I am confused. I thought the thread was about gender, and the reference to “social bullshit” and the statement “that outliers exist, doesnt mean anything” were statements in support of excluding transgender people from society. The 0.018% stat (rate of intersex if defined narrowly) is clearly a reference to sex, not gender. So now I am just lost.

I think things get taken too far in some contexts, but the underlying sensitivity is when you are talking to a person who considers themselves an outlier. Like telling someone with no legs that they don’t meet the definition of human and ADA is an abomination that should be repealed. Or telling someone diagnosed with conversion disorder that they can’t receive any physical accommodations, and can’t have any medical consults to check if their symptoms might have a different cause. I hope we can agree those would be insensitive positions to take.

I think they were trying to demonstrate the second type of dot should be increments of 10 - the missed step in the original answer - and both messed it up (started with an increment of 20 as you pointed out) and extended it way beyond what was required for the problem at hand.

When one of my grandfathers died, none of his children or ex-wives wanted anything to do with a funeral or burial arrangements. My parents found a place that accepted his alcoholism-ravaged body, and they took care of things. I’m not sure of the details, and seems likely it wasn’t a medical school, but some organization took the body “last minute”.

I see so much argument around UBI with the assumption it has to be enough to live off or it’s worthless. But Alaska’s system makes a real difference to reducing the number of people living below poverty level, even being just a small fraction of what is required to live there for a year. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pop4.398

Although not designed as a social program to redistribute income, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) has been reducing poverty by providing equal annual payments to nearly all state residents for over 40 years. …the PFD reduced the number of Alaskans with incomes below the US poverty threshold by 20%–40%… The effect of the PFD has been even larger for vulnerable populations. The PFD has reduced poverty rates of rural Indigenous Alaskans from 28% to less than 22%, and has played an important role in alleviating poverty among seniors and children… up to 50% more Alaska children—15% instead of 10%—would be living in poor families without PFD income. The poverty-ameliorating effects of the PFD have lessened somewhat since 2000, as dividend amounts adjusted for inflation have been declining.

An appeals court blocked the rule, and Trump’s FTC had argued in support of it. They haven’t appealed the ruling, though. https://www.businessinsider.com/ftc-blocks-subscription-trap-click-to-cancel-ftc-rule-2025-7

Trump’s FTC filed a brief in March supporting the negative option and click-to-cancel rule, writing that consumers “face unnecessary obstacles from sellers who force them to endure multiple phone calls, long hold times, and countless automated menus. Studies show that most Americans pay hundreds annually for unwanted subscriptions.”

FTC’s commissioner Mark Meador took a different tone last week when he wrote in a post on X following the 8th Circuit’s ruling: “The FTC’s click-to-cancel rule, which would have made it much easier for consumers to get rid of unwanted online subscriptions, isn’t going into effect for one reason: the Biden FTC cut corners and didn’t follow the law. Process matters.”

This suggests that the FTC likely won’t appeal the ruling…

The cost is a big turn off for most people. At grocery stores near me, the Impossible and Beyond products are more than double the price of the meat products they are imitating. In part because livestock feed is hugely subsidized by the government.

If the plant-based meat alternatives could gain efficiency through scale and experience to lower the cost below animal meat, we would see way more people trying them and finding what dishes they work best in, which would feed back into scaled market demand. But I don’t see that kind of explosive growth potential at current price levels.

Growing meat cells in a lab and selling them as food is illegal in the states you reference.

What Beyond does in processing plant material into something that resembles some meat products is still legal everywhere.

Or you could soak it in prescription strength urea for a couple of days to get the nail to fall off. Less collateral damage that way.

OP might be talking about a procedure where a podiatrist or dermatologist kills the mis-growing edges of the nail root. The remaining root grows a narrower nail, but hopefully a straighter one. Sometimes the process doesn’t work the first time (hard to judge how much cell-kill stuff will get just the edges and not damage the middle) and has to be repeated.

It’s a war of attrition at this point, with Ukraine providing almost all the people to become casualties but highly dependent on foreign aid for weapons, ammunition, intelligence, and continued sanctions enforcement on Russia. If either the foreign support or the domestic supply of soldiers falls short before the Russian economy collapses, Russia gets to keep the occupied land. If the first break is the ruble tanks to the point desperate poor foreigners stop signing up en masse to be cannon fodder in the Russian army, Ukraine could realistically take back the territory they lost.

Arguably Bernie got as many primary votes as he did (a good showing but a legitimate loss) because inside politics had cleared the field of more compelling challengers to Clinton. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/donna-brazile-warren-bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-rigged

Eliminating benefit cliffs, and taking the onus off applicants (the government has all our taxes!) to prevent qualified people from being cut off due to missing some paperwork box or deadline, would go a long way. Given how great our government has been at making programs that sound like they would help people, but then creating bureaucracy to ensure very few actually get help (not as a money saving thing - the bureaucracy costs a lot - but just because they believe people don’t deserve help), I have a lot of skepticism for any new program.

Their belief in MAGA is filling some deep psychological need. Logical reasoning around the belief is irrelevant because logic can’t activate whatever social buttons are being satisfied by their engagement with the MAGA movement.

Research trying to figure out what makes humans susceptible to this kind of stuff and how to protect each other was a hot topic, but then Congressional Republicans launched harassing investigations into everyone in the field and the institutions that supported their work, and of course the current executive branch has entrenched that fear. Gotta keep the victims coming to the grifter trough.

Different people and relationships can have different solutions that work for them. That’s OK!

https://clerk.house.gov/Members/ViewVacancies

Gerald Connolly and Raúl M. Grijalva, apparently. Both were Democrats. No, there are no alternates. Each State determines its own process for filling vacancies: often the governor appoints someone but special elections are also common.