domain:alexepstein.substack.com
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10m ago
There is written record of the Secretary for Health demanding that the WPATH removes minimum age requirements from their Standards of Care so that the Biden administration can better pursue their goals related to trans issues. WPATH did comply, in violation of their own procedures of how the SOC is supposed to be determined.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15m ago
If we were talking about media broadly, I'd agree, but I think the broadest category that can be used fairly for the purposes of this conversation is "satirical publications". Is the any cathedral satire that matters at this point?
SteveKirk
19m ago
Washington State literally passed this fucking law last year, stop lying to our faces that it's not happening (and also it's good)
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
20m ago
Even the trans community has been somewhat bothered by the "pronouns in bio/email" stuff,
So howcome they did absolutely nothing about it for all these years? Why did they participate in dogpiles on anyone who did voice their concern (including the occasional trans person, funnily enough)?
benmmurphy
27m ago
The Babylon Bee was serving an underserved market. The Babylon Bee might individually be more relevant than the Onion but not so relevant when compared to all the Cathedral media. Of course that is an unfair comparison, but if you compare Cathedral vs anti-Cathedral media then Cathedral media in total is more relevant.
mrvanillasky
40m ago
This will fail eventually as you get votebanks that become crystalised. What benefits does the average heritage amerikaner get from having Indians or Chinese becoming a permanent resident?
Why would you not defect, why do you get called names the moment anyone brings up dual loyalty?
India itself became an unfixable hellhole because fo too many ethnicities, China tried to fix it by imposing things on everyone.
This is an incredibly naive idea. If this is so, then should Israel or Saudi not also import people by the millions? Most people migrating or getting refugee status are completely incapable of being productive money wise. Large sums of money still don't justify the permanent issues demographic changes cause.
WhiningCoil
57m ago
Every peer nation in the world has "done the science" and decided transitioning children leads to worse health outcomes. Except in the United States, where a 2 hour telehealth appointment gets you fast tracked, and schools staffed by hysterical activist will go behind parents backs.
I would rather parents have an iron clad right to exercise their own judgement with respect to their child's medical decisions, than let weird fads like electroshock, icepick lobotomies, methamphetamines or sterilization drugs get pushed on them because of "the science".
ABigGuy4U
59m ago
Yeah, I don’t know if it was a particular quirk of hers or just the writing style of the time. But the way she just summarizes entire conversations without putting any of the dialog feels weird.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
That was in no way a joke. He was already facing down a prosecution for not employing enough illegal immigrants for a job that has requirements which can only be met by legitimate citizens, his compensation payout being declared too high, etc. The lawfare was already happening, and I think there's a very good chance he would have been extradited abroad and prosecuted for misinformation/hate speech if Trump didn't win.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
The bigger issue is that the barrier to entry is so low publishing online now that theonion.com doesn't hold much value.
So why did the Babylon Bee manage to overtake them in terms of relevancy?
Silverdawn
It's a DOGE eat DOJ world.
1hr ago
You really just have to put your foot down and tell these people (the men, in this case) that they're not welcome. And when they inevitably respond with accusations that you're being sexist, transphobic, and exclusionary, you say: "yes I am sexist, yes I am transphobic, yes I am exclusionary, yes yes yes, it's all true; now please, the door is that way, if you don't mind."
On social media, you get banned at this point. If the moderators controlling the forum in question don't bend the knee, they get removed.
IRL, these conversations don't really happen. Presumably there are a lot of legal things happening behind the curtains but you only find out when you're already being sued.
And frankly, 'trans' advocates were never interested in having a real conversation in the first place. They only act like they want to talk because they think that will get them the most influence. They don't actually believe there's anything to discuss, they already know they're right.
anti_dan
1hr ago
I think the suspect counties still generated about the same number they always do. Slightly less probably than 2020 because that was the easiest its ever been, but sometimes 100k doesn't cut it. See, e.g. the 1980 and 1984 IL presidential elections.
jkf
1hr ago
Yes, and those options are equally available to good and bad people alike -- indeed I suspect that Bad People are usually a little better at them.
DradisPing
1hr ago
I wonder if its decline is related to it becoming just another mouthpiece for the democrat agenda, or if I'm totally off track.
The bigger issue is that the barrier to entry is so low publishing online now that theonion.com doesn't hold much value.
The pay for writers isn't that great either afaik.
So a talented funny person is better off doing their own thing. YouTube used to be easy to monetize. I think it's more streaming and podcasts now.
HalloweenSnarry
1hr ago
To add onto the other replies, pronouns on the modern Internet contain much more information than the literal direct conveyance of gender identification. It's a potent nugget of information if you're willing to read between the lines...or letters, in this case.
cartman
1hr ago
Right, but these 'malicious actors' could be anyone, even the parents themselves. I don't think parents should have a special right to make these decisions for their children if their interests are not aligned with their child's. I can't remember the exact details, but there was a news story a year or two ago about a couple whose child died because they refused to get a basic medical treatment for religious reasons.
In such a case, do you think the parents have the moral right to refuse treatment for the child? (I believe in the case I'm thinking of the child was a newborn, so the question of consent was obvious).
If you answer negatively to the above (as I do) then we switch from having a discussion about what is absolutely allowed or not allowed to one in which we must judge the pros and cons of taking away agency from parents depending on what the issue is.
I largely agree with you that children can be convinced of anything depending on the right context, but here is my main contention with your points: The key difference between a groomer targeting a child and a doctor performing a surgery is their interests; the latter is doing so based on what they believe to be in the best interests of the child based on medical/scientific literature, the former is doing so for personal reasons.
Malicious actors can convince children of things, but that does not mean any expert telling any child about a solution to their medical issues is grooming them. You might want a parent to sign off on antibiotics, but I hardly believe that if a doctor came up to a severely sick child and recommended they start antibiotics, you would label them as a groomer.
jake
1hr ago
The justification for this ruling was that unstable people listened to Jones, right? So Jones is culpable. I don't even agree with prosecution under "incitement of imminent lawless action," it goes against our entire philosophy of law. If a person who would not otherwise commit a crime, would do so if told by the right person, they can't be held accountable. If for no other reason than the continued function of civilization, we are required to hold all adults as solely responsible for their actions.
To maintain civilization we must also be free to challenge all "established" narratives, at any time, for any reason. The United States owes its continued existence to its foundational documents assuming the worst. 1A assumes that unchecked, the government will lie, so people must have legal protection for calling out those lies. 2A even more so, which accounts for the possibility and need for violent revolution. i.e.; "1, so you can shed light on their tyranny, 2, so you can kill them if all else fails." It assumes bad actors will appear and so enshrines the ability to fight them, while holding the spirit of the whole, the whole of the people in good faith in vesting the power to fight them with the people.
It's also why, and you can call it wasted rebelliousness, I consider this as absolute moral mandate to call Sandy Hook a hoax. The government conspired to destroy a man for questioning it, downthread there's debate about "He would have had to pay less if he'd done it/well actually he might be sued for more if he'd done it," yeah but not much more, and that's the point. His punishment for questioning appears to be in the realm of the monetary punishment for having committed it. It's a hoax. The system is a hoax, that it's unquestionable is a hoax, everything about it could be true, and it's still a hoax.
Gun control is never happening. So the masses laugh as in this ruling the families make the short lives and most violent deaths of their children part of nothing greater than a soon-forgotten joke. It's disgusting.
SlowBoy
1hr ago
Your question is a non-sequitur: why do I have to prove anything more? There is clear irregularity in 2020, either give an innocuous explanation for the counting stopped over a water pipe, or concede.
There could be all sorts of trivial reasons why Harris would grow from Biden:
- They learned how to cheat better
- Population Growth
- Demographic Change
- Georgia flipping blue in 2020 excited more blue voters to vote in 2024
Comparing two different numbers from two different moments in time without any context is, pardon, complete apples to oranges.
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
1hr ago
Black Americans are like 30% at least bisexual imo and Latinos are just hiding it through machismo.
Pete would be down low enough for them
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2hr ago
At least some of the post-mortem analyses and interviews with swing voters I've seen make the case that Trump did this on trans issues specifically - there's a reason "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you" was statistically and anecdotally their most effective advertisement.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2hr ago
If you wanted to astroturf, going for a neutral to semi hostile media network might convince a Trump voter or two.
This is straightforwardly true, but the problem is the dem candidates. Kamala Harris had no real policies or positions, and could only really exist in a controlled and managed media environment that was willing to give her campaign editorial control over the finished product. She had so much negative baggage that she just wouldn't be able to answer without offending some part of her coalition, and she was a charisma void that meant she couldn't find ways around that. If she was forced to expose her personality and thinking for a solid three hours with no assistance, she would have tanked the campaign harder than she actually did.
When your candidate is so unappealing that they cause voters to peel off whenever they talk in an uncontrolled environment (Kamala even had trouble in extremely friendly environments too), you can only make appearances on friendly media, in friendly spaces. The correct answer is to run a real candidate who is speaking to people's issues and has an actual competent understanding of the world and social context - but when you have to advocate for policies which actively harm your constituents and provide a return on investment for all the lobbyists and donors who financed your campaign, you can't run a genuine candidate, so you're stuck with the kinds of disingenuous empty suits that ran the republican party before Trump showed up and still run the democrat party.
faceh
2hr ago
I'm not certain if you're arguing that she was a critical part of creating the wealth and therefore deserves a large cut (i.e. he wouldn't have succeeded if he wasn't married to her) or if you're just saying that the law states she gets a chunk as long as they were married long enough.
The position "a woman can be married to you a long time and then leave and take a huge chunk of your wealth with her" isn't very encouraging, on its own.
urquan
2hr ago
meritocracy
Oh god, please don't bring up this word with OP, we're about to get a lecture about how meritocracy necessarily means open borders to high-talent immigrants, even if it means economic ruin for existing residents...
TIRM
2hr ago
schools are forcing uninterested, non-consenting children into transition
I certainly never claimed that, so I won't be championing it. You may not take my statements, make an exaggerated looney version of them and then foist that wild view onto me.
Whether these are valid medical treatments for minors or horrific butchery that we will look back on like elective lobotomies for strange children is the matter under dispute.
The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya and rereading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for the first time. I was too young to pick up on it the first time, but the pre-incident life experiences of the latter’s protagonist is described from the start in upper middle class terms. It feels like she’d easily become fast friends with Rudy Huxtable from the Cosby Show.
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