Interests are not inherently gender-specific. I know many women who gravitate towards wargames, sports, and the like, typically male-dominated hobbies. We need to stop pursuing this notion that an activity is inherently male or inherently female.
Most trans women I know are the exact opposite, they gravitate towards extremely feminine interests, like makeup, fashion, design, etc. Inherent attraction towards a particular interest only dictates your personality type, I don't think it's meaningful insofar as it relates to gender dysphoria -- I think that stems from a much deeper, much more subconscious phenomenon which is adjacent to body dysmorphia. But I digress.
I proffer a question to those skeptical about gender transition: with the rise of GLP-1 blockers, many have found holes in the body positivity movement, in that a lot of formerly obese people who found solace in Ozempic and lost a lot of weight -- this accounts for a body transformation. Many report their symptoms of body dysmorphia disappeared entirely. Is this not the same for HRT and trans people? The other issue is that many are quick to compare the plight of a trans person to that of an anorexic -- but it's already established that anorexia nervosa is a special class of eating disorder that is multifactorial in origin and etiology.
If you're content with GLP-1 blockers and Ozempic being used to combat obesity, then you should have no issue with HRT. It's essentially the same thing, being used to treat a very similar condition. A lot of obese people don't necessarily want to be skinny, they just want to feel comfy in their own skin, and that's a trait they share with trans people.
There's one particular variable in all of these examples and videos that is conveniently elided by the authors, which is that most of these seem like inner-city schools. Children born into poverty with lackluster parenting are more likely to act out, the presence of social media notwithstanding.
I'm having a hard time reading this as a reasonable suggestion, so I apologize in advance if I'm being closed-minded.
Do you not believe that this would lead to further bad outcomes? Children need something to do during the day, and with neither the ability to work, nor other obligations (not to mention their brains are not fully developed) it seems like they would end up far worse off than they would otherwise, even if the school was under-performing.
The initial batches of F-35 rusted to pieces in 3 months of service. The Sikorsky MH-53E has a kapton defect and has been dropping out of the sky for decades. Commercial aircraft aren’t filled with well paid people who signed a waiver saying they’re OK with the risk of dying. It’s a completely different space. A fighter pilot crashing isn’t anything compared with a plane going down with a hundred souls aboard
> Commercial aircraft aren’t filled with well paid people who signed a waiver saying they’re OK with the risk of dying.
Neither are military aircraft (especially ones that carry more than just a pilot and navigator/RIO), generally, unless “well-paid” is defined broadly enough to be equivalent to just “paid”.
Doesn't seem like that far of a stretch given that Accutane (another acne medication) has been linked to IBD as well. There are a lot of drugs that interfere with the gut microbiota, of which its dysbiosis is often linked to the development of IBD. We're still in the infancy of understanding the pharmacokinetics of drugs as far as they relate to the gut and the ability of drugs to modulate the microbiome.
Isotretinoin and benzoyl peroxide are not remotely similar drugs. They have completely different mechanisms of action. That they both treat acne is essentially a coincidence.
This is irresponsible advice. Some people find that meat alleviates their symptoms while other people find more relief from going vegetarian. Recommending a single type of diet (especially a "fad" diet like the carnivore diet, rather than one with some type of scientific basis like low-fodmap or specific carbohydrate diets) as a panacea is not going to work for most people. People can and should try elimination diets instead, where you eliminate all but the most basic of foods and slowly reintroduce foods over time to see which ones are triggers.
It's entirely possible you or someone you know saw great success with a carnivore diet, but others trying it might not see the same results and need one tailored to their specific gut microbiome.
Beef-only is the ultimate elimination diet. You literally eliminate absolutely everything except beef.
And beef contains 100% of the nutrients you need in order to thrive in life.
There are people who have literally eaten nothing but ribeye steaks for over ten years now.
Also, consider the fact that agriculture is only about 12,000 years old, but human beings have been living on Earth for about 200,000 years (in our current form -- a couple million if you include Homo Erectus and the other variations). We were basically 99% meat-eaters for the vast vast majority of human history.
I follow a diet that is basically 100% beef, eggs, salmon, and milk (planning to cut out the milk) and I can assure you that it is the easiest possible diet for your digestive system. (For one thing, you completely stop farting.). You have never known poops so small, easy, and quick (because 99% of what you eat is simply absorbed - this diet has no fiber).
Note that there is no truly satisfactory "literature" on ANY diet, because double-blind randomized controlled trials that are of a long enough duration and over a large enough sample size are basically impossible to conduct. The human body is the most complex thing that we know of in the universe.
However, you can follow the work of Dr. Ken Berry or Dr. Shawn Baker to learn more about the carnivore diet -- they've been neck deep in it for years. And the anecdotal evidence is becoming overwhelming -- check ou the success stories at the carnivore.diet website.
Both of those doctors have had their medical licenses revoked, and are the exact type of guru-grifters I was referring to in another comment.
> Also, consider the fact that agriculture is only about 12,000 years old, but human beings have been living on Earth for about 200,000 years (in our current form)
Classic "appeal to nature" fallacy, with no real evidence to back up. If humans were healthier before 12,000 years ago, surely it'd be easy to prove that they had lower mortality rates and longer life expectancy?
First, Dr. Ken Berry has not had his medical license revoked.
Second, Dr. Shawn Baker got involved in a dispute with a hospital system because he began curing people through the carnivore diet rather than through extremely expensive surgery (he is an orthopedic surgeon). This led to the hospital system losing a lot of money. They insisted that he stop curing people, but Dr. Baker refused. They retaliated against him by getting a fraudulent fellow to badmouth his work and get his license revoked. He then went to court and won and his name was cleared completely.
As for your claim that there is no evidence to back up the fact that humans were healthier before 12,000 years ago, what about the fact that they were taller and had fewer dental caries and larger brains? Also, my point was not that humans were healthier then (although they were) but that the carnivore diet was the diet that human beings literally evolved on.
It's better to attempt elimination diets rather than a single type (low-fodmap, specific carb, carnivore, etc.) What works for one person may not work for everybody.
The carnivore diet is the ultimate elimination diet. The strict version (in which you eat nothing but ribeye steak) is nutritionally 100% complete and there are people who have been thriving on this diet for over a decade now. Meat is the food that human beings evolved on. Just try it and see for yourself.
Exercise is also a big one. It can be difficult to exercise when you lack energy, but it's critical for your long-term health, both physical and mental. The bidirectional gut-brain axis is poorly studied but seems incredibly powerful compared to the importance that medicine has traditionally given it.
The idea behind there being no link between diet and IBD is nonsensical and patently unscientific.
From a layman's point of view, IBD is a single disease. However, in reality, it's an umbrella term for a disease with a common set of symptoms and histological changes that can have a variety of underlying etiologies. Some people are more genetically susceptible, with family histories; others with no family history can undergo changes in gut microbiota composition, genome methylation, among other environmental factors that influence development and progression of the disease.
There are a bevy of peer-reviewed studies that show links between better diets/exercise and an increase in SCFA-producing microbiome components, which are known to suppress inflammatory cytokines and improve innate immune mucosal defense systems and free radical scavenging, promoting gut healing. On the flip side, plenty of people with poor diets and a lack of fiber are at a far higher risk of developing IBD or some other autoimmune disease (like SLE or RA), even certain cancers. It's why one of the most common strategies to address mild IBD and IBS cases is to begin an elimination diet and see which foods are triggers for inflammation.
You are correct that for many, diet isn't the reason why people have IBD. But it does play a huge role in symptom burden and the overall severity and prognosis of the condition. This isn't even considering the effect of environmental contaminants (such as PFOA and BPA) on IBD development, which has been well-known for over a decade now.
Ignoring science for a bit, just from the perspective of common sense, the idea of what you put in your body not affecting you is absurd and ridiculous. It's an idea pushed by gastroenterologists who don't want to risk upset patients who would rather not change their entire diet and lifestyle to mitigate their disease, for a small portion of whom the changes will not work anyways due to an underlying genetic component to the disease. Still, there's nothing to lose and everything to gain from adopting a healthier lifestyle.
IBS is a common set of symptoms. IBD is short for inflammatory bowel disease, and it's an umbrella term for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis (UC).
My point seems to have flown over your head. Obviously it's a given that I know that, I'm a histologist. My point was that IBD is marked by histological changes within gut epithelial tissue that suggest chronic inflammation and elevated TNF-a and cytokine activity. However, it doesn't mean that the causative agent of IBD is the same for everyone.
If this was the case, and IBD was a purely genetic illness with no environmental component, then it would be literally impossible to study it. In labs we force mice to ingest dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) which produces persistent colitis by degrading the gut mucosa. It's impossible to really tell without sequencing someone's entire genome whether their IBD comes from genetic factors or environmental factors.
Both IBD and IBS respond to changes in diet, as both diseases involve degradation of the gut mucosa. Obviously IBD is marked with inflammation as well, while IBS is marked only by dysbiosis and abdominal discomfort.
That's incorrect -- the reason NASA chose Starship is because it was the most capable lander for the lowest possible projected upfront cost. Government contracts always attempt to maximize economic utility while meeting objectives -- any other advantages are ancillary to this.
> Symmetrically, almost all problems can be solved by increasing the mass budget: more fuel to loiter longer, redundant systems, etc...Starship is so hilariously large that there's enough mass budget to solve almost any problem.
Also incorrect. Mass budget does not change fundamental Newtonian physics, nor does it alter the issue of instability caused by a high center of mass. The engineers at SpaceX are very smart and I'm sure they're hard at work trying to engineer out this solution, but it's a bit like saying that you can prevent a car from rolling over if you make it heavy and powerful enough. Sure, but that causes problems and challenges of its own. It would have been easier to engineer the car to have a lower center of mass, i.e. it would be easier to land on the moon with a lander that had its mass spread out over a larger surface area and didn't have an angular moment of inertia significant enough to where topple was a concern -- like the Dynetics or BO proposals.
> Also incorrect. Mass budget does not change fundamental Newtonian physics, nor does it alter the issue of instability caused by a high center of mass.
The size of the ship solves some problems. Illustrations depict landing gear taller than a person, which means small rocks and holes are less of an issue.
Landing on a sloped surface will be an issue. Apollo 15 was close to disaster on its tilted landing and Apollo 12 had a bobble when setting down. Starship is unlikely to survive the same.
Starship will have spare fuel and relightable engines. It could just take off when it starts tipping and go for a second landing attempt on a more even surface. The low gravity is a real pain for landing, but it makes it really easy to abort a landing too, even after touch down.
Except they have no depth of experience doing a non-hoverslam landing (0 on dirt) and there is a serious risk of damage from flying debris. Apollo only had 2s max to perform an abort on a known good engine. Expecting a restart to work reliably with minimal delay is ambitious.
> It could just take off when it starts tipping and go for a second landing attempt on a more even surface.
... A surprisingly kerbal solution. Wouldn't the engines be firing to control the vertical speed though? Otherwise it'll end up lithobraking at hundreds of meters per second instead of gently touching down at 1 or 2 m/s. At least that's what happens to me if I don't burn retrograde.
> Lets not go overboard with the claims we make about government contracting.
That's more or less true though?
There's no need to debate semantics when the criteria NASA used are very clearly laid out in the source selection statement [0]. It is plain that SpaceX was selected because it met the technical requirements, provided the best value for the government, and fit within NASA's budget for the program (indeed, was the only proposal that did so).
There's also the GAO report which more or less says the same thing with more detail and confirms NASA's judgement [1].
And, I'm no expert on contracting, but it is my understanding that "meeting requirements" and "achieving the best value" are criteria that are supposed to underpin all government contracts, not something unique to that particular contract.
No it isn't. It was done correctly in this case. But if you study the history of NASA and DoD contracting the idea that they always perfectly evaluate is nonsense.
Literally during the very selection process you talk about, a NASA employ was fired because he tried to give Boeing an unfair advantage. How many times in history was this not caught?
Often the selection documents aren't public. The idea that lobbying and politics have no influence of government selection is just being naive.
Just recently in commercial Crew Starliner was selected over Dreamchaser. Despite Dreamchaser being considerably cheaper, and offering much more utility. NASA just assumed that Starliner would be done fast because it was Boeing. The reality many believe without Boeing CommercialCrew would have failed.
We can go threw history, as far back as you like. The Supersonic transport, you basically had Boeing proposing an absurdly complex incredibly ambitious design, despite being the company with the least amount of experience. They were selected despite the other projects being much more reasonable and much cheaper.
>understanding that "meeting requirements" and "achieving the best value"
These can often be at odds. It is surprisingly difficult to award a govt contract under the guise that it provides better value (and there are specific contract mechanisms to that effect). However, from a contracting officer's perspective, it can be riskier (to them personally, even if it's less risky to the taxpayer). The govt also has other goals, like reducing the risk of putting all their eggs into one contractor's basket. All this to say, there are enough competing aspects to undermine a claim that "value" is baked into the primary goals of every contract.
Most trans women I know are the exact opposite, they gravitate towards extremely feminine interests, like makeup, fashion, design, etc. Inherent attraction towards a particular interest only dictates your personality type, I don't think it's meaningful insofar as it relates to gender dysphoria -- I think that stems from a much deeper, much more subconscious phenomenon which is adjacent to body dysmorphia. But I digress.
I proffer a question to those skeptical about gender transition: with the rise of GLP-1 blockers, many have found holes in the body positivity movement, in that a lot of formerly obese people who found solace in Ozempic and lost a lot of weight -- this accounts for a body transformation. Many report their symptoms of body dysmorphia disappeared entirely. Is this not the same for HRT and trans people? The other issue is that many are quick to compare the plight of a trans person to that of an anorexic -- but it's already established that anorexia nervosa is a special class of eating disorder that is multifactorial in origin and etiology.
If you're content with GLP-1 blockers and Ozempic being used to combat obesity, then you should have no issue with HRT. It's essentially the same thing, being used to treat a very similar condition. A lot of obese people don't necessarily want to be skinny, they just want to feel comfy in their own skin, and that's a trait they share with trans people.