I'm assuming at this point refusing will be a badge of honour but one which is terminal for federal funding, in this 4 year term if not longer. You would need very high confidence in your future career trajectory to do that.
We had a mini storm over government censorship of CSIRO science in Australia and it got pretty ugly, but this is much uglier.
If they do the same for NSF, earth sciences, DoE and AGW it's going to be pretty nasty.
I don't even have to agree with the science. This kind of mass bad-topic-ban is really unhelpful. I wonder if the editorial boards are also going to put up a fight? I can imagine some kind of "retracted because of Trump policy, not because the peer review process asked for it" markers.
Genetics, and Lysenkoism comes to mind. A stain on soviet science which echoed down the years.
If they do give in though, they might face consequences after Trump’s term. The Supreme Court should definitely chime in quickly here, although the court is stacked way too heavily with conservatives who open to Trump’s new interpretation of the constitution.
Holding back science publication for national security is pretty well understood. I'd be amazed if the funding T&C doesn't have weasel words back to the sixties about requiring permission from the feds to publish, even if it was implicitly assumed most of the time.
You have a whole government getting dismantled, with purpose. I wouldn’t bet on Trump getting reelected or extending his term — but the bigger question is: what will be left at the end of it?
It’s not impossible the very idea of a “US presidency” radically changes by 2028.
We’ll know which way the wind is blowing by the midterms. If the plan is to never cede power again it will also have to be done by then. Trump is speed running the US to a recession which bodes well for 2026 assuming they happen.
They probably won't need the military: the police itself is already heavily militarized. But I have no illusion that Hegseth would even blink one eye before deploying soldiers domestically.
Right now I wouldn’t be certain there will be anything resembling midterms. Trump and his pals are speedrunning turning America into an Russia-style oligarchy. There will be of course be “elections”, that happen to always turn out exactly like the sitting power wants it to be.
I'm not saying they wouldn't like to try that, but I'm not sure exactly how that may happen.
Do you think flooding the zone with shit will work? If they actively rig the next elections do you think that any attempt to point that out will be met by "you were saying all the time that elections cannot be rigged"?
It seems society has been caught off guard by the transformation in the media landscape and the resulting fragmentation of attention.
If the POTUS were to determine the outcome of the midterm elections by decree, that act would be legal. The SCOTUS has already paved all the way to hell.
USAID is basically shut down right now. It’s illegal, of course—it was created by an act of Congress and the money it gives out is typically in the form of contracts for specific projects, so everyone not getting paid has a contract dispute.
But it’ll take time for the administration to lose in court. In the meantime, the lack of cash flow is causing people to be laid off and then organizations will shutter. And that’s the goal, dismantling the capability.
And who says they are willing to hold fair elections next time? They are not going to conceed power voluntarily, especially not now since they see what they can get away with and that means if you let them, they will "win", just like the decades of "wins" in other authoritarian states.
"a republic, if you can keep it" and obviously you can't.
I'm tired of people crying wolf, like they've done pretty much every day since 2016.
I'm not a fan of Trump, but his critics have pretty much squandered their credibility, and his political opponents have dumb strategies and even dumber priorities (if you can even take them at their word).
I believe Trump is a fascist who is extremely dangerous and everything he did so far ticks all the boxes. And by the way: In the wolf story you refer to the wolf was real. The real moral of that story is that the villagers should have trusted the boy (to prevent his death) and help him, as he in fact saw a wolf (who ate him in the end). The story says that the boy lied, but as he died that story would have been told be the villagers who let him die. The wolf was real (he ate the boy), the villagers made up a story after the fact of how the boy had it coming as a lier to justify their position.
It is a story about people who are more afraid of the scary story and the messenger who tells it, than of the actual danger itself. About people who despite warnings let the boy get eaten, because they checked the first two times and the evil wasn't directly evident to them.
In German we say about fascism: "Wehret den Anfängen" (defend against the beginnings). Once you are in a fascist society, once the wolf is eating you, it is to late. And the wolf is real.
Trumps opponents, collectively, have been crying wolf. They've been saying we're just around the corner from a a dictatorship for years, and Trump had a whole term and a dictatorship didn't happen.
And we're talking about some new-style political correctness here, but you're jumping to "we may never have elections ever again!1!!." If there's actual danger, people need to fucking stay focused and not get distracted and habitually overreact. Overreaction does two bad things: 1) it burns up your credibility, because it's a lie; and 2) when acted upon it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as it triggers reactions of its own.
> I believe Trump would have lost if this was a fair election.
Election denial? Not a good look.
> In the wolf story you refer to the wolf was real.
Only at the the end, not at the beginning. In the beginning, the boy was lying to get attention.
> The real moral of that story is that the villagers should have trusted the boy (to prevent his death) and help him, as he in fact saw a wolf (who ate him in the end).
No it isn't. The real moral is don't lie, otherwise people stop trusting you and bad things will happen. It's explicitly stated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf: "The moral stated at the end of the Greek version is, 'this shows how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them'".
If you get something so basic as that wrong, it calls everything else you say into question.
> The story says that the boy lied, but as he died that story would have been told be the villagers who let him die. The wolf was real (he ate the boy), the villagers made up a story after the fact of how the boy had it coming as a lier to justify their position.
> It is a story about people who are more afraid of the scary story and the messenger who tells it, than of the actual danger itself. About people who despite warnings let the boy get eaten, because they checked the first two times and the evil wasn't directly evident to them.
> There was a boy tending the sheep who would continually go up to the embankment and shout, 'Help, there's a wolf!' The farmers would all come running only to find out that what the boy said was not true. Then one day there really was a wolf but when the boy shouted, they didn't believe him and no one came to his aid. The whole flock was eaten by the wolf. The story shows that this is how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them.
The boy lived; the farmers believed him, and were not afraid of the story so were fooled for a time; there was no coverup.
Oh sure, I'm not suggesting Trump has a fountain of youth in his bedroon. Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il also eventually died, ending their terms. At least in their case, or pre-democracy European countries, the power was very explicitly blood-bound. This had the advantage that if a few quickly died in succession you might just get a child on the throne who ends up being overthrowable.
Unfortunately, this problem has been solved by dictatorships where the power is tied to a party or small non-familial circle, such as China, potentially Russia (though we'd have to see how things end up would Putin disappear tomorrow, they may actually have reverted to familiar inheritance) and now, likely, the US. There, pesky biology forms no such risk.
The dynastic approach to power retention requires a coalition of ideologically unified extremists to keep it going. One key feature of the Trump coalition is that everyone hates each other. They all are cranks who want something unthinkably awful, but also don't care about what the other guy wants and hopes they don't get what they want[0]. There is no Trumpism to rally around, only a Trump.
[0] A microcosm of this is the Musk / Altman feud.
You’re a little early to come to this conclusion and dictators don’t require a political coalition, they just reward loyalty and eliminate opposition ruthlessly. You’re still playing a game Trump doesn’t want to play (democracy).
Hitler was also perceived as a worthless clown who could be easily manipulated by other interests when first elected. But he was cunning enough to eliminate all opposition and start a world war. Putin and Xi (who Trump admires and looks up to) are very similar.
Trump could easily start a dynastic takeover of the republican party, there is more than one Trump (Ivanka, Baron, etc). There are many reasons to be fearful at this juncture, especially if you live in the US.
I agree with all of it and think the likelihood of a dynastic takeover is over 50%.
But I don't think this is entirely accurate
> Hitler was also perceived as a worthless clown who could be easily manipulated by other interests when first elected. But he was cunning enough to eliminate all opposition and start a world war. Putin and Xi (who Trump admires and looks up to) are very similar.
Especially with Putin, as far as I can tell at no point was he considered a clown by anyone who mattered. He was definitely underestimated, but it's a marked difference with Trump (and Hitler).
Yes there are certainly differences and that description doesn’t fit him so well but he was certainly underestimated, in particular his vindictive ruthlessness (a trait he shares with trump).
That old piece of paper? Obviously that wasn’t really what they meant at the time, just like the 14th amendment doesn’t really grant birthright citizenship. Why, the whole thing is really just a set of guidelines that need to be interpreted by a council of clerics.
That's been the opinion of every intellectual giant who said that the republicans wouldn't steal the supreme court, that abortion wasn't on the table, that trump would never be elected, that he wasn't a threat (then he pulled a treason), that he would never be elected again.
Continue to pish posh while they continue dismantling the republic.
So your plan is to freak out every time some junior backbencher proposes something, like it actually means something? You'll be freaking out all the time, and what will it accomplish? You might as well put on a pink hat and run around Washington DC for a weekend.
And then, maybe when the idea actually gets pursued, it won't seem so controversial because all the energy was wasted before it was actually a thing.
> Continue to pish posh while they continue dismantling the republic.
If you don't want it dismantled, you can start by not getting distracted by dumb stuff and/or taking the bait. Then, the next step is to realize the politics of maximum opposition failed, and try something else.
Keep ignoring the world in front of your eyes.
Edit: Also if you think the "world of maximal opposition has failed" that's very amusing as the level of opposition was extremely low.
Get your pink hat on, it's time to waste your energy on the wrong things.
> Keep ignoring the world in front of your eyes. Edit: Also if you think the "world of maximal opposition has failed" that's very amusing as the level of opposition was extremely low.
Trump got elected, despite being portrayed constantly as both hopelessly incompetent, totally unacceptable politically, and as existential threat to democracy by his opponents and most of the media; being subject to multiple criminal investigations by them; having huge protests against him; and more than $1.4 billion spent on advertising against him. He was opposed to the legal maximum, and anything more would have gotten into armed militia territory.
Ugh, I knew I'd get 10 different replies all saying the same thing about how he's going to get around it. Yes, I know. My point was that making a comparison to Joe Biden as the parent did does not follow, since Biden was not term-limited.
I think this move by the administration is a bad idea but it's not necessarily illegal. Which federal law or Constitution article do you think is being broken here?
The one that says there are only two genders and disagrees with biological reality, confuses sex and gender, and is mostly about fear instead of education.
Why exactly do you think that a model of gender created by a bunch of people who didn't know anything about germ theory, let alone statistics, describes biological reality? Have you been so unlucky in life that you never ever have considered this?
On top of being an evil person, Money was quite wrong about gender — not only making intersex mutilation a thing, but also forcibly transitioning a young cis boy in one of the most heartbreaking cases I've ever read about.
The modern scientific model is a collaborative effort by many professionals across several fields, refined over several decades. There is no single scientist who is responsible for it. Instead of projecting cis insecurities, it centers trans people and treats us as honest conveyors of our experiences. And it sure is more correct than anything a bunch of illiterate fundies who beat their wives ever dreamed up.
I'm trying to wade through Varoufakis' Technofeudalism. It's obvious most billionaires lack ideological loyalty except which might make them the most money. The problem is the manufacturing of consent amongst the populous of a belief that a tiny fraction of the population should be celebrated and enriched without regard to all other concerns. This, I think, is what allowed inverted totalitarianism to give way to more overt totalitarianism. The US is presently exhibiting themes of ochlocracy, anocracy, kleptocracy, and plutocracy.
Elon Musk cannot run for President of the United States because he is not a natural-born US citizen. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and the US Constitution requires presidential candidates to be natural-born citizens of the US.
Musk needs to find a different way to exert his will through his allies.
And no, he is very far for being that popular that anybody would find a way to waive the natural born citizen requirement. He is also not that popular and he doesn’t have the charisma of a president.
You don’t need to worry about him being a president. If you want to worry about him: he doesn’t need to become a president to have insane amount of power and influence over the US.
Can't currently run. But they said Trump couldn't run for a third term, and yet there is a constitutional amendment on the table to do just that. Nothing is off the table now.
You do not need the popular will of the people to govern: that's a collective fiction we all agree to in order let democracy function.
If people no longer believe democracy functions and simply accept that as the status quo, then it doesn't.
Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia for decades while they had elections the whole time, and wasn't always President in that time. But there's never been any doubt who's in charge.
I was talking specifically about him becoming the president of the United States. I even highlighted that he doesn’t need to become the president to have extreme power over the country.
Just my opinion, and I say this with love, but if you think Musk is going to become president, you need to turn off BlueSky and touch grass.
That is not true. You absolutely need the popular will, or at least assent, to govern. Even in the deepest, darkest dictatorships, like North Korea, if the vast majority of the population decided to rise against the leaders, millions would die, but they would ultimately win.
Any leader of any type has to convince the populace that accepting their rule is better than fighting it. Even if current weaponry allowed an army to kill the entire rest of the population of a country, that still doesn't allow a leader to rule by force alone: for one, the army will revolt at some point before killing the majority of their brethren. And even if they didn't, the loss of the majority of the population would ultimately leave the country far too economically devastated to serve any purpose, even for the glorious leader.
Yes. Trump gets away with shit because he’s deeply charismatic and his most ardent supporters think he’s the next coming of Christ. Elon has some super fans but not like that.
All this also isn’t occurring in a vacuum: the GOP is full of highly ambitious people who won’t want the competition for their own run.
GOP lost house and senate seats they could have won behind another candidate. Trump is useful to the party until he’s not. Elon is of zero use at all to the party.
> Trump gets away with shit because he’s deeply charismatic
This needs to be said more. Trump is a singular force in our current politics. Even people who despise Trump will admit that one on one and in small groups he’s incredibly charismatic and likable. Bill Clinton comes to mind as another POTUS with just a super high level of charisma.
Musk on the other hand is incredibly awkward and would have very little broad appeal.
I do also, but I've heard it said a few times from different people who have interviewed him or been around him in small group situations. And it's been said to caution people who continue to underestimate his appeal.
It'd be interesting to see them simultaneously discard birthright citizenship and the natural born requirement. I'm sure at least someone in the party will try, there's really no low they won't reach for.
I suspect it must be what charisma looks like in a social environment I am not a part of because for the life of me I cannot see it as charisma, all I hear is barely coherent ramblings, in a weird tone.
Yes. If enough of you in the US stop "playing pretend" and stop believing in law and constitution meaning something more often than not, your country will instantly go up in flames (and probably take a chunk of the rest of the world with it).
I mean, this isn't the first time leadership has ignored the constitutuon, and the country has rarely gone up in flames.
The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Internment of Japanese Americans into concentration camps strike me as particularly infamous, and the Second Red Scare (or McCarthyism) involved a lot of unconstitutional conduct as well. But I'm sure there's lots of other things, too.
Hopefully, past experience will repeat and after a brief period, there will be a return to the traditions of rule of law and respect for the constitution.
You're right. I'm just addressing GP's hyperbole taken straight:
> Do we still play pretend that the law and constitution mean something
Leadership ignoring constitution in some areas is a problem, but as long as law is generally still seen as working, and expected to work, in everyone's daily dealings, things aren't bad. They may not be fine, but can be improved. However, once enough people stop believing law and constitution matter in general, that's when they actually stop working, because they're just words on paper, and their only power stems from everyone expecting everyone else experts them to have authority.
Like the law matters anymore. The Supreme Court already said that everything Trump does is an official act and thus legal. If Trump declared that Musk can run for president then that is now legal and the law.
That's not what the Supreme Court said. They said that virtually anything the president does is possibly an official act, and therefore can't even be prosecuted, unless the prosecutors first prove to a judge that it wasn't an official act. And if the judge isn't convinced it wasn't an official act, then the president is immune from any prosecution for that act. So if Trump ordered the military to kill Harris and Obama, this would be an official act and he would be free from any legal consequence for it - the judiciary couldn't even investigate the reasons for it, because that would encroach on the power of the executive branch.
However, this laughably broad, king-level power still doesn't grant him the power to just make anything into law. He can't be prosecuted for anything, but that doesn't mean that anything he wants is now law.
Given his current health, Trump isn't going to stay in charge more than four years though. He could keep the title but would end up as impotent puppet on life support (like Bouteflika was at the end of his reign over Algeria).
Agreed. But that's why I said nazi bar. It doesn't mean everyone.
Also due to the upvote/downvote/flag system, entire narratives are controlled with a small number of accounts. It's a fundamentally broken approach to online discussions. We need to get rid of upvote/downvotes completely. Retain flagging for vetted users, and punish those who are flagging material that should not be flagged.
Like most online forums, HN discussions are dominated by people who like to spend all their time online arguing with people. It's the 80:20 principle, or the 90-9-1 principle. Largely these are early-20s, politically ignorant men, with a long tail of socially stunted "greybeards" who have not managed to find greater fulfillment in life than what online discussion forums provide. The technical topics here are frequently recycled and the quality of discussion is not that notable. I'm embarrassed it took me over a decade to reach this conclusion.
I don't think the readership of HN leans RW, but the commentary and moderation does, largely due to the fact that RW commentators are quick to flag views they disagree with, in contravention of the stated moderation standards, while "normal people" can't be bothered to engage with this kind of platform, and the moderation team is content to let this dynamic persist. Witness the flagging on this very article as an example.
Nazi's required hyperinflation to get the plebs on their side. This is a bit different in the sense bread prices aren't jumping by a million bucks every week. And Nazi Germany of 1930s was a much smaller country with nascent democracy (purging few hundred important people) much more complex today.
Its more like when Ergdogan, Modi etc initially came to power.
They too entered with lot of thunder and lightning but it didnt do any magic, cause at the end of the day these are massive dynamic complex systems and any radical change has unpredictable costs and consequences that only show up with time.
Give these decision a month or two to play out. Don't just sit and keep refreshing your feed and expect any reaction that is effective to take shape instantly. Its a stupid expectation
Would you like to offer a substantive critique of any of the highlighted cases?
And for what it's worth, here's a later highlighted case where FIRE defended a professor who had been told to stop teaching, and I quote, "woke shit" like gender studies at a state university.
The adverb correctly identifies that it’s more complicated than that.
The fantasy that “biological reality” is anything other than substantially more complicated and messy than a neat dichotomy with perfect alignment across sex characteristics and gender is both wrong and obviously so.
Nothing in medicine or biology is so simple. There’s always a way for the human organism to be more complicated. It keeps me very busy and in a job.
The implication of the term is that there are other contexts for "male" or "female" other than "biologically". If "non-woke" contexts assume that male/female are inherently biological terms, then "biologically [male/female" is obviously "woke".
The "right" is basically trying to assert (without saying it out loud) that science is wrong. They're also basically either intentionally or unintentionally confusing gender and sex.
Science has shown that there is more than two combinations of X and Y chromosomes. So if you went by chromosomes alone, there's more than two sexes. And if you go by phenotypic categorization (secondary sex characteristics, like tits, balls, dick, vagina, voice, height, etc), there's a multitude of sexes and male and female are just categories. Again this is well-documented in scientific literature, it's biology 101.
But then "the right" also mix in references to gender as banned. Gender, as every half-educated person knows by now, is different than sex: gender is social expression, sex is biological expression. Gender is your clothes and hair and voice and name, sex is the junk in your pants.
But the "right" is basically saying: "Hey, science is wrong! And these weird leftists are wrong! Sex determination doesn't matter, gender determination doesn't matter. There's only two things in the world, ever, and we call them male and female. Science and society and logic and reason and everything else can get fucked."
It's political psychosis. Hate-filled zealots who are so hell-bent on imagining the world in a more simplistic way that they literally want to re-define reality to fit their wishes. It's the book Nineteen-Eighty-Four, being enacted in real life. This isn't a joke or hyperbole, this is literally what's happening. They're creating a government of insanity.
Since they can't literally stop people from having all kinds of combinations of chromosomes and primary/secondary sex characteristics, the next step will be what the Nazis did, which is to round up anyone who doesn't fit a "normal body" and incarcerate them or force them into medical procedures to "fix them". (we actually did this in the past, too, not just the Nazis)
But before we get there, the first step is to force the government to perpetuate the psychosis so they can say it's official, and then people will swallow it easier. They are betting that we won't do anything. And we won't.
Hmm, rather than waste my response to the two deadheaded comments below the above and now my zombie peers; I wrote:
> an explanation for the recently-invented concept of "gender".
Perhaps recent to certain Europeans in central north america .. but hardly a recently invented concept.
When I was a kid in the 1960s in the Austral Asian equatorial region the missionaries were going hard trying to stamp out Sistergirls, the bugis gender roles, and every other abomination under God that caught their eye.
As I heard tell, indigenous north and south americans had expanded concepts of gender that got the same treatment.
If there's a fallacy it likely lies with repressed WASP types brainwashed into a rigid moral prison of a worldview.
I don't think it's really about science. I mean if anything the science agrees with them. Sex is extremely bimodal (intersex is on the order of 1 in 1000):
Also the use of gender as "it's like, how you feel, man" is very recent. When I was growing up (80s, 90s) it was just a synonym of "sex". If you look in old dictionaries that's what it says.
I looked it up and apparently the more recent definition came from feminists in the 70s (I guess it didn't catch on until later).
I think this is a massive over-correction (banning words is dumb) but they're not completely wrong.
I think the sane path lies in the middle: people shouldn't be forced to avoid "pregnant women" or "pregnant people". That includes being forced by social ostracism, which is the far left's method of choice.
Elemental distribution in the universe is also extremely bimodal .. moreso even than the exceptions to the reproductive male or reproductive female buckets.
Everything in the universe is either Hydrogen or Helium .. save for a tiny tiny cluster of exceptions known (to astronomers) as "metals" and as "every other damn element including carbon and oxygen" to the aquatic apes.
Science is quite happy to endlessly study things with a frequency of ppm (parts per million) and less.
Well I guessed that you were trying to make a point about how our language is highly biased towards heavy elements even though they are a tiny proportion of the universe, and that means it also makes sense to bias our language towards intersex people even though they are a tiny proportion of the population.
But it can't be that because that is an obviously stupid point. So what was your point?
* Report on Gold deposits in a high yeild region: Gold Deposits of the Pilbara Cratonhttps://www.ga.gov.au/pdf/RR0065.pdf (74 page AGSO report, 'rich' veins have 0.4 ppm gold)
The main take away would be that some people are born that are neither male nor female, others are born where assignment isn't clearcut or easy, and such births are more common than the frequency of gold in the earth's crust.
Everyone is born male or female, some just ambiguously so. Intersex is a colloquial misnomer, the correct and more accurate term is “disorder of sex development”.
I don't think that's true. Or at best it's a tautological argument. Some people have crazy genes like XXY. There's no clear gender that they are "supposed" to be.
I refer you to my comment[0] (flagged for some inexplicable reason), chromosomes are not the method of sex determination in humans (or most animals), and are not even the necessary condition in the process of fulfilling the sexual reproduction strategy in some others.
I don't know how to read that comment, but your idea that everybody is exactly male or female is clearly wrong just by thinking about it.
Sex is clearly a continuum, just like everything in the world. If you smoothly vary someone's physiology and genetics from male to female there will be a region in the middle where it's kind of woolly and you can't really say they are definitely male or female.
Let me give another example. Is a spork a spoon or a fork? It's clearly somewhere in-between. You can't say "this spork is actually a spoon with some anomalous tines".
Now it just so happens that there are very few sporks in the world (due to the huge selection pressure). But they do exist and they aren't obviously "male with errors" or "female with errors".
You can't really argue against this, any more than you can argue that green is actually very blueish red. The English language dictates that it isn't.
You're free to go off and make your own not-English where green is "blueish red" but don't expect anyone to know what the hell you are talking about.
Sex is not colour. Colour does exist on a spectrum, sex does not (in humans or other mammals). Humans are also not cutlery. Both of your analogies are misplaced.
Humans, (along with 95%+ animals) are gonochoric, which means they are either male or female and cannot change that.
There is no spectrum because there are only two types of sex cell (gametes, sperm and ova) thus, only two reproductive strategies available.
We also know that the reproductive strategy coincides with gamete size (small and large, again, sperm and ova) and this is helpfully confirmed by non-gonochoric species that are hermaphrodatic, like clownfish. We know that a clownfish has changed from male to female when their reproductive strategy has changed to the point that they can produce the other type of gamete.
> You can’t really argue against this
It seems like your assumptions have been challenged, it would’ve been better if you’d do some of that yourself, and read some biology by actual biologists, not from activists.
Yes it does. It just has an extremely bimodal distribution.
> Humans, (along with 95%+ animals) are gonochoric, which means they are either male or female and cannot change that.
Sure, when the genetics all goes to plan. But it isn't perfect. Sometimes it doesn't.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about all of this but I can't quite figure out where it is. It's like you've only read a biology textbook and never really thought about it or something.
No, there cannot be a hermaphrodatic human because of the genetics, as only one reproductive strategy can be chosen even when there is a disorder.
Find me the third type of gamete and you’ll have a point.
Edit: I’ll add, traits are a bimodal distribution, sex is binary (because of all I’ve outlined here). If you believe that traits define sex then you are sorely mistaken (see 3rd gamete for why).
Dealt with here[1] but I'm more than willing to post the quote again:
> In the past, ovotesticular syndrome was referred to as true hermaphroditism, which is considered outdated as of 2006. The term "true hermaphroditism" was considered very misleading by many medical organizations and by many advocacy groups, as hermaphroditism refers to a species that produces both sperm and ova, something that is impossible in humans.
Your opinion is readily falsifiable by empirical observation:
"if the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female" .. "the prevalence of intersex is about 0.018% (one in 5,500 births)"
What I wrote is not contrary to what Sax writes, in any way. In fact, I fully support what he wrote, and would urge people who are interested in the subject to read his much fuller explanation on his website[0].
As such, I really do not understand your objection, and that’s probably because you don’t understand your objection. Sex in humans determined by the strategy for gamete production, which can only result in a large gamete or small gamete - not by chromosomes. Hence, “intersex” people are still male or female regardless of their disorder. This is well understood, settled science, and is not my opinion. If you think sex is decided based on your chromosomes, then you’ve been misinformed.
> and that’s probably because you don’t understand your objection.
Maybe tone that down a notch or three.
Gametes (egg or sperm) can mix-and-match with other sex markers—commonly, chromosomes, genitals, sex hormones, and secondary sex characteristics—to create a mosaic of sex traits.
We can’t create a sex binary using the reproductive organs (gametes and gonads), because:
* People can have both ovarian and testicular tissue (an ovotestis or gradation of cells)
* People can have ambiguous gonadal tissue
* It is common for all types of gonads (female/male/intersex) to lack gamete production
I refer you to:
> “In anisogamety, an individual's sex condition coincides with the type of gametes it produces; male if it produces male gametes exclusively, female if it only produces female gametes, and hermaphrodite if simultaneously or at different times” [1]
[1] The Biology of Reproduction, Cambridge University Press, Giuseppe Fusco, Alessandro Minelli
which you might be familiar with [0].
Note: " male if ..", "female if ..", and "hermaphrodite if .."
which is ( counts slowly 'cause can't understand stuff real good ) one, two, three buckets.
An individual's sex condition *coincides* with the type of gametes it produces. Gametes are used to determine (in this sense, ascertain) sex because it shows the reproduction strategy.
> which is ( counts slowly 'cause can't understand stuff real good ) one, two, three buckets.
Humans are not hermaphroditic, no mammals are. Not sequentially, not simultaneously. (In fact, the way that sex development occurs it cannot happen, but that is going to be too high level for this discussion, clearly.)
> Gametes (egg or sperm) can mix-and-match with other sex markers—commonly, chromosomes, genitals, sex hormones, and secondary sex characteristics—to create a mosaic of sex traits.
Traits do not define sex, gamete size does (see above), adding them all up will not change that.
> People can have both ovarian and testicular tissue (an ovotestis or gradation of cells)
And only one reproduction strategy, which is why there are no human hermaphrodites, having both types of tissue does not mean there is possible gamete production, as evidenced by the total lack of any actual hermaphrodites in all of recorded human history, if not a knowledge of the process itself.
> People can have ambiguous gonadal tissue
Completely irrelevant.
> It is common for all types of gonads (female/male/intersex) to lack gamete production
Also irrelevant. Someone who has finished their fertile phase still has a reproduction strategy in place. Someone who has a disorder still has a reproduction strategy in place. Someone who is not disordered and still in their fertile phase yet not producing gametes right now still has a reproduction strategy in place.
There are only two reproduction strategies in humans, and only one in any individual, and only one is possible in any individual, and it cannot change.
> Maybe tone that down a notch or three.
It was an accurate observation, which you have only gone on to prove further.
True hermaphrodite is a misnomer, a term for an intersex disorder known as ovotesticular syndrome[0]. To quote the great Wikipedia:
> In the past, ovotesticular syndrome was referred to as true hermaphroditism, which is considered outdated as of 2006. The term "true hermaphroditism" was considered very misleading by many medical organizations and by many advocacy groups, as hermaphroditism refers to a species that produces both sperm and ova, something that is impossible in humans.
To check, we can apply "our" quote - a hermaphrodite would either be sequential, which we know humans are not (I hope we know that much), or able to produce both types of gametes at the same time.
True hermaphrodites cannot do that, and the paper you shared makes no claim that they can or that they have. None of the examples show that either.
Your claim is false.
> Not all humans reproduce.
I'm sorry, but you're bringing the conversation down to a level too silly to bother with there. Every human has a reproductive strategy, and from conception to boot. Whether any individual actual reproduces is irrelevant to that.
Really, that kind of argument is beneath the level of this forum.
> Also the use of gender as "it's like, how you feel, man" is very recent.
That's because we got to some level of acceptance in some regions where we got to agree on some English term. It's not like the non-binary people appeared only very recently. We just got to honestly talk about it now. But there's many known figures from the past who pretty much lived that way, including the Universal Friend.
Outside of the usual western countries, it existed for ages, like the non-binary "mahu" in Hawaiian culture.
And yet politicians don't spend their time demonizing people with an extra fingers spreading lies, fear, and hatred. Revoking protections to expose them to harassment. "The cruelty is the point" and all.
The context of the discussion matters. My friends are scared, I don't really think your desire to be able to easily generalize the human race is something I can care too much about.
>And yet politicians don't spend their time demonizing people with an extra fingers spreading lies, fear, and hatred.
People with extra fingers don't demand society bends backwards for them, branding anyone who presents any opposition whatsoever as bigots. They don't have a history of, funny enough, "spreading lies, fear and hatred" like trans advocacy does either.
Trans people deserve sympathy and care and I have little expectation the current US administration treats them as they should, but the amount of willful ignorance required to look at this as something that "just happened" rather than the result of abuses of power by advocates is such that anyone partaking in it is better off ignored.
clown comment from the start. utterly delusional bullshit. go on, what demands are trans people making of "society" other than "leave us the hell alone".
>. They don't have a history of, funny enough, "spreading lies, fear and hatred" like trans advocacy does either.
>what demands are trans people making of "society" other than "leave us the hell alone".
To be referred and treated to as a gender they are not perceived to belong to (often under legal penalties), often reaching into biological sex (see: sports, women spaces). To dismiss gender definitions altogether in order to blur the lines to accommodate for them (you yourself were doing this a moment ago).
>just outright making shit up, cool.
No. You are, again, doing this yourself, right now, by saying stuff like "The cruelty is the point" which is very evidently spreading hatred. Advocacy did A LOT of "spreading lies and fear" by spreading narratives like the "female brain in a male body" or "would you rather have a trans son or a dead daughter?". And again, the vast majority of trans people are innocent for these, they deserve no blowback, their situation is bad as it is to begin with, but this did not by any stretch of imagination begin with politicians and pretending that's the case only worsens the problem.
> Also the use of gender as "it's like, how you feel, man" is very recent. When I was growing up (80s, 90s) it was just a synonym of "sex". If you look in old dictionaries that's what it says.
The changes in society are recent, the ideas are extremely old.
In our society, being gay used to be illegal, black people were property, and women had no rights. Then somebody would suggest that be changed, and the majority of people would freak out, for exactly the same reason: "that's not how it was when I was growing up!".
Yet multiple genders [not sexes] have existed for millennia, we didn't have the concept of two sexes [not genders] until the Enlightenment, and these words have changed their meanings and been used in different ways throughout time.
Society changes. Our understanding of the world changes. Sometimes we regress, like right now, like we did in the Victorian era, like we did after the fall of Rome, etc. But we need to push back, so that regression doesn't harm people, the way it has harmed people so many times in the past.
> Science has shown that there is more than two combinations of X and Y chromosomes. So if you went by chromosomes alone, there's more than two sexes
This undermines the point most "gender positive" people want to make. Yes, there are non XX or XY people, but they're rare compared to XX/XY transgender people. They also tend to have issues like learning disabilities and problems with speech. By conflating transgender people with people with chromosomal irregularities you're establishing a link suggesting XX/XY transgenderism is also a "disorder".
Indeed, the terms "biologically male" and "biologically female" have been described by activists who are not at all aligned with Trump as "trans-phobic" and a "TERF dogwhistle" so it's strange to see these two groups suddenly agreeing with each other over something.
It's a rhetorical wrestling match, not an agreement. Moreover, the reality of the majority of the larger movement doesn't always align with the loudest voices in the room, especially when it comes down to semantics. Meanwhile any search for truth in the form of science suffers.
They got you all riled up about words and definitions while they ignore your constitution and turn the US into their own authoritarian regime.
Sometimes I wonder if that isn't a little bit deserved, since people are so removed from what really counts, they might need a reminder how unlikely having democracy actually is.
Divide et impera (or divide and conquer) is one of the old machiavellian imperatives. And language is enough to divide. Letting them divide you is a good way of making sure your own interest loses and theirs win.
"woke" seriously broke the minds of the conservatives in America. Crazy to watch their reaction to this. They can't take their own advice and just mind their own business? Leave people alone?
The cdc is political and gets involved in cultural wars? This is already happening with this administration?
"Woke" is exactly the same thing as "politically correct" used to be, along with "social justice warrior" and "cultural Marxism" and a bunch of other euphemisms for "not us and therefore evil". It's been the same thing for decades. This is just the latest incarnation.
People often seem to say that this is the ultimate form of it. It's not. It continues unabated, and in a few years they'll have yet another term for the same thing.
No one is interested in eliminating strict gender roles. What people want to do is to exclusively be the one to define and enforce them according to their own believes and views.
Affirmative action has a long history of only being applied when the benefiting demographic is the intended benefiting demographic. The same rules apply to freedom of religion, in that only officially approved religious beliefs are allowed to benefit from freedom of religion. The definition of an approved religion get defined by those creating and enforcing the rule, which changes based on who is in power.
It's not "not us and therefore evil". That's too simple. Instead it's "they are saying we're the problem which is evil, and others perhaps including my children, are starting to believe them, therefore a threat".
Conservatives really care about an order in things, to keep out chaos. Anything that reduces structure in society is suspicious, especially if it comes at you expense. Note that this holds for plenty of people who are way down on the power ladder.
Republicans stopped being "conservative" in that sense a very long time ago. They see threats wherever they are told to see them, and ignore very real threats right in front of them. "The children" are an excuse, not a principle.
I would very much like to see the American conversation turn to a legitimate discussion of differences of values. I can't say if it ever really did, or if that's just the myth we tell ourselves. But for the moment we have "conservatives" consistently sowing chaos with no benefit to themselves, and even their own detriment, solely for the purpose of harming those they see as their domestic enemies.
Because this is a direct attack on their societal model? You enslave a gay guy as priest and social contract upholder, the others get smithered upholding social machinery in companies and the state. If you do the moses "let-my-people-go"-thing, everyone is out partying, but the overall structure of society falls apart. Its horrifying ,a evolutionary created, biological state building instinct. But reality wont budge.
>They can't take their own advice and just mind their own business?
Not all conservatives are "small-government" conservatives. Ron Paul was really the last libertarian in the Republican party. The latest crop has an authoritarian streak.
There's a few people in here doing whataboutism like this. Where are you getting the idea that the "left" or whoever banned words in scientific articles?
I don't mean to refer to scientific articles specifically. Rather, it just seems to me that the left is usually the one coming up with lists of "bad words" (I believe it was Stanford? Some big university a few years back came up with a huge list of "potentially harmful" terms and alternatives you should say instead.) And the right usually gets mad about it, so I'm a little surprised to see them play the same game. It's not a good look (in my eyes).
Anyone is allowed to publish a list of "bad words". Did they force the CDC to retract 5 million perfectly good studies because they contained the words?
China supresses information because they fear the anger of the oppressed.
This censorship is much more petty. "My child hates me, and it can't be my fault. Let's call some modern progress ideology, and stomp all over it".
This isn't about repression, it's a show of force. Both for intimidation, and to gather admiration. Because it is cool if you can be above the law. It takes strength to be above the law, so we should respect it.
Scary thing is, it seems to be working.
Honestly this is in some ways worse to me. The US government already know their people will not rebel. Somehow, despite the higher consequences this time around, far fewer people have been willing to protest. In 2017, millions demonstrated across the country, this year it was only a few thousand:
Does it matter that this election was won with a clear margin, also in the popular vote? I feel like it does.
Rebellion and protest wil require those who supported Trump to change their mind. Democracy demands it.
Which shows that things get weird if a majority of people favor the dissolution of rule of law within a democracy. A point it seems the US has reached, but I would give it another few months to give people time to really see what they voted for.
If everyone who supported a shift towards facism protested against everyone who did not, I believe you'd see much lower proportion than the 49% of voters who voted for Trump. In fact, you'd probably see a much lower proportion than the 31% of eligible voters who voted for Trump. I'd estimate maybe only half of people who voted for Trump actually support most of his policies. That puts it at just 11% of the population of the US and I think that's already far too generous. You are right, we should be democratic and allow people's views to be represented. But I don't think as many people support these policies as a simple count of the number of votes Trump received might suggest.
Yes, not half of America supports the slide into facism. But I think some of those who supported trump need to publicly disavow this slide in order for opposition to be viable. Resistance to facism make a lot more sense if people believe a new, fair, election would actually help.
It’s in the same vein. The government is removing information so it can act impunitively against certain people. The people getting harmed by these policies are, in the end, poor and marginal. If you’re already lucky enough to be rich in America, you’re probably getting much richer in the next four years.
ALL THAT SAID, if I were advising Trump (I’m not) and asked to be Machiavellian, I’d say his single priority right now is the budget. Create as much confusion in the public space as possible so your surrogates in the House have the room they need to manoeuvre. (Also keep an eye out for CBO’s gutting. It’s a real check on Trump inasmuch as it lives outside the executive and determines what can be passed on party lines with reconciliation.)
This isn't something done to enable harm. It's meant to be directly harmful, and to signal an immediate win.
It is 'follow up' on promises made and it signals to others "hating trans people is acceptable now".
It is barely about suppressing this information. But about what the act signals to supporters, bigots, and 'targets'.
I am not a lawyer but this CDC order seems contrary to Trump’s recent Executive Order “RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP”.
This Executive Order states in part: “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
…
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;
…
Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech.
(a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.”
We are losing this battle, every kid now talks about how they are “hype” rather than hyped for something, and talking about being “tan” rather than tanned is already commonplace in the USA
No, no, no. A bias government has layers in opposite directions at an angle of about 30 degrees to the way of travel, as opposed to a radial government where layers are parallel to each other.
Radial governments have better fuel economy, and suffer fewer blowouts.
I ran into several young Trump voters after the election that adamantly believed he would just improve the economy. “All that Project 2025 stuff was a smokescreen.”
> I knew a few Rep voters who went like "Project 2025 is not affiliated with Trump, and even if, that's good, because fuck the LGBT"
> * last part added by me, but that's how their attitude was...
I think the problem is one of a non-united grouping - Most people are accepting of L, G and B, but not T.
The actual L and G friends I have (Don't have any B friends; or if I do, I don't know about it) individually try to distance themselves from the T.
There would have been much less for Trump to mudsling on if the opposition simply dropped support for T while keeping L, G and B.
Having LGBT as a single block that you are either for or against is stupid because while most people would be either neutral or positive about L, G and B, the clear majority of people are not neutral on the proposals from the T camp.
There is no right to pronouns or to being referred to in whatever way you want. In fact, policing that kind of thing is an infringement on other people's right to free speech either.
There is no right to expensive surgeries either, especially cosmetic ones.
There is also no right to deciding which bathroom you get to go to.
Please be precise which rights you think are "human rights" and why.
> You don’t have to use pronouns if you don’t want to.
I'm pretty certain that that is not true. Language policing was a big problem - "use the wrong pronoun and lose your job" is not a meaningful choice to many people.
I think your strongest venue to keeping it (short of a civil war) is organizing in labor unions. Because individuals are easy to control but nothing focuses the minds of billionaire elites like a full general strike with no end in sight.
> I think your strongest venue to keeping it (short of a civil war) is organizing in labor unions.
US labor unions have been systematically weakened for decades, though, so that's not a very good chance. Labor organizing can do powerful things, but it doesn't tend to work overnight on the scale needed.
I said this is the strongest venue, not that it is a strong venue.
This crisis is not going to get solved by individuals. The route for individuals to take is infiltration and nudging of the two parties from within — but that is not general advice you can give to everybody, it takes a certain kind of individual to do that. E.g. if you are a person like AOC, trying to replace you Dem representative would be a very good venue to help the cause.
But most people aren't that politically capable or stubborn to run (they rather complain about politicians than mame those decisions themselves).
So outside of that it takes organizations to take stances. Organized labour, churches, other kinds of groups that can turn out in big numbers.
I think the emperor's new clothes is not a fitting comparison at all. Everyone could see the emperor was naked, they just thought they were the only ones. As soon as there was a second voice confirming what they saw, the illusion crumbled. But trump voters are so far off the deep end, the smoke screens so elaborate, that they _actually_ see the fine garments.
I'm not sure that's true for most of them. Most seem to love a naked king as long as he's "hurting the right people". The cruelty is the point for them, but they don't understand that he also doesn't care about them so long as he's getting high on the damage he's causing everyone, which is what his well-known malignant narcicissm demands.
In my experience, the more loudly someone shouts about being a crusader for free speech, the more likely they are to actively be attacking others' freedom of speech.
I don't know where you lived, but you are surely familiar with the related trope in regards to Democracy: the more of it in a country's name, the less of a democracy it will be.
You could also simply look at current events to understand the turn of phrase: Elon Musk, proud "free speech absolutist" bans Twitter accounts which criticize him, bans posts with the word "cisgender", and has manipulated the algorithm to prioritize his own posts.
It just seemed like an outright lie and I guess it is.
It's a generic rhetorical flourish, those often come with a bit of hyperbole, aren't universally applicable, etc. That's a normal thing that happens when people have normal conversations, especially if they're a little worked up. It's this cliché, without the iambic pentameter
If you find something someone's said unclear, you're better off just asking instead of smacking them with a wikipedia link and then calling them a liar, though.
You’re arguing it’s a rhetorical misstep and at the same time suggesting it need not be called out. Huge pet peeve of mine is when these little flourishes derail an entire discussion because they aren’t really true but get the sympathetic individuals involved all riled up. If the device isn’t positively contributing it should be identified and dismissed.
It only 'derails' anything if someone decides to pedantidunk on it. That's not conversation. The occasional flight of verbal fancy is, though. 'Calling out' completely mundane things about other people's comments demolishes forums which is why the site docs and zillions of mod comments exhort you not to do it.
In addition, your experience and this statement aren't mutually exclusive. As for evidence: political developments in the EU and America(s), including the US, as well as policy changes by some of the wealthiest, claiming-to-be-freedom-loving platform owners on earth, should provide enough hints not to dismiss this claim outright.
It's certainly true of the Republican party in the US. They proclaim to be defenders of freedom of speech, yet have passed the vast majority of bills censoring books in educational institutions.
Musk is a glaringly obvious example. But also basically the entire GOP fits, as well (they all screamed free speech in response to fact checkers only to do this "anti-woke" silencing)
I'll just pick one quote: "There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society."
Also this in relation to his book: A section of the book favoring exclusion of democrats and homosexuals from society.
This is not the kind of person that is arguing for free speech on its own merits. In fact he's asking for the opposite of free speech. He wants to choose who has the freedom to speak and who doesn't.
Wow, this is such a concise description of what has been going on with the far right in the US and Europe for the last decade! I'm glad to finally have a name for it. Thanks!
Nitpick: it can be if you redefine numbers and/or operations. Math is not science (but is used as a basis for science) and you can yourself redefine what 2, 5, + and = mean, and use that new set accordingly. Just like you can make "Sky is green" true if your redefine what either "Sky", "is", or "green" mean - language is also not science so it can be redefined.
Retraction isn’t censorship, and bans on what you can publish at work as part of your job are not restraints on your individual right to free expression.
> In the order, CDC researchers were instructed to remove references to or mentions of a list of forbidden terms: “Gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female,” according to an email sent to CDC employees (see below).”
So yep, censorship. Any article that even _mentions_ LGBT (e.g. for epidemiological reasons) is now prohibited to be even referenced.
By that logic, is the term Baptist or Hindu scientifically sound? Is the term string theory? Is the term working class ? What makes words or terminology scientifically sound that doesn't apply here?
It sounds like someone disagrees with the underlying identity that individuals ascribe themselves and now anyone who do research using these identities is censored. You don't have to endorse (or even fully understand) a phenomena to research it. Arguably those are some of the most interesting research questions.
This argument doesn't hold water when the left does it, and it doesn't hold water in this instance either. Censorship does not only mean government infringement upon freedom of individual expression.
> this CDC order seems contrary to Trump’s recent Executive Order
Freedom of speech and the First Amendment generally apply to the government imposing penalties on private citizens, e.g. through criminal law.
The CDC is the government. The government as an employer regularly imposes speech restrictions on government employees and always has, e.g. if you're a public school teacher and you want to teach students to believe that vaccines cause autism, they can tell you not to do that and fire you if you don't. You can imagine the trouble if that wasn't the case.
> You can imagine the trouble if that wasn't the case.
While you're absolutely right, just wanted to take this opportunity to point out that we may well not need to imagine this particular scenario, unfortunately, as it might happen very soon indeed.
Based on a man who has dedicated the last twenty years of his life to fighting vaccines (and who thinks that even the polio vaccine killed more people through cancer than it saved) becoming Health and Human Services secretary. What makes you so sure that antivaxx propaganda will continue being banned from education?
This is an administration that is actively ignoring other EOs such as anti-DEI initiatives. An administration that has come out and said that either all humans are neither male or female, or both male and female at once. This is an administration that either tried to send $50M in condoms to Gaza, or thought their followers were too stupid to believe the lie. This is also the administration that hates the military, police, and Americans in general. None of this is debatable. It's backed up by action. So, not surprised why we'd think they'd be burdened by the law.
When Trump (or Republicans, generally) say "free speech", they patently do not mean what the rest of us mean by free speech. They mean:
1. Everyone should be able to say horrible things about sexual and racial minorities.
2. Everyone should be able to deny scientific facts that are inconvenient to Republican ideology, the fossil fuel industry, or any of their friends.
3. There can be no consequences for (1) or (2), even when it obviously contradicts other laws (libel, incitement of violence, fraud, etc.) or oaths (to truth, to the constitution).
4. Stating a fact or opinion contrary to (1) or (2) is in fact trampling the free-speech rights of right-wingers, and is therefore forbidden.
They don't want free speech. They want free speech for themselves, and enforced consent, if not assent, from everyone else.
All right, then by this logic what does the left mean by "free speech". You talk about scientific facts, so does the left believe we cannot say scientific facts about biology? Furthermore, I'm not aware of any censorship regarding fossil fuels. My understanding is that the Sierra Club and Thunberg are able to say whatever they want in this country if this is what you are talking about.
One difference is that the left doesn't generally advocate for absolute free speech, so it isn't hypocritical. I think the left is generally more open about the areas where free speech shouldn't be absolute - namely, where it causes manifest harm, especially to underprivileged groups - whereas the right will use it in a doublespeak way where they claim to be free-speech absolutists while actually favoring only their own ideology.
But also, the main difference is that the left wants to protect speech that is factually true and punish lies, whereas the right wants to protect lies and punish truths. So even if the strategies were very similar, I wouldn't actually care all that much - you can still differentiate and make a value judgment. Scientists should lose federal grants if they publish made-up or obviously biased research; they shouldn't lose federal grants if they publish results that are inconvenient to the current president's fragile masculinity.
> does the left believe we cannot say scientific facts about biology?
No.
I'm guessing you're trying to not-so-subtly talk about gender identity/trans people. If you're trying to say that "there are only two biological sexes" is a true fact that the left suppresses, then (1) it isn't a true fact (according to literally the entire medical community), (2) even if it were, it's not relevant to gender identity (nobody questions that trans women are biologically male, it just isn't relevant), and (3) the left position isn't that you can't say such things, just that saying it makes you an idiot and likely a bigot, and it should be treated like any other hate speech: if it ends up causing harm (e.g., by inciting physical attacks on trans people, or getting them fired from their jobs) then there should be legal consequences (the harmed people should be able to sue you, it should be a violation of equal-employment laws, etc.).
> I'm not aware of any censorship regarding fossil fuels.
Have you looked at any news reporting lately? The Trump administration just spent half of last week stripping every mention of climate change from every government website, and threatening any research organization that takes public money against looking into it.
> the Sierra Club and Thunberg are able to say whatever they want in this country
The Sierra Club is a mess and a neutered shell of what it used to be, so nobody really cares what it says.
Greta Thunberg has been personally mocked and threatened by Donald Trump, so I don't think it's fair to say that she can say whatever she wants - I think she'd be in very real danger if she came here.
Overtures of fascism. I expect we’ll see thinly-veiled euphemisms and rephrasings that just evade the banned list, if not outright refusal. Ultimately this falls short for the same reason that simple filters of all kinds fail in their (apparent) objective, to the extent that it doesn’t even feel like the point is to actually stop the discussion, but rather to send a message.
There's a big difference between word filters and this: this one has a chilling effect. The intent is to send a message, but that message is a threat.
If you are a spammer and get past the filters you win, if you get past the word filter here the thought police can still decide to punish you.
The more successful you are the more likely you are to be punished instead of being rewarded. It will require self-sacrifice to actually work on "dangerous" topics.
This is a weird way to look at it. There's a shifting of incentives towards less "dangerous" topics. But "dangerous" just means citizens have decided research involving these terms is generally not the highest ROI for taxpayer funding. No one's going to face the wall over private research.
I wonder how will this affect private institutions and private publications?
I could imagine people moving away from CDC into private sector, and considering it's long been a "model" US view that things progress best when done in a free market, it might actually be a boon to medical research.
But, a couple of quick searches tells me 1/3rd of healthcare costs per person comes from the federal government (data from 2023), and NIH puts majority of it's $48B budget towards external (83%) and internal (11%) research.
Obviously, only some research would have (or need to have) the forbidden terminology, so perhaps nothing really happens.
Edit: and lest it remains unsaid, let's also take this with a grain of salt until it comes out from multiple sources or officially.
According to TA, this also affects lots of other papers even if they are not central to the topic. The intention is to combat "woke" research, but it creates pure chaos and uncertainty across the whole field. There is no official policy, and every bureaucrat is trying to guess what is going to be permissible in the future and what not. To be on the safe side (i.e., to not get fired), the ban is interpreted broadly.
Hopefully not much. They'll invent some jargon if necessary and move on. The issue with banning "woke ideology" in principle is that it isn't formally defined and doesn't mean anything. And to ban a thing first it has to exist in a detectable way.
My guess is there'll be a bit of flailing then everyone will default back to status quo. It isn't possible to implement incoherent policies and it isn't going to do anyone any favours in terms of image to pursue this. Might take 4 months, might take 4 years to blow over.
It’s the illiberal right shaking hands with the illiberal left. The problem is this time the purges aren’t just ideological, but also financial: there are winners and losers in our healthcare industry likely to be defined by their polarity to Trump.
Banning terms from general and academic use originated, in modern America, from the illiberal left’s cancel culture.
I’m not saying they caused this—it’s not novel that illiberalism leads to censorship. But the tactics both groups use when they get their hands on power are remarkably similar.
> the nonstop equivocation
You probably mean false equation. I don’t believe I am, because the illiberal left never came into power. At least not federally. Liberals on the left successfully checked our radicals in a way the right did not.
(If you want policy fusion between the illiberal left and right, it’s in RFK Jr. Marin County sees eye to eye with MAGA on e.g. vaccines.)
before cancel culture it was satanic panic from the right. This is not a new phenomenon, and I don't think it has much to do with the shift towards right wing extremism
"the buck stops here". he controls the most powerful army in history. I don't care whose arm is reaching up his colon to move his lips - he's responsible. it's his signature on the orders.
Nobody is arguing with you on that. You said cancel culture was grassroots while this is not. My point is they both started grassroots. This one just reached higher.
If we’re talking about banned words or terms, one of our Supreme Court justices wouldn’t define the term “woman.”
The Biden administration directed ICE to use the term “undocumented noncitizen” instead of “illegal alien.” They also pressured social media sites to censor certain content.
is any of this comparable to banning any acknowledgement of the existence of trans and intersex people in anything connected to the federal government?
in fact refusing to define a term doesn't sound like banning at all. to ban is to forbid somebody else from doing something. to refuse to do something personally isn't banning.
Being unable to describe a woman would be pretty similar to banning trans acknowledgement. They're basically 2 sides of the same coin; the mismatch between reality and the categories we use. There are different opinions about which part of the mental model has to give. Ie, the concept of man/woman is too imprecise for political discourse - do politicians abandon the word woman or do they abandon the parts of reality that don't fit into a man/woman model?
The obvious solution is the third option of letting a few more genders in, but that would still require being able to articulate what a woman is.
The gender one is more consequential; if we accept that they exist there are a lot of women who get involved in the legal system because of their gender. Eg, say there is a case that involves gender discrimination - a judge that can't identify what a woman is will struggle to come up with reasonable rulings.
In fairness we don't have the words the judge used in front of us so maybe there was some hedging involved. But they do have to be able to come up with a working definition.
if the ruling is unsatisfactory, you can appeal. you can bring in expert witnesses. she's a professional, and she'll make her decisions based on the facts of the case, and hopefully not based on prejudice. if it's the supreme court, she won't be alone.
A Nazi punching a Jew in the face is much worse than a Jew punching a Nazi in the face. I hope you agree with this. The latter is even, arguably, good.
That's a matter of context, and raises the question of whether they're in a civil society or a war (or both at once). In principle in a civil society nobody should be punching anybody in the face and mitigating circumstances like the other person being a nazi are only details. But see Sartre's feelings about living alongside nazis in occupied France: the were very polite and pleasant, and the whole situation was tense and awkward because you're unsure of your duty in that situation - is it war or not?
There is no such thing as a civil society when one group believes the other should be segregated, enslaved, have genocide committed against them, etc. That is just gas lighting one group so that they don't know they are the frog in the boiling pot. Trying to be civil in a tolerance paradox situation just makes sure you're eliminated, but maybe just not today.
Is this a quote from Sartre, or just an interpretation? I looked for it and couldn’t find it, beyond maybe representing his “Paris under the occupation”
No, not a quote, a very poor recollection of casually reading about this. He was keen on resisting, tried to organize a group (of writers?) and made some proposals for violent acts (assassinations?) but they couldn't get it together to do anything.
> It isn't possible to implement incoherent policies
If you assume that the goal is to implement a policy, no, it's not possible. But that's never the goal with such chaos. The goal is to make it unclear what's allowed or not, so that the real answer becomes: whatever the current ruler favors is allowed, and whatever he dislikes is disallowed. "Woke ideology", like "globalism" or "cultural Marxism" before it, means nothing, which means it can mean anything.
I remember my dad having to travel to Moscow during the Soviet times to get the censor's approval for the movie he was planning to shoot (that is on top of budget-related issues etc.) I was still very little then, but from what little I remember, it seemed like it always was a guessing game: how much do you have to add of glory to the proletariat in order to make the cut. Naturally, artists were turning their noses when they saw too much of the Soviet propaganda in a movie, so, they tried to put as little of it as possible, at the same time using all sorts of tricks to disguise the criticism of the system that required the censorship.
And while this kind of little struggle had its fun moments... overall, I don't think it was fun. Also, indeed the rules of what's allowed or disallowed would change based on current political events, and just like in 1984, everyone was supposed to acknowledge that the rules had always been the way they currently are. Which, in terms of long-term planning, would sometimes result in problems. Like, when someone was trying to placate the censorship by overemphasizing some political aspect at the time of submission, but the events developed so fast, that the official party line at the assessment time was the exact opposite of what it was at the submission time.
----
Oh, and just to give some examples of when the "proto-woke" (in Soviet times it was called the "decadent capitalist influence") had some tragic consequences.
The only acceptable painting style was Soviet Realism. Anything that had signs of deliberate distortion of color / perspective / size / anatomy etc. would be labeled "decadent capitalist" and perpetrators would be prosecuted.
So, another student in my dad's class came in drunk to a model drawing session. And instead of using a graphite pencil, used what was called a "chemical pencil", which is a kind of Indian-ink based pencil (it's practically impossible to erase). And, in a study of a head of a model, that student made several strokes that extended beyond where the area of the nose would've been, and so it looked like the model had whiskers...
That student was later taken away to the dean, and in short time was expelled.
Another student was expelled for wiping his paintbrush on the canvas (which he later planned to cover with some neutral background color, but was too late...) because he forgot to bring a piece of rug that one usually uses to wipe a brush before using a different paint.
That sounds like a fun anecdote, but those two had their lives ruined.
> The only acceptable painting style was Soviet Realism
It was the "socialistic realism". Being interested in math this particular insanity did not affect me too much, but for someone interested in the arts living under this gun was a 24x7 reality. Not fun times...
Yeah, my bad. Funny how I managed to forget it. That was a big part of my life :) It was still a thing when I went to art college.
And then years later I'd go to see Kyiv Art Academy final year exhibition, and it was still socialistic realism, but now instead of workers and farmers they have saints. For some reason it became very religious... Or maybe I just fell on bad years.
The weirdest thing is to watch the American right wing implement a Russian playbook. The people who made loudest noises about "commies" are now fawning over the Eastern Bloc.
Today's Russia is not communist in any way. It's a far-right-wing autocratic kleptocracy, where all power is held by a single individual and those who have personal favor with him, all wealth is managed through a cycle of corrupt state-sponsored ventures, and all cultural identity is wrapped up in tradition and faux-masculinity. There's not even a pretention of left-wing influence; it's a fully fascist state.
The USSR was obviously similar in practice for most of its history, especially under Stalin, but it still pretended to maintain the trappings of a communist structure. And at least the USSR made it clear what the rules were: it was an unabashed command economy, with property owned by the state, and economic decisions flowing through the party leadership. The Putin/Trump version where there's a de jure market economy but de facto control by the ruling party is a different kind of corruption incentive - it's much harder to challenge what theoretically isn't happening.
Having lived close enough to it to "pick up the vibes" I'm going to say the only thing that's really changed is the flavor of the propaganda. USSR might have started as a leftist thing (I wouldn't know), but it didn't behave like one toward the end. It was all about power & corruption.
> This is leading to what Germans call “vorauseilender Gehorsam,” or “preemptive obedience,” as one non-CDC scientist commented.
And why is this term German? Do, perhaps, the Germans have unique experience and insight in this regard?
> After the German elections of 1932, which permitted Adolf Hitler to form a government, or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed. [1]
It’s become fashionable to accuse people who raise the spectre of fascism and authoritarianism of crying wolf. We are being told not to believe the evidence of our own eyes, like when Elon Musk performs the Nazi salute in front of the far right dignitaries assembled for the inauguration and we’re supposed to believe this is because he’s on the spectrum or some other nonsense. If you don’t want to go down the road that anticipatory obedience leads to, then you have to resist. It is that simple.
Late Soviets had term for it too - “aggressive-obedient majority”, although this applies more to Republicans in legislature and the Air Force people who took down Tuskegee stuff
> They'll invent some jargon if necessary and move on.
The authors of this memo banning terms haven't realized this has already happened in part. Obstetrics avoids the use of gender with the term "parturient" instead of "mother." "Pregnant person" probably isn't showing up in many papers.
And maybe that's fine because it isn't a signal of ideology like "pregnant person" is. Don't forget that if scientists were using these terms, they were likely already doing so because of political pressure, so it is good to stop it in cases where it's nothing to do with their research (eg. transgender parturients). Of course it doesn't mean this order isn't ham-fisted, but research is often polluted by politics because it helps get funding as well as researchers are pretty politically biased in some fields.
What’s wrong referring to the relevant sex characteristics? Why change language for the exceptional and small population? A man who gives birth is still the mother even if they take a social role of a father later in the child’s development.
Because their sex characteristics aren't the relevant thing, the fact that they are pregnant is. The medical field prefers precise terminology. It's only when it comes to trans people that people get weird about it, because they're really using it as an excuse to argue about something else
noobermin is rihgt. I've been reading a book about gastroenterology and it is surprising how many decades occur between research, findings, medical acceptance, and then eventually application to the public.
Sure, but there must be some relation as they cover the cost of drugs and any novel procedures, which are at least somewhat priced according to how much research to develop them cost.
I was just looking for how much research is funded by federal government, and that number came up as somewhat unrelated — it was harder to come up with a total medical research cost number, so this was the best I could do in a couple of minutes.
If corporations are going to argue for the current regime of health care costs to stay as high as possible in the "free market" using research & development costs as an argument, then yes it makes sense to bring it up.
> I wonder how will this affect private institutions and private publications?
A government agency trying to enforce censorship in scientific publications outside its sphere of influence... I have to admit, that was not the first thing I wondered about.
I don't agree with how Trump and his administration are going about this, but it has been interesting to see how quickly it has pushed democrats back to a more federated approach.
After the election many started looked to state's rights type issues to make change locally before Trump took office.
Changes like this could very well push research back out of the centralized government back to more of a free market and federated or decentralized approach. That would at least be a silver lining in my opinion, though to a potentially very dark cloud.
The free market doesn't support most research. Research usually doesn't end in something that's marketable, and even if it does it's often on a too long time scale to do so for companies to justify. And even if there is, it might never get published lest competitors gain anything from it. This is bad for science. At best states might step in but I imagine many won't.
That's the conventional argument for government funded research, but is it true? The AI space is a good example of very long term research, funded almost entirely by the private sector without any clear idea of how the results would be marketed, they publish and - the key part - the work actually replicates. Nor is the AI space unique. XEROX Parc was another famous example, Big Data/Cloud has come entirely out of private sector research. Not unique to computer science either: the research work that led to Ozempic was being funded by Novo Nordisk as far back as 1998.
> Research usually doesn't end in something that's marketable
It usually does, even in academia. That's why they count citations. It's just that the thing that's marketed is either policy advocacy (marketed to governments) or the claims in and of themselves, marketed either to the general public in TED talk style advocacy or to other academics as work they can build on to get more grants. A lot of people don't recognize the existence of things like the profit motive, lobbying or marketing in government funded research, imagining that they don't exist, but they do. In some fields, it's common for lobbying to be like 50% or more of the word count.
There's a long tail of papers that research things that nearly nobody cares about, yet perhaps one day they might. These are the "we studied some obscure fish in the Amazon and found a cure for cancer" type stories that crop up from time to time. But such claims often don't quite work out, and the private sector is easily able to fund this sort of exploratory work too.
Yet at the same time we keep seeing startups bringing innovation, while the big enterprises do not bring that much original innovation. Instead, those big enterprises rather kill innovation by buying those startups. Not seldom to just cancel the whole product together.
This is almost a secret, but __most innovation come from the small players__.
Those small players benefit from open access and academic progress. It is a very fruitful cooperation.
But the tragedy is that in the US the meaning of "the free market" is being loudly distorted.
What they actually mean is a cozy climate for oligarchs, protected by the mountains of tariffs and deregulation. In the US society, the idea of competition has deformed into "killing competition", and they clarify it now with "by all means possible". Those extremists HATE competition. Nobody arrived likes being disturbed and having to work to keep competitive. Rent extraction is way simpler.
Especially HN should think a little longer about what that all means for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Well, in the AI space at least that's not really true. Google, NVIDIA and Meta have all made huge contributors. So has Microsoft, in their own way. It's a real mix of big old companies and smaller upstarts.
Even in this example it is a yes and no. Remove academic development in the AI, including the paths we left, and your examples would not have any AI at all.
The problem is a little bit more nuanced than that though. It is not that big companies do not make inventions. Often, these inventions do not survive politically in the behemoth. That is why some companies decide to create a spinoff, knowing that their own body would be trying to kill the growth of their offspring.
Even in the early days AI was heavily funded by the private sector. Symbolics machines were partly promoted as a way to do AI research, back in the logic era. And the AI winter was mostly a grant funding phenomenon. When it became unfashionable in universities the field rebranded as ML and became commercially driven by (mostly) different people. Companies like Google invested in advanced ML research from day one.
Nowadays it's been rebranded back to AI due to the switch to neural methods, but there's been funding for AI from the computer industry for as long as the field existed.
I'm pretty sure AI would exist as a field and be in a similar place to where it is now, even if governments had never funded it at all.
Even more, a significant portion of the researchers at industrial labs got their start as graduate students, largely funded by government grants. Even if somehow no actual fundamental research transferred from academia into industry, the people sure do.
That is not actually what happens with most acquisitions, especially not in the drug and biotech space. Big enterprises buy promising startups at the phase 1 or 2 stage fully intending to bring them to market. But still many fail to ever make it through phase 3 and gain FDA approval. That's not an innovation problem it's just the nature of the business.
I am not sure if this applies here, but Regulatory Capture is a certain way to block the small players from growing. I understand that drugs are a special case, so I do not know if that applies there.
Also, the fact that a product fails post-acquisition is precisely what happens a lot in regular business too. They can be seen as a threat to other fiefdoms in the behemoth, or they lose their autonomy. Doesn't always mean the product or idea was flawed beyond repair.
This is bad for science, if you mean the deletion of data. Moving away from centralized authorities may be net positive though, time will tell.
You're also touching on the problem of research as an industry. Papers should be published regardless of economic value, and research should be done for the sake of curiosity. Sometimes outcomes are useful or functional, but that shouldn't be the only, or even primary, driver.
States rights will be in the crosshairs soon enough. States that support public health, be that reproduction, vaccines, sex ed, weather, or simply just fact-based research, could see thier federal funds dry up. States still need to biuld infrastructure, something that almost always taps federal funds. Everyone who works in science or research is afraid at the moment, irrespective of where they think their funding comes from.
I know a guy measuring tree growth, with an eye to whether tree planting is effective post-fire. Much of the study is on federal lands. He has no idea whether the project will still exist come spring.
Sure, but the GP you were replying to was focused on the risk of states losing federal funding and how that leverage is making many act differently in response.
When the federal government takes somewhere between 50% and 100% of the income tax payed by a state's citizens simply to give it back to the state with strings attached, that is a straightforward undermining of the state being able to act on its own.
In general, it's amazing how reliably crypto-authoritarian points are prefixed with "I don't see how". It exploits our natural advantage to assume good faith and difficulty understanding, rather than a willful ignoring of coercion.
It has never been the case that one party was for centralization and one was for decentralization. Neither of these are goals. Both are instead methods of achieving goals. Both parties will use claims of federalism when they want to oppose federal policy they don't like and have done so for decades and decades.
Sure, that seems to be what drives the two parties flipping and it seems to be happening now. While your team is in charge you like federal powers, when the other team is in charge you like state powers.
It is generally true, though, that one of the two parties is for decentralization at any given point in time.
I don’t know about “parties” but political movements absolutely are divided by centralization (or not). Collectivism is literally the centralization of wealth.
I wonder how much of the success pseudo gender “science” had in undermining the scientific and medical communities was attributed to the centralization of science authority in the federal government. It makes me wonder if there shouldn’t be a separation of science and state.
If you get really good researchers away from cash-strapped CDC into private sector — not sure if this will play out, and if private sector would be interested, or if their research even has earning potential — but it "might", right?
A lot of research NIH funds because there is low outcome of a market product at the end of that research. This is because investors won't spend the money or only fund research that has no money incentive in its outcome. The way I see is it is progress is about to stop because investors will only fund thing that can have a direct money outcome for them in the future...
I think that's the only option. We need the truth, we currently have a deranged President leading the blind who would rather believe in a sky daddy and the lies they tell themselves than reality. I could see an oligarch that actually might choose to do the right thing, along with a group of high end Universities to replace CDC and NIH at least for the next 2-4 years when we can reestablish some sanity. While I'm fine with rescending bad papers and false information, these blanket attempts to normalize thought crime from the new regime to destroy science and the truth and replace it with their own distorted world view needs to be met with resistance.
Whether they believe in God doesn't have to be part of the equation though. You can believe in God and also in trans rights and science and everything.
It's possible but somewhat rare. I've met religious research scientists before, but in general principles of faith and the scientific method are at odds with each other.
Interesting thought, but significant technologic “break throughs” almost never come from the private sector. A “break through” is just luck, and countless years working on a problem incrementally. That doesn’t typically return profits.
> While the policy is only meant to apply to work that might be seen as conflicting with President Trump’s executive orders, CDC experts don’t know how to interpret that.
This seemed key to me. The managerial/editorial layer is acting in a way that any manager would when there is unclear interpretation: risk-adversity.
It's much easier to do than undo, so you stop until things are cleared up.
However, it seems the organizational layer whose work is being affected is assuming this risk-adverse interpretation is the new policy coming from the top. No doubt, legacy media will take the same interpretation.
If I were to approach this rationally, I would probably want to see clarification before running with the Hitlerian comparisons.
I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen a politician make an absurd campaign promise and then follow through on it successfully. I’d find it terrifying if it weren’t about the most first-world of all first-world problems.
If by first world problems you mean that this destruction of our society is going to give us the traditional living standards of the third world, that seems like something worth worrying about.
This was bin laden’s goal. Making Americans afraid was very successful because it turns out that stoking fear is very profitable and useful for gaining power. Now everyone is taking advantage of it.
Talk about winning a war without firing one shot at the enemy. The admiration, envy and emulation of totalitarian Chinese despotism in the U.S. must feel like a victory.
We know Russia invested a lot in this outcome. Hence, at some point, this government will be seen as treasonous. Didn't China as well, wouldn't they know it's a net win for them and their interests, despite the few hurdles ("tariffs") that were announced?
I never understood why there hasn't been more investigation into Russian influence during the last four years. But maybe the ones to make a call about that didn't care.
I think the most dangerous claims about Russian interference could not be proven true, they weren't proven false. I'm talking here about Trump being a full on Russian asset.
As a side note, I'm not sure that he is _explicitely_ in contact with Russia, but since he got oRussian assistance, an implicit quit-pro-quo is obvious to me.
The fact Russia meddled in US elections is pretty clear cut by this point.
Most of the claims of Russian influence were directly proven, the only thing not proven was direct coordination with the presidents campaign. Notably, there were several ‘dangled pardons’ to prevent people from testifying (pardons that were eventually granted) so who knows what actually happened.
Definitely. At this point rest of the world might as well become friends with China. At least Xi Jinping the CCP aren't idiots, which makes them more predictable to deal with than Trump's regime.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 314 ms ] threadWe had a mini storm over government censorship of CSIRO science in Australia and it got pretty ugly, but this is much uglier.
If they do the same for NSF, earth sciences, DoE and AGW it's going to be pretty nasty.
I don't even have to agree with the science. This kind of mass bad-topic-ban is really unhelpful. I wonder if the editorial boards are also going to put up a fight? I can imagine some kind of "retracted because of Trump policy, not because the peer review process asked for it" markers.
Genetics, and Lysenkoism comes to mind. A stain on soviet science which echoed down the years.
It’s not impossible the very idea of a “US presidency” radically changes by 2028.
Do you think flooding the zone with shit will work? If they actively rig the next elections do you think that any attempt to point that out will be met by "you were saying all the time that elections cannot be rigged"?
It seems society has been caught off guard by the transformation in the media landscape and the resulting fragmentation of attention.
More details would help
It has already been floated.
But it’ll take time for the administration to lose in court. In the meantime, the lack of cash flow is causing people to be laid off and then organizations will shutter. And that’s the goal, dismantling the capability.
It’ll also probably cause a recession.
"a republic, if you can keep it" and obviously you can't.
I'm not a fan of Trump, but his critics have pretty much squandered their credibility, and his political opponents have dumb strategies and even dumber priorities (if you can even take them at their word).
See: https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
I believe Trump is a fascist who is extremely dangerous and everything he did so far ticks all the boxes. And by the way: In the wolf story you refer to the wolf was real. The real moral of that story is that the villagers should have trusted the boy (to prevent his death) and help him, as he in fact saw a wolf (who ate him in the end). The story says that the boy lied, but as he died that story would have been told be the villagers who let him die. The wolf was real (he ate the boy), the villagers made up a story after the fact of how the boy had it coming as a lier to justify their position.
It is a story about people who are more afraid of the scary story and the messenger who tells it, than of the actual danger itself. About people who despite warnings let the boy get eaten, because they checked the first two times and the evil wasn't directly evident to them.
In German we say about fascism: "Wehret den Anfängen" (defend against the beginnings). Once you are in a fascist society, once the wolf is eating you, it is to late. And the wolf is real.
Trumps opponents, collectively, have been crying wolf. They've been saying we're just around the corner from a a dictatorship for years, and Trump had a whole term and a dictatorship didn't happen.
And we're talking about some new-style political correctness here, but you're jumping to "we may never have elections ever again!1!!." If there's actual danger, people need to fucking stay focused and not get distracted and habitually overreact. Overreaction does two bad things: 1) it burns up your credibility, because it's a lie; and 2) when acted upon it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as it triggers reactions of its own.
> I believe Trump would have lost if this was a fair election.
Election denial? Not a good look.
> In the wolf story you refer to the wolf was real.
Only at the the end, not at the beginning. In the beginning, the boy was lying to get attention.
> The real moral of that story is that the villagers should have trusted the boy (to prevent his death) and help him, as he in fact saw a wolf (who ate him in the end).
No it isn't. The real moral is don't lie, otherwise people stop trusting you and bad things will happen. It's explicitly stated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf: "The moral stated at the end of the Greek version is, 'this shows how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them'".
If you get something so basic as that wrong, it calls everything else you say into question.
> The story says that the boy lied, but as he died that story would have been told be the villagers who let him die. The wolf was real (he ate the boy), the villagers made up a story after the fact of how the boy had it coming as a lier to justify their position.
> It is a story about people who are more afraid of the scary story and the messenger who tells it, than of the actual danger itself. About people who despite warnings let the boy get eaten, because they checked the first two times and the evil wasn't directly evident to them.
As far as I can tell, that's your imagined head-cannon. Here's the actual original story: http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/oxford/151.htm
> There was a boy tending the sheep who would continually go up to the embankment and shout, 'Help, there's a wolf!' The farmers would all come running only to find out that what the boy said was not true. Then one day there really was a wolf but when the boy shouted, they didn't believe him and no one came to his aid. The whole flock was eaten by the wolf. The story shows that this is how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them.
The boy lived; the farmers believed him, and were not afraid of the story so were fooled for a time; there was no coverup.
Unfortunately, this problem has been solved by dictatorships where the power is tied to a party or small non-familial circle, such as China, potentially Russia (though we'd have to see how things end up would Putin disappear tomorrow, they may actually have reverted to familiar inheritance) and now, likely, the US. There, pesky biology forms no such risk.
[0] A microcosm of this is the Musk / Altman feud.
Hitler was also perceived as a worthless clown who could be easily manipulated by other interests when first elected. But he was cunning enough to eliminate all opposition and start a world war. Putin and Xi (who Trump admires and looks up to) are very similar.
Trump could easily start a dynastic takeover of the republican party, there is more than one Trump (Ivanka, Baron, etc). There are many reasons to be fearful at this juncture, especially if you live in the US.
But I don't think this is entirely accurate
> Hitler was also perceived as a worthless clown who could be easily manipulated by other interests when first elected. But he was cunning enough to eliminate all opposition and start a world war. Putin and Xi (who Trump admires and looks up to) are very similar.
Especially with Putin, as far as I can tell at no point was he considered a clown by anyone who mattered. He was definitely underestimated, but it's a marked difference with Trump (and Hitler).
Literally so.
Also, I know. My only point was that comparing to Biden doesn't make sense, since when Biden was running again he was not term-limited.
They're going to try to find one way or another to let him run again (if he lives long enough)
> Not if they change the constitution. https://ogles.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-ogles-propo...
Backbencher proposes something dumb that'll almost certainly go nowhere? The sky must be falling, and that's proof!
Continue to pish posh while they continue dismantling the republic.
And then, maybe when the idea actually gets pursued, it won't seem so controversial because all the energy was wasted before it was actually a thing.
> Continue to pish posh while they continue dismantling the republic.
If you don't want it dismantled, you can start by not getting distracted by dumb stuff and/or taking the bait. Then, the next step is to realize the politics of maximum opposition failed, and try something else.
Keep ignoring the world in front of your eyes. Edit: Also if you think the "world of maximal opposition has failed" that's very amusing as the level of opposition was extremely low.
Get your pink hat on, it's time to waste your energy on the wrong things.
> Keep ignoring the world in front of your eyes. Edit: Also if you think the "world of maximal opposition has failed" that's very amusing as the level of opposition was extremely low.
Trump got elected, despite being portrayed constantly as both hopelessly incompetent, totally unacceptable politically, and as existential threat to democracy by his opponents and most of the media; being subject to multiple criminal investigations by them; having huge protests against him; and more than $1.4 billion spent on advertising against him. He was opposed to the legal maximum, and anything more would have gotten into armed militia territory.
Trump orders USDA to take down websites referencing climate crisis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42896378
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/31/trump-order-...
The modern scientific model is a collaborative effort by many professionals across several fields, refined over several decades. There is no single scientist who is responsible for it. Instead of projecting cis insecurities, it centers trans people and treats us as honest conveyors of our experiences. And it sure is more correct than anything a bunch of illiterate fundies who beat their wives ever dreamed up.
Again, I don't like this any more than you do, but your employer generally does get to dictate what you do and say at work.
:(
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/31/trump-order-...
"How Do We Know Climate Change is Real?
There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.
Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture ..."
I suppose there's a lot of both bright and brave people working there (extremely bright compared to the president)
Musk needs to find a different way to exert his will through his allies.
And no, he is very far for being that popular that anybody would find a way to waive the natural born citizen requirement. He is also not that popular and he doesn’t have the charisma of a president.
You don’t need to worry about him being a president. If you want to worry about him: he doesn’t need to become a president to have insane amount of power and influence over the US.
If people no longer believe democracy functions and simply accept that as the status quo, then it doesn't.
Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia for decades while they had elections the whole time, and wasn't always President in that time. But there's never been any doubt who's in charge.
Just my opinion, and I say this with love, but if you think Musk is going to become president, you need to turn off BlueSky and touch grass.
Any leader of any type has to convince the populace that accepting their rule is better than fighting it. Even if current weaponry allowed an army to kill the entire rest of the population of a country, that still doesn't allow a leader to rule by force alone: for one, the army will revolt at some point before killing the majority of their brethren. And even if they didn't, the loss of the majority of the population would ultimately leave the country far too economically devastated to serve any purpose, even for the glorious leader.
I see no reason why Clearance Thomas and co wouldn't give Musk the same treatment.
All this also isn’t occurring in a vacuum: the GOP is full of highly ambitious people who won’t want the competition for their own run.
GOP lost house and senate seats they could have won behind another candidate. Trump is useful to the party until he’s not. Elon is of zero use at all to the party.
This needs to be said more. Trump is a singular force in our current politics. Even people who despise Trump will admit that one on one and in small groups he’s incredibly charismatic and likable. Bill Clinton comes to mind as another POTUS with just a super high level of charisma.
Musk on the other hand is incredibly awkward and would have very little broad appeal.
For those infected he's articulate and smart.
For those outside the cult he's a demented bumbling fool.
I hope you're right. He will eventually die. Who has enough clout to take his place without splitting the Republican Party?
The definition of "natural born" has never been tested and could well be redefined to be meaningless.
The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Internment of Japanese Americans into concentration camps strike me as particularly infamous, and the Second Red Scare (or McCarthyism) involved a lot of unconstitutional conduct as well. But I'm sure there's lots of other things, too.
Hopefully, past experience will repeat and after a brief period, there will be a return to the traditions of rule of law and respect for the constitution.
> Do we still play pretend that the law and constitution mean something
Leadership ignoring constitution in some areas is a problem, but as long as law is generally still seen as working, and expected to work, in everyone's daily dealings, things aren't bad. They may not be fine, but can be improved. However, once enough people stop believing law and constitution matter in general, that's when they actually stop working, because they're just words on paper, and their only power stems from everyone expecting everyone else experts them to have authority.
However, this laughably broad, king-level power still doesn't grant him the power to just make anything into law. He can't be prosecuted for anything, but that doesn't mean that anything he wants is now law.
Also due to the upvote/downvote/flag system, entire narratives are controlled with a small number of accounts. It's a fundamentally broken approach to online discussions. We need to get rid of upvote/downvotes completely. Retain flagging for vetted users, and punish those who are flagging material that should not be flagged.
Doesn't nazi bar refer to a bar full of nazis?
I don't think the readership of HN leans RW, but the commentary and moderation does, largely due to the fact that RW commentators are quick to flag views they disagree with, in contravention of the stated moderation standards, while "normal people" can't be bothered to engage with this kind of platform, and the moderation team is content to let this dynamic persist. Witness the flagging on this very article as an example.
Its more like when Ergdogan, Modi etc initially came to power.
They too entered with lot of thunder and lightning but it didnt do any magic, cause at the end of the day these are massive dynamic complex systems and any radical change has unpredictable costs and consequences that only show up with time.
Give these decision a month or two to play out. Don't just sit and keep refreshing your feed and expect any reaction that is effective to take shape instantly. Its a stupid expectation
Stop eating up billionaire bullshit. They don't care about you. They will gladly use your corpse as cattle feed.
And for what it's worth, here's a later highlighted case where FIRE defended a professor who had been told to stop teaching, and I quote, "woke shit" like gender studies at a state university.
https://www.thefire.org/cases/valdosta-state-university-prof...
The trans stuff has definitely been controversial, but those phrases are definitely not "woke"?
The fantasy that “biological reality” is anything other than substantially more complicated and messy than a neat dichotomy with perfect alignment across sex characteristics and gender is both wrong and obviously so.
Nothing in medicine or biology is so simple. There’s always a way for the human organism to be more complicated. It keeps me very busy and in a job.
Science has shown that there is more than two combinations of X and Y chromosomes. So if you went by chromosomes alone, there's more than two sexes. And if you go by phenotypic categorization (secondary sex characteristics, like tits, balls, dick, vagina, voice, height, etc), there's a multitude of sexes and male and female are just categories. Again this is well-documented in scientific literature, it's biology 101.
But then "the right" also mix in references to gender as banned. Gender, as every half-educated person knows by now, is different than sex: gender is social expression, sex is biological expression. Gender is your clothes and hair and voice and name, sex is the junk in your pants.
But the "right" is basically saying: "Hey, science is wrong! And these weird leftists are wrong! Sex determination doesn't matter, gender determination doesn't matter. There's only two things in the world, ever, and we call them male and female. Science and society and logic and reason and everything else can get fucked."
It's political psychosis. Hate-filled zealots who are so hell-bent on imagining the world in a more simplistic way that they literally want to re-define reality to fit their wishes. It's the book Nineteen-Eighty-Four, being enacted in real life. This isn't a joke or hyperbole, this is literally what's happening. They're creating a government of insanity.
Since they can't literally stop people from having all kinds of combinations of chromosomes and primary/secondary sex characteristics, the next step will be what the Nazis did, which is to round up anyone who doesn't fit a "normal body" and incarcerate them or force them into medical procedures to "fix them". (we actually did this in the past, too, not just the Nazis)
But before we get there, the first step is to force the government to perpetuate the psychosis so they can say it's official, and then people will swallow it easier. They are betting that we won't do anything. And we won't.
https://isna.org/faq/frequency/
Also the use of gender as "it's like, how you feel, man" is very recent. When I was growing up (80s, 90s) it was just a synonym of "sex". If you look in old dictionaries that's what it says.
I looked it up and apparently the more recent definition came from feminists in the 70s (I guess it didn't catch on until later).
I think this is a massive over-correction (banning words is dumb) but they're not completely wrong.
I think the sane path lies in the middle: people shouldn't be forced to avoid "pregnant women" or "pregnant people". That includes being forced by social ostracism, which is the far left's method of choice.
Elemental distribution in the universe is also extremely bimodal .. moreso even than the exceptions to the reproductive male or reproductive female buckets.
Everything in the universe is either Hydrogen or Helium .. save for a tiny tiny cluster of exceptions known (to astronomers) as "metals" and as "every other damn element including carbon and oxygen" to the aquatic apes.
Science is quite happy to endlessly study things with a frequency of ppm (parts per million) and less.
Not sure what point you're trying to make here but we don't live in a star.
Give it some time, it may come to you eventually. Or not.
But it can't be that because that is an obviously stupid point. So what was your point?
> I think this is a massive over-correction (banning words is dumb) but they're not completely wrong.
Is it that "they're not completely wrong" to ban terms referring to events significantly more common than the occurrence of gold in the earths crust?
To quote another:
> it can't be that because that is an obviously stupid point. So what was your point?
----
For general interest:
* frequency of "true" (undecidable) intersex (1 in 5,500 births): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0022449020955213...
* Mean global crustal ppm of gold: 0.004 (four thousandth of one in a million) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
* Report on Gold deposits in a high yeild region: Gold Deposits of the Pilbara Craton https://www.ga.gov.au/pdf/RR0065.pdf (74 page AGSO report, 'rich' veins have 0.4 ppm gold)
Whoa, honestly, that is much more common than I expected in my mind.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex for why it's not straightforward and why the edges are pretty fuzzy.
The main take away would be that some people are born that are neither male nor female, others are born where assignment isn't clearcut or easy, and such births are more common than the frequency of gold in the earth's crust.
It's very rare though.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907868
Sex is clearly a continuum, just like everything in the world. If you smoothly vary someone's physiology and genetics from male to female there will be a region in the middle where it's kind of woolly and you can't really say they are definitely male or female.
Let me give another example. Is a spork a spoon or a fork? It's clearly somewhere in-between. You can't say "this spork is actually a spoon with some anomalous tines".
Now it just so happens that there are very few sporks in the world (due to the huge selection pressure). But they do exist and they aren't obviously "male with errors" or "female with errors".
You can't really argue against this, any more than you can argue that green is actually very blueish red. The English language dictates that it isn't.
You're free to go off and make your own not-English where green is "blueish red" but don't expect anyone to know what the hell you are talking about.
Humans, (along with 95%+ animals) are gonochoric, which means they are either male or female and cannot change that.
There is no spectrum because there are only two types of sex cell (gametes, sperm and ova) thus, only two reproductive strategies available.
We also know that the reproductive strategy coincides with gamete size (small and large, again, sperm and ova) and this is helpfully confirmed by non-gonochoric species that are hermaphrodatic, like clownfish. We know that a clownfish has changed from male to female when their reproductive strategy has changed to the point that they can produce the other type of gamete.
> You can’t really argue against this
It seems like your assumptions have been challenged, it would’ve been better if you’d do some of that yourself, and read some biology by actual biologists, not from activists.
Yes it does. It just has an extremely bimodal distribution.
> Humans, (along with 95%+ animals) are gonochoric, which means they are either male or female and cannot change that.
Sure, when the genetics all goes to plan. But it isn't perfect. Sometimes it doesn't.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about all of this but I can't quite figure out where it is. It's like you've only read a biology textbook and never really thought about it or something.
Find me the third type of gamete and you’ll have a point.
Edit: I’ll add, traits are a bimodal distribution, sex is binary (because of all I’ve outlined here). If you believe that traits define sex then you are sorely mistaken (see 3rd gamete for why).
European Journal of Pediatrics, 1994
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02000779
> In the past, ovotesticular syndrome was referred to as true hermaphroditism, which is considered outdated as of 2006. The term "true hermaphroditism" was considered very misleading by many medical organizations and by many advocacy groups, as hermaphroditism refers to a species that produces both sperm and ova, something that is impossible in humans.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42929198
As such, I really do not understand your objection, and that’s probably because you don’t understand your objection. Sex in humans determined by the strategy for gamete production, which can only result in a large gamete or small gamete - not by chromosomes. Hence, “intersex” people are still male or female regardless of their disorder. This is well understood, settled science, and is not my opinion. If you think sex is decided based on your chromosomes, then you’ve been misinformed.
[0] https://www.leonardsax.com/how-common-is-intersex-a-response...
Maybe tone that down a notch or three.
Gametes (egg or sperm) can mix-and-match with other sex markers—commonly, chromosomes, genitals, sex hormones, and secondary sex characteristics—to create a mosaic of sex traits.
We can’t create a sex binary using the reproductive organs (gametes and gonads), because:
* People can have both ovarian and testicular tissue (an ovotestis or gradation of cells)
* People can have ambiguous gonadal tissue
* It is common for all types of gonads (female/male/intersex) to lack gamete production
I refer you to:
which you might be familiar with [0].Note: " male if ..", "female if ..", and "hermaphrodite if .."
which is ( counts slowly 'cause can't understand stuff real good ) one, two, three buckets.
Not two.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907868
> which is ( counts slowly 'cause can't understand stuff real good ) one, two, three buckets.
Humans are not hermaphroditic, no mammals are. Not sequentially, not simultaneously. (In fact, the way that sex development occurs it cannot happen, but that is going to be too high level for this discussion, clearly.)
> Gametes (egg or sperm) can mix-and-match with other sex markers—commonly, chromosomes, genitals, sex hormones, and secondary sex characteristics—to create a mosaic of sex traits.
Traits do not define sex, gamete size does (see above), adding them all up will not change that.
> People can have both ovarian and testicular tissue (an ovotestis or gradation of cells)
And only one reproduction strategy, which is why there are no human hermaphrodites, having both types of tissue does not mean there is possible gamete production, as evidenced by the total lack of any actual hermaphrodites in all of recorded human history, if not a knowledge of the process itself.
> People can have ambiguous gonadal tissue
Completely irrelevant.
> It is common for all types of gonads (female/male/intersex) to lack gamete production
Also irrelevant. Someone who has finished their fertile phase still has a reproduction strategy in place. Someone who has a disorder still has a reproduction strategy in place. Someone who is not disordered and still in their fertile phase yet not producing gametes right now still has a reproduction strategy in place.
There are only two reproduction strategies in humans, and only one in any individual, and only one is possible in any individual, and it cannot change.
> Maybe tone that down a notch or three.
It was an accurate observation, which you have only gone on to prove further.
Most humans are not, sure. Some are: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02000779
Your claim is falsified.
> And only one reproduction strategy, which is why there are no human hermaphrodites,
Not all humans reproduce. Yes, there are only two reproductive genders, these do not cover all humans.
There are several strategies to identify gender, as we both (I hope) know, each has its edge cases, none is sufficient.
A laser like focus on sex-as-gamete-production (SAG) is completely adrift from social reality.
> It was an accurate observation, which you have only gone on to prove further.
Your attitude says more about you, the lack of self reflection most of all.
No, as we have both quoted, and you miscounted, there are four states:
- Male (gonochoric) - Female (gonochoric) - Sequential hermaphrodite - Non-sequential hermaphrodite
True hermaphrodite is a misnomer, a term for an intersex disorder known as ovotesticular syndrome[0]. To quote the great Wikipedia:
> In the past, ovotesticular syndrome was referred to as true hermaphroditism, which is considered outdated as of 2006. The term "true hermaphroditism" was considered very misleading by many medical organizations and by many advocacy groups, as hermaphroditism refers to a species that produces both sperm and ova, something that is impossible in humans.
To check, we can apply "our" quote - a hermaphrodite would either be sequential, which we know humans are not (I hope we know that much), or able to produce both types of gametes at the same time.
True hermaphrodites cannot do that, and the paper you shared makes no claim that they can or that they have. None of the examples show that either.
Your claim is false.
> Not all humans reproduce.
I'm sorry, but you're bringing the conversation down to a level too silly to bother with there. Every human has a reproductive strategy, and from conception to boot. Whether any individual actual reproduces is irrelevant to that.
Really, that kind of argument is beneath the level of this forum.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotesticular_syndrome
That's because we got to some level of acceptance in some regions where we got to agree on some English term. It's not like the non-binary people appeared only very recently. We just got to honestly talk about it now. But there's many known figures from the past who pretty much lived that way, including the Universal Friend.
Outside of the usual western countries, it existed for ages, like the non-binary "mahu" in Hawaiian culture.
For example, you can't say humans have 5 fingers on each hand, polydactyly (had to google that one) has a higher prevalence than 0.001
The context of the discussion matters. My friends are scared, I don't really think your desire to be able to easily generalize the human race is something I can care too much about.
People with extra fingers don't demand society bends backwards for them, branding anyone who presents any opposition whatsoever as bigots. They don't have a history of, funny enough, "spreading lies, fear and hatred" like trans advocacy does either.
Trans people deserve sympathy and care and I have little expectation the current US administration treats them as they should, but the amount of willful ignorance required to look at this as something that "just happened" rather than the result of abuses of power by advocates is such that anyone partaking in it is better off ignored.
clown comment from the start. utterly delusional bullshit. go on, what demands are trans people making of "society" other than "leave us the hell alone".
>. They don't have a history of, funny enough, "spreading lies, fear and hatred" like trans advocacy does either.
just outright making shit up, cool.
To be referred and treated to as a gender they are not perceived to belong to (often under legal penalties), often reaching into biological sex (see: sports, women spaces). To dismiss gender definitions altogether in order to blur the lines to accommodate for them (you yourself were doing this a moment ago).
>just outright making shit up, cool.
No. You are, again, doing this yourself, right now, by saying stuff like "The cruelty is the point" which is very evidently spreading hatred. Advocacy did A LOT of "spreading lies and fear" by spreading narratives like the "female brain in a male body" or "would you rather have a trans son or a dead daughter?". And again, the vast majority of trans people are innocent for these, they deserve no blowback, their situation is bad as it is to begin with, but this did not by any stretch of imagination begin with politicians and pretending that's the case only worsens the problem.
The changes in society are recent, the ideas are extremely old.
In our society, being gay used to be illegal, black people were property, and women had no rights. Then somebody would suggest that be changed, and the majority of people would freak out, for exactly the same reason: "that's not how it was when I was growing up!".
Yet multiple genders [not sexes] have existed for millennia, we didn't have the concept of two sexes [not genders] until the Enlightenment, and these words have changed their meanings and been used in different ways throughout time.
Society changes. Our understanding of the world changes. Sometimes we regress, like right now, like we did in the Victorian era, like we did after the fall of Rome, etc. But we need to push back, so that regression doesn't harm people, the way it has harmed people so many times in the past.
This undermines the point most "gender positive" people want to make. Yes, there are non XX or XY people, but they're rare compared to XX/XY transgender people. They also tend to have issues like learning disabilities and problems with speech. By conflating transgender people with people with chromosomal irregularities you're establishing a link suggesting XX/XY transgenderism is also a "disorder".
Sometimes I wonder if that isn't a little bit deserved, since people are so removed from what really counts, they might need a reminder how unlikely having democracy actually is.
Divide et impera (or divide and conquer) is one of the old machiavellian imperatives. And language is enough to divide. Letting them divide you is a good way of making sure your own interest loses and theirs win.
The cdc is political and gets involved in cultural wars? This is already happening with this administration?
People often seem to say that this is the ultimate form of it. It's not. It continues unabated, and in a few years they'll have yet another term for the same thing.
Everything has to be based on merit except for nepotism, legacy admission, donations for favours etc.
Affirmative action has a long history of only being applied when the benefiting demographic is the intended benefiting demographic. The same rules apply to freedom of religion, in that only officially approved religious beliefs are allowed to benefit from freedom of religion. The definition of an approved religion get defined by those creating and enforcing the rule, which changes based on who is in power.
Conservatives really care about an order in things, to keep out chaos. Anything that reduces structure in society is suspicious, especially if it comes at you expense. Note that this holds for plenty of people who are way down on the power ladder.
I would very much like to see the American conversation turn to a legitimate discussion of differences of values. I can't say if it ever really did, or if that's just the myth we tell ourselves. But for the moment we have "conservatives" consistently sowing chaos with no benefit to themselves, and even their own detriment, solely for the purpose of harming those they see as their domestic enemies.
Not all conservatives are "small-government" conservatives. Ron Paul was really the last libertarian in the Republican party. The latest crop has an authoritarian streak.
Well, welcome to the inside part of a great wall in the making. Thoughts and prayers y'all.
https://www.cdc.gov/contraception/hcp/provider-tools/index.h...
https://web.archive.org/web/20241219075518/https://www.cdc.g...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.cdc.ondieh...
https://web.archive.org/web/20241231085620/https://play.goog...
This censorship is much more petty. "My child hates me, and it can't be my fault. Let's call some modern progress ideology, and stomp all over it".
This isn't about repression, it's a show of force. Both for intimidation, and to gather admiration. Because it is cool if you can be above the law. It takes strength to be above the law, so we should respect it. Scary thing is, it seems to be working.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/18/womens-march...
Rebellion and protest wil require those who supported Trump to change their mind. Democracy demands it. Which shows that things get weird if a majority of people favor the dissolution of rule of law within a democracy. A point it seems the US has reached, but I would give it another few months to give people time to really see what they voted for.
It’s in the same vein. The government is removing information so it can act impunitively against certain people. The people getting harmed by these policies are, in the end, poor and marginal. If you’re already lucky enough to be rich in America, you’re probably getting much richer in the next four years.
ALL THAT SAID, if I were advising Trump (I’m not) and asked to be Machiavellian, I’d say his single priority right now is the budget. Create as much confusion in the public space as possible so your surrogates in the House have the room they need to manoeuvre. (Also keep an eye out for CBO’s gutting. It’s a real check on Trump inasmuch as it lives outside the executive and determines what can be passed on party lines with reconciliation.)
It is barely about suppressing this information. But about what the act signals to supporters, bigots, and 'targets'.
This Executive Order states in part: “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
… Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; …
Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech. (a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/rest...
He complains about a bias government, to install his own loyalists.
Same goes for science.
Rule of law…
(Yes it happened to this message as well, but too egregious to leave as an example).
"bias government" = government that is about bias, in some way, e.g. obsessed about it
Radial governments have better fuel economy, and suffer fewer blowouts.
* last part added by me, but that's how their attitude was...
> * last part added by me, but that's how their attitude was...
I think the problem is one of a non-united grouping - Most people are accepting of L, G and B, but not T.
The actual L and G friends I have (Don't have any B friends; or if I do, I don't know about it) individually try to distance themselves from the T.
There would have been much less for Trump to mudsling on if the opposition simply dropped support for T while keeping L, G and B.
Having LGBT as a single block that you are either for or against is stupid because while most people would be either neutral or positive about L, G and B, the clear majority of people are not neutral on the proposals from the T camp.
There is no right to pronouns or to being referred to in whatever way you want. In fact, policing that kind of thing is an infringement on other people's right to free speech either.
There is no right to expensive surgeries either, especially cosmetic ones.
There is also no right to deciding which bathroom you get to go to.
Please be precise which rights you think are "human rights" and why.
You don’t have to use pronouns if you don’t want to.
Why do you care if another human’s happiness is centered on gender identity?
No one has ever been assaulted by a trans but every day there’s another report of a pastor or priest molesting children.
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is in our declaration of independence.
I'm pretty certain that that is not true. Language policing was a big problem - "use the wrong pronoun and lose your job" is not a meaningful choice to many people.
US labor unions have been systematically weakened for decades, though, so that's not a very good chance. Labor organizing can do powerful things, but it doesn't tend to work overnight on the scale needed.
This crisis is not going to get solved by individuals. The route for individuals to take is infiltration and nudging of the two parties from within — but that is not general advice you can give to everybody, it takes a certain kind of individual to do that. E.g. if you are a person like AOC, trying to replace you Dem representative would be a very good venue to help the cause.
But most people aren't that politically capable or stubborn to run (they rather complain about politicians than mame those decisions themselves).
So outside of that it takes organizations to take stances. Organized labour, churches, other kinds of groups that can turn out in big numbers.
I'm not sure that's true for most of them. Most seem to love a naked king as long as he's "hurting the right people". The cruelty is the point for them, but they don't understand that he also doesn't care about them so long as he's getting high on the damage he's causing everyone, which is what his well-known malignant narcicissm demands.
In my country for example we had dictatorship until 1974 and there was censorship, done by a department called... Censorship.
It wasn't some kind of gotcha, it just seemed completely wrong and I'd like to update my assumption in case it was wrong.
You could also simply look at current events to understand the turn of phrase: Elon Musk, proud "free speech absolutist" bans Twitter accounts which criticize him, bans posts with the word "cisgender", and has manipulated the algorithm to prioritize his own posts.
It's a generic rhetorical flourish, those often come with a bit of hyperbole, aren't universally applicable, etc. That's a normal thing that happens when people have normal conversations, especially if they're a little worked up. It's this cliché, without the iambic pentameter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady_doth_protest_too_much...
If you find something someone's said unclear, you're better off just asking instead of smacking them with a wikipedia link and then calling them a liar, though.
https://pen.org/report/americas-censored-classrooms/ this is from a few years ago but the trend continues
I'll just pick one quote: "There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society."
Also this in relation to his book: A section of the book favoring exclusion of democrats and homosexuals from society.
This is not the kind of person that is arguing for free speech on its own merits. In fact he's asking for the opposite of free speech. He wants to choose who has the freedom to speak and who doesn't.
So yep, censorship. Any article that even _mentions_ LGBT (e.g. for epidemiological reasons) is now prohibited to be even referenced.
It sounds like someone disagrees with the underlying identity that individuals ascribe themselves and now anyone who do research using these identities is censored. You don't have to endorse (or even fully understand) a phenomena to research it. Arguably those are some of the most interesting research questions.
Freedom of speech and the First Amendment generally apply to the government imposing penalties on private citizens, e.g. through criminal law.
The CDC is the government. The government as an employer regularly imposes speech restrictions on government employees and always has, e.g. if you're a public school teacher and you want to teach students to believe that vaccines cause autism, they can tell you not to do that and fire you if you don't. You can imagine the trouble if that wasn't the case.
While you're absolutely right, just wanted to take this opportunity to point out that we may well not need to imagine this particular scenario, unfortunately, as it might happen very soon indeed.
Laws don't count with Don, conventions don't count, rules don't count. The only thing that counts is power.
And he has it now.
The order is concerned with government censoring private individuals.
1. Everyone should be able to say horrible things about sexual and racial minorities.
2. Everyone should be able to deny scientific facts that are inconvenient to Republican ideology, the fossil fuel industry, or any of their friends.
3. There can be no consequences for (1) or (2), even when it obviously contradicts other laws (libel, incitement of violence, fraud, etc.) or oaths (to truth, to the constitution).
4. Stating a fact or opinion contrary to (1) or (2) is in fact trampling the free-speech rights of right-wingers, and is therefore forbidden.
They don't want free speech. They want free speech for themselves, and enforced consent, if not assent, from everyone else.
One difference is that the left doesn't generally advocate for absolute free speech, so it isn't hypocritical. I think the left is generally more open about the areas where free speech shouldn't be absolute - namely, where it causes manifest harm, especially to underprivileged groups - whereas the right will use it in a doublespeak way where they claim to be free-speech absolutists while actually favoring only their own ideology.
But also, the main difference is that the left wants to protect speech that is factually true and punish lies, whereas the right wants to protect lies and punish truths. So even if the strategies were very similar, I wouldn't actually care all that much - you can still differentiate and make a value judgment. Scientists should lose federal grants if they publish made-up or obviously biased research; they shouldn't lose federal grants if they publish results that are inconvenient to the current president's fragile masculinity.
> does the left believe we cannot say scientific facts about biology?
No.
I'm guessing you're trying to not-so-subtly talk about gender identity/trans people. If you're trying to say that "there are only two biological sexes" is a true fact that the left suppresses, then (1) it isn't a true fact (according to literally the entire medical community), (2) even if it were, it's not relevant to gender identity (nobody questions that trans women are biologically male, it just isn't relevant), and (3) the left position isn't that you can't say such things, just that saying it makes you an idiot and likely a bigot, and it should be treated like any other hate speech: if it ends up causing harm (e.g., by inciting physical attacks on trans people, or getting them fired from their jobs) then there should be legal consequences (the harmed people should be able to sue you, it should be a violation of equal-employment laws, etc.).
> I'm not aware of any censorship regarding fossil fuels.
Have you looked at any news reporting lately? The Trump administration just spent half of last week stripping every mention of climate change from every government website, and threatening any research organization that takes public money against looking into it.
> the Sierra Club and Thunberg are able to say whatever they want in this country
The Sierra Club is a mess and a neutered shell of what it used to be, so nobody really cares what it says.
Greta Thunberg has been personally mocked and threatened by Donald Trump, so I don't think it's fair to say that she can say whatever she wants - I think she'd be in very real danger if she came here.
I'm dying to know what this fact is, and if you spent even 30 seconds looking up what the current state of science is with regards to it.
I want to know if you downvoted with zero consideration, or if you looked it up and then downvoted me to assist in your delusional denial.
If you are a spammer and get past the filters you win, if you get past the word filter here the thought police can still decide to punish you.
The more successful you are the more likely you are to be punished instead of being rewarded. It will require self-sacrifice to actually work on "dangerous" topics.
I could imagine people moving away from CDC into private sector, and considering it's long been a "model" US view that things progress best when done in a free market, it might actually be a boon to medical research.
But, a couple of quick searches tells me 1/3rd of healthcare costs per person comes from the federal government (data from 2023), and NIH puts majority of it's $48B budget towards external (83%) and internal (11%) research.
Obviously, only some research would have (or need to have) the forbidden terminology, so perhaps nothing really happens.
Edit: and lest it remains unsaid, let's also take this with a grain of salt until it comes out from multiple sources or officially.
My guess is there'll be a bit of flailing then everyone will default back to status quo. It isn't possible to implement incoherent policies and it isn't going to do anyone any favours in terms of image to pursue this. Might take 4 months, might take 4 years to blow over.
That’s a lot more optimistic than I fear.
It’s the illiberal right shaking hands with the illiberal left. The problem is this time the purges aren’t just ideological, but also financial: there are winners and losers in our healthcare industry likely to be defined by their polarity to Trump.
Lay this at the feet of who caused it.
Banning terms from general and academic use originated, in modern America, from the illiberal left’s cancel culture.
I’m not saying they caused this—it’s not novel that illiberalism leads to censorship. But the tactics both groups use when they get their hands on power are remarkably similar.
> the nonstop equivocation
You probably mean false equation. I don’t believe I am, because the illiberal left never came into power. At least not federally. Liberals on the left successfully checked our radicals in a way the right did not.
(If you want policy fusion between the illiberal left and right, it’s in RFK Jr. Marin County sees eye to eye with MAGA on e.g. vaccines.)
cancel culture from the right is coming from POTUS.
can you tell me if you think there's any difference at all between the two?
Not really. Trump is channeling something that probably came from the book-banning religious conservative crowd.
The Biden administration directed ICE to use the term “undocumented noncitizen” instead of “illegal alien.” They also pressured social media sites to censor certain content.
There was also the whole Al Franken thing.
in fact refusing to define a term doesn't sound like banning at all. to ban is to forbid somebody else from doing something. to refuse to do something personally isn't banning.
The obvious solution is the third option of letting a few more genders in, but that would still require being able to articulate what a woman is.
In fairness we don't have the words the judge used in front of us so maybe there was some hedging involved. But they do have to be able to come up with a working definition.
you and I have very different definitions of banning.
If you assume that the goal is to implement a policy, no, it's not possible. But that's never the goal with such chaos. The goal is to make it unclear what's allowed or not, so that the real answer becomes: whatever the current ruler favors is allowed, and whatever he dislikes is disallowed. "Woke ideology", like "globalism" or "cultural Marxism" before it, means nothing, which means it can mean anything.
And while this kind of little struggle had its fun moments... overall, I don't think it was fun. Also, indeed the rules of what's allowed or disallowed would change based on current political events, and just like in 1984, everyone was supposed to acknowledge that the rules had always been the way they currently are. Which, in terms of long-term planning, would sometimes result in problems. Like, when someone was trying to placate the censorship by overemphasizing some political aspect at the time of submission, but the events developed so fast, that the official party line at the assessment time was the exact opposite of what it was at the submission time.
----
Oh, and just to give some examples of when the "proto-woke" (in Soviet times it was called the "decadent capitalist influence") had some tragic consequences.
The only acceptable painting style was Soviet Realism. Anything that had signs of deliberate distortion of color / perspective / size / anatomy etc. would be labeled "decadent capitalist" and perpetrators would be prosecuted.
So, another student in my dad's class came in drunk to a model drawing session. And instead of using a graphite pencil, used what was called a "chemical pencil", which is a kind of Indian-ink based pencil (it's practically impossible to erase). And, in a study of a head of a model, that student made several strokes that extended beyond where the area of the nose would've been, and so it looked like the model had whiskers...
That student was later taken away to the dean, and in short time was expelled.
Another student was expelled for wiping his paintbrush on the canvas (which he later planned to cover with some neutral background color, but was too late...) because he forgot to bring a piece of rug that one usually uses to wipe a brush before using a different paint.
That sounds like a fun anecdote, but those two had their lives ruined.
It was the "socialistic realism". Being interested in math this particular insanity did not affect me too much, but for someone interested in the arts living under this gun was a 24x7 reality. Not fun times...
And then years later I'd go to see Kyiv Art Academy final year exhibition, and it was still socialistic realism, but now instead of workers and farmers they have saints. For some reason it became very religious... Or maybe I just fell on bad years.
The USSR was obviously similar in practice for most of its history, especially under Stalin, but it still pretended to maintain the trappings of a communist structure. And at least the USSR made it clear what the rules were: it was an unabashed command economy, with property owned by the state, and economic decisions flowing through the party leadership. The Putin/Trump version where there's a de jure market economy but de facto control by the ruling party is a different kind of corruption incentive - it's much harder to challenge what theoretically isn't happening.
I'd argue that it isn't possible to write thousands of pages in a single bill or budget proposal and have it actually be coherent.
Authoritarians do not stop until they are stopped by an external force.
The cost of stopping them only increases with every move they make to consolidate power (which of course is the intention).
> This is leading to what Germans call “vorauseilender Gehorsam,” or “preemptive obedience,” as one non-CDC scientist commented.
And why is this term German? Do, perhaps, the Germans have unique experience and insight in this regard?
> After the German elections of 1932, which permitted Adolf Hitler to form a government, or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed. [1]
It’s become fashionable to accuse people who raise the spectre of fascism and authoritarianism of crying wolf. We are being told not to believe the evidence of our own eyes, like when Elon Musk performs the Nazi salute in front of the far right dignitaries assembled for the inauguration and we’re supposed to believe this is because he’s on the spectrum or some other nonsense. If you don’t want to go down the road that anticipatory obedience leads to, then you have to resist. It is that simple.
1: https://lithub.com/resist-authoritarianism-by-refusing-to-ob...
The authors of this memo banning terms haven't realized this has already happened in part. Obstetrics avoids the use of gender with the term "parturient" instead of "mother." "Pregnant person" probably isn't showing up in many papers.
I've always joked that Trump was basically the Manchurian candidate.
"Winnie-the-Pooh"?
I was just looking for how much research is funded by federal government, and that number came up as somewhat unrelated — it was harder to come up with a total medical research cost number, so this was the best I could do in a couple of minutes.
A government agency trying to enforce censorship in scientific publications outside its sphere of influence... I have to admit, that was not the first thing I wondered about.
After the election many started looked to state's rights type issues to make change locally before Trump took office.
Changes like this could very well push research back out of the centralized government back to more of a free market and federated or decentralized approach. That would at least be a silver lining in my opinion, though to a potentially very dark cloud.
> Research usually doesn't end in something that's marketable
It usually does, even in academia. That's why they count citations. It's just that the thing that's marketed is either policy advocacy (marketed to governments) or the claims in and of themselves, marketed either to the general public in TED talk style advocacy or to other academics as work they can build on to get more grants. A lot of people don't recognize the existence of things like the profit motive, lobbying or marketing in government funded research, imagining that they don't exist, but they do. In some fields, it's common for lobbying to be like 50% or more of the word count.
There's a long tail of papers that research things that nearly nobody cares about, yet perhaps one day they might. These are the "we studied some obscure fish in the Amazon and found a cure for cancer" type stories that crop up from time to time. But such claims often don't quite work out, and the private sector is easily able to fund this sort of exploratory work too.
This is almost a secret, but __most innovation come from the small players__. Those small players benefit from open access and academic progress. It is a very fruitful cooperation.
But the tragedy is that in the US the meaning of "the free market" is being loudly distorted. What they actually mean is a cozy climate for oligarchs, protected by the mountains of tariffs and deregulation. In the US society, the idea of competition has deformed into "killing competition", and they clarify it now with "by all means possible". Those extremists HATE competition. Nobody arrived likes being disturbed and having to work to keep competitive. Rent extraction is way simpler.
Especially HN should think a little longer about what that all means for aspiring entrepreneurs.
The problem is a little bit more nuanced than that though. It is not that big companies do not make inventions. Often, these inventions do not survive politically in the behemoth. That is why some companies decide to create a spinoff, knowing that their own body would be trying to kill the growth of their offspring.
Nowadays it's been rebranded back to AI due to the switch to neural methods, but there's been funding for AI from the computer industry for as long as the field existed.
I'm pretty sure AI would exist as a field and be in a similar place to where it is now, even if governments had never funded it at all.
Also, the fact that a product fails post-acquisition is precisely what happens a lot in regular business too. They can be seen as a threat to other fiefdoms in the behemoth, or they lose their autonomy. Doesn't always mean the product or idea was flawed beyond repair.
You're also touching on the problem of research as an industry. Papers should be published regardless of economic value, and research should be done for the sake of curiosity. Sometimes outcomes are useful or functional, but that shouldn't be the only, or even primary, driver.
I know a guy measuring tree growth, with an eye to whether tree planting is effective post-fire. Much of the study is on federal lands. He has no idea whether the project will still exist come spring.
Nothing wrong with that, it happens pretty often, but it is interesting to see play out in real time.
Louisiana didn't have ant federal funding for roads for years because they were refusing to raise the drinking age from 18 to 21.
In general, it's amazing how reliably crypto-authoritarian points are prefixed with "I don't see how". It exploits our natural advantage to assume good faith and difficulty understanding, rather than a willful ignoring of coercion.
It is generally true, though, that one of the two parties is for decentralization at any given point in time.
How? That seems like going out of your way to label this as not as bad as it actually is.
This seemed key to me. The managerial/editorial layer is acting in a way that any manager would when there is unclear interpretation: risk-adversity.
It's much easier to do than undo, so you stop until things are cleared up.
However, it seems the organizational layer whose work is being affected is assuming this risk-adverse interpretation is the new policy coming from the top. No doubt, legacy media will take the same interpretation.
If I were to approach this rationally, I would probably want to see clarification before running with the Hitlerian comparisons.
Divide and conquer has always been the most effective strategy.
Dividing is much easier with portable propaganda devices, selling citizens' psychological profiles to anyone with cash.
As a side note, I'm not sure that he is _explicitely_ in contact with Russia, but since he got oRussian assistance, an implicit quit-pro-quo is obvious to me.
The fact Russia meddled in US elections is pretty clear cut by this point.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_...
This is spelled out by the Republican Comitee as well.