Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, December 5, 2022
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105 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Tis the holiday season and time to confess that we watch and enjoy a lot of those cheesy Hallmark style Christmas movies. You know, the ones that employ a lot of Canadian actors during the year because that is where they are made. They are slight, don’t require a lot of attention or brainpower, and are given to warm, sloppy sentimentality.’
Plots typically go like this: Single man or women comes home to visit, some slight drama occurs (financial, sibling rivalry, or some other easily resolved issue), another single man or woman comes on the scene, romance occurs (after drama, of course), and then, happy resolution.
It is amazing how many single dads there are, ready to be snatched up. All without commenting how many dead mothers there are.
It’s a shameful secret, I know, but we watch a lot of these movies.
@Scott: My intensely cynical daughter, whose normal tastes in movies run to depressing German language art films, is completely addicted to them.
There is an article about the state of the crypto “industry” in the Times and it got me thinking about the nature of certain scams/fads and the type of people who are drawn to them. Crypto is the perfect representation of one that attracts a certain type of person. On the surface it appears understandable and simple, but is actually incredibly difficult to truly comprehend, especially once you bring in human behaviors. It attracts a certain kind of person who thinks they are smarter than most people. They think they mostly understand it, but more importantly, there are people they admire who seem to definitely understand it and are energetically enthusiastic. The fad/scam has some appeal on its own, but it’s really these smart and energetic enthusiasts who attract the hapless victims. They yearn to be like these enthusiasts, to be part of their world, and leave the plodding masses behind.
@MarkedMan: “I suspect that under that cynical shell, you are at heart a sentimentalist.” — Captain Renault, Casablanca
@Scott:
My partner listens to a pretty funny podcast about those. I think it’s called “Christmas Town”. I am not 100% sure that’s the name though. I am not a podcast person.
@MarkedMan:
Crypto currency is the Beanie Babies of our generation … change my mind.
Also:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw
3 full days until my surgery. 2 days of panicked work and one day of “bowel prep”. Because I live in the dumbest country on the planet, in the darkest timeline, there is a magnesium citrate shortage to make that even more unpleasant.
Right now my last hurdle is to pass a Covid test this morning. I think I’m more freaked about that than the actual surgery.
The other bad part of this is I’ve been off my HRT meds for almost 2 weeks now. I haaaaaaate this. I feel angrier and dumber. I can barely drive because I turn into a seething rage monster. This feels awful and like the before times. Stupid lack of actual science.
@Rick DeMent:
Okay, I’ll take a shot. When you bought a Beanie Baby, you got an actual Beanie Baby. When you buy crypto, 99% of which is done via some sketchy exchange, you have nothing tangible. Only the word of the exchange operators that you own anything at all.
Here’s my example, admittedly from a couple of generations previous: Florida real estate “developments”. Prove me wrong.
@Beth:
Maybe not the dumbest.
http://www.thebulwark.com/russia-to-gays-shut-up-and-disappear/
@Rick DeMent: @MarkedMan: I think the main point of the Beanie Baby analogy (which I’ve thought of before) is that they’re both based on the Tinkerbell principle: something has value as long as people believe it has value. And in both cases, this turns out to be ephemeral.
@MarkedMan:
Hey! Sometimes you can use that crypto to buy real drugs. Try doing that with a beanie baby.
@Beth:
Considering that laundry detergent is a valid currency in some drug exchanges, I’m betting a Beaning Baby would also work.
@Rick DeMent:
The dragon beanie baby I got for $10 because it was cute and I like dragons actually exists and us still sitting on my shelf
@Beth:
Worst part is there’s no evidence being on HRT increases risk of bad surgical outcomes (if there were, they’d have to put cis women on testosterone before surgery), it just another way fir the Healthcare industry to make things harder for trans patients =(
I know we have some commenters here that read “Reason” and other Libertarian media and I’m curious as to how they are handling the whole crypto thing. Given that Libertarians were a big part of the crypto craze from almost the very onset, I assume various essayists in Reason over the past decade discussed it at length and the general tenor was positive, probably wildly positive. How did that evolve? Are they still all in, and view this crash as just an opportunity to buy low? If so, are they in any way grappling with all the fraud that’s been revealed? And, if they are not still all in, is there any self examination at all, any exploration of why they got bamboozled? I would be astounded if there was, but it would definitely change my perspective on at least those Libertarians.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/us/politics/gay-rights-supreme-court-first-amendment.html
TLDR: This case is not about religious freedom, it’s about using the 1st amendment to elevate the Christian religion above all others and enshrine it, at the very least, in precedent if not in law.
Here we go again. So here is my beef about these cases. First of all do you notice it always seems to be gay weddings that have these people feeling as if their mortal soul is impearled. I would venter a guess there will be no testimony about whether baking a cake or designing a web site is actually a sin that displeases God since homosexuality is hardly mentioned in the bible and when it does it’s in the old testament which sanctions all kinds of things most mainline faiths don’t consider a sin (slavery, selling your daughter, prohibitions on tattoos, dietary and clothing prescriptions). There will be no discussion in the case questioning whether or not doing business with a person who lives a lifestyle that is deemed non-Christion is actually a sin in the eyes of their congregation, god or whatever.
The status of homosexuals, as far as the New Testament goes, it’s pretty clear by the example of Jesus, that hanging out and generally associating with sinners was the son of Gods jam. There is nothing in the New Testament that remotely says anything like: thou shall not provide services for hire to sinners (if it did Christians would not be able to be in business because all have sinned and there would be no qualified customers to sell to). Further more, the web designer is a sinner themselves and, according to scripture, has no standing to hold themselves above other sinners.
But here is the the big fat counter example that blows this nonsense virtue signaling out of the water. The prohibition against divorce is all over the New Testament like a rash. Here is only one example:
Not one time have I ever heard of any of these people refusing to provide services to divorced couples getting re-married. Not once has anyone even brought it up. It should be easy to find an example of this web person “participating in adultery” by making a website for a guy marrying a divorced woman. At best this person is picking and choosing sins arbitrarily or just according to personal feelings of ickyness. The reason is clear, divorced people are a much bigger part of the wedding industry then gay people so it’s not really in anyone’s interest to discriminate against them.
My point is no one is even questioning the sincerity or even the logical consistency of of the argument. They are “Christian”, and their sincerity is not questioned even one little bit. But if there were someone trying to make a religious freedom case regarding some other syncretic religion or just any religion other the Christianity they would get the 3rd degree about whether or not the plaintiff was actually sincere.
Here is one example
To many on the right, religious freedom begins and ends with Christianity. The do not seek relief from an oppressive law, they seek to elevate Christianity above all others and enshrine it in , at the very least, precedent if not law.
@MarkedMan: I’ve often wondered about the Venn diagram of crypto enthusiasts and gold bugs. Always seems to be a similar mindset.
Last year I had the first sip of eggnog I’ve ever actually enjoyed–Alton Brown’s recipe, using a variety of sugars to make it tastier (light and dark muscavado, turbinado, etc). After already downing a quart of it over the last two weeks I decided to branch out.
This tequila-and-sherry nog is apparently amazing , despite sounding horrid to me. Will report back in a few days.
https://www.thehumblegarnish.com/recipes/jeffrey-morgenthalers-sherry-tequila-egg-nog/
@Rick DeMent:
The “sincerely held religious beliefs” scam really sets me off. There is no bottom to that. No court is going to get into the adjudication of what is, or is not, a sincerely held religious belief. If allowed to continue to be insinuated into American law, it will cause endless chaos.
We are currently have the annual defense appropriation held up because far right culture warriors are trying use religion (vaccines, especially the COVID vaccine, are a violation of my religious rights) to excuse the disobeying of legal orders and to undermine the good order and discipline of our armed forces. It cannot stand.
@MarkedMan:
OK so “worse then Beanie Babies” … I’ll accept that answer 🙂
We try to make some medieval food and drink for our church’s Christmas revels. This year we made hippocras, a mulled wine with lots of unusual spices like spikenard and grains of paradise. Went over well but definitely very different. We also made wassail and it came out better than usual which may have been luck but I think it is because I used a cinnamon liqueur instead of our usual brandy or rum. Also used fresh ginger instead of powdered this time.
Steve
@Stormy Dragon:
For once I don’t think it’s actually the medical industry trying to make things hard on Trans people. I mean, we get enough, thanks. I think this is more about lazy misogyny and a lack of drive to do basic science if it’s hard and unglamorous. It’s much easier to say, “oh, yeah, we found out in the 60’s that estrogen supplements cause blood clots” and be done than to think, oh, wait, that was the 60’s and it’s 2022 and that was horse Estrogen and now we use bio-identical estrogen. The only thing more astounding about the lack of medical knowledge about womens bodies is the enormous shrug you get when you ask why that’s the case.
@steve:
I hope you serve “roste pekok,” “spynoches yfried,” and “frytour blaunched.”
@Beth:
Beth, if I forget to say it later, good luck and wishes for a speedy recovery!
@Beth: I don’t think laziness enters into it. When I designed medical devices I was part of no small amount of clinical tests, but no clinical trials. Device companies try very hard to stay away from anything to do with clinical trials which can add years to release. And even if you can justify not doing a trial, if it is just to add an indication to an existing surgical device it is astoundingly expensive and one or two surgeons who muck up the protocol by taking shortcuts can throw the whole trial into question, which endangers your original indication as well as the new one. Long story short, it is unlikely that a surgical instrument company would want to sponsor studies or trials for procedures that a) are probably adequately performed by existing instruments, and b) only amount to a few thousand a year. The drug companies have no benefit at all that would justify them doing their part of the research.
That leaves individual surgeons and other clinicians acting on their own. It will probably happen eventually, but slowly. After all there are very, very strong motivations in medicine not to change protocols. The thinking goes something like this. “All the well controlled and well documented surgeries up to now had the patient pat their heads and rub their tummies three times just before anesthesia. Can’t think of a reason why that means anything but that’s the protocol we have and it has good outcomes. Does the benefit of eliminating it so outweigh the cost that it is worth conducting the experiments on actual human beings?”
@MarkedMan:
Setting aside the unnecessary psychological suffering of forcing trans patients to go off HRT to access medical care, there are health risks associated with going off HRT:
Risk of cardiac and stroke death increases after discontinuing hormone therapy
So in the name of “safety”, they’re actually endangering their patients.
@Beth: Good luck, I hope you have lots of support lined up after surgery. Like, people who can handle hiccups in recovery.
I say this as someone who just had a minor procedure done, and ended up not resting properly due to unforeseen issues (cat needed emergency surgery the very next day, then my fridge died randomly).
Just the old lesson: expect the unexpected. I wish you the best!
@MarkedMan:
I get what your saying, and I definitely think that’s one side of the ledger. Why spend expensive money and time learning something when we “know” what works. Fair enough.
The other side of that ledger though is a mix of misogyny, Homo/Transphobia, and intellectually laziness that posits that White Cis Men are actually human and worth knowing about and everyone else is an imperfect copy not worth spending time on. That’s how you get all these drugs that scientists don’t actually know if they work on women or not. Or that Black Women are somehow machines that don’t feel any pain whatsoever.
Personally, I hate it when Republicans and other Right-Wing Nut Jobs talk about how Trans healthcare is “experimental”. They are usually talking about surgeries which are mostly not experimental at all. They don’t get at any of the things that are experimental and that almost all Trans people would love to know the answer to. Like, why do hormones effect us like this. Why do some us get menstrual cramps but others don’t? Is there a better way to start HRT than, here’s a fistful of pills, get a blood test, cross your fingers and light some sage we’ll see what happens.
@Franklin:
Thanks. I think I do better with the unexpected than the expected. My partner and I have had a running argument about that part of this for a while now. She’s basically planning on strapping me to the couch for the first couple weeks after I get out of the hospital. I’ve been booking work cause my attorney brain is like a shark and if it stops moving it freaks out and eats swimmers.
Trying to imagine myself shutting down for more than a day or two is rough.
@Stormy Dragon:
It’s a free country, and you are free to think the worst of surgeons. Lord knows they are often a prickly egotistical bunch with poor bedside manner. But I was pointing out that there are other reasons to be reluctant to change protocols than sheer malignancy. And while the paper you referenced seems to be solid, with an n = 400,000, it concerns post menopausal women with a history of cardiac events and who had completely stopped HRT for at least a year. I can’t imagine the surgeon who would take that in front of a clinical review board and say, “Look at all these old Swedish women with bad hearts! Can I modify accepted protocols based on this? And by the way, I am fully aware that the first thing malpractice lawyers look for is deviations from standard of care, and will use it to paint us as reckless cowboys regardless of whether the deviations have nothing to do with the poor outcome.”
@MarkedMan:
One example of what I’m getting at is:
https://www.insider.com/surgeon-counts-human-clitoris-nerve-fibers-for-first-time-ever-2022-11
So, some maniac in the 70s went digging around some cow genitals, came up with a number, said, “eh, Women are more like cows than humans, close enough.” and ever since then that number was cited as gospel.
@MarkedMan:
And this is part of why I don’t chalk it up to merely medical conservatism: every time someone brings up a systemic problem, the response is to center how the people in this systems feel about themselves and suggest any criticism of the status quo is an attack on doctors, as though how surgeons feel about themselves is the real issue instead of centering the well being of the patients.
@Scott:
I don’t have any doubt that there’s a big overlap between the two. But if you think about it, aren’t they based on opposite ideas? Goldbuggery clutches onto the classical view of money as tied to an actual physical substance whose value derives from its intrinsic properties and rarity. Crypto, on the other hand, seems to embrace a quasi-futurist philosophy where the whole world is gradually going virtual.
To people who buy into these scams, none of this matters. All they see is that there’s a secret stash of wealth the normies don’t want you to know about that will protect you from the coming economic apocalypse. It’s such an appealing story, it gets you to overlook the plot holes.
Re: cryptocurrency.
About eight years ago I developed an interest in cryptocurrency. Of course, I wasn’t so interested that I wanted to spend actual money on it. So I found a crypto that had no value and was kind of a joke and named after a cute Shiba Inu dog: Dogecoin. At the time, Microsoft was offering a free month on their new Azure cloud computing platform, so I spun up a bunch of free instances, installed the Dogecoin “mining” application on them, and let it run. At the end of the month I had around 20,000 Dogecoin.
Then Elmo…er, Elon got involved and started what I am now convinced was a pump-and-dump of Dogecoin and instead of being worth 0.0001 of a dollar it gained actual value (until he tanked it). When I sold mine I made around $5K, which is pretty good considering my “investment” was $0.
But when I was “in,” I saw the absolute craziness some of the Dogecoin devotees exhibited. They “invested” thousands and thousands of actual dollars into it and have all lost their asses. It’s sad.
@Beth:
First, I agree, and as a boring old white guy I know this benefits me. The reason that I am defensive about it anyway is because I have been part of at least a couple of clinical studies that ended up shortchanging the populations you mention. Two different devices, but in both cases our protocols were originally written to include people of color and women and the elderly, all of which would certainly be users of these two devices. Now, a reputable medical device company doesn’t actually recruit for or run its own tests. They are done by an outside company with experience in recruiting, running and results reporting, in conjunction with a reputable hospital. We sent our protocols off to them and they started recruiting, and we immediately got a bunch of young white fit men and also a decent amount of young white fit women. I mean, like, in their twenties. OK, never mind, the other groups may take longer but their are other places to look. A month went by, then two. A few, much too few, people in the right categories. Okay, let’s change where they were recruiting and take a more expensive hands on approach. Another month. Ok let’s offer more money to the participants. Another month and another. Five or six months in we still hadn’t started the study and project money was being burned at flamethrower rates, and schedules were starting to get screwed up. So we went back to our review board and pleaded for a reduction in counts of people in those categories. We ended up a bit better than all the previous studies but nothing to brag about.
I don’t know enough about medical study recruitment to understand why it is so hard. But it was very hard and these are for devices that simply monitor vital statistics. Not all that much different than the Fitbits and the smart watches and all kinds of stuff you can buy over the counter. But participating in a clinical study means a clinician sits across from you, looks you in the eye and explains everything that can possibly go wrong, and makes sure you understand. Then you have to have the most thorough physical of your life. Then you have to sign a million complicated forms. It’s not surprising that the 24 year old grad student with an “I’m gonna live forever!” attitude and looking for beer money and is more willing to sign up than a 57 year old black woman working two jobs and skeptical of the medical establishment in general. But if it’s that hard for a device that simply monitors, what the heck is it like for a device that cuts or cauterizes your innards?
@Kylopod: Well put. And I can think of parallels in the alternative medicine crowd or the supplements enthusiasts. The ability for people to believe two conflicting things at the same time is limitless. I first noticed this growing up on the south side of Chicago in the 60’s and 70’s, which was seeing a large influx of Mexican immigrants at the time. It was not unusual to hear people complain about how lazy and shiftless they were in one breath and in the next go on about how they were taking all the jobs.
@Stormy Dragon: Yep. No point in trying to understand why we get the outcomes we do. The problem is simply rotten people. No point I trying to fix anything.
@MarkedMan:
You get the outcomes you do because faced with a risk of an out dated procedure potentially killing trans women, your primary concern is throwing yourself a pity-party because people aren’t groveling enough for your liking.
The “well, we’d like to do the right thing, but it’s just so hard and meeting our marketing deadlines is more important than the lives of trans people so they’ll just have to suffer through the half-century old procedure, and please try to suffer more quietly so we don’t feel bad about the system’s indifference” isn’t the benevolent response you seem to think it is.
@Beth: I have been absolutely astounded more than once at the lack of basic research. Why is the “correct” body temperature 98.6? Because the US army measured hundreds of thousands of new recruits during WWI and averaged the results. Since then the average has been going steadily down. Why haven’t they done a more sophisticated study in over a hundred years? Well, who is “they”? As far as I know no medical association considers themselves the keeper of the average body temperature. Oh, it will eventually and slowly be updated, but we just don’t have the mechanisms in place to force it.
As for the number of nerves in the clitoris, you have to start with someone interested in studying it. Institutional bias could have come into play if and when the person doing the research asked for funding and access to cadavers (very precious and tightly controlled). But it’s easy to go down to an old fashioned butcher shop or slaughter house and ask for the odder bits. Heck, I had a colleague who worked on surgical staplers who did exactly that, collecting a small cooler full of pig intestines or cow stomach on his way into work, at least until he got his hands slapped because he was using animal tissue without going before our internal ethics board and reviewing the need. Didn’t matter that they were going to be just as dead and cut up whether he was there or not. Protocols are protocols. Exceptions can be made but it’s not up to the experimenter to make those exceptions.
Or, yeah, maybe medical device people are just assholes. 😉
@Stormy Dragon:
What is the matter with you? @MarkedMan just took the time to write a long, detailed but revealing explanation of one reality, and your response is to attack him?
@Stormy Dragon: you obviously feel strongly about this. You didn’t seem to hear me say that there are major medical companies trying to do something about this and are finding it difficult. Rather than simply insult everyone involved, why don’t you try to get in there and help them? I don’t know what you do for a living or what your training is in but if you could apply that somehow to solving these problems it would benefit everyone. I’m not being sarcastic here. You can’t do this alone, but there are many people trying to figure out how to improve this and they could use all the help they can get. Outcomes change with motivated people working their way through problems one by one.
@Beth:
It goes way farther than that.
Remember the early advice about COVID being transmitted via surfaces? Then the arguments on whether it was airborne in droplets or aerosol?
All that comes from some old test about measles, which is an airborne aerosol,which just happened to vahe tested up to a certain size filter. The assumption was that larger particles or droplets wouldn’t be airborne.. But this had not been tested.
So we wasted weeks hand washing and hunting down hand sanitizer*, when we could have moved to masks right away.
Humans are really that effed up.
*This does help, as there is some transmission via surfaces. But we focused on the lesser means of contagion and missed the larger one.
@Michael Reynolds:
Because I’m not attacking him, I complained about an aspect of the system he works in, and he chose to personalize it into an attack on him. And it’s ironically a perfect example of one of the reasons why systems are so hard to change: because when the people in it respond to a problem, they are more focused on absolving themselves of blame than they are on actually addressing the issue.
His long, detailed explanation wasn’t actually an explanation of why the system is the way it is, it was a long, detailed explanation of why nothing can be done and so anyone unhappy is just being unreasonable.
Oh irony…
Switzerland mulls electric car ban during energy emergencies
@Kathy:
This is crucial. There is a real scandal in the way we responded to COVID because of this but I rarely see anyone mention it. Because of an error made decades ago in a virology paper (text book?) the entire community believed that aerosolization (the size at which particles will remain suspended in the air indefinitely because wind currents and Brownian motion overcome gravitational affects) occurred when the particles were less than 10 nanometers. They were off by a factor of 100 or 1000. Because the COVID virus is 100 nm virologists thought it would essentially drop down immediately. But people who studied aerosols have known for 70+ years that something 100nm would never hit the ground except by chance.
What we still don’t know is how much of the virus comes out of a person as individual viruses, as opposed to riding on a fleck of mucous, which will drop down almost immediately. And which, BTW, will also be stopped by a cloth mask, whereas an individual virus just laughs at a cloth mask.
@Stormy Dragon:
@Stormy Dragon:
@MarkedMan:
I think this:
and
are closely related. To tie in Stormy’s point a bit, when the people that control access and funding are Straight Old White Men, especially when a lot of that group 1. only thinks their problems matter (so, so, so many dick pills), and 2. believes WILD things about other groups (Black women can’t feel pain, women in general are not human*) that intrinsically shapes the kind of basic science that gets done. On top of that there is a high level of distrust by certain groups due to wildly unethical experiments run on them cause Old Straight White Men didn’t think other people are worthy.
Another small piece I’ve noticed is that a lot of studies seem to be very constrained. I started getting fed ads for research studies involving depression and psychedelics. Those are two things I’m interested in and would have signed up for, but I was out of the age range. Then I looked at other ones and was bounced out cause i’m not a cis woman with both fallopian tubes. I’m in a place where I’m generally able and willing to be experimented on, but no one wants me. Not really, but that sounds funny.
The last thing is that basic research is frequently dumb and expensive. Like the droplets thing Kathy mentioned. Oh, we know this one thing and it’s close enough. Well, no, its not close at all at that scale. Or the difference between cow genitals or a human clitoris. Someone has to do the dumb expensive things in order to figure out other cooler things. Frequently people doing the dumb things get made fun of instead of funded.
I meant to add at the bottom:
* the number of men who appear to believe or explicitly espouse the belief that women are not human blows my mind. Like, how do you get from A to B on that one.
@Rick DeMent: “Your religion is not my burden.”
@Kylopod: That’s what I always thought. If two measures of assets that have diametrically opposite qualities are favored by a certain population, then it is not those qualities that are desirable but something else entirely different. It never made sense.
@Beth: Good luck.
@Beth:
Do you know if those studies were ultimately funded by private companies or was it individual researchers? Because companies pursue products that will make them the most money. That’s the beginning and end of it. Anything that doesn’t have a chance of generating big money isn’t going to get funded. And yes, you fall into a category where there are too few people to generate much revenue. Revenue pays all those salaries. So, sure, we get a lot of dick pills. But you know what we get more of than anything else? Statins. Or basically drugs for things that a) affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, b) is already being treated so there is a known market and distribution channel, and c) has a very modest improvement in a single parameter, such as less nausea for some patients, or a better nights sleep, which can translate into billions of dollars of sales. Railing against big Pharma for not working on things that affect you is like railing against Arby’s because they aren’t tackling homelessness.
And this applies to anything that can’t generate such money. I’m an old straight white guy, but that doesn’t mean there is any work being done by Pharma on the genetic malady I have that would have painfully killed me by now if it hadn’t been diagnosed relatively young and for which exists a fairly simple and effective treatment (hemochromatosis, blood letting).
Any money for research that doesn’t fall into the big-Pharma category comes from either the government or special interest groups such as the American Cancer Society or the MS Foundation. While those latter groups are big enough to have researchers on staff, most of their funding and all of the government and small foundation money goes to researchers who file grant applications, and those are about things those researchers are specifically interested in.
It is good and right to demand that big Pharma, hospitals and professional organizations take into account women and minorities and children. Continuous pressure is the only way to move the needle. But how effective is it to demand research, much less development for new things that don’t fall under big Pharma or the big foundations? When we say “They must research this”, who is the “they”? Some Iowa State post-grad working away in a lab, scraping by on a meager salary? That post-grad has thousands upon thousands of disease states and conditions to choose from. Okay, I’m giving way too much “choice” to the post-grad but even with the effect of all the committees and professors and funding agencies it boils down to the same thing: someone or, more realistically, many someones have to pick the thing that interests you and disregard all the rest.
The last time I looked into it, there was nothing going on to try to reverse my condition and very little research into it at all. That may change. Years ago it was “known” that it only affected older men, mostly of Irish descent. Then they added in other white men. Then post menopausal women (remember, blood letting is an effective treatment). When my sister was diagnosed thirty years ago the senior clinician laughed at the junior clinician for ordering the tests, telling him only one person in a million had it. We know now that the prevalence could be as high as 1 in 300 and that women are just as likely to have it as men, although it is very unusual for a woman to be symptomatic before menopause. My point is all that makes it more likely that some budding researcher will have it themselves or have a family member that has it, and it piques their interest. If enough basic research gets done there may turn out to be something really unique about it, which would generate more interest. That’s the way research gets going. There is no “they” to tell them “they” have to do what you want them to.
In a way this is good news. Trans issues are big right now, getting lots of media attention. That increases the likelihood it will pique the interest of some budding researchers somewhere. And sure, in a year or two there won’t be as much attention paid because everything is cyclical, but researchers tend to work on the same thing for their whole career, so anyone who gets started may well be in for the next few decades at least.
@Beth:
This is too true. There used to be a Senator (William Proxmire?) who made a big deal about handing out his “Golden Fleece” award for government money “wasted” on “goofy research”. Except that even as a kid I could usually see why the research could be important. If someone was, say, researching pheromones that sexually attracted mosquitos he would have a big laugh about eggheads worrying about the love life of picnic pests on the government dime. But research along that lines can lead to more effective mosquito eradication or control.
@Scott:
There are still specific right-wing narratives behind both these ventures: goldbuggery is rooted in the reactionary mindset (the idea that if we did things a certain way for millennia–or so the narrative claims–there must be something wrong if we suddenly started doing things differently in the modern age), whereas crypto appeals to libertarians on the notion of sidestepping government regulations or even operating independently of government altogether. And perhaps part of the contradiction arises due to the modern fusion that has taken place between reactionary conservatism and antigovernment libertarianism–two ideologies that have not always been interlinked historically.
@MarkedMan:
I get you about the private funding part. Go for the biggest market available, makes sense.
The research studies that I’ve been getting ads for recently have mostly been about depression and PTSD and have come from various parts of University of Illinois. That’s probably why they are studying psychedelics or at least its probably slightly slightly easier or a large university to be able to jump through the regulatory hoops to get at that. On that one, there’s tons of people with both depression and PTSD and any thing that anyone could come up with medication wise that’s better than what we got would be very profitable. Lol, unless actual LSD and then that stuffs so cheap Pfizer would be pissed.
I also don’t think my problem is so much with the individual choices of researchers or funders. My problems are the systemic nature of things that elevates straight white men above everyone else, usually to everyone’s detriment and the fact that a lot of basic science isn’t done because it’s either not “sexy” or because it was “done” in the past (cow genitals, aerosols) so we don’t need to do it again. The last one is especially lazy.
Also, for what its worth, I think the government should be paying for a lot of the basic stupid science that even if it goes nowhere itself, can lead to better outcomes or just more information in other ways. Large scale knowing stuff to know stuff is valuable.
Mostly things happen or don’t happen for ‘reasons.’ Sometimes those reasons may be malicious, but more often not.
An example from my world. Until quite recently there were very few books published for kids that featured Black main characters, or story lines specific to that demo. The immediate assumption, once the issue came to the fore, was racist old White men who own publishing. Or else racist editors on nearly all-white staffs.
I proposed a different reason: poor pay for editors. Publishing hires young women (yes, mostly women) from good colleges, often Seven Sisters schools, then pays them far too little to allow them to live and work in NYC while paying off student debt. So, many young editors have to be subsidized by their families. What kind of family has sufficient excess wealth to subsidize a non-profitable child? White families, as a rule. The color gap in income is nothing next to the color gap in family wealth.
Shitty wages all but guaranteed that the editor class would be White. Editors of any background will tend to prefer books that speak to their personal backgrounds. So, White editors acquired White books.
HarperCollins editorial and other departments are currently on strike for decent wages. One of the points the strikers now (finally) make is my point: raising wages would allow for more minority recruitment.
So, not individual racism (though there’s certainly some of that) but the effects of racism past, so to speak, structural racism. In this case an easily-solved problem since HarperCollins is doing quite well and can afford the raises.
@CSK: The “pekok” will be a project for next year, I think. The place (only one so far as I could tell) that sold dressed out peafowl charged $299.99 for a 4-7 pound bird. (An additional $25 for a bird certified as Halal.) Most of the farms I found were selling birds either as pets or breeding stock. No indication of when you’ll find peafowl in your local Stop and Shop, Market Basket, or Hannafords*, though.
*Kroger’s for those of us who live in the United States (and based on my last visit to Kroger’s website, no matter what sign the store has, if it’s a supermarket, it’s probably owned by Kroger.)
@OzarkHillbilly:
Sadly we seem to have a SCOTUS that disagrees.
@CSK: Spynoches yfried brings up a culinary question for the cohort: When you use fresh spynoches, what do you do with the sprout that is attached to the root stem in the center of the bunch? Where I live, the soil spynoches are grown in is very sandy, so I just cut the leaves up the stem an inch or so and throw the base away.* How say you all?
*Well, I used to just cut the stem a little high. As a warfarin patient, I only eat spinach either by accident or when I take acetaminophen for more than a dose or two. And even then, only a small amount one time. My doctor tells me that I can, theoretically anyway, eat spinach if I’m willing to eat it every day, but I don’t like it that much. 😉
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Here’s the recipe for “roste pekok.” It’s probably the most bloodthirsty recipe I’ve ever read:
1. Take a pekok
2. Breke his necke
3. Kutte his throte
4. And fle him
5. The skyn and the ffethurs hole togiders
6. Drawe him as an hen…
Shall I go on?
@Sleeping Dog: Bwahahahahahahahahaha! I love it!
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
You “perboile” the “spynoches,” then press out the water, “hew” them in two, and then “frye” them in “oyl.”
@MarkedMan:
You’re right, let me be more clear: I’m not attacking your expertise or professionalism as a doctor because I think doctors are rotten people deliberately trying to harm people. I AM specifically attacking your dismissive “that’s simply the way things must be and anyone who thinks things need to change is just a troublemaker” attitude.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Since I generally don’t like spinach, I don’t do anything with them. 😀
However… The past couple weekends, I’ve made pesto out of spinach*. Still using pine nuts (but you can use other nuts), Romano cheese, and olive oil. There’s no bitterness, and it stays bright green for days (I boil the spinach down before tossing in the blender).
Yummy!
=========
* I recently learned that “pesto” is a sauce made from any green-leafy vegetable, smashed in a pestel (now, food processor). The stuff made with basil is simply “Genoa-style”.
@OzarkHillbilly: Shows how little JFC knows. For lots of people, their religion is intended to be a burden for you. I have an acquaintance who was just a little while ago lamenting that he doesn’t get invited to share the Thanksgiving holiday with people. The fact that he is vegan, gluten free, lactose avoiding and doesn’t bend any of his lifestyle rules for anyone–evah(!!!) seems to escape his perception totally as a contributing factor in the lack of invitations to share holidays with others.
Yeah, those factors are not religious, per se, but the principle at work carries across the gulf.
@Stormy Dragon: So, somehow you think I am a doctor? And your takeaway from my comments was that I think that anyone who wants change is a troublemaker? Alright, then.
@Beth: “Lol, unless actual LSD and then that stuffs so cheap Pfizer would be pissed.”
Maybe not. Pfizer could probably sell LSD + “secret ingredient”* and do just fine noting the safety factor of control over the potency (why Western medicine used “warfarin” rather than “dong qua root” for example) and quality control (you never can tell with what that blotter tab you just took has been stepped on). If it’s for PTSD, they’re gonna want insurance to pay for it, and they’ll make the profit on volume.
*Placebolonimin–a newly discovered biologic. Maybe a slightly less obvious name though. 😉
@CSK: We have a Foster Farms chicken packing factory in Kelso. You’re not telling me anything I don’t know about or that school kids can’t see on the HR tour.
(And who doesn’t know that it’s way easier to grab the chicken by the head and snap than to hold the fidgety bird on a chopping block? I’ve never gotten chicken from anywhere other than Safeway, and even I know that.) I’d assume that the added weight of the peafowl makes the neck breaking task even easier, provided the fowl wrangler is adequately strong.
@Stormy Dragon: Ah, the joys of watching someone explaining existing power structures coming into conflict with someone who is touched at an existential level by those power structures. Imminent-peril vs lack-of-passion.
Carry on if you need to, but also step back later and ask yourself it it helped at all.
The people who can control or direct their passion without stifling it change the world. The people who are controlled by their passion get feisty and frustrated.
I have absolutely no idea how to be in that first group. If you figure it out, let me know.
@CSK: So ya’re a lieve the sandie budde in person I take it.
Others?
@Mu Yixiao: “(but you can use other nuts)”
No, I can’t use nuts at all. Allergies. 🙁 But then again, I shouldn’t eat pesto in the first place because of the warfarin issue.
I suspect that basil became the go to for pesto because it has the most adaptable flavor, but yeah, you can make pesto from lots of stuff.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Nay, I am notte. I perchayse my spynoches alreddy pycked and debudded. Begock.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I’ve had red bell pepper pesto.
@Gustopher:
There’s often seems to be an assumption that if someone is complaining about the existing power structures, then they must not understand those structures, because apparently no one could understand the current structure and yet think there’s still a problem.
Recommended:
I Emailed My Doctor 133 Times: The Crisis In the British Healthcare System
Which goes into a lot of detail about the ways in which systems resist reform
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yes, but the average home cook generally receives the fowl prepared for cooking. One doesn’t, at least in my experience, chase a flapping, squawking bird around one’s kitchen.
@Gustopher: My entire career as an engineer has been about making something that didn’t exist before, or making something that did exist into a better version. In the beginning it used to be just things, devices, but now it is as likely to include the processes or the way a group works together to get things done. Usually this involves fixing things that aren’t working, or aren’t working as well as they could be. The only way I know how to do that is to calmly sit down, spend time understanding what is happening now and why it is happening that way, try to imagine the optimal way for it to work, and develop a plan on how to get from here to there, then execute that plan. Occasionally I do this on my own, but more often I’m getting input and insight from as wide a group as I can, and very frequently it is they who come up with the solution or we do so collectively. And then we look at the next thing that isn’t working right, and fix that, and the next and the next. Eventually we get there. That’s the way my mind works. I recognize that the minds of other people, many of them very effective, work differently and I have no problem with that. What I don’t understand is why someone needs to constantly attack me because I don’t think and operate in the same way they do. And yes, I most certainly do understand that Stormy has been attacked in much the same way for a lifetime. As I’ve often said, if the reaction of people to being hit was to make sure they didn’t hit anyone else, we would all have been living in peace and love and harmony millennia past.
On a different note, I noted that the Supremes are taking up the case of the Colorado graphic designer who wants to break into wedding websites. But, citing her religious beliefs, she refuses to make them for same-sex couples.
As a befuddled older Luddite, I don’t understand this designer’s issue/complaint/snivel. I really don’t. As a photographer, I’ve shot engagements, weddings, performers of various tints, bands, etc. Apparently, I’m a bad deity worshiper, because I’ve never cared about potential or actual clients’ orientation vis-a-vis religion, sexuality, or dietary choices. My ONLY real interest is/was/will ever be “am I gonna get paid?”
Or is my mistake in thinking that everyone else’s business is their own and not mine? Maybe I should market as a straight services provider happy to provide services for those of differing needs?
You need to remember that, AFAICT, there are only about 9000-10,000 gender reassignment surgeries in the US per year. (Not my area of expertise so could be wrong.) Since it is relatively uncommon (and still relatively new at many places) it will always take longer to generate studies. Next, someone has to fund the studies. I honestly dont know who would fund them. We dont do these surgeries at our place but my partner’s wife trained to do them and works at another hospital. Next time we have dinner I could ask her, if I remember.
Next, most of us prefer to practice evidence based medicine. It is well known that some people dont do so well psychologically when they stop HRT. However, we also think there is a higher risk of clotting when taking them and would like to see some literature showing it is not a risk. The study Stormy sites does not address stopping them at the time of surgery. (While I am sure he meant well this is a good example of someone citing a study that is good but irrelevant. Clotting issues in the peri-operative period where you deliberately initiate the clotting cascade and there is also an inflammatory component are different than those of permanently stopping them after taking them for many years to prevent osteoporosis or other reasons.)
As always, I would have suggested talking this stuff over with your doc and or his practice nurse/PA who may have more time. They will likely know all of the literature on the topic. This is pretty specialized surgery so they likely do care and are well informed. In general their bias will be towards the success of your surgery and your survival and not so much about how you feel. As pointed out above it is possible that in 5 years some good studies come out (maybe there are some now?) and people will continue HRT through surgery. Maybe a new anticoagulant or regimen. That said my guess would be that they think they are really doing what is best for you based upon current knowledge. (There are tons of caveats here like maybe the surgical team at any given facility may not follow usual protocols because they have have had worse outcomes in their population doing so and better with the one they worked out.)
Steve
@MarkedMan: I’ve always read, and Harvard agrees with me, that one Carl Wunderlich, in the mid 1800s, measured arm pit temps on a bunch of people and average 37 deg C. Then someone did an unjustified hard conversion and came up with an overly precise 98.6. It varies during the day and people who have heard 98.6 all their lives are prone to looking at a digital thermometer saying 98.0 or 99.2 and decide they’re sick.
However, Harvard does note, as you say, it’s been dropping. Average is now more like 97.5 (oral). They suggest this might be due to lower metabolic rate, perhaps due to larger average body size or lower rates of infection and inflammation, which would have been more common in earlier samples.
@CSK: No. One doesn’t chase the flapping squawking bird around the kitchen, one kills it in the chicken yard or the garden. At least that’s what my grandma used to do.
@CSK: I’ve had some sort of pasta with red pepper pesto before, too (no nuts in it [flop sweat emoji]). My tastes are too crude to appreciate pesto, I think.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Growing up Lutheran/pagan–depending on where you were residing at that moment, you got to avoid the whole “if someone sins and you don’t try to stop them, you become complicit in their iniquity” discussion. You’re lucky. It wouldda driven you nutz.
Lots of work and little time.
About average, when the Army Air Corps wanted to design a cockpit that would fit all pilots, they averaged the body measurements of a lot of men. The thing is none of them fit the average in all measurements (height, arm span, leg length, etc). So, there was no average pilot.
the problem of fit was solved by making the seats and some controls adjustable, like you have in your car today.
@gVOR08: I stand corrected. Neat! So it’s actually closer to a century and a half since the original work was done.
For two years during the pandemic I had to take my temperature orally every working day. I had two different thermometers at home, one mercury, one digital and another digital one at the office. At various times I checked them against each other and they all agreed. My normal temperature first thing in the morning was less than 98. Usually 97.4 or 97.6, although it could go up or down from that. In the winter it wasn’t unusual to drop below 97. My record was 96.2. I checked that against both thermometers. I felt fine but it made me nervous enough I looked it up and couldn’t find anything about low body temperature until you reached hyperthermia at 95.
All this talk of averages measured long ago reminds me that some years ago there was a terrible boating accident in NYS, Lake Placid to be exact, with 20 deaths. The Adirondacks have a tradition of scenic lake cruises in old wooden boats. Like many transportation accidents this one was exactingly investigated and multiple causes were determined. But one contributor was that the boat had been certified by number of passengers based on an old overall average of 140 lbs. The new average is 200lbs for men and 170lbs for women, and I’m willing to bet the retired seniors that made up the passengers were above average in weight. So while the fully boat was not exceeding its number of passengers, it was probably exceeding its specified weight by 30-50%. (It was also concluded that by todays standards it shouldn’t have been rated as high as it was even by the 140lb standard)
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Sniffff… nobody ever invites me over for their Thanksgiving celebrations either. Either they really hate me, or they know I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.
Heh, rat poison or a Korean medicinal root…
@CSK:
I have claimed to have done this after a couple of culinary disasters. I don’t think I ever sold the story but people relied on their taste buds to decide not to let me cook again
@MarkedMan:..if the reaction of people to being hit was to make sure they didn’t hit anyone else, we would all have been living in peace and love and harmony millennia past.
John Bolton ‘going to seriously consider’ challenging Trump
“We’ve got perhaps a dozen or more potential presidential candidates looking to 2024. I think every one of them, before they declare their candidacy, should say, ‘Donald Trump was wrong. We repudiate him. He doesn’t belong in the Republican Party,’” Bolton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press NOW.”
The Hill
@OzarkHillbilly: If I understand thing correctly, it thins their blood so much that the bleed out from minor injuries. Dong qua is where warfarin comes from, according to what the sources that introduced me to atrial fibrillation told me.
@Mister Bluster: Goo goo ga joob!
Doctor Duncan MacDougall
Human Soul weighs 21 grams.
6 subjects. One lost 21 grams of weight at death.
Dogs are screwed.
@Mister Bluster: I felt compelled to comment on that story on Political Wire that John Bolton thinking he can run for prez and block Trump is the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Ah, shoot, there’s always room for you to join Cracker at our table! SWMBO says I’ve been hosting the outcast tables since my imitation of Christ and the moneylenders at a family Thanksgiving…about 50 years ago.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I have a blood clotting issue*, once spent 6 days in “intermediate ICU” (w ever tf that means)(“your lungs look like apple trees” and after a 2nd rnd of clots have been on blood thinners ever since.
Not really. Since I have been on them, I have had several injuries (gee, a carpenter? who’da thunk it!) from small to middling with lots of blood all over the place (once in a store I left a trail of blood 3-400 ft) and never once felt light headed. Drove myself to the ER while putting a compress on the wound. I’m on Xarelto now (for reasons) which is supposed to be much worse, but really is not.
A couple years ago I stumbled in my garden and ripped my arm open on a cattle panel/trellis for a good 6-7 inches. My truck was in the shop and I thought I was fucked. Called my neighbor and asked if she could take me to my NP. “Yes.”
Called my NP to see if they could sew me back together.
“If you can stop the bleeding, sure.”
Pulled everything I had wrapped around my arm off and… It was barely seeping.
Lesson being, if I hit something major… I might well be shit out of luck.
If I hit something median… I have battle field dressings for just that scenario.
Anything else? Relax, it will be OK.
The truth is, I might well die from a serious bleeding injury, but I will definitely die from a serious clotting issue if I don’t take my blood thinners.
*it’s genetic, my mother had several episodes, I’ve had 2, my elder brother and sister have both had at least one episode. There is one known link (factor 5 iirc) but none of us have tested positive for it. There must be a 2nd genetic anomoly they haven’t found yet. I hope they do soon for the sake of my sons and granddaughters.
Give me an address and a date and I just might show up… much to your regret.
A ways back when the first dirt was still being laid down, my eldest Sis started having Minnesota babies. My parents decided that the thing to do was to split the Thanksgivings: One year up there, one year down here in STL. Fine with me.
My roommate’s family found out and insisted I should not spend TG alone but with them. OK, I had never felt anything but… I guess “welcome” is the word… in their house.
Before that day, I had never had so much fun at a TG dinner and never did again. My buddy was 1 of 9 children (yes, Catholic), and he was the only male child. I had been taking shit from his sisters for years at this point and had learned to give back as good as I got. Their boyfriends however… Talk about a deer in the headlights… I would’ve felt sorry for them but I had already been subjected to that abuse and came back for more.
That was probably the only time I had ever been in their house and never once caught any shit, not because I was able to fire back at a seconds notice but because it was such a target rich environment they forgot I was there.
Even now I feel a little bit guilty about laughing at those guys’ discomfort, but one of them had the grit to stick it out and is still happily married to this day. The others who couldn’t? They weren’t good enough.
@Rick DeMent: Yeah, they do, but fuck’em.
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve never had a major bleeder on warfarin, but bruises take forever to heal.
My doctors advice was something like “don’t take up skiing, because the slopes are never near a trauma center. Also, try not to get into a car accident, but I guess that’s good advice for anyone.”
My INR is weirdly stable, even when I don’t pay attention to what I eat. I think my fat acts like a buffer. My doctors are mildly baffled.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Are you new to the rat poison club? Or did you listen to the warnings and take them to heart?
A friend of mine was diagnosed with diabetes a year or two ago. Goes to nutritionist, gets plan, follow up at the three month mark. Shows up three months later, lost a big chunk of weight, nutritionist is completely shocked that someone actually followed all the advice, has to give relaxed advice to accommodate my friend never cheating.
Anyway, you’re unlikely to bleed out from a minor injury*. You can eat a little bad food (except grapefruit! Or at least my doctor is weirdly panicked about grapefruit in particular), but don’t be stupid about it.
And don’t give yourself an appendectomy. Or take aspirin, ibuprofen or any other NSAID. Watch out for head injuries.
Also, a good pesto is delicious, but no reason to acquire the taste now.
*: my therapeutic range is 2.0-3.0, if you’re one of the 3.0-4.0 folks, you will bleed even more and should be extra careful. But extra careful is often just keeping someone around to call 911 while you’re using a chain saw or whatever. You’ll get used to it.
@Kylopod:
I keep asking my economist friends how this is any different from gold. They split down the middle between the ones who say “it isn’t” and the ones who try to argue that gold has “intrinsic value” (as if its price typically has anything at all to do with how well it works for electronics and frying pans…)
I passed my covid test. Holy shit.
@MarkedMan:
I thought you and I had a pleasant little disagreement about this. Honestly, I don’t think there’s much daylight between us (and Stormy) on this issue. Besides internet (mostly fun) histrionics.
@steve:
That number seems really high, but I’m always surprised by the number of Trans people there are. But 1% of 300 million is still a huge number. Lol, the other issue for me is Trans Reddit has decreed there are only like 4 doctors in the entire US that you should let touch you and that there are ZERO plastic surgeons in Chicago and blah blah blah. I’ll be glad to not pay attention to them any more.
As for the rest, your a doc and probably understand a lot of this better than I do. I just know that we’re working with some outdated protocols and we’re stuck with them for goofy reasons. I HAAAAAAAATE WPATH with an unbelievable fury, but their is a point to their existence. In my case, stopping HRT has left me feeling awful, stupid, angry and like I did before. I can feel myself draining out of myself. Double fun whammy is that I’ve had a non-stop headache for about a week. I’m lumping that in with the bad effects but I’ve been told to avoid all of the stuff I would normally take for a headache.
Lol, two more days of this and then I get the headache of me fighting with the doctors over why I won’t take any damn Hydrocodone. I hate that crap. I’d rather white knuckle the paid.
Oh, and mild amusement. I am fairly forceful with my primary doctor over my meds. I listen to her, but I won’t do something because of blind insistence on protocols. The nice thing about my Primary is she listens and doesn’t take any of my crap. Lol, I feel like we’re bartering new protocols as we go.
@Beth: Just so you know, I’ll be worrying about and also celebrating for you the next couple days/weeks, so please check in ASAP when you’re feeling up to it!
@OzarkHillbilly: I was offered the one that came before Xarelto while I was in Korea. My doctor and I decided that it was probably a bad idea to switch because sometimes I forget to take my dose for the day.
@Gustopher: I was only referring to the rats and am assuming that the eat way way more dong qua than I take warfarin (and my dose is pretty large because I eat significant amounts of salad, cauliflower, broccoli and other things, too). I used to drink herbal teas to, but fell out of the habit in Korea and only found out I shouldn’t because I made a pot of chamomile tea the day before my protime test and had 1.9 instead of my usual 2.6.