CharonY

That is the difference between a human classification system and what is in the natural world. Nature has all the variability, including non-viable, sterile and everything in-between. I.e. they exist. Our classification system is cruder and as you mentioned, mostly ignores rare conditions in most contexts. That does not make them non-existent. At minimum we have therefore XY, XX and one big box for all other configurations on the karyotpe level (which by my count exceeds two categories). It should be noted that this is not even all that determines the development of sexual organs. Folks with Swyer syndrome, for example have an XY karyotpe, but develop female genitalia. So the karyotype would be male, but the phenotype clearly female. Gender development is not fully genetic, but has strong developmental aspects. During childhood we develop something that we associate with our identity and including aspects like sexual orientation (which are further developed during puberty) but also gender identity. While there appear to be genetic dispositions (which are still under investigation), the link is likely quite a bit more complicated. As far as I can tell, no one decides out of the blue to be of a certain gender without some form of identify formed behind that.

Are you serious? Do you think that all the data in the papers I linked were gained from harmful interference? Do you think we should just assume things rather than quantify and measure actual differences?

Research.

Folks are investigating this issue, and I do not think it is helpful to use sweeping assertions without having the data. Muscle strength alone or even just looking at outliers (i.e. top performers) is insufficient to discuss the broader range of sports (after all, not all athletes are fall into the narrow range of record holders). For sports requiring explosive strength there is likely an advantage that might not be overcome by transition. Also, a careful look at full-contact sports makes a lot of sense for safety issues. For others, there is data suggesting various levels of adjustments are feasible. For example, in archery, data suggests that transwomen might compete with cis-women on equal footing after two years of treatment: https://doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2021.1938692 There are other studies underway that test multiple performance measures (e.g. multiple muscle measures, lung performance, heart performance etc.) in transgender athletes, which would provide better information on what sports might or or might not need adjustments. As such, little has changed from the start of the discussion in which it has been mentioned that better data is needed.

In that context one should also to keep in mind that absolute risk, is often not helpful for decision-making. Rather, one probably should think more in terms what the risk of taking a medication is vs not taking it, within a given context. Specifically for stomach cancer, the rates are fairly low, and even if doubled, it is not terribly higher. So if one was a smoker or live in an area with high radon levels, the risks are quite a bit more relevant, for example.

A paper was just published estimating heat-associated deaths in Europe during 2022, which was the hottest year on record until this year. Overall, the authors calculated 61,672 (37,643-86,807 CI 95%) heat-related deaths. Considering that the predictions indicate that things are not going to be better (quite the contrary), it show the immediate impact of heat on humans, even without considering broader ecological implications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02419-z

No one said that it should not be investigated. In fact, they are still underway. And many have been done in the past (I have seen studies going back to the 70s at least). None of them have found strong evidence for carcinogenic effects in humans so far. Required evidence is usually based on existing evidence levels, with clinical data (which is part of the approval process) having the highest weight. The actual evidence for cancer risk in humans is still low, and a bigger worry at this point is neurotoxicity during prolonged use. What ultimately has to be evaluated is the cost/benefit. Many drugs, including antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs etc. are highly toxic. The question therefore is whether there are groups which ultimately have more benefit than harm. Obviously, if there are alternatives that are lass harmful, they would be preferred. Some other antibiotics that can be used to treat certain conditions (such as Chron's disease) but depending on the person, the side effects can be more or less severe. There are basically no harmless drugs. Just various levels of harm. Again, the premise is not that we can only use drugs that have no risk of harming the patient. This is just not viable. It is about finding treatments for conditions that overall have the best risk/benefit ratio for a given condition and a given patient. So far, metronidazole makes the cut and with antibiotics efficacy waning, more toxic ones will be see increased use. If the intention was to create the perfect drug before use, well most of us would probably be dead before that happens. That all being said, I will agree that over prescription can be an issue. But that is not dealt with by kicking out drugs from the portfolio. Rather, we need better and faster diagnostics to ensure that we only prescribe antibiotics that are needed. With cancer risk, conclusive evidence under therapeutic limits is very difficult. It is looking for rare cases among rare cases requiring huge cohorts to see an effect. As such having enough statistical power to show no effect is going to be exceedingly difficult. I.e. the rate of stomach cancer is maybe around 10 per 100,000 persons. So even if you enroll 10,000 control cases and 10,000 folks taking the drug, you may have maybe one case, which could be purely stochastic. Even worse, you would need to track them for years which would make it a tremendously expensive study. So realistically you would need many individual studies and try to look at a meta-analysis, or more likely have retroactive surveys. The issue with the latter is that there are a lot of confounding factors beyond the drug under consideration that may affect cancer risk. So even those might not reach enough folks to figure things out. That all being said, some of the earlier studies in the 80s tracked over 700 patients for close to 10 years, seeing no effects for patients treated for trichomoniasis for any types of cancers (if adjusted for smoking). Another study was retrospective and looked at matched patient data (i.e. similar groups but one with and another without treatment) for about 10-12 years found no effects for short-term exposure, either. Since then, there have been follow-ups using similar designs but no smoking gun. That being said, other commonly used antibiotics are starting now also to be suspected to potentially be associated with cancers during long-term treatment. For example one retroactive comparison between clarithromycin compared to metronidazole (there was no untreated patient cohort) showed that clarithromycin had a higher overall death and cancer risk than metronidazole after follow-up. (And interestingly clarithromycin is also under discussion to be used as a potential repurposed drug for cancer treatment at some point...). Also, it is necessary to look at risk in context of overall risk we are willing to commit. For example, certain diets are associated with cancer, and we are likely to eat more of it and for longer than an antibiotics course. In summary, folks look at the available set of info to assess risk/benefit. Sometimes the assessment is wrong (thalidomide being one of the famous examples), but it always is based on need and empirical evidence. Otherwise, options would be really, really limited.

Helicobacter infections are associated with a potentially four to eight fold increase in stomach cancer. For metronizadole there is no clear linkage, hence no numbers. That is where the designation comes from. It is plausible due to the animal studies, but so far no human cohorts have found a difference between users and non-users. If a linkage was found, the designation would shift.

Reality is rather different from movies. There are cases when bullets are likely to cause issues (e.g. in joints, at nerves or blood vessels) where there are routinely removed. But beyond that, they are often left alone. Fundamentally there is no mechanism of the body to get rid of larger stuff that is deeply embedded in wounds. It can get isolated and then sticks around (literally). But there is not really a mechanisms to move larger things through the body cavity in mammals that I am aware of. In frogs and fish folks have identified mechanisms in which foreign objects were removed. In case of the frog it was eliminated through the bladder and I believe in some fish it was observed that the objects moved into the intestines.

Most folks are not saying that though. Rather if there are quantifiable differences, one should use those as much as possible. That also goes for race, but it has to be actionable. In other words, one needs to find better rules for sports to find the right balance to maximize inclusion. Likewise, rather than just saying we end racism and all is well, we have to look at the quantifiable harm and use measures to address them. Targeted, if possible, untargeted if it provides a net benefit. Also, I could turn this argument around. You say that skin color is superficial, whereas the sex differences are clearly impactful. However, at the same time we have got much, much, much more data on skin color, in practice, affects folks to huge degree in terms of all kind of life outcomes. Conversely, the studies on transgender athletes is only now starting and folks only recently have a handful of data points in terms of these quantifiable differences. While I do think that for some sports there is likely going to be disparities that need to be addressed somehow (I have speculated earlier in what form it could be), but ultimately we need more research. I think, to some degree your argument is guided by how you think the world should be (in terms of racial equality) and how you perhaps sense race, yet the reality of it it is very different. And policies need to address that.

Also, in the context of this discussion, you wouldn't just use taxon, but name what level you're speaking of. E.g. species x is extinct or genus y or family z. There are also different types of taxonomic systems (basically different ways to build the family tree) and you would refer to which system you are talking about. I.e. you define the sets you're speaking or you use the commonly accepted consensus. But you don't randomly fill it with a bunch of things.

Also, you are not using the commonly used terminology, including the concept of species. A descendant species is, using the concept of reproductive isolation, not able to form offspring with the ancestral species. As such, there is no genetic flow back (otherwise, they would not be considered separate species). Thus, if the ancestral population dies out, they are extinct. There are cases where an ancestral population might persist at the same time as its descendants, which is more likely for recent and/or fast events (such as hybridization). One needs to recall that the fundamental unit in evolution is the species (flawed as the concepts might be) and one has to think about population and descendants in terms of gene flow. But it does not really make sense to make up a new concept on the spot that is not in line with common understanding and usage of the involved terms.

Extinction is actually fairly well defined. If there are not extant members of a particular species, the species is extinct, regardless of speciation events that may have predated the extinction event. You won't find anyone seriously arguing that the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees is not extinct, for example. What you seem to mix up is the use of extinction in the context of higher taxonomic units, in which case a lineage would be fully extinct if they do not have any extant species. Classification is a bit messy from what I remember. But from what I remember (which might be outdated) the clade Dinosauria historically was divided into two groups: Saurischia (from which birds are eventually descended) and the perhaps confusingly named Ornithischia, (which are extinct). While there might have been considerable reshuffling, in all cases the clade Dinosauria would contain birds as their surviving member. It is fairly straightforward and you really just need to look whether there is an extant member on the species levels of whatever taxonomic unit you refer to.

It may depend on location, but studies in a range of states (I believe I have seen data from Michigan, Texas and California, at least) have shown that class and socioeconomic status (and I am pretty sure it included first-gen college students) did not really increase diversity by much mostly it benefitted white folks. In fact, in some universities coming from rural communities is seen as a plus. But there is a general issue when looking at the lowest parts of the economic ladder. Here, students are already struggling in school and as you know, admissions first check whether students pass a minimum qualification bar (with different unis having different baselines). But obviously if folks barely get a high school degree because they have to help out at home or work, or suffer from hunger, it will be difficult to even consider a college education. Effectively it is necessary that they are good enough to get a full scholarship, and even it could be a struggle as they often have less or no support and financial contingencies as other students. So those that succeed tend to have some sort of support, such as being poor but at least to live near a school that is not totally gutted financially. And (un)surprisingly enough we will find more white kids in this particular segment. There is also one interesting tidbit regarding rural schools in the US. I remember seeing a graph on national test scores and while rural America was somewhat lagging, the reverse is true in the low-income segment. I.e. low-income students had generally lower scores compared to high-income students overall, but rural low-income students had actually slightly better scores than non-rural low income students. Also another finding was (IIRC) that some of the biggest gaps between rural and non-rural populations are found among white folks (i.e. non-rural white students had way higher scores than their rural counterparts). That is, white rural students are not really outcompeted by black students, but by non-rural white students.

Well, I guess some folks would weaponize anything and individual evens especially of teenagers acting out or doing stupid things seems to be a gold mine for that. That being said, I also suspect that folks are getting numb a bit, and it requires something more shocking to rouse more than the facebook groups.

If we move away from the notion of addressing past wrongs a bit and more towards addressing existing consequences of existing inequalities, we could look at issues surrounding college admissions. As a degree is a multiplier of wealth, but has wealth-based gatekeeping (especially in countries with high tuition fees, such as USA, Canada, UK, etc.), access does have financial consequences down the road. That being said, universities are generally more interested in maintaining a diverse student body (which benefits them in several ways, ranging from international recruiting, to teaching environment). In the US, abolishing affirmative action in a number of states have resulted in a significant drop in especially Hispanic and black students. Since then, admission folks have tried to figure out how to bolster diversity without using race. Other factors, e.g. grades, wealth, activities etc. have always been on the books, but just using those has not been very successful. I.e. bolstering low income students, mostly elevated Asian and white students but kept disadvantaging black and Hispanic students. What folks seem to arrive at this point (which is also mentioned in the ruling) is that universities might encourage students to write how their upbringing and background has affected their lives as part of the essay element. In a way, this avoids a potential blanket bonus (such as with wealth), but requires a narrative of sorts. The issue there, is then one of support, as both affluential folks but also less affluent white and potentially Asian folks might get more support in drafting these assays (as they generally have access to better high-schools). Realistically speaking though, if one wants to level the playing field and provide equal chances to everyone, the groundwork has to be done. Which means providing infrastructure and support in underserviced areas (better school, better healthcare) and you can do that by zip code. Realistically it would be pretty much the same as targeting black and Hispanic neighborhoods but it would avoid talking about race. It is a bit like doing a tap dancing around the issue and despite the fact that I hate the term, it sounds a bit like virtue signaling (we can only address the issue by not naming it). Like treating cancer but not call it that. But if it helps, it sure is better than nothing.

Yes, that is an issue with using specific target or hard quotas. Institutions with more experience on that matter have implemented a softer form of affirmative action (i.e. using same brackets rather than holding specific folks back). There was a bit on it in an Atlantic article that is interesting:

In other words, it might be a good idea to revamp categories and rules so that folks can compete according to ability rather than based on genitals they were born with?

I suspect the reason is more that folks somehow think of trans-women to be somehow more predatory as most discussions seem not to involve homosexual folks (which technically are invisible). While trans-men are also targeted, they do not seem to be much considered, either. Which has all the hallmark of fear and culture-war policy vs actual policy.

One corollary from that is that some folks focus on specific and individual damages, but overlook systemic challenges (such as long term impact of getting removed from economic and other benefits, invisible but baked in racialized policies, where color-blind application would perpetuate those harms, confinement in underdeveloped areas and so on). A second is that often these issues are seen as a weird zero-sum game. I.e. it seems that the argument is that systematically excluding one group from economic and societal gains is somehow the same as bringing them up to the same level. I.e. as long as the factor that did the division is brought up to remove the suppression, it is equivalent to suppression. Without removing all context, I just fail to see it as a symmetric proposition. I will also say that it is a bit dangerous to generalize these racialized policies based on the case of reparations. That one is something that can and should be more targeted, as there are ways to trace issues in an individualized way. However, general racialized policies cannot be tracked down to individuals (that is just not what policies are) and it is critical identify demarcation lines. For example, universities strive to create a diverse learning environment, but the question is how to recruit them. If we ignore race, the student body tends to be largely income based, resulting in a composition that represents well-off part of the population mostly. Providing stipends for low-income students bolsters that part of the composition, but looking at racial composition, we see that often low-income minorities do not benefit from it much. There are various reasons, starting at which schools they are, and what kind (if any) counseling they get, for example. So targeting those students and schools specifically can bolster the recruitment of minority students and to create the desired teaching environment. What has been shown in the US is that a color-blind application of stipends and benefits, the enrolment of minorities drop (and just to be clear, race would be just one of many factors used for admissions). Thus, the application of a color-blind policy results in racial inequity. And considering the impact of college on future income, it has knock-on effects of future trajectories. In other words, (and as the other articles I have posted) being color-blind can result in racial inequality, the very thing that color-blindness supposedly should end, but which in reality it just promotes (under the current system). I do agree that if we magically resolved every form of racism and racialized policies and dismantled all the systems that create inequality, then we may be able to switch to a color-blind perspective. However, starting with the latter is hitching the cart before the horse and is not getting us anywhere.

Talking about fantasy, historians discuss the Versailles treaty as one of many contributing factors, rather than drawing a direct line (the Nazis used it for their propaganda, though, which is in part where some of the myths came about). There have been proponents of this thesis, including contemporaries such as John Maynard Keynes. But some key facts weaken that argument. One is that before the NSDAP came to power the payments were effectively dead in the water, the sum was re-negotiated several times and payments were deferred (and basically cancelled in the Lausanne Conference). The actual payment provided were much less than Germany could have afforded after economic recovery in the interim period. And yes, it was a potent propaganda tool inasmuch as the felt impact was way higher than the actual one. However, in terms of economic destabilization the Great Depression had a much higher impact. So in that light, the "fact" is a bit iffy and trying to draw a line to the reparations under discussion requires a fair bit of mental gymnastics. What is rather similar are probably perception vs impact.

Not sure, I think it is a cultural thing to some degree. Saunas (and of course FKK) often have mixed nudity and quite some lockers are semi-shared. I.e. you have a private cubicle to change but they can be in a mixed room, rather than entirely separate.

From what I understand some folks would still like him to use the women's bathroom? (I do not understand folk's obsession with bathrooms, in the first place, though).

It depends, a couple of studies have shown that especially in the lower income brackets, cash injections especially coupled with counseling has some of the biggest immediate impacts. Another thing that is relevant for things like foundational support is proper representation. I.e. direct knowledge of affected communities and active engagement. The issue with setting up a good system is that folks deciding on them tend to solve problems that they are familiar with. Typically these approaches resulted in either benefitting the majority (especially if the initiatives are not minority focused) or even result in direct harm (i.e. the paternalistic approach you mentioned). There is a delicate balance, especially for systematically disenfranchised communities, who might often be wary to these kinds of approaches. There are increasingly initiatives that rely on community participation, which might be a way to go forward.

I think your misunderstanding is in the first sentence the abstract. The authors say that an earlier report showed superconductivity at near-ambient pressures and temperatures but there apparently were disagreements whether the results were valid. So the authors are doing a more systematic analysis to resolve this controversy. In their own work they then describe resistance measurements in dependence on pressure at RT. Without reading the paper itself it suggest that they get similar resistance measurements as reported earlier, but likely only at high pressure.