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Identity is about who we are and how we identify ourselves to others. I could tell you I identify as a father, and while I could share pictures of me with my kids or submit to a paternity test to meet your arbitrarily high threshold in the name of science, most commonly we simply accept my statement as true since it’s ME telling YOU how I identify MYSELF. Likewise, I might identify as a baseball fan. I could produce tickets to the games I’ve attended and post all the games I’ve watched on TV in the past year and even all the times I’ve participated out on the diamond with friends, but most commonly my saying “I identify as a baseball fan” is sufficient based on my say so alone. You don’t ask to test it and submit it for peer review. Perhaps I was born in Russia then later moved to Germany. I could show you my passport and citizenship papers, but if I tell you I now identify as German, that really ought to be enough no matter how much you love the motherland and hate that I’ve defected. Perhaps I was given the name John at birth, and now tell you I instead identify myself as Bruce or Loretta. You don’t get to tell me I’m not allowed to do that like some entitled overseeing brat. And on and on and on ad infinitum … I could identify as a reader, or an audiophile, or as an art lover, or a car collector, or a weapons expert and cigar aficionado, a brewer, a builder, a lover of memes… and you wouldn’t sit here demanding that I produce scientific evidence to support these. It’s about ME telling YOU how I identify MYSELF, and you don’t get to tell me I’m wrong no matter how forcefully you disagree with the identity of myself I’ve expressed. It’s simply not your place. End program. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. YOU have no say in anything related to MY identity, and gender identity is obviously no different.

Ah! At last, a foolproof weight-loss regimen! (Can I propose FUX news for the western version?)

12 Area units is correct Here is my derivation, avoiding equations one way or another. I use the property of rectilinear similar figures that the areas are in proportion to the squares of corresponding sides. So firstly complete the rectangle ANIM by adding 3 extra squares, making 6 in all. DH is a right bisector of two sides so passes through the centre of the rectangle at K AI is also a diagonal of the rectangle and more importantly bisects CE. Thus CK is equal to KE. Call this s. CK is one side of the triangle CKJ which we are given has having 1 square area unit. Triangle CKJ contains the same angles as triangle AMI since AN is parallel to MI. Hence triangle CKJ is similar to triangle AMI., with side CK corresponding to side MI Since the length of each side of a square is 2s and side MI occupies 3 squares its length is 6s. So the area of triangle AMI is (6)2 times the area of triangle CKJ or 36 area units. Triangle AMI is exactly half the rectangle ANIM. So the total area of the rectangle is 72 area units. The rectangle is comprised of 6 squares so each square has an area od 12 area units as required.

Bulgakov? I had only heard part of the quote, about Soviet newspapers before dinner. It remains fresh advice, yes. I have heard their annual flagpole climbing contest is quite the spectacle.

The part two of that quote is:

This quote only needs a small 100-year update:

I don't follow the news very closely anymore. Primary source for Canadian and world news is CBC. If I want to follow to follow up a particular event or topic, I seek out the reliable on-line sources that are most knowledgeable on the topic, and that still let me. I also read most of Gwynn Deyer's colomns. Previously, when I was both more interested and had satellite tv, I watched PBS NewsHour and TVO's The Agenda regularly and several late-night talk shows and weekend newsmagazines. I still sometimes look in on them on You Tube.

I browse the AGMA (American Guild of Musical Artists) newsletter for my politics. Congress loves to give the citizens a big song and dance.

Oh I go to the National Lubricating Grease Institute Spokesman for that: https://www.nlgi.org/nlgi-spokesman/

I try to have some variety, too. Reuters, Guardian, LA Times, Washington Post, AP News, Daily Kos, Vice News (for its "underreported stories" emphasis), Politico, National Review (has retained a few conservatives with the capacity for independent thought), BBC, National Public Radio (US), and The Atlantic. And of course Journal of Toenail Fungus for its guest editorials by deposed dictators, unique perspectives I can find nowhere else.

Financial Times, BBC, Guardian, Reuters, mainly. I also check Independent, Brexograph (headlines only, to see what the Swivel-Eyes are thinking, or being told to think ) and the Spectator and New Statesman for commentary. And others from time to time on specific topics, e.g. Forbes, Business Insider, New Scientist, Nature publications etc.

Identity and feelings are often conflated/interchanged as synonymous, but feelings are conditional on the stability of ones self-identity. Self-identity should be consistent over long periods for a person to function productively in the social and personal spheres. Feelings can change without affecting ones sense of core identity, if they are reasonably transient, but absence of a stable, personal identity creates a continuous state of unstable feelings, with the potential for pathological consequences. I would be interested to know how much of a trans' mental state is endogenous vs reactive, due to a persistent, negative social reception.

Transgender individuals authentically telling us how they identify are not delusional.

Biology forum. Not unfounded and weird guesses about ulterior motives for transitioning forum. Also, is your friend cool with the "he" pronouns you keep dropping? It's called misgendering, n'est-ce pas? You may rely on the truth of me saying I want to walk like an Egyptian with Susannah Hoffs, formerly of The Bangles. It is not complex. When a police officer arrests me and informs me that anything I say may be held against me in a court of law, I will reply "Susannah Hoffs." Worth a try.

I agree with you that this distinction is the heart of the matter. Mathematicians have a beautifully involved and highly abstract theory of the infinite. Yet nobody has ever demonstrated a completed infinity in the physical world in which we live. Some cosmologists speculate that beyond the visible universe, the universe as a whole may be infinite. If so, then it would be a question of physics as to whether set theory applies to physical infinities. I believe this is a question for many decades in the future. It has often been the case that crazy abstract math later becomes necessary to describe the world we live in. Riemann and others pioneered the math of non-Euclidean geometry in the 1940s, and everyone considered it a great curiosity but of no use to the physicists. Then when Einstein was struggling to formulate his general theory of relativity, one of his math buddies said, "Hey, math has just the thing for you," and showed him Riemannian geometry, which is the perfect mathematical setting for relativity. Einstein reportedly said that when he got his own theory back from the mathematicians, he no longer understood it. So this is my thesis, or my belief. That some genius not yet born is going to find a use for infinitary set theory within physics; and that breakthrough, whatever it is, will enable the next huge leap in scientific understanding. I also think that answer to consciousness is NOT to be found in today's understanding of computability and AI; but rather within some future scientific revolution. Our current focus on computer AI is on the same level as the 18th century vision of the world as a great machine. Whatever is the technology of the age, we think the universe and/or our minds are that thing. We are not 18th century clockwork machines, and we are not computers as we currently understand them. I think the mathematics of the infinite is the key to the next revolution in physics; but that we're many decades or a century early.

A woman was at her hairdresser’s getting her hair styled for a trip to Rome with her husband.. She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded: ” Rome? Why would anyone want to go there? It’s crowded and dirty.. You’re crazy to go to Rome .. So, how are you getting there?” “We’re taking BA,” was the reply. “We got a great rate!” “BA?” exclaimed the hairdresser.. ” That’s a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they’re always late. So, where are you staying in Rome ?” “We’ll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome ‘s Tiber River called Teste.” “Don’t go any further. I know that place. Everybody thinks it’s gonna be something special and exclusive, but it’s really a dump.” “We’re going to go to see the Vatican and maybe get to see the Pope.” “That’s rich,” laughed the hairdresser. You and a million other people trying to see him. He’ll look the size of an ant. Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You’re going to need it…” A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome “It was wonderful,” explained the woman, “not only were we on time in one of BA’s brand new planes, but it was overbooked, and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful, and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot. And the hotel was great! They’d just finished a £5 million remodelling job, and now it’s a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They too were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner’s suite at no extra charge!” “Well,” muttered the hairdresser, “that’s all well and good, but I bet you didn’t get to see the Pope.” “Actually, we were quite lucky, because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder, and explained that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors, and if I’d be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me. Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me” “Oh, really! What’d he say ?” He said: “Who the Fuck did your hair?”

Most of the problems LGBTQA folks have are because of you and those who think like you. Their outlook is only bleak when confronted by those who deny them the right to identify themselves as they wish, something I'm sure you want for yourself. That's the "real denial".

Gender identity is a pretty recent phenomenon, in the numbers we see now. And sexuality is such a complex emotion that you can't rely on what people say is actually what's really in their head. Some people are in real denial, when they realise that they are attracted to their own sex. Homosexuality still has acceptance problems. It must be hard to grow up with all the gay jokes flying around, and then realise you're gay yourself. And it must be worse if you are attracted to straight men (or women, in the case of lesbians) and not gays. The outlook must be pretty bleak, but the option of becoming transgender might appeal as a possible way of getting a non-gay straight partner, and allow you to avoid admitting to yourself that you're gay. I'm only guessing here, but my one trans friend is absolutely adamant that he's not gay. (I haven't discussed it with him but other friends have told me that) And he's still with his long-term female partner. It's obviously a very complicated life to be living.