyce, Abigail Shrier, Leor Sapir, and James Morandini, all of whom I also had the good fortune of meeting during my graduate studies. As an interdisciplinary researcher with eclectic interests, I am fascinated by my dissertation topic because it threads so many existing topics I have dabbled in throughout my research career, including: hormones and brain development, evolution and sex differences, puberty and mental health, adolescent social development, and philosophical questions of mind, identity, and bioethics, all while addressing an ongoing public health crisis and unfortunately ix
It also comes with the most cursed acknowledgements page to have ever been written.
Thesis acceptance certificate signed by Steven Pinker, Leah Somerville, Randy Buckner, Michael Bailey, and Kenneth Zucker.
Pack up. I’ve found the most cursed thesis committee ever to exist.
"Operation Epic Escort" guys come on
To be sure, there were fun aspects too! And baby calves are real cute (shame about the 'half of them going immediately to meat processing' part) but yeah, it's generally a good thing that we've substantially reduced the number of human-hours required for agriculture!
My strongest memory of working on a farm (one that had such nice labor conditions that it wasn't actually profitable!) was retching as I shoveled cow shit.
this is endless discourse...so I will just reiterate that *Newsom is not ahead in polls* and talking about him as if he's already the nominee helps him. don't do that. www.everythingishorrible.net/p/we-can-bea...
RESULT: The AP calls it, that there will be a runoff between Democrat Shawn Harris and Republican Clayton Fuller in April (meaning they’ll take the top 2 spots and neither will get 50%).
This is the reddest district in Georgia, though Dems are at least going to get a big overperformance today.
Politically, this is incredibly stupid, but as a policy matter it’s also incredibly stupid.
The Democrats!
depp v heard makes a lot of this click for me as well. a group of men are angry that trans women can say no to them now so theyve launched a global public sexual harassment campaign against us, aided by friendly editors and reporters who are sick and tired of not being allowed to openly sneer at us
if Iran just gives up we will have to conclude Trump is actually magic
If LLM consciousness is interesting to fight enough it should be interesting enough to read seriously about, right?
Damn
ngl, thinking that the issue here is just that "US is rational and stable" is a load-bearing assumption for a lot of things so people default to it. because house of cards collapses entirely if assumption is put into severe doubt
There is such a bifurcated view of AI.
What if it is neither useless nor a omniscient but a secret 3rd thing?
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@miamiherald.com
On the eve of the Iran war, the "Secretary of War" was battling with the Boy Scouts.
He didn't win.
Latest column from @esksf.bsky.social
missionlocal.org/2026/03/boy-...
a liberal comedian is one of the few broadly popular political figures while the extant regime is in bed with foreign dictatorships? where have I heard that before....
these people are depraved, evil, yes, all those things. they are also fucking morons.
it cannot be emphasized enough that the only reason Donald Trump was the first person to try to bomb Iran into submission is that he was the first US president dumb enough to try
“Piracy is the most effective form of artistic distribution these days. So be it.”
-Werner Herzog on NPR just now 🔥
Someone send this to the years-long mutual who blocked me after I said the media consolidation system and removal of properties from streaming services was gonna push people towards piracy.
yeah it's very understandable, but it causes people to contort themselves into incoherent thinking, e.g. this take making the rounds this morning
the implication is that human cognition cannot be explained in mathematics. that's a strong (and I think inherently wrong) claim!
People are uncomfortable with the idea that LLMs are operating in a way that is likely mathematically equivalent to a sub-system of human cognition.
not training enough junior engineers because we are using the tools to do what we might have hired young people to do. people not talking to each other as much because they can just ask the robot their dumbest questions. I think at this point anyone can rehearse these in their sleep
People in general are really poorly equipped to to factually analyse a war where *both* sides are genocidal murderers and relentless liars
This is elite signaling, the rich exurbs pretend to be rural by doing conspicuous consumption of being rural and the actual rural areas follow them as taste makers. It’s also why they look down on cities even though they don’t live in one and what happens there doesn’t matter to them at all.
It's been truly incredible watching this happen in real time. But, of course, the truth is that all reactionary nostalgia of this sort is consumerism-saturated nonsense. It's all aesthetics, things you can buy, etc.
None of the horrors of the past two months would've occurred under a Harris Administration; that's just a fact. But there were so many people who needed to renew their "Fell For It Again" awards for believing in Donald The Dove/Dem Lady's the Real Warmonger.
