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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: February 24th, 2025

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  • If I go to someone and ask for a therapy session, even if they are the most supportive, thoughtful person I could hope to find, it’s not appropriate for them to hold it out as proper therapy. We have rules and restrictions on who is allowed to offer certain services, and for good reason. If one asks their therapist about confidentiality, it’s highly inappropriate for the therapist to misrepresent the confidentiality rules, also for good reason.

    ChatGPT will gladly claim to be able to provide this support, and will promise complete anonymity. It will say that it’s able to offer good advice and guidance. As you said, the text it generates will certainly be natural-sounding. It also won’t be therapy. It definitely won’t be anonymous.

    A person who lies about stuff faces consequences. A label on the door of a “medicinalist” that says “No promises to offer truthful information, verify all important things” isn’t going to prevent that if they’re selling arsenic as a cure-all. If a company wants to offer a service, they should be restricted in what they can claim they are offering.









  • Only 4% of people who went back to living in their sex assigned at birth for a while cited that their reason was because they realized that gender transition was not for them. When considering all respondents who had transitioned, this number equates to only 0.36%.

    I will grant you that the survey includes the information in a much better context compared to the article. However, this paragraph from the survey I take issue with. Those who de-transition are the only subcategory that is compared to the total population in the written text in this way, even if the percentages are subsequently present in a chart.

    Taken together, 82% of those who went back to living as their sex assigned at birth at least for a little while

    The conclusion on the following page also clearly identifies that de-transition on the basis of identity is uncommon. It also uses “at least for a little while” as though it’s a portion of a larger demographic, which it is not. Perhaps they mean it as compared to those who are currently not living as the gender they identify with, but I think that’s a strained interpretation.

    I think it’s disingenuous to attempt to make a claim about the occurrence rate of something which can’t be captured in your survey without noting the incompleteness. Especially so given the controversial nature of detransition within the broader conversation about trans issues. While it is technically true that the claim is made only of survey respondents, I still feel that the way the section is drafted provides/implies a broader framing.

    My opinions here are clearly quite pedantic. However, the topic is one where it’s critical that care be taken to avoid giving opponents any reason to discredit the larger work.


  • Okay… there’s not really any serious question that de-transition is often a result of transphobia, and that the vast majority of those who explore the gender squiggles at some point in their lives do not detransition. But this survey and this article are making an argument using awful, bullshit science and should be called out for it.

    This is a survey done on trans people. This does not include those who did explore transition and then came to the conclusion they were cis. There is no valid means for these authors to draw any conclusions about the claim they are making. And, those who are anti-trans could easily take a bad-faith reading of this which is “9% of people who transition questioned their decision before remaining under the trans ideology, which confirms that this is something our children are being pressured into.”

    We need people to stop doing fake pseudo-science bullshit analysis and calling it trans science.




  • Meanwhile, health officials said seven children were killed after an Israeli air strike targeted a water distribution site in central Gaza. The Israeli military has claimed that the strike was a result of a “technical malfunction” that had caused the missile to fall “dozens of metres from the target”.

    So in other words, they weren’t trying to hit children with the missile, they were instead trying to hit the water source, which would’ve killed those children as well as many more people. That’s much better.




  • As with most things, not categorically, but commonly. I had some cosmetic (technically reconstructive might be more accurate, but it was “elective”) surgery a couple of years ago, and I believe I paid like 85% of the bill up front. My recollection is that the remainder was due to some variables in the final cost.

    However, that’s not to say it can’t be financed even if due up front. One could certainly use any number of debt-based funding methods to acquire the money, and the surgery provider would have no means of knowing.


  • It’s entirely reasonable to both support EMTs or 911 dispatchers or firefighters, and to not support ICE. These aren’t conflicting ideas, they just happen to be multiple separate things all lumped together in order to make you think they all go together.

    Similarly, you can believe that some police actions are acceptable, and others (arguably most, or at least far too many in our current system) are not. If a guy is stabbing his ex to death across the street, then there needs to be some intervention from some form of law enforcement. That’s not really in question. Standing on a man’s neck for 9 minutes is obviously an entirely different thing. That’s also not in question by anyone reasonable.


  • IANAL.

    The judge is, mostly, correct from what I can tell. The FCRA explicitly allows the use of this information, as amended from a prior prohibition. He is correct in concluding that a blanket probition isn’t well supported within the statute’s boundaries. He is wrong in suggesting that the CFPB has no regulatory authority over the sharing medical details. The statute obviously semi-implicitly authorizes the CFPB to place some restrictions on how this information is shared, but the judge too-readily rejects these arguments. Not that the defendants made them particularly well, granted.

    But… even setting aside the partially erroneous legal finding, it’s moot. Trump’s CFPB joined the plaintiffs in this case, agreeing to roll back the provisions. That the CFPB has the right to do so isn’t in question. Or well, the defendants argued it, but it’s not a good argument. They basically said that because they don’t agree with the change, the Court shouldn’t be allowed to permit it.

    Congress needs to fix this, but obviously won’t.


  • Those you want to convince with this would view it as a political stunt fabricated by the left or the Biden Crime Family or whatever, and all it would do is reinforce the idea that any evidence brought forward is irrelevant.

    If they had enough evidence to prosecute, that’s fine. Sending rapists to prison is obviously worthwhile. But making a political point of it wouldn’t actually gain anything for anyone.