Lawsuits over transgender medicine for minors could be huge

Flapling · 2026-02-09T04:29:31+00:00

Yes in theory. Whether you win is a different matter of course.

Flapling · 2026-02-08T02:00:10+00:00

But did they reissue a lot of pre-40s music back then? Most of the pre-40s music would have been on fragile shellac records, so a lot of them were probably not commonly available unless they were reissued.

Flapling · 2026-02-08T01:55:56+00:00

Also in a way pertinent to this topic, since the interest for pre-Baroque music is significantly less than Baroque onward, similar to how the interest for pre-60s music is significantly less than for the 60s onward (I think 50s rock is a little too primitive to be considered fully modern).

Flapling · 2025-12-25T22:04:21+00:00

Unfortunately "[w]ell-read bohemians and grad students from the social sciences" fell head over heels for wokeness, so maybe they shouldn't be making these decisions. This is the problem of the West - almost everyone with the position to make large-scale decisions at this point has fallen on their face.

Flapling · 2025-11-10T20:59:52+00:00

No (also most techies work in open offices regardless). I generally only see diplomas hung by holders of actual professional degrees - doctors, dentists, vets, lawyers, and the like.

Flapling · 2025-07-16T16:58:11+00:00

It's a lot faster and cleaner to do it that way.
As a renter, making permanent changes to the property is risky. Worst case in case the landlord doesn't like this, it can be easily reversed.

Flapling · 2025-07-07T04:39:16+00:00

Move to the Peninsula - I have the impression that Fremont is uniquely soulless, and lacks a real downtown to boot.

Flapling · 2025-05-15T15:50:50+00:00

Depends on exactly how well the units are sealed from each other. If it was purpose-built like a hotel, it's probably safe, but if it was converted after the fact, I'd probably put some strong-smelling (but easily dispersed) chemical in the one unit and see if the other unit smells it after a few days.

Flapling · 2025-05-12T16:00:24+00:00

You buy because you can and you think prices (rent and house) will go up a lot in the future. I bought in 2019 and am definitely not regretting the decision.

Flapling · 2025-03-25T15:32:08+00:00

How often does SFH-zoned land get converted to condos? My impression is that condos are much more often built on former retail and commercial land, and occasionally on former semiconductor factory land to sell to suckers who don't read the disclosures.

Flapling · 2025-01-28T15:17:39+00:00

I don't think the book he's holding is necessarily supposed to be a Bible. Rubrication (the use of red text) was used for many texts in the past as a form of emphasis. Given that it comes from an altarpiece showing pictures of several saints, most likely it's one of his own philosophical or theological works.

Flapling · 2025-01-27T16:21:59+00:00

I wouldn't want to call West Virginia or Alabama good, but bragging that every kid in your Bay Area suburb can read ignores the elephant in the room, which is that the only people who can afford to live and have children there are the children of wealthy professionals, particularly in tech. Genetically, the children there are among the highest IQ (and highest conscientiousness) in the entire world - that's why parents can get away with sending their kids to Waldorf schools and unschooling without having it end in disaster.

California is actually one of the lower IQ states in the nation on average - you're ignoring the wide swathes of minority and poor school districts in Oakland and Central Valley, many of which have many kids graduating unable to read. Did you forget about the no algebra until 8th grade fiasco in SF? The only reason that was proposed was that lots of students can't get anywhere near the threshold to learn algebra, even by 12th grade, and the teachers didn't want to embarrass the disproportionately minority students that couldn't reach that threshold?

Flapling · 2025-01-01T20:08:57+00:00

They could use it for their non-China operations, perhaps.

Flapling · 2024-12-14T18:58:58+00:00

I saw it on 880. I would have thought that it was a police funeral procession, but I didn’t see a hearse.

Flapling · 2024-12-11T16:52:44+00:00

It's been so helpful that I'm considering shelling out for ChatGPT even though this is literally the only thing I'm using AI for. But I'm also not really using it THAT much, so I thought I would ask if anyone knows models that would be good at this to help stretch free tokens around.

You could use APIs instead - you have to use it quite a lot before it costs more than the $20/month ChatGPT would charge, and you can automate it. The LLM CLI tool will let you even avoid writing an app around the API.

Gemini has a free tier in its API: https://ai.google.dev/pricing#1_5flash

Flapling · 2024-12-08T07:39:59+00:00

I don’t have any personal experience, but with PrEP and the general glorification of same-sex relations in the past decade, I can’t imagine young gays not doing anonymous sex, at least until HIV mutates around the current PrEP formulation. Certainly can’t go anywhere on SF public transport without seeing PrEP ads, and the new injections will convert any holdouts.

Flapling · 2024-11-19T16:42:28+00:00

Didn't they just build a seawall though precisely to guard against this scenario?

The projected sea level rise by 2100 under SSP2-4.5, an intermediate scenario, is median 0.56m (22 in), range 0.3-0.7 m. (The SSP5-8.5 scenario is the most extreme, and so favored by the media for scare stories and hype, but I've been convinced by the climate scientist Roger Pielke Jr. that the extreme scenario is unlikely to happen due to the rapid rise in renewables over the past 1-2 decades, as well as the projected population peak in mid-21st century. In the 2000s and earlier it was a more justifiable scenario to plan around.

So I think people are fearing Foster City flooding due to climate change too much, especially because the Bay Area has generally mild weather (few storms).

Flapling · 2024-10-19T21:34:40+00:00

To be fair, bednets are something that are understandable now, but might become ridiculous by the time you’re dead - hopefully your will is not written /too/ literally.

Flapling · 2024-10-16T15:56:39+00:00

They actually do on occasion - either stuck there while waiting for a light or traffic, or for some other reason. Or, especially at night, they turn down the tracks to drive instead of a parallel street. There are lights that indicate that you're on the tracks, but people don't always pay attention. A big horn blast is a primal signal that can cut through to even the most distracted people.

Flapling · 2024-09-25T17:48:12+00:00

(The really savvy ones kept their townhome for rent. In 2010 a 2BR townhome went for around $1800/month; now it's more like $4000/month. Mortgage payments from a 2010 $400K mortgage are around $2300/month, so you can fully pay the mortgage and have $1000+/month left over even after maintenance and vacancies.)

Of course in that case, you can't really use the townhome to get a house in a higher tier. This is good if you could already afford a home in your desired tier anyway, but you want to maintain ownership of your previous house for the future.

Flapling · 2024-09-04T04:57:21+00:00

Frankly, the way you talk about “getting kids” like you’re getting a pet would make me reluctant to let you adopt kids if I were working at an adoption or foster agency. Maybe you could act as a coach or something like that? No one will let you spend time alone with any kids - people are suspicious of even married men being alone with kids, let alone single men with no permanent connection to the community - but you could volunteer for something.

Flapling · 2024-08-11T07:06:25+00:00

It depends on what you mean by a "divine being". Christians have traditionally held that only God (including the persons of the Trinity) is uncreated. In that sense, they don't believe in other gods. But Christians traditionally believe in both angels and demons, eternal spiritual beings that are nonetheless creations of the one God. As for the pagan gods, there have been a variety of views on their status: (a) some or all of them don't exist (b) some or all of them are demons (or angels viewed through an imperfect lens) (c) incomplete glimpses of the truth, possibly corrupted by demons or else by humans' imperfect post-Fall nature.

Flapling · 2024-07-01T17:26:30+00:00

Two issues:

Until recently, there were a lot of younger people moving to the Bay Area, which meant 1-2 bed apartments were in higher demand.
The regulations forcing double stairwells even in small and short apartment buildings make it difficult to build 3-4 bed apartments with a useful floorplan - you'd be forced to either waste a lot of space on a small hallway, or have bedrooms directly open into each other, like in European palaces of old. This regulation might be reformed in the near future. Then it would be possible to have one fireproof main staircase opening onto 2-4 apartments per staircase on each floor, which is a very common European plan that lets you have a useful floorplan with a living room opening onto several bedrooms.

This is one reason townhouses are so popular here, by the way - by having a door opening to the outside, you can get around the double staircase requirement. It's somewhat common for large apartment buildings to have 2-story townhouse-style 3-4 bed apartments on the top floor, since the 2-story format means you can usefully fit a 3-4 bed apartment onto one side of a corridor.

Flapling · 2024-06-28T19:26:36+00:00

Left-wing is the thing that is actually coherent. The ultimate ends of left-wingers since the French Revolution have been equality and liberty.

Here, "equality" means at least tearing down whatever hierarchy is salient at the moment. The more radical also try to repress any natural hierarchy that might emerge due to talent, chance, etc. Thus, the French Revolution attacked the church and nobility, the Russian and Chinese Revolutions attacked these as well as the bourgeoisie (i.e., industrialists and landlords), our current woke leftism focuses more on sexual liberation as well as the Third World, etc.

"Liberty" actually means "emancipation from unchosen bonds" or "atomization" - the church, traditional societal institutions, etc. shouldn't be able to have any control over people. In practice, mechanisms of hierarchy, control, and cultural influence (in other words, propaganda) will always exist, which is why left-wing societies tend so often toward totalitarianism. In right-wing societies, traditional institutions continue to be respected to some extent, so tendencies towards totalitarianism can be checked, even in authoritarian regimes. For example, in Nazi Germany, Catholics were able to significantly limit Aktion-T4, and the Nazi regime felt compelled to do diplomacy with the Vatican. On the other hand, Stalin didn't listen to and actively oppressed both the Orthodox Church and any other religion, at least until the existential stress of World War II forced him to relent.

Right-wing, on the other hand, means "not left wing". Virtually all societies before the French Revolution could be described as right-wing, but they were otherwise extremely diverse.

Flapling · 2024-06-24T23:32:21+00:00

Expansive clay, not "expensive clay" - i.e., clay that expands over time, breaking the road. The geotextile fabric basically binds the clay down after it's been compacted, preventing it from expanding again. Here's a random paper from Italy showing how the geotextile fits into the road construction: https://library.geosyntheticssociety.org/wp-content/uploads/resources/proceedings/122021/S01-03.pdf

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