American Cultural Differences

The U.S. Is Just Different — So Let’s Stop Pretending We’re Not - Freakonomics

""She did want to measure culture, and how it differs from place to place. She decided that the key difference, the right place to start measuring, was whether the culture in a given country is tight or loose.

GELFAND: All cultures have social norms, these unwritten rules that guide our behavior on a daily basis. But some cultures strictly abide by their norms. They’re what we call tight cultures. And other cultures are more loose. They’re more permissive...

Tight cultures, she writes, “are usually found in South and East Asia, the Middle East, and in European countries of Nordic and Germanic origin.” Loose cultures tend to be found in English-speaking countries as well as Latin-American, Latin-European, and formerly Communist cultures. The United States, you may not be surprised to learn, is on the loose end of the spectrum — although not in the top five. The five loosest countries according to this analysis were Ukraine, Estonia, Hungary, Israel, and the Netherlands. Australia and Brazil are also loose. The five tightest countries are Pakistan, Malaysia, India, South Korea, and our old friend Singapore. China, Japan, and Turkey are also tight. Now, let’s pull back and make an important point: labeling a given country tight or loose is an overall, aggregate measurement. Within countries, there is of course enormous variation. There are plenty of looser people in tight countries and vice versa. But remember what Hofstede told us:

HOFSTEDE: You’re like one drop in the Mississippi River. You may decide to go another way, but that doesn’t make the river change.

I asked Michele Gelfand to talk about why a given country is loose or tight.

GELFAND: In cross-cultural psychology, we study how ecological and historical factors cause the evolution of differences. And there’s large differences around the world, for example, on how much cultures are exposed to chronic threat. And that really can help explain some variation — not all, but some variation — in norms and values...

Loose cultures tend to be found in English-speaking countries as well as Latin-American, Latin-European, and formerly Communist cultures. The United States, you may not be surprised to learn, is on the loose end of the spectrum — although not in the top five. The five loosest countries according to this analysis were Ukraine, Estonia, Hungary, Israel, and the Netherlands. Australia and Brazil are also loose. The five tightest countries are Pakistan, Malaysia, India, South Korea, and our old friend Singapore. China, Japan, and Turkey are also tight...

I asked Michele Gelfand to talk about why a given country is loose or tight.

GELFAND: In cross-cultural psychology, we study how ecological and historical factors cause the evolution of differences. And there’s large differences around the world, for example, on how much cultures are exposed to chronic threat. And that really can help explain some variation — not all, but some variation — in norms and values... So, Japan has been hit by Mother Nature for centuries. Or more human-made threats, like how many times has your nation been invaded over the last 100 years? Groups that tend to have threat tend to develop stricter rules to coordinate...

DUBNER: When I look at the loosest country in the data, I see Ukraine. And I think, “Holy cow, Ukraine is surrounded by threat, including its next-door neighbor, Russia.” That relationship has not been a constant, but that makes me a little suspicious.

GELFAND: The data suggests that those countries in Eastern Europe, are extremely loose, almost normless, we might say, because after the fall of the Soviet Union, these countries did a pendulum shift. And that happens a lot. What we saw in Egypt was very similar. We had a very tight social order. When they took out Mubarak, this went the opposite extreme to almost anomie, normlessness.

As for the U.S., Gelfand says the U.S. is not only loose but getting progressively looser... But even a loose country will tighten up when a threat arises.

GELFAND: Like during 9/11, during World Wars, we see increases in tightness. During the Cold War. We had a lot of struggles with tightening during Covid, clearly.

Gelfand says the countries that were most aggressive in trying to contain Covid tended to be tighter countries... Michele Gelfand and several co-authors recently published a study in The Lancet about how Covid played out in loose versus tight cultures. Controlling for a variety of other factors, they found that looser countries — the U.S., Brazil, Italy, and Spain — have had roughly five times the number of Covid cases and nearly nine times as many deaths as tighter countries. But, let’s look at the pandemic from a different angle: which country produced the most effective Covid-19 vaccines? Tightness may create compliance; but looseness can drive innovation and creativity.

GELFAND: The U.S. is one of the most creative places on the planet. Like, you saw in the U.S. trying to locate Covid in sewage. That’s a crazy, creative solution to try to deal with the pandemic...

Tight countries tend to have very little jaywalking, or littering — or, God forbid, dog poop on the sidewalks. You can even see the evidence in the clocks that appear on city streets.

GELFAND: In Germany and in Japan, the clocks are really synchronized. In Brazil and Greece, you’re not entirely sure what time it is...

A loose country, like the U.S., tends to do well in creativity and innovation; in tolerance and openness; in free speech and a free press. The downsides of looseness are less coordination, less self-control; more crime and quality-of-life problems.

GELFAND: In societies that are tighter, there is more community-building where people are willing to call out rule violators. Here in the U.S., it’s actually a rule violation to call out people who are violating norms.

She sees the lack of self-control in loose countries as particularly worrisome.

GELFAND: So, that has a lot of other effects on debt, on alcoholism, on recreational drug use. It also is related to obesity. Apparently over 50 percent of cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese...

Joe Henrich wanted to see how the Ultimatum experiments worked when it wasn’t just a bunch of WEIRD college students.

HENRICH: I was doing research in the Peruvian Amazon. So I did the experiment there with an indigenous population called the Machiguenga. And the Machiguenga were much closer to the predictions of Homo economicus, where you’d make low offers and never reject. So, they would offer a mean of about 25, 26 percent. There were a number of low offers of 15 percent, which didn’t get rejected. And this led to this project where we did in lots of places — hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, Africa, Papua New Guinea. And we found the full spectrum of variation. Offers went up as high as 55 or 60 percent in some places and then down around 25 percent in other places.

DUBNER: I remember once, years and years ago, when I was reading this research that you were doing, speaking with Francisco Gil-White, who was then at Penn, and he told me that when he was running this Ultimatum experiment, I don’t remember where — I want to say Mongolia.

HENRICH: Yeah, he was in Mongolia.

DUBNER: But that the research subjects, they gave him a lot back and they thought it was going to him. And he said the reason was that he was a young postdoc, and he had holes in his jeans. And the research subject explained to him that, “Oh, I feel so bad for you that you can’t afford pants without holes in them that I can’t take the money from this poor American kid.” And it struck me as a way in which this experiment could be perverted" 

 

Ahh, "stereotypes"! 

 

The Pros and Cons of America’s (Extreme) Individualism - Freakonomics

""HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., there is little constraining. If you’re a constrained sort of person, you won’t go far in the U.S.

Stephen DUBNER: I’m curious whether you’ve ever been accused of political incorrectness in your study of national cultures. Is that a yes?

HOFSTEDE: Yes, especially by people from Anglo countries. Culture can be quite an offensive concept, particularly to people who project it onto an individual characteristic, as if it was about an individual...

Collectivistic cultures are those of the Amerindian empires. The Aztec, the Inca, and today’s Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, are very collectivistic. China is also very collectivistic and so are the Southeast Asian countries, but not Japan. Europe has very strong gradients between very individualistic Nordic and Anglo and Germanic countries; Germanic is a little bit more collectivistic. Latin countries tend to be more collectivistic, especially Spain and Portugal — not so much Italy and France...

Where would you think the U.S. ranks among all the countries measured on this dimension? That’s right: we are No. 1, the most individualistic country in the world, 91 out of 100 on the Hofstede scale of individualism. Spoiler alert: This dimension is one of the six in which the U.S. is the biggest outlier in the world...

HOFSTEDE: High individualism is correlated with trying new stuff. Because if you try something new, you show to the people around you that you are an individual and you can make your own decisions. And that is a status-worthy thing. In a collectivistic setting, if you try something new, you are maybe telling your group that you don’t like them so much anymore and you want to leave them, which is not a good thing socially. You could ask people, “What do you like to eat?” The more collectivistic they are, the more likely they are to talk about their grandmother and what she made, and they’re less likely to start entirely on their own diet.

Here are some things that tend to thrive in highly individual societies: human rights, a free press, divorce, and a faster pace of life. We even walk faster...

Individualistic countries tend to be richer, but as Hofstede the Elder once put it, “The order of logic is not that individualism comes first. It is that the wealth comes first, and the individualism follows.” Henrich takes a more nuanced view...

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that individualism might contribute to inequality — or at least, as Henrich puts it, the justification of inequality. The notion of the American Dream has long been that prosperity is just sitting out there, waiting for anyone to grab it — as long as you’re willing to work hard enough.

HENRICH: So Americans tend to be more work-obsessed than other people.

The average U.S. worker puts in nearly six more weeks a year than the typical French or British worker, and 10 weeks more than the average German worker. For some Americans, at least, working hard is a badge of honor.

GELFAND: When we ask people, “What does honor mean to you?” in the U.S., a lot of people talk about work...

HENRICH: [Americans] are self-enhancing, which means they try to promote their attributes. Self-centered — so if you give them tasks and have them list traits about themselves, they’ll tend to list their attributes and characteristics rather than their relationships.

GELFAND: The U.S. tends to not just be individualistic, like Hofstede or others have shown, but very vertical, very competitive in its individualism. And that’s different than in Scandinavia and in New Zealand and Australia, which has much more horizontal individualism. That’s to say that it emphasizes privacy and independence, like the U.S., but it’s much more egalitarian...

Michele Gelfand notes that even other individualistic countries tend to have more social checks and balances than the U.S.

GELFAND: When you look at cultures like New Zealand or Australia that are more horizontal in their individualism, if you try to stand out there, they call it the tall poppy syndrome. You’re going to be shut down. There, it’s really important to maintain that humility, to be focused on your privacy, but not trying to one-up other people.

The spirit of competition — of what Michele Gelfand calls “vertical individualism” — seems to permeate every corner of American society. Joe Henrich points out that even our religions are competitive.

HENRICH: My favorite explanation for this — I think this has been put out most clearly by a sociologist named Rodney Stark — is that with freedom of religion, you get competition amongst religious organizations. So the U.S. produces the sort of Wal-Mart equivalent of religions: big churches giving the people what they want, high pageantry. Whereas if you have a state religion, it tends to get tired and old and boring. People get less interested...

According to the 6-D Model of National Culture that we’ve been talking about, the U.S. is the most individualistic nation on earth...

HOFSTEDE: If you are, let’s say, a toddler, what do you get to decide for yourself? In a society of small power distance, a lot. At school in the Netherlands, I’ve seen a mother ask her two-year-old, “Shall I change your nappy?” And then the child gets to decide whether its nappy gets changed. This would never happen in a society of large power distance. A child is a child, and a parent is a parent, and a parent decides for the child.

The U.S. also has a small power distance — 40 on a scale of 100, which puts it among the lowest in the world. This carries over into many areas of society, including the labor market.

HOFSTEDE: In the U.S.A., the boss needs to be a team player. They’re not supposed to be the boss... In the U.S.A., individualism coupled with masculinity creates a society where if you’re not a winner, you’re a loser. And this dynamic leads to a lot of fighting for the sake of fighting... you might be going down the path of civil war, really. If you no longer even pretend to be one people and to be fair to all the citizens of your country, then you’re not going down a road that leads to a great future...

DUBNER: When you’re inclined to look at the U.S. in a positive light, do you find uncertainty avoidance to be largely a force for the good in terms of creating and building a strong society, or do you think it’s more —?

HOFSTEDE: This is a very American question, Stephen. You realize, you want a black or white value judgment...

Everybody, of course, instinctively feels and should feel that their country, or whatever their tribe is, is the best in the world. If you don’t feel that, then you will be an unhappy person...

The U.S., according to this analysis, is comparatively a short-term country. One hallmark of short-term thinking: a tendency toward black and white moral distinctions versus shades of gray. Another one: impatience...

HOFSTEDE: For the U.S.A., the world is like a market. But a lot of the world is much more like a family. You have to behave like a family member if you want to be one. In the Germanic world, we have systems, which means that nothing stands alone. Every action or every fact or every move has a system around it. And this is what Europe has. Europe has a strong influence from Germany, also from France. Both are long-term oriented, so they see a lot of context around things... In an individualistic society, depending on how the mood is, you can get very different developments. So you can see that in an individualistic society, after becoming a world champion in a sport or certainly after winning a major war, people do not fight one another, but they admire one another. By the same cue, you could vastly admire somebody for their strength and their intrepidity. Then you can have something very good happening. For instance, the rhythm of vaccination in the U.S.A. is very fast. Whereas in countries that are bogged down in cronyism and corruption, it doesn’t happen. So, yes, the same attributes that can be a big problem can also be a big boost."

Links - 16th December 2022 (1 - Crypto)

Does the Crypto Crash Mean the Blockchain Is Over? - Freakonomics - "BUDISH: The thing I worry about is a rogue actor sends a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin to some financial institution, gets back a billion dollars worth of traditional financial assets — bonds or dollars — and then overwhelms the blockchain with computational force so that they delete that original transaction in which they sent the billion dollars worth of Bitcoin to the financial institution in the first place.
This is called a “double-spend” attack: the rogue actor in this scenario gets $1 billion in assets from the bank and keeps their original Bitcoin. Budish says the amount of computing power needed to prevent a $1 billion “double-spend” attack could cost as much as $3 trillion annually, or 4 percent of global G.D.P. Until 2140, some of this cost is covered by the issuance of new Bitcoins. But at some point, miners will have to be paid if we all want a secure and trustworthy Bitcoin ledger.
BUDISH: This is the problem to worry about with anonymous, decentralized trust is — it’s trustworthy, as long as a majority of the compute power is behaving honestly. But if you overwhelm the compute power with a larger majority, you can essentially rewrite history. And Bitcoin has other shortcomings as a currency. At the moment, the Bitcoin blockchain can only process 7 transactions per second. The credit-card company Visa does 1,700 per second"

What Problems Does Crypto Solve, Anyway? - Freakonomics - "SCHOAR: We compare the concentration of Bitcoin ownership to the wealth inequality in the U.S. So in the U.S., about 0.1 percent of Americans control about 16 percent of all wealth. In comparison in Bitcoin, what we find is that 0.01 percent of Bitcoin owners control 26 percent of all the Bitcoins that are out there. The concentration is actually ten times even more concentrated than the wealth in the United States...
During the first two years of Bitcoin’s existence — 2009 to 2011 — the vast majority of Bitcoin was mined and collected by just 64 people. Most contemporary Bitcoin owners can be connected to those original 64 miners by a chain of just six transactions. So a relatively tiny group of people acquired and held onto Bitcoin during its meteoric rise. A recent report from the U.S. Federal Reserve reads: “Those who held cryptocurrency purely for investment purposes were disproportionately high-income, almost always had a traditional banking relationship, and typically had other retirement savings.”"

Axie Infinity Has Left Filipino Gamers Despondent + In Debt | TIME - "he plunged into Axie, doing battle with cartoon monsters for hours deep into the night. He soon began earning cryptocurrency, which he converted into pesos, allowing him to take better care of his mother and his home. At the same time, thousands of young people in the Philippines were jumping headlong into the game. For a brief moment at the peak of crypto’s astonishing 2021 boom, these young Filipino players were fulfilling a longtime dream of crypto’s most ardent evangelists: that “play-to-earn” blockchain games like Axie could lead the way to a more equitable, opportunity-rich global economy. Fourteen months later, most Filipino players, including Orias, have exited the game nursing anger and anxiety—and, in some cases, thousands of dollars down. Orias grew to hate playing the game. It was boring and stressful... “I felt fatigued all the time. I became more aggressive in every aspect of my life,” he says. The story of Orias and Axie Infinity serves as a cautionary tale for crypto and its bombastic rhetoric about changing the world. Many crypto thought leaders, when rebutting criticism about the unsavory aspects of the space, point to its impact in developing countries. But Orias and others say that Axie Infinity reinforced predatory systems and gave them false hope... as the game’s popularity increased, observers pointed out that its economic structure was unsustainable: the value of SLP necessitated new players continually buying in, much like a Ponzi scheme. Sky Mavis’ team even acknowledged in its white paper that the game was “dependent on new entrants.”... As more players entered the game and generated more and more SLP tokens, each token’s value decreased. By November, the research firm Naavik reported that average earnings for Axie scholars had dropped below the Philippines’ minimum wage... a hacker targeted the “bridge” upon which money was transferred between Sky Mavis’ blockchain Ronin and the much larger cryptocurrency Ethereum. (Bridges between chains are one of the least secure parts of blockchain ecosystems.) More than $600 million was quickly drained from the network, with two-thirds of that belonging to users themselves. While Sky Mavis returned all funds, the hack demoralized the game’s user base... Filipino scholars, who were told that blockchain games would bring radical economic change, are walking away confused and jaded. Several scholars TIME talked to said they owe hundreds or even thousands of dollars to friends or family who helped them pay the initial investment, only for their monsters to become worthless"

Founders of bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows go missing - "The co-founders of failed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital appear to be on the run from creditors... the physical whereabouts of Zhu Su and Kyle Davies, who started Three Arrows in 2012, are “currently unknown”... Three Arrows, also known as 3AC, managed about $10 billion in assets as recently as March. On July 1, the firm filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection from U.S. creditors in the Southern District of New York, after a plunge in cryptocurrencies and the collapse of the terraUSD (UST) stablecoin project wiped out its assets."

11 Companies That Hoarded Customers’ Money as Crypto Crashed - "There’s no getting around it, June was a disastrous month for cryptocurrency.  Though cryptocurrency prices have trended down for the better part of 2022, investors truly had the rug pulled out from under them in the past two months"

Major Democrat donor's crypto company collapses, World Economic Forum cuts ties to it - "A cryptocurrency company led by a major Democratic donor is going bankrupt and faces a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation.  FTX, run by Sam Bankman-Fried, told employees on the morning of November 8 that another company, Binance, would be coming in to buy it due to financial problems. Those were partially caused “after [FTX] was hit with roughly $5 billion worth of withdrawal requests on [November 6]”... There is at least $1 billion of client funds left unaccounted for and some customers may never get their money back, according to Reuters and CNN. “FTX paused withdrawals, though FTX US withdrawals remained unaffected,” Coindesk reported November 11.  Bankman-Fried had poured tens of millions of dollars into Democratic candidates in the 2022 cycle, making him the second largest supporter of liberal causes and candidates, just behind George Soros. He gave just under $36 million in the 2022 election cycle...   The World Economic Forum, which listed FTX as a “partner,” scrubbed its connections to the company, facing criticism for the way Bankman-Fried mixed funds held by FTX and a separate company he controls called Alameda Research... Bankman-Fried and his brother also donated millions of dollars to other organizations besides explicitly political ones. The FTX Foundation, the charitable arm of the company, gave millions of dollars to TOGETHER Trials, which published a study critical of the use of ivermectin as an intervention against COVID... Liberal investigative reporting company ProPublica has received $5 million from another Bankman-Friend nonprofit called Building a Stronger Future. “Over three years, the donation will support investigations into ongoing questions about the COVID-19 pandemic, biosecurity and public health preparedness”... ProPublica did not respond to a Tuesday morning media inquiry from LifeSiteNews about how it minimized conflicts of interest in its reporting due to the donation and if anyone at the organization had any concerns about the contribution."

Ben Hunt on Twitter - "Enough of this bullshit. I’m old enough to remember that Bernie Madoff - who ran a scam 100x more complex than SBF’s - was in handcuffs the same day the Feds learned he used client funds to cover fund obligations. Seriously. Enough of this bullshit."
When you have links to the US government...

Bitcoin has no future as a payments network, says FTX chief | Financial Times - "Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the digital asset exchange FTX, said the proof of work system of validating blockchain transactions, which underpins bitcoin, was not capable of scaling up to cope with the millions of transactions that would be needed to make the cryptocurrency an effective means of payment"
Oops. Just half a year before FTX's implosion

‘They couldn’t even scream any more. They were just sobbing’: the amateur investors ruined by the crypto crash - "Desperate, Roy made a string of bad bets. The value of his portfolio dwindled to €20,000, then €3,000. “It got so out of control because I saw all my chances to live a better life fading away,” he says. “So I became really desperate and eventually just completely isolated. I didn’t want to see anybody, because I thought I was a failure.”  Most mornings, he would wake up shaking from alcohol withdrawal, order booze online and spend the day drinking and taking drugs. He developed stomach ulcers. “You can’t explain the pain,” he says. “I would drink and puke and drink and puke and drink and hope to keep it in, so the pain would go away. I felt like dying.”  In May, jobless and broke, Roy checked into Castle Craig, one of the only centres in the world that treats cryptocurrency addiction. (He lost his job when he relapsed; his rehab fees are covered by medical insurance.) His cryptocurrency portfolio is worth about €300. Now, amid the incongruous grandeur of a Scottish stately home, he is attempting to rebuild his life – and quieten the tormenting thought that he should have pulled out his money when he had the chance... The industry’s enthusiasts and sceptics agree on one thing: they saw this coming. Perhaps they didn’t predict the precise contours of the crash, or the fact that so many seemingly reputable companies would flame out, but there was a sense that the cryptocurrency bull would run out of road. The sector was too hot, too loaded with bad-faith actors, scammers, credulous investors and amateurs feigning expertise in Telegram groups, YouTube videos and Twitter threads. When internet jokes such as PooCoin and Dogecoin surged in popularity, it ought to have been apparent that a market correction was coming. Such stupidity cannot be sustained for long. “Was it surprising?” says Dr Larisa Yarovaya, an associate professor of finance at the University of Southampton. “I think it was quite predictable.” The Bank of England has repeatedly told cryptocurrency investors to be prepared to lose all their money. Investors bought bitcoin as a speculative punt in 2020 and 2021 because interest rates were low and many had spare cash due to lockdowns and economic stimulus packages. But when interest rates and inflation began to rise, fuelled by Covid‑affected supply chains and the war in Ukraine, institutional investors preferred to put their money into safer assets... The mania around bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies was fuelled by a social media hype machine unprecedented in the history of financial markets... Nassim Nicholas Taleb was once open-minded about the potential of cryptocurrencies. The risk engineering professor originated the theory of the “black swan”: a hard-to-predict but seismic event, such as the 2008 financial crash, that is often rationalised after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. In 2018, Taleb wrote an essay describing bitcoin as “an excellent idea” and a possible “insurance policy against an Orwellian future”.  Last year, Taleb revised his position in a paper that described bitcoin’s value as “zero”. “This is the first time we’ve seen a financial bubble coupled with religious, cult‑like behaviour and an investment strategy not seen before in history”... When Taleb published his 2021 paper, he received so much abuse that he had to lock his Twitter account. “I could not believe how psychopathic bitcoin people were”... Future generations may look back at this boom as a period of mania, when money multiplied like bacteria and a collective delusion gripped financial markets. It may seem unfathomable, but it shouldn’t. After all, who doesn’t want to be rich?"

Commentary: Don’t trust the hype – Bitcoin will never be a wise investment - "over-issuance of currency is just one possible threat to emerging-market financial stability, and removing it does not suddenly make Bitcoin a reliable store of value. Quite the contrary: Bitcoin’s price volatility since its inception in 2009 has been staggering... According to a note from JPMorgan on Feb 17, its three-month realised volatility at the time was 87 per cent, compared to just 16 per cent for gold. Similarly, a recent study finds that Bitcoin’s price volatility is almost ten times higher than that of major fiat currencies (such as the US dollar against the euro and the yen). Moyo also suggests that Bitcoin could facilitate remittances to low- and middle-income countries. But this ignores the fact that Bitcoin transactions are notoriously inefficient. Because its block size is capped at one megabyte and the block-discovery process takes approximately ten minutes per block, only seven transactions can be completed per second.  By contrast, Visa executes an average of 1,700 transactions per second, and could feasibly handle more than 65,000 transaction messages per second. By design, Bitcoin is simply too inefficient ever to become an effective medium of payment. Similarly, the fact that Bitcoin’s supply is fixed at 21 million units is more of a drawback than a selling point. A proper currency should be able to undergo a massive expansion in supply when circumstances demand it, such as in the case of a financial crisis or a shock to aggregate demand. There can be no lender of last resort or market maker of last resort capable of systemic rescue operations with Bitcoin and other decentralised cryptocurrencies... Bitcoin’s extremely high energy demand is another nail in its coffin... The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index estimates annualised consumption at 139.15 terawatt-hours – more than that of Argentina. Simply put, Bitcoin and other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies are an environmental disaster.  Worse, cryptocurrencies can be replicated without bound, further amplifying the environmental damage"

Bitcoin price close to new record high as analysts predict ‘permanent hike’ in 2021
From 2021. So much for that

Meme - "I Am Finally RICH - How Crypto Made Me Rich
boogie2988 1 year ago
I need your help.
boogie2988 5 days ago"

Crypto group shamed for spending $3m on ‘Dune’ book, mistakenly believing it had acquired copyright to produce NFTs - "The spice must not be flowing for members of an NFT (non-fungible token) group that spent $3m on a rare book detailing film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic science fiction novel Dune... [its] members mistakenly believed that the purchase granted them the copyright to the book, which they intended to splice and sell as NFTs before burning the physical copy."

Warren Buffett: Cryptocurrency 'has no value'

Cryptocurrency investing has a big gender problem - "Twice as many men as women invest in cryptocurrency, according to CNBC and Acorn's Invest in You: Next Gen Investor survey, conducted in partnership with Momentive. The crypto gender gap exceeds the existing gap within traditional investments including stocks, ETFs, mutual funds and real estate... Twice as many men as women invest in cryptocurrency (16% of men vs. 7% of women), according to CNBC and Acorn's Invest in You: Next Gen Investor survey, conducted in partnership with Momentive. Women are lagging behind men in their rates of cryptocurrency investing, just as they have historically struggled to keep pace with men in more traditional investment verticals. In fact, in the new survey data, the gender disparity in crypto matches or exceeds the gender gaps in ownership of exchange-traded funds (14% of men vs. 7% of women), individual stocks (40% of men vs. 24% of women), mutual funds (30% of men vs. 20% of women), real estate (36% of men vs. 30% of women), and bonds (14% of men vs. 11% of women)."
Of course, if women had been more into crypto than men, the crash would've hurt them more and this would've been a big gender problem

Meme - Natalie Brunell @natbrunell: "Yes this tweet called the top of #Bitcoin and yes we're all eating/working at McDonald's, but check back in with us in 4 years"
"I'm starting a weekly #Bitcoin dinner with my girlfriends who are new BTC investors! Welcome them to Team Orange! @MeghanKluth"

Meme - Mom: "Fix it. Now
This is why we don't love you
You told us to buy etherim at 4,000 now it is 1,000"

Ukrainian Put Savings Into Crypto to Avoid War Risks. Then It Crashed. - "Yuri Popovich thought it seemed like a good idea at the time... Billionaires weren't spared from the crash, either. Changpeng Zhao, the wealthy founder of the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance, joked last week that he was "poor again" after the value of Binance's holdings in luna, a sister token that has its value pegged to terra's, crashed to about $2,200 from $1.6 billion a month ago."

Crypto meltdown rings alarm bells - "Crypto assets were supposed to behave quite differently to conventional investments. It turns out that they do. In a “risk-off” environment they perform far worse.  The selling points for crypto assets used to be that they weren’t correlated to other assets classes and therefore would provide diversification from conventional holdings of shares and bonds and also provide a hedge against inflation. It turns out none of those previous investor convictions has proven true. In fact cryptos have demonstrated that, as an asset class, they are highly-correlated with other risk assets but in a grossly exaggerated fashion.  The market capitalisation of all crypto assets has fallen by $US1.5 trillion ($2.2 trillion) since peaking last November at about $US2.9 trillion, a fall of about 52 per cent. The value of the dominant asset, Bitcoin, has fallen from almost $US70,000 to about $US30,000, or a decline of about 57 per cent. At almost the same time that the crypto market peaked, so did technology stocks. (It took a couple more months – until January this year – for the broader market to crack)... There has been a general flight by investors to cash. It’s not just cryptos and stocks that have slumped but emerging markets’ currencies and securities, high-yield debt and even Treasury bonds.  It is notable that the US dollar has strengthened even as bond yields have spiked – the flight to safety hasn’t been to the traditional safe haven of the US government bond market but to an even safer place. The drivers of the implosion in risk asset values that began in the crypto market last November are obvious. It’s the outbreak of inflation at 40-year highs and the inevitable, if belated, response by the Federal Reserve Board in the form of higher interest rates and reduced liquidity. The implications for the change in monetary policy for conventional assets is obvious. When the risk-free rate – the 10-year bond rate used to discount future corporate cash flows – rises, the net present values of those cash flows shrink. Crypto assets generally don’t have cash flows so the destruction of value occurring presumably relates to the impact of the external settings on investor psychology and the increasing aversion to risk that has developed since late last year... The fact that the downturn in the crypto market started a little earlier than the broader sell-off in riskier stocks is interesting. The “mainstreaming” of crypto last year attracted institutional money and wider use of sophisticated trading strategies, including the use of leverage and derivatives. The exodus of those relatively new investors, and the unwinding of their positions, might be another strand in the explanation for the violence of the movements in the value of crypto assets... Algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD – which is supposed to use financial engineering to peg its value perfectly to the US dollar, fell below US70 cents this week after experiencing something akin to a “run.”  Coincidentally, on Monday the Federal Reserve warned in its latest financial stability report that stablecoins were vulnerable to runs because they were backed by assets that might lose value or become illiquid during periods of stress. It noted that stablecoins are increasingly used to meet margin requirements for leveraged trading in other cryptocurrencies, which could amplify volatility and increase redemption risks."

‘I lost my life savings’: Terra Luna cryptocurrency collapses 98% overnight - "The price of the Terra (LUNA) cryptocurrency has fallen by more than 99 per cent, wiping out the fortunes of crypto investors.  Terra, which ranked among the top 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies, dropped below $1 on Wednesday, having peaked close to $120 last month. Other coins also appear to be in trouble amid a market-wide downturn."

Crypto’s steep decline has investors worried. What do celebrity boosters say? - "In a flashy advertising campaign for Crypto.com, Hollywood star Matt Damon told potential cryptocurrency investors that “fortune favors the brave.”  But after the price of bitcoin plunged this week, erasing more than $200 billion in wealth in just 24 hours, Damon and nine other high-profile celebrities who have publicly endorsed digital currencies evidently were not brave enough to comment on the apparent market crash. NBC News contacted representatives for Damon, as well as Larry David, Charli D’Amelio, Jamie Foxx, Paris Hilton, LeBron James, Kim Kardashian, Ashton Kutcher, Gwyneth Paltrow and Reese Witherspoon. Their spokespeople did not respond to emails sent Thursday morning; Kardashian's publicist declined to comment. Damon, David and James each appeared in eye-catching crypto commercials that aired during the Super Bowl in February. The star of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” showed up in a cheeky ad for the FTX exchange, making it seem like crypto deniers would be judged as harshly by history as those who opposed silverware or the wheel... Witherspoon, for example, tweeted in December that “crypto is here to stay" and encouraged more women to get involved."

Meme - "My money was losing 8.5% a year due to inflation so I decided to invest in crypto. Now I've lost 50% in a few months"

Bill Gates Explains Why He Doesn’t Own Any Cryptocurrency - "“I like investing in things that have valuable output. The value of companies is based on how they make great products. The value of crypto is just what some other person decides someone else will pay for it so not adding to society like other investments”...  On whether billionaires should pay more in taxes, Gates, who has previously said he would pay more tax, warned that going too high could lead to more tax dodgers. “Getting marginal rates above 60% often leads to a lot of complex avoidance if your system allows for that. It is strange to have the capital gain rate below the ordinary income rate. An estate tax could go somewhat above 60%—it is amazing how few countries have those”"

Salvadoran President Bukele's Latest Bitcoin Venture Is Another Distraction - "Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s experiment in making Bitcoin an official national currency alongside the U.S. dollar, which has been the currency since 2001, has not gone well. But when a con artist’s grift starts to fall apart, he knows to move onto the next one fast. The same goes for fast-talking presidents.  More than 91 percent of Salvadorans want dollars, not bitcoins. The official Chivo payment system was unreliable at launch in September—the kiss of death for a new system. Users joined for the $30 signup bonus, spent it or cashed it out, then didn’t use Chivo again. The system completely failed to check new users’ photos, relying solely on their national identity card number and date of birth; massive identity fraud to steal signup bonuses ensued. Bitcoin’s ridiculously volatile price was appreciated only by aspiring day traders. Large street protests against compulsory Bitcoin implementation continued through October. The government stopped promoting Chivo on radio, TV, and social media. Chivo buses and vans were seen with plastic taped over the company’s logo...   The other $500 million raised from bond sales will theoretically be used to start construction on Bitcoin City, a charter city in a special economic zone. Bitcoin City would have no income, property, contract, or city tax. The only tax would be value-added tax, or VAT, half of the proceeds from which would be used to fund the city, and half to pay back the bonds...   Shortly after Bukele’s June announcement that Bitcoin would be legal tender in El Salvador, he tweeted that the country would mine its own bitcoins via the existing LaGeo plant in Berlín, Usulután, and a 95-megawatt well that had just been opened. A shipping container of bitcoin mining rigs was set up at the Berlín plant on Sept. 29.  The trouble is that mining bitcoins in El Salvador makes no economic sense. Bitcoin mining is a process of competitively wasting electricity to guess a winning number every 10 minutes or so. Your business input is electricity; so miners are in direct competition with every other miner in the world, and go wherever reliable electricity is cheapest and the government is willing to turn a blind eye to the whole enterprise—a pressing issue since China kicked cryptocurrency miners out in May.  The world’s average price for bitcoin mining is around five cents per kilowatt-hour; but industrial rates in El Salvador are 13 to 15 cents per kilowatt-hour. In one four-day period, the Berlín operation mined $269 of Bitcoin—and was estimated to have spent at least $4,672 worth of electricity doing so...   The bitcoin mining and Bitcoin City proposals are ultimately just yet more splashy distractions from Bukele’s economic woes... a national economy really can’t run on a volatile and manipulated speculative commodity that’s unusable as a currency."
From December 2021

An Entire Country Switched to Bitcoin and Now Its Economy Is Floundering - "Months after El Salvador announced that it would accept bitcoin as legal tender, the country has found itself on the verge of economic collapse yet again...  forcing your nation’s banks and stores to accept a currency large swaths of the population are unfamiliar with and don’t trust is a good way to tank your economy...  the country’s sovereign bond dropped from 75 cents to 63 cents overnight and is now at 36 cents. In the past five months since it officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender, experts have estimated that El Salvador’s sovereign credit got four times worse than it was before the move. Bitcoin’s extreme volatility has also been on full display, as its price was hovering around $60,000 at the time of Bukele’s big announcements, but has now crashed to the mid-$40,000s... A Central American University survey conducted last September found that nine out of 10 citizens in the country didn’t know what bitcoin was, and eight out of 10 said they had little to no confidence in the digital cash. Bukele also sold the legislation on the idea that bitcoin would make remittances — money sent to Salvadorans from friends and family members working abroad — cheaper. However, the opposite was often true.  This is because citizens would typically turn the bitcoin into cash after receiving it, Fortune reports. To do that, they needed to travel to an ATM, which takes a substantial cut of the money withdrawn. Exchange platforms like Coinbase also take anywhere from two to four percent of the money as well.   Hanke believes that that winds up being nearly four times as expensive as traditional remittances."
From January 2022

Analysis-Crypto crash leaves El Salvador with no easy exit from worsening crisis - "Bitcoin has fallen 45 per cent since El Salvador officially adopted it in early September, and 26 per cent from its May high as crypto assets have been swept up in a risk-off investing environment.  The combined market value of all cryptocurrencies recently fell to $1.2 trillion, less than half of where it was last November"

Bitcoin As an Inflation Hedge Challenged by Sell-Off After CPI Data - "With its fixed supply of 21 million bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is meant to protect against reckless central bank policy and helicopter money distributed by governments during the pandemic."

Dogecoin Creator Jackson Palmer Criticizes Cryptocurrencies - "“After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity”... One of the many awful traits of the crypto community that Palmer points out is that “even the most modest critique of cryptocurrency will draw smears from the powerful figures in control of the industry,” not to mention the ire of everyday investors terrified of losing it all. Just something worth remembering when those figures inevitably fart out some bad-faith tweets saying Palmer’s just jealous he never cashed in when he had the chance."

Crypto Traders Loved Big Leveraged Bets Until Inexplicable Crash - Bloomberg - "“It was a major, major amount of money for me that died, even though I predicted everything properly,” he said from Calgary. “Given my situation, that was my one shot at retirement and now that’s pretty much all gone.”"
And this was 2021

From Crypto to Offshore Accounts: Tactics Used to Get Cash Out of China - Bloomberg - "Right now, it’s all about peer-to-peer and cryptocurrencies rather than cash in a suitcase."

Links - 15th December 2022 (2 - Climate Change: Energy Transition)

Colorado utility company locks 22,000 thermostats in 90 degree weather due to 'energy emergency' - "Thousands of utility company customers in Colorado were locked out of changing their thermostats due to an "energy emergency," sparking outrage that spilled onto social media.  Xcel Energy, a utility company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, confirmed that 22,000 customers in the Denver, Colorado area who were signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their thermostats for several hours... the customers were part of a rewards program that gave them a discount on their energy bill in exchange for permission to give the company some control over their smart thermostats... Customers receive a $100 credit when they sign up for the program and $25 annually. The company says the program helps make the system more reliable... this week was the first time in six years that customers could not override their thermostats."
In future customers will not have a choice

Dylan LeClair 🟠 on Twitter - "German multinational corp BASF, the worlds largest chemical producer, is downsizing permanently in Europe “These conditions in Europe endanger the international competitiveness of producers & force us to adapt our cost structures as quickly as possible & also permanently," - CEO"
Andrew Hammel on Twitter - "BASF is downsizing and offshoring permanently. The de-industralization of Germany's already beginning. The average German is about to find out how much of their prosperity was down to cheap energy. (The answer: A lot more than they assumed.)"

Germany confronts a broken business model | Financial Times - "BASF is not alone. Since the summer, companies across Germany have been scrambling to adjust to the near disappearance of Russian gas. They have dimmed the lights, switched to oil — and, as a last resort, cut production. Some are even thinking about moving operations to countries where energy is cheaper.  That is triggering deep concern about the future of German industry and the sustainability of the country’s business model, which has long been predicated on the cheap energy guaranteed by a plentiful supply of Russian gas. Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution, has said Germany is a case study of a western state that made a “strategic bet” on globalisation and interdependence — and was now suffering the consequences.  “It outsourced its security to the US, its export-led growth to China, and its energy needs to Russia”... BASF has largely dismissed concerns that it’s repeating the same mistakes German business made in Russia — becoming too dependent on an authoritarian state with potentially aggressive intentions towards its neighbours. Brudermüller, who spent ten years living in Hong Kong, says BASF can’t afford not to be in China, which accounts for 50 per cent of the global chemicals market and is growing much more strongly than Europe... Government statistics released last month said production in energy intensive industries, which account for 23 per cent of all industrial jobs in Germany, had declined by 10 per cent since the start of the year. Sectors like metals, glass, ceramics, paper and textiles have taken the biggest hit. “That means there are 1.5mn workers in Germany whose industries are currently under pressure,” says Clemens Fuest, head of the Ifo Institute... "In September, chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the creation of a €200bn “protective shield” to cushion the impact of higher energy costs on companies and households, including a “brake” on the price of gas. Heinz hopes this is just the start. “The government will do what’s needed to keep industry in Germany alive,” she says. “Because without industry our country is worth nothing.”"... Germany has Europe’s largest chemicals industry by far — yet it is almost entirely reliant on imported energy and raw materials. For decades, BASF, Europe’s largest industrial consumer of gas, derived most of those imports from Russia.  Now the cost of that dependence is becoming clear... The business environment in Germany — and Europe more broadly — has “deteriorated”, BASF’s Brudermüller said in October. Growth in the European market has been sluggish for a decade. EU regulation is creating “great uncertainty”, he said.  Industry leaders cite measures such as the EU’s industrial emissions directive and its chemicals strategy for sustainability, designed to ban the most harmful chemicals in consumer products."
The degrowth people are going to get their wish. When they proclaim that they want to destroy the economy, we're still supposed to pretend that's a conspiracy theory

Europe Is Turning to Firewood As Russian Gas Remains in Flux - "Soaring energy prices in Europe are pushing the continent to revert to heating sources like coal and firewood... consumers are rushing to purchase old-school heaters for their homes, which could pose more problems if not installed properly. Another source said the rush to switch methods of heat in homes leads him to believe that "we're going to have to carry some people out horizontally this winter." Energy prices in Europe have climbed as much as 1,000% above pre-war levels... Analysts cited by the Washington Post predict an uptick in poverty and government debt coupled with further negative ramifications to the environment for essentially pivoting backwards on energy."

Fossil-fuel price spikes are causing pain but little climate payoff - "For three decades, climate campaigners have fought to make fossil fuels so expensive that people would be forced to abandon them. Their dream is becoming reality: Energy prices are spiraling out of control and will soon get even worse. Yet we are no closer to solving climate change... Since the 2015 Paris agreement was inked, the world’s 1,200 biggest energy corporations have slashed capital investment in oil and gas by more than two-thirds. Huge price rises are the inevitable result of forcing more energy out of an increasingly starved system. The climate-policy approach of trying to push consumers and businesses away from fossil fuels with price spikes is causing pain with little climate payoff, for two reasons.  First, solar and wind are still only capable of meeting a fraction of global electricity needs. Even with huge subsidies and political support, solar and wind delivered just 9% of global electricity in 2020. Heating, transport and vital industrial processes account for much more energy use than electricity. This means solar and wind deliver just 1.8% of global energy supply. And electricity is the easiest of these components to decarbonize: We haven’t yet made meaningful progress greening the remaining four-fifths of global energy. Second, even in the rich parts of the world it is clear few people are willing to pay the phenomenal price of achieving net-zero carbon emissions. Soaring prices are hiking energy poverty in industrialized economies, and prices are set to climb even further. Germany is on track to spend more than a half-trillion dollars on climate policies by 2025 yet has only managed to reduce fossil-fuel dependency from 84% in 2000 to 77% today. McKinsey estimates getting to zero carbon will cost Europe 5.3% of its GDP in low-emission assets every year — for Germany, more than $200 billion annually. That’s more than Germany spends annually on education and police, courts and prisons combined.   Western leaders can’t continue to push expensive policies without a backlash. As energy prices soar, risks grow of resentment and strife, like France saw with the “yellow vest” protest movement.  For the poorest billions, rising energy prices are even more serious because they block the pathway out of poverty and make fertilizer unaffordable for farmers, imperiling food production. The well-off in rich countries might be able to withstand the pain of some climate policies, but emerging economies like India or low-income countries in Africa cannot afford to sacrifice poverty eradication and economic development to tackle climate change. Globally, the inability of green energy to compete means the world is on track to remain fossil-fuel dependent. Analyzing all current and promised climate policies, the International Energy Agency finds fossil fuels will still provide two-thirds of global energy use by 2050, only a modest drop from 79% today. And green energy’s failings are why carbon emissions are still increasing. Last year saw the highest global emissions ever... We didn’t solve air pollution by forcing everyone to stop driving but by inventing the catalytic converter that drastically lowers pollution. We didn’t slash hunger by telling everyone to eat less but through the Green Revolution that enabled farmers to produce much more food.   Yet innovation in green energy has been neglected for three decades. In 1980, the rich world spent more than 8 cents of every $100 of GDP on low-carbon technologies. As climate policies focused on making fossil fuels more expensive, green research spending halved to fewer than 4 cents of every $100. Copenhagen Consensus researchers, including three Nobel laureate economists, have shown the most effective climate policy possible is to increase green research-and-development spending fivefold to $100 billion per year. This would still be much less than the $755 billion the world spent just last year on often-ineffective green technology... much of the benefits will come after any patents have run out, which is why companies will be hesitant to invest. Instead we need public innovation investments. The best example of game-changing climate innovation is the 10-year, $10 billion public investment in shale gas President George W. Bush launched, which ultimately led to energy companies embracing the technology. Not intended as climate policy, it led the way for a production surge of cheap gas, outcompeting a significant part of coal. Gas emits about half the CO₂; this was a major reason America has seen the single-biggest emission reduction the past decade."
But then, the aim isn't to make life better and cheaper

London's Record £9,724.54 per Megawatt Hour to Avoid a Blackout - Bloomberg - "Last week, unbeknown to many outside the power industry, parts of London came remarkably close to a blackout — even as it was recovering from the hottest day in British history. On July 20, surging electricity demand collided with a bottleneck in the grid, leaving the eastern part of the British capital briefly short of power. Only by paying a record high £9,724.54 (about $11,685) per megawatt hour — more than 5,000% higher than the typical price — did the UK avoid homes and businesses going dark. That was the nosebleed cost to persuade Belgium to crank up aging electricity plants to send energy across the English Channel. The crisis, which quietly played out within the control room of the British electricity system, shows the growing vulnerability of energy transportation networks — power grids and gas and oil pipelines — across much of the industrialized world after years of low investment and not-in-my-backyard opposition... The £9,724.54 price, settled between noon and 1:00 p.m. on July 20 via the so-called NEMO interconnector that links the UK with Belgium, was the highest Britain has ever paid to import electricity, nearly five times higher than the previous record. The absurdity of that level is apparent when comparing it with the year-to-date average for UK spot electricity: £178 per megawatt hour... The world is investing about $300 billion per year in power grids, an amount that has barely changed since 2015, according to the International Energy Agency. It isn’t enough, as the global economy electrifies and deals with a shifting generation map, with intermittent renewable energy like solar and wind replacing polluting — but dependable — coal- and gas-fired stations... Aging infrastructure, often 30 or 40 years old, needs to be replaced. But refurbishment and expansion come up against local opposition to more pylons and overhead cables. In the UK, authorities are bypassing popular resistance by moving some parts of the grid offshore, using undersea cables. “Fish don’t vote,” goes the industry’s joke. It is, however, an expensive undertaking. High metal prices are making building new grids even more costly. Cables are made of copper or aluminum which, at today’s prices, account for nearly a third of what will be spent on a new grid, up 10 percentage points from investments made between 2010 and 2020. Across the US and Europe, utilities and grid managers need to invest billions of dollars into digitalization of the network to allow demand-side load management that would reduce consumption at peak times, often via hourly prices. Managing peak demand is going to be even more important when millions of households shift to electric vehicles, creating a new source of electricity consumption."
The power of "green" energy
NIMBYism is probably the biggest downside of democracy. The irony is that the NIMBYs seem to be the ones virtue signalling about "green energy" - but in environmentalism there is no best solution, even on purely environmental grounds: only tradeoffs that greenies pretend don't have to happen

The New Great Game - "A ruthless dictator like Putin knows a bunch of “useful idiots” when he sees them. Russian interests have reportedly financed anti-fracking activities for years. But he doesn’t need to use surreptitious methods when Western powers have demonstrated such a remarkable lack of seriousness. As Mike Shellenberger has put it: “While we banned plastic straws, Russia drilled and doubled nuclear energy production.” Putin, Shellenberger argues, understands his national interest: Russia produces three times as much oil as it can use domestically and twice the amount of gas or coal it needs. It supplies about 20 percent of Europe’s oil, 40 percent of its gas, and 20 percent of its coal. The most critical case may be Germany, Europe’s dominant economy, whose ballyhooed Energiewende sought to abandon nuclear power and coal at the same time. Not only has the cost of living in Germany gone up, but the country has increased its dependence on Russian gas. It’s not just green activists and politicians driving the current energy disaster. ESG stakeholder capitalism has created a lack of investment in fossil fuels, even as soaring demand for “rare earths” looks set to create a series of environmental disasters. In 2022, gas storage in Europe has fallen to a dangerous level below 50 percent capacity and the standoff with Russia has caused European gas prices to spike. Even if American LNG gas replaces Russian supply, the changeover will take months. In this sense, we are repeating history as a sad farce. As in the 1930s, Western appeasers have held the door open for Russian expansionism. A deluded West failed to take steps to contain Russia following the 2014 Crimean annexation, instead cutting back on lethal weapons for Ukraine and refusing to sanction the Nordstream 2 pipeline, and Putin responded to the perception of weakness as bullies always do. Putin is not alone in following the Westphalian energy model, which prioritizes national sovereignty over the demands of global capital or international institutions. China also benefits from the rapid de-carbonizing of the West, pumping money into Western green funds, despite its own continuing heavy coal investment at home. The Chinese know that, for at least the medium-term, fossil fuels will remain critical to their economic growth. After all, fossil fuels still account for 81 percent of all energy supplies, and even if every country meets its respective climate promises, they will still account for roughly three-quarters in 2040... The West’s green agenda—which objects to nuclear and natural gas as well as dirtier fuels—tilts the competitive edge to China. Even before the invasion of Ukraine, the unreliable and expensive reality of “renewable” energy was already accelerating the de-industrialization of the United Kingdom and other parts of the EU. The current energy shortage is causing factories in Europe to close, and short of a concerted attempt to revive manufacturing, high energy prices are likely to hasten the shift to less regulated places like India and China, which are by far the world’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide. By the time China, India, and other developing countries feel able to embrace lower emissions by turning to nuclear power, the self-driven de-industrialization of the West will likely be all but complete, with even once-great industrial powers permanently ensnared in China’s notoriously high-carbon supply chains. Like Russia, China can thank the ESG movement for all this, led by the likes of financial firms like Blackrock, which insist that developments meet their “net zero” obsessions. Wall Street’s dual standards represent an effective embrace of China’s hegemony by hamstringing Western industry while expanding business with the world’s dominant polluter and autocracy par excellence. So far, more palatable options—increasing remote work, geothermal energy, production of natural gas, nuclear power, and new technologies—are not on the woke corporate agenda. Government mandates on things like electric cars essentially hand China a dominant position in the future of ground transportation. China also retains a near-monopoly on the EV battery supply chain, which includes control of 80 percent of the world's raw material refining, 77 percent of the world's cell capacity, and 60 percent of the world's component manufacturing. China produces four times more batteries than the second-place United States, and controls critical raw materials, including large concentrations of rare earths, lithium, copper, and cobalt. The United States actually possesses some of these minerals, but environmental opposition makes it unlikely they will be developed, at least during the Biden years. China and Russia have moved rapidly to secure those they happen to possess but others can be procured from emerging vassal states in Africa and Central Asia as well as Latin America. All this supports China’s stated aim of dominating the supply chains and becoming the leading global superpower by 2050—a frightening prospect but one at least more coherent than Western governments’ vague dreams of “building back better” or of an anti-growth “reset.” An industrial revival in the West will be difficult without reliable energy like natural gas and nuclear—unreliable alternatives like solar and wind have to be backed by other sources when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow... Europe and America may call this a war for democracy, but the world’s largest democracy, India, has been circumspect on the issue, and Israel, which needs Russia to control its unruly neighbor Syria, has been reluctant to join the anti-Putin cause.  Just as revealing is that many African countries which are highly dependent on China have failed to join the condemnation of the invasion... It would certainly help if the Western defense establishment were to refocus on the challenges posed by the duopoly. Sadly, if a bizarre tweet by the head of MI6 is any indication, much of it remains preoccupied by green absolutism and gay rights. Militaries in the US and Europe worry about fighting climate change and rooting out white nationalism, when their time would be better spent improving their dubious war-fighting abilities. China, meanwhile, is building the world’s largest naval fleet—not to be a “force for good,” as the Obama-era Navy crowed, but to extend its influence in the eastern Pacific, and then to Africa and beyond. Sadly, it’s difficult to identify Western leaders who might provide the liberal democratic world with some backbone. There is no one who resembles Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman, or even Reagan. The chaotic Trump presidency is gone, replaced by a bland and weak-looking Biden, who even the Guardian thinks may be compromised by his family’s connections. The reaction of Biden’s climate tsar John Kerry to the Russian invasion was classic: he was concerned, he said, by its “massive emissions consequences.” Maybe he didn’t consider the reductions from weak economic growth and the deaths of thousands of emissions-producing soldiers and civilians. Ultimately, the West may have to choose between the current climate agenda and the hegemony of the authoritarians. The best hope now is that Putin’s aggression will cause the West to wake up, reindustrialize, and find a workable energy policy."

Thread by @ShellenbergerMD on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Greta Thunberg said “I want you to panic” and nations did. They over-invested in unreliable weather-dependent energy sources & under-invested in reliable energy. Now, global energy shortages are forcing the poor to choose between food & electricity. Overdependence on unreliable energies isn’t the only reason for energy shortages. Post-pandemic economic recovery resulted in higher energy demand. And too little natural gas stored on-site after a colder-than-expected winter played a role.  But the heavy investment in unreliable renewables made energy supplies more vulnerable to a single commodity’s volatility. Today’s grids mean that high gas prices cause energy price spikes and a return to the dirtiest forms of electricity production, including diesel and coal. The return to coal was most dramatic in Germany. Electricity from wind was 20% lower in Germany in the first half of 2021 than the first half of 2020, resulting in a 24% higher use of fossil fuels and 28% greater emissions from electricity. Lack of wind in Britain led its grid operator to ask French electricity giant, Électricité de France, to restart a coal plant in Nottinghamshire. And California requested permission from the federal government to violate air pollution regulations so diesel plants can operate.  In 2019, @GretaThunberg called nuclear “extremely dangerous, expensive & time-consuming” & unnecessary for most nations.  Afterwards, Germany and Sweden closed nuclear reactors that could have kept running for decades. Germany, Sweden, the US and other nations replaced their nuclear plants with fossil fuels, contributing to global energy supply shortages.  As a result, what turned out to be “dangerous and expensive” wasn’t nuclear, it was Greta Thunberg & her anti-nuclear climate movement. This isn’t the first time that pro-scarcity environmentalists created real world scarcity. They have done so in the past. I describe the history of pro-scarcity Malthusians in Apocalypse Never.  Since World War II, the pro-scarcity activists have hidden their anti-abundance agenda behind the mask of concern for nature... Greta made clear last year that she hates “the system” more than she fears climate change. In 2019 Greta singled out for attack France & Brazil, which get 86% & 79% of their power from zero-carbon sources. Why? Because her real concern isn’t climate change, it’s destroying “the system”. Americans should be relieved that that global energy crisis occurred before Congress passed disastrous climate legislation, which would have increased energy scarcity and electricity prices even more than unreliable renewables already have... Advocates of unreliable renewables are scrambling to explain how over-investment in them, and under-investment in reliable energies, are not to blame for global energy scarcity, which is contributing significantly to inflation, but when you’re read what they write it’s word salad. These are *physical* & *economic facts :
Unreliables make electricity less reliable and more expensive when deployed at scale
Over-investment in unreliables led directly to blackouts in California & Texas
Over-investment in unreliables led directly to today’s energy shortages
Here are the sources which include my testimony to the Senate and House where I predicted the current global energy crisis"

How Europe is trying to build a future free of fossil fuels in the midst of an energy crisis - The Globe and Mail - "Entering a winter in which its member states will struggle to keep lights on and homes heated, the European Union is aiming to wrap up years-long negotiations for what might be the world’s most ambitious climate-policy package... there are also all the binding transitional targets that are being set.  That means, for instance, increasing the EU-wide requirement that 32 per cent of all energy be produced from renewable sources by 2030 to somewhere between 40 and 45 per cent, while also setting sector- and country-specific renewable demands and hammering out what does or doesn’t qualify as renewable.
When elites profit and everyone else suffers, you can barrel headlong towards destruction

In Europe's Energy Crisis, Ideology Trumps Basic Math - "Facing the worst energy crisis since World War II as the cold-weather heating season starts, Europe continues to dither. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has presented a series of new European Union energy policies, including planned price caps, additional taxes on energy producers, establishment of a new European hydrogen bank, and new support for electric vehicles. European Union member states, meanwhile, are nationalizing utilities, setting electricity prices, and subsidizing consumers. These EU policies do not represent a significant departure from the policies that got the continent into the energy mess in the first place.  The fundamental problem is that Europe is still not facing the sources of its energy security crisis, preferring to blame outside forces for its current predicament. Von der Leyen and other European leaders point at Russia and its war on Ukraine for Europe’s energy woes. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s throttling of the gas taps has undoubtedly made things worse, but this will already be the third winter of Europe’s energy crisis. In the winters 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, Europe already experienced significant spikes in the prices of electricity and natural gas, as well as gas shortages that led to increased use of coal and fuel oil. European policymakers either did not take notice or preferred not to change course... Europe’s crisis has been two decades in the making. Aiming to engineer a fast transition from fossil fuels and nuclear energy to renewable sources, European policymakers forced profound changes in the energy supply. At the same time, they ignored projections for continued demand for oil and natural gas, as well as the need for a reliable baseload fuel source to back up intermittent solar and wind. Many EU member states cut back domestic production of fossil fuels and constrained imports, with the notable exception of gas from Russia. Germany, which has significant gas deposits of its own, banned fracking—as did France and other countries. Over the past decade, European domestic production of natural gas has halved, and today imports make up 83 percent of Europe’s gas consumption.  Under pressure from activists and green parties, Germany and several other countries also chose to phase out carbon-free nuclear power, despite an impeccable safety record. Today, Europe’s proposed caps on gas and electricity prices, along with new levies on energy producers, will further restrict supplies while seeking to protect consumers from the high prices that could induce them to lower the thermostat and turn down the lights. Europe’s policy of blocking gas supplies created shortages that started causing price spikes two winters ago. Believing it will soon be able to do without gas, Europe has also blocked long-term contracts for imports, with the result that Europe is starving for gas even though it is surrounded by some the world’s largest gas reserves—not just in Russia, but also in North Africa, Central Asia, and other regions. The EU could have easily ensured access to reliable gas supplies at affordable prices but is now dependent on the costly spot market instead. Even today, while European officials trot the globe for new gas volumes, they are refusing to sign long-term contracts with the courted producers...   In European energy policy, ideology trumps basic math. Phase out nuclear and coal and put the brakes on natural gas—but add less energy generation from renewables than you’ve subtracted—and you get a shortage. What’s more, all attempts to force a faster transition to wind and solar ignore major resource and technology constraints: These energy sources require vast land usage, critical materials and hardware (including from China), and either backup power or nonexistent storage. And, finally, the policymakers’ forced transition ignores projections of continued demand for fossil fuels, including for transportation, industry, heating, and backup power for unpredictable wind and solar.  Despite the math, the data, and a two-year-old energy crisis that has sharply worsened since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, European policymakers continue to follow each other like sheep. As if the energy crisis weren’t happening, the Netherlands announced this week that it will continue to reduce gas production at the massive Groningen field. Germany is sticking to its fracking ban and nuclear phaseout, while Belgium shut down a nuclear power plant last week that provides a significant share of the country’s electricity needs—even as Belgians protest in the streets against skyrocketing energy prices. These countries might instead take their cue from Liz Truss, the new British prime minister: One of her first announcements after taking office was a new energy policy, including a renewal of offshore oil and gas exploration and a reversal of her country’s fracking ban. Instead of changing course, European policymakers have doubled down with increased investments in solar, wind, and electric vehicles. “The renewables are cheap, they are homegrown, they make us independent,” von der Leyen said in her State of the European Union speech earlier this month. This is a plain contradiction of the facts: Europe has yet to get renewables to work without subsidies and fossil-fuel backup power, they require resource-hungry global supply chains, and they come with their own set of geopolitical challenges and dependencies, just like fossil fuels. European leaders are aware that their energy market designs are not working. National governments are bailing out or outright nationalizing collapsing utilities. Most are now setting electricity and gas prices for customers. Moreover, Europe’s high cost of carbon has not deterred utilities from firing up mothballed coal plants and switching from gas to fuel oil for electricity and heat...   Instead of focusing with urgency and laser sharpness on these issues—and reversing mistaken decisions such as various countries’ nuclear phaseouts—European leaders continue to push new projects that are untested and far from commercially viable. Their current pet technology is hydrogen: Von der Leyen recently announced yet more EU funding and the establishment of a European Hydrogen Bank. Hydrogen, however, is not yet commercially viable, there are serious safety concerns about its use and transportation, and there may be significant climate and pollution impacts from its production and inevitable leaks.  Were European policymakers more honest about the homegrown causes of their energy crisis, the proper policies would be clear. First, the EU needs to allow and even encourage its energy buyers to sign long-term gas import contracts, which generally span more than a decade. This would allow producers to invest in the production and transport of dedicated gas volumes for Europe. Nuclear phaseouts should be reversed wherever possible. Next, Europe should be technology neutral in its development of renewable and low-carbon energy sources—instead of directing vast subsidies to specific technologies selected by politicians and bureaucrats.  In addition, Brussels and European governments should give natural gas a new look, including domestic sources, as Britain is now doing. Modern natural gas projects do not release methane like previous generations, and the switch from coal to gas is still the fastest and most efficient way to lower both pollution and carbon emissions. Furthermore, European policies need a long-term plan for baseload fuel to produce electricity in conjunction with solar and wind. Because they do not produce a consistent and predictable volume of power, solar and wind can never replace base load fuels like nuclear and natural gas. These sources go hand in hand."
Clearly Putin invading Ukraine led to Europe having heating issues in 2020. Time to double down on "renewables"

How Europe can adapt to living without Russian gas for years | Financial Times - "Much of European gas demand comes from heating. If Europeans just lower thermostats in their homes by an average of 3C — down to 19C this winter — that could make a big difference."
Fighting climate change means being cold and miserable

Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.substack.com on Twitter - "Germans are on track to pay around $3k a month to heat a 2,500 square foot home this Winter"

Analysis: Europe's banks dim lights as they brace for winter blackout - "Some of Europe's biggest banks are preparing back-up generators and to dim the lights as they brace for potential power cuts and energy rationing that threaten the money system underpinning the region's economy... There is a special urgency for financial firms to act because of the importance of payments and transactions to Europe's economy, already fragile due to the fallout of war... experts fear that few companies are prepared for lengthy blackouts of more than a few days.  "This represents a serious gap in resilience planning," said Avi Schnurr, CEO of the Electric Infrastructure Security Council, a think-tank that advises on preparing for such hazards."

Meme - Dominos:
Smallest domino: "An autistic Swedish girl decides to skip school"
Largest domino: "The collapse of Europe's energy grid"

EU energy crisis prompts flurry of cash aid (also titled "Warning of 'energy-industry Lehman Brothers' moment as gas crisis brings on cash crunch")

The Rich World’s Climate Hypocrisy - WSJ - "The developed world’s response to the global energy crisis has put its hypocritical attitude toward fossil fuels on display. Wealthy countries admonish developing ones to use renewable energy. Last month the Group of Seven went so far as to announce they would no longer fund fossil-fuel development abroad. Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. are begging Arab nations to expand oil production. Germany is reopening coal power plants, and Spain and Italy are spending big on African gas production. So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal that the nation will more than double its exports. The developed world became wealthy through the pervasive use of fossil fuels, which still overwhelmingly power most of its economies. Solar and wind power aren’t reliable, simply because there are nights, clouds and still days. Improving battery storage won’t help much: There are enough batteries in the world today only to power global average electricity consumption for 75 seconds. Even though the supply is being scaled up rapidly, by 2030 the world’s batteries would still cover less than 11 minutes. Every German winter, when solar output is at its minimum, there is near-zero wind energy available for at least five days—or more than 7,000 minutes. This is why solar panels and wind turbines can’t deliver most of the energy for industrializing poor countries. Factories can’t stop and start with the wind; steel and fertilizer production are dependent on coal and gas; and most solar and wind power simply can’t deliver the power necessary to run the water pumps, tractors, and machines that lift people out of poverty.  That’s why fossil fuels still provide more than three-fourths of wealthy countries’ energy, while solar and wind deliver less than 3%. An average person in the developed world uses more fossil-fuel-generated energy every day than all the energy used by 23 poor Africans... This promised paradise is a sham built on wishful thinking and green marketing. Consider the experience of Dharnai, an Indian village that Greenpeace in 2014 tried to turn into the country’s first solar-powered community.  Greenpeace received glowing global media attention when it declared that Dharnai would refuse “to give into the trap of the fossil fuel industry.” But the day the village’s solar electricity was turned on, the batteries were drained within hours. One boy remembers being unable to do his homework early in the morning because there wasn’t enough power for his family’s one lamp.  Villagers were told not to use refrigerators or televisions because they would exhaust the system. They couldn’t use cookstoves and had to continue burning wood and dung, which creates air pollution as dangerous for a person’s health as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, according to the World Health Organization. Across the developing world, millions die prematurely every year because of this indoor pollution.  In August 2014, Greenpeace invited one of the Indian’s state’s top politicians, who soon after become its chief minister, to admire the organization’s handiwork. He was met by a crowd waving signs and chanting that they wanted “real electricity” to replace this “fake electricity.”  When Dharnai was finally connected to the main power grid, which is overwhelmingly coal-powered, villagers quickly dropped their solar connections. An academic study found a big reason was that the grid’s electricity cost one-third of what the solar energy did. What’s more, it was plentiful enough to actually power such appliances as TV sets and stoves. Today, Dharnai’s disused solar-energy system is covered in thick dust, and the project site is a cattle shelter. To be sure, solar energy has some uses, such as charging a cellphone or powering a light, but it is often expensive and has distinct limits. A new study in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, found that even hefty subsidies couldn’t make solar lamps worth their cost to most people. Even in wealthy nations such as Germany and Spain, most new wind and solar power wouldn’t have been installed if not for subsidies. This is why, for all the rich world’s talk of climate activism, developed nations are still on track to continue to rely mostly on fossil fuels for decades. The International Energy Agency estimates that even if all current climate policies are delivered in full, renewables will only deliver one-third of U.S. and EU energy in 2050. The developing world isn’t blind to this hypocrisy. Nigeria’s vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, articulated the situation elegantly: “No country in the world has been able to industrialize using renewable energy,” yet Africa is expected to do so “when everybody else in the world knows that we need gas-powered industries for business.”"
Weird. We kept being told that "renewable" energy is cheaper than fossil fuels

Conditions on living in a post-vaccine world

From March 2021:

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Conditions on living in a post-vaccine world

"‘Edward Jenner who pioneered vaccination and could justifiably claim to have saved more lives than any other human being would never have got past a modern ethics committee. To prove his theories about smallpox, he cut open an eight year old boy's arm and rubbed in pus taken from a milkmaid’s blisters'...

‘Inequality can be justified or unjustified. And in the case of vaccine passports, it's justified inequality. As you mentioned in the introduction, the basis for restricting people's liberty is that that individual represents a threat to other people. And that's the justification the government has for the current lockdown. But if an individual no longer represents a threat, if they're not carrying a gun, then restricting their liberty is, is completely unethical. So that will create inequality but the inequality is based on people having a differential threat to others’...

‘As vaccines become sufficient in supply, there's no need for vaccination passports, because people can protect themselves by being vaccinated. But under conditions of scarcity, which is what we have at the moment, there's a continuing threat to others… we should be thinking creatively about giving people more liberty. So for example, we could consider hybrid strategies, where once the vulnerable are vaccinated the, the over 50 year olds by April, we could, we could release the under 50 year olds, because they are not a threat to the NHS by getting ill. And the vulnerable, those who are likely to become ill would be vaccinated. So that would be a way of promoting everybody's liberty’...

‘You are concerned that a vaccine passport would produce a divisive society. You're absolutely correct. A vaccine passport would divide society into places which are physically safe for people to go and places which are not physically safe. Now, it seems to me that you want to make, under the rubric of equality, all places equally unsafe. Isn't that carrying the principle of equality to really quite absurd and dangerous lengths?’

‘No, not at all. So again, there's no conclusive evidence yet about transmissibility. So the idea of vaccine-segregated spaces, makes little sense. And even so, we don't have mandatory vaccines in society. We've already accepted that there will be groups who either cannot or a minority of people who will not receive a vaccine who will still exist in our society. So the question is, what's the best way about going about this public health messaging? Is it to support people and include people and have positive messaging? Or is it to create a segregated checkpoint society and kind of banish these people? I think the answer to that is quite obvious.’

‘But you talk about a checkpoint society, you're conjuring up a kind of sort of pre fascist dystopia, but surely oppression is involuntary. The point about the vaccines is that no one forces, no one's going to force anybody to have the vaccine. People can choose not to be vaccinated and not to have the passport.Aa civil libertarian like yourself, I'm sure would choose not to be vaccinated and not to have the passport, that is you, entirely your right. But it is not your right, surely, then to proceed and say, I expect everybody else to put up with the fact that I may still be a lethal risk to their health, because I want to have it on my own way? That surely cannot be right.’

‘No, I think that's that's ridiculous. We can't start treating people as biohazards and as though, you know that-’

‘Why not? They are’

‘Well, yeah, okay, we can do. And then we do get into exactly the kind of society that you described. It's very totalitarian society, we start treating everyone as a potential threat.’

‘Oh come on. Why is it totalitarian, why is it totalitarian to understand and accept and acknowledge the blatantly, patently obvious fact that if people aren't vaccinated they are a possible risk to others by carrying this virus? For goodness sake, you're saying that statement of simple fact is totalitarian?’

‘What I'm suggesting that we have in this debate is a bit of balance. So you know, just as someone might have or carry coronavirus and by the way, that's when quarantine kicks in. If you're infectious, that's when you're at risk, not generally for existing as a human being. So what’s really important, that's why test and trace and quarantine is so important, but to treat everyone as permanently a possible infectious risk, as some kind of bio hazard, for coronavirus specifically, we've never had this attitude towards all kinds of other health problems or flus when they come around in the winter, we will completely distort the society that we knew and there is not a chance in hell that this will stop with coronavirus. These passes would be used for flu, MMR, everything else’...

‘As to the point about, you know, having to have the yellow fever vaccine to go to Ghana. You know, people choose to go there for holiday or work. This is about just basic, normal liberties, without which you can't work, if you're found to have evaded the vaccine for some reason, even if that's not the reality’...

‘I remember hearing those who are anti gay marriage saying, well, yes, everyone has the choice to get married, the condition is that you'll have to choose a partner of the opposite sex. And the point being that if the consequences aren't acceptable to the individual, there's effectively no choice at all.’...

'I think many of these issues about the individual versus the collective good, are ones which citizens themselves could very well make. And we probably be able to resolve issues like vaccine passports much better if it wasn't, you know, the hated politicians and officials and made the decisions but actually, government invited citizens themselves to consider these questions'"

Why do the people promoting vaccines show contempt for the science by having the exact opposite idea of how they work, while they exaggerate the risk of covid? Of course one excuse is that this episode was released in March 2021, which was before we knew the vaccines didn't reduce transmission - but that just brings home the point about imperfect knowledge and the problems with basing policy on that (to say nothing of how now all this is being memory holed and we are being told no one ever said they would reduce transmission).

If there're conditions of scarcity, that means that those who are unable to get vaccinated are unjustly excluded from society. But apparently that is not unjust because of vaxhole logic

Even the weaker claim that coercion to get vaccinated is justified because it prevents the health system from collapsing is flawed - since healthy young people don't have a high chance of being hospitalised in the first place (yet are the ones most targeted/affected by covid apartheid)

Ironically throughout history Jews have been subject to the sort of discrimination Melanie Phillips champions - because everyone "knew" they were threats to others, and almost always they had the chance to convert (so they had a 'choice' over being discriminated against)

Links - 15th December 2022 (1 - Trans Mania)

'Misgendering' incident plunges Green Party of Canada into renewed turmoil - "Just one year after its partial meltdown during the 2021 federal election, the Green Party of Canada is once again in crisis over an incident of “misgendering.” It all started at a Sept. 3 media event in Vancouver kicking off the party’s leadership contest. In a Zoom appearance, Interim Leader Amita Kuttner was identified using a caption bearing the pronouns “she/elle.” Kuttner, 32, identifies as non-binary and pansexual (attracted to all genders and orientations), and goes by they/them pronouns. In a subsequent statement, Kuttner slammed the “misgendering,” saying the incident “made me feel hurt and isolated” and hinted that it was “reflective of a larger pattern of behaviours that a few in the party are perpetuating.”  The statement added, “in moments like these I wonder — how can I ensure other people’s safety if I can’t even ensure my own?”  Kuttner’s statement was followed by a joint letter — signed by leadership candidates as well as the party’s two MPs, Elizabeth May and Mike Morrice — calling for a “restorative process” to root out “harassment” within the Greens... Green Party President Lorraine Rekmans was the first to resign. A volunteer who estimated that she has worked 40-hour weeks for the past year on party business, Rekmans implied in a Saturday resignation letter that leadership candidates were subtly blaming her for the “she/elle” mistake... Krystal Brooks, the Ontario representative to the party’s federal council, also resigned. In a lengthy Sunday Facebook post, Brooks criticized the party for continuing its leadership race even while candidates were calling for an investigation into “systemic” harm within the party. The contest should have been postponed “pending the investigation”... Notably, both resignees are Indigenous, with Rekmans having been celebrated only 12 months ago as “the first Indigenous woman to be president of a national political party in Canada.” Amidst all this, Kuttner launched a fundraiser last Wednesday intending to spite Jonathan Kay, an editor with Quillette and occasional National Post columnist. Kay had tweeted that the misgendering controversy sounded “exactly like satire,” prompting Kuttner to ask supporters to donate $68,000 to counter Kay’s “hate.”  As of press time, the fundraiser has pulled in $226.69, $10 of which was donated by Kay himself.   The whole misgendering fracas is occurring as the party struggles to recover from its disastrous performance in the 2021 federal election.  Several months before the election, then-leader Annamie Paul had gone public with accusations that she had been repeatedly subjected to “anti-Semitic” and “racist” attacks from within the party (Paul is Jewish and Black). Paul then limited her campaign almost exclusively to her personal bid for a seat in Toronto Centre. She would ultimately win just 3,921 votes, putting her in a distant fourth place behind the NDP, the Conservatives and the victorious Liberal candidate (who won 23,000 votes).  Paul would later deem her leadership as the “worst period of my life.”  Although the Green Party retained both of its MPs, its share of the popular vote dropped off a cliff in the 2021 vote. In 2019, under May, 1.2 million Canadians had cast Green ballots. Under Paul, that was down to just 400,000 — the party’s worst showing since 2000."
When you're not a serious party

Meme - "White left wingers: Misgendering is literal violence.
Also white left wingers: *Forever refer to Mexicans as Latinx despite literally all of them hating it*"

Meme - "AND THAT'S HOW HOMOSEXUAL SODOMITES PLEASURE EACH OTHER.
A.I.D.S. (Awesome Intelligent Dickbutt Sensation) ANAL FISSURE (Super #epic!)
NOW, ONTO OUR NEXT TOPIC, DILATORS AND BOTTOM SURGERY. #Awesome! You could be trans!"
"HMMMMM.... I AM NOT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CERTAIN THAT KIDS SHOULD BE LEARNING THIS."
"HMMMMM.... YET, YOU HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH KIDS LEARNING ABOUT HETERO SEXUALITY. CURIOUS"
The dishonesty of liberals objecting to "grooming"/sexually explicit [sex] education by claiming it's already being done and no one has a problem with it. This also applies to liberals who claim that if you're against promoting sexuality and gender ideology to kids, you're a hypocritical bigot X-phobe since society "promotes" heterosexuality

Meme - "If you applaud feminine cis men... you'd better support feminine trans men"
""A feminine trans man." So, a female, that wants to be a male, that looks like a female?"

Meme - "If using the wrong pronouns is an act of violence, what do you call erasing an entire vocabulary to describe women."

Meme - "And then these ppl write posts about not being validated or unable to find partners"
"IT'S BECOMING SO COMPLICATED TO TALK ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE. I'M ALWAYS SCARED I'LL MAKE A MISTAKE"
"Good! Watch what you're saying"
"I'm AFRAID TO ASK ANY QUESTION IN CASE I MIGHT OFFEND SOmEONE."
"FINALLY! THAT'S GREAT TO HEAR"
"I will keep my curiosity to myself"
"Even better!"
"FINE! I'LL LEAVE YOU ALONE, THEN."
"AWWW YISS!!"

Meme - "Yo ok what if there was a Cinderella story where Cinderella is a trans woman and that's really why her stepmom treats her like shit and won't let her go to the ball and when the prince and his men come around looking to try the slipper on every woman in the land her stepmom tells the prince there aren't any women left in the house because she insists that Cinderella is a man, but Cinderella comes out and the prince recognizes her and says something along the lines of "well I'd say that's a woman if I ever saw one""
"That would explain the shoe size not being common among women as well."
"love when LGBT+/MOGAI headcanons actually make more sense than conventional canon."
The narcissism is amazing. And MOGAI is even more ridiculous than the usual acronyms (but at least, presumably, it won't keep expanding)

Thread by @iandprior on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Virginia Democrats to introduce legislation that would allow parents who don’t affirm their child’s “gender identity” to be criminally prosecuted. @NickMinock  is reporting that @guzman4virginia  is leading the charge to “expand the definition of child abuse to include parents that do not affirm their child’s gender identity.” @guzman4virginia said that there would be a CPS investigation and “it could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that a CPS charge could harm your employment.”"
Auron MacIntyre on Twitter - "Slippery slope remains the undefeated champion. This was always the inevitable destination, the natural conclusion of the ideology was always destined to take us here From "how does it affect your marriage" to "the state will take your child if you don't agree to mutilate them" in under a decade"

Orietta Rose 🇺🇲 on Twitter - "Not long ago they wanted to abolish boy/girl toy aisles & clothing sections because "gender is a social construct". So what's gender affirming care then? Affirming "feeling" like a boy or girl, based on those socially constructed stereotypes."
MelloVox on Twitter - "I get the feeling that the goal is to systematically strip away your long standing principles, morals and ethics."
Thou Mayest on Twitter - "Agreed. I think fundamentally it's about driving a wedge between child-parent and a destruction of the nucleur family. Mao's red army 2, commie kid boogaloo"

Meme - "YOU BETTER SAY THE WORDS I WANT YOU TO SAY OR I'M GONNA KILL MYSELF *Trans woman with rope*"

Meme - "I am looking for a room. Budget: $600 for rent and $100 for utilities
About me: You can call me Onyx. I am a non-binary dragon who seeks a den. I am 19 years old, trying to move out of my parent's house. I adore all sorts of animals, especially the ones deemed "creepy or ugly." I collect rocks and add them to my "hoarde" of treasure. I love photographing mushrooms and plants. I am an artist. I sometimes do modeling and create characters like in movies like Toy Story and Frozen as a hobby. I also like to use pastels. On top of being an artist, I also am a singer and I write I practice magick and I am exploring pagan beliefs. have an eclectic world-view. I self-identify as a dragon. Sometimes I will mentally turn into more of a dragon. When that happens, please be patient and don't force me to speak because when I am like that, I am almost non-verbal. Also, I am plural. What does plural mean? Well, it means you have more than one person in the same body. You have probably heard of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). It is on the plural spectrum. I don't have DID but I am plural. My active headmates (they share the body with me) are Reggi, Tyrene, Jackson, Michael, and Ells. Elia is non-binary and the rest are trans guys."

Meme - "TechCrunch: 'Gaming disorder' is officially recognized by the World Health Organization
JEZEBEL: "World Health Organization Finally Stops Classifying Trans People as Mentally III""

Meme - "Dad thinks LGBTQ+ is a cult. WTF? Hello everyone, I'm an almost 20 years old Italian trans girl who cracked around a year ago. I'm not really secretive about my gender identity but I'm not out to everyone either. I guess I'm socially transitioning?  Anyways, my parents are sending me to various therapists in the hope they "fix" me (they won't say it but yeah, that's their goal), which is really funny when the therapists tell them there's nothing to fix.  2 days ago I was just coming out of one such appointments, and the therapist (first time I saw him) was very nice and suggested the idea of talking with my dad as he's usually the most understanding of my parents. So in the car I do talk with him and it turns out he thinks LGBTQ+ is a Scientology-like cult because he has been on websites (didn't tell me which) and the "marketing strategy" is very similar. The thing he insisted the most about was that "both [LGBTQ+ and Scientology] will tell you that others are going to hate them or tell them they're wrong and to not listen to them because they are not believers".  I was baffled, I never heard anything remotely close to this, not even from bigots. After some confusion I asked him if he thought I was brainwashed to which he answered yes. I also told him that I had never heard this comparison before and he said something like "those who oppose the DDL Zan [law that protected vulnerable minorities, including LGBTQ+, that has been repelled earlier this month] say that". I can't even.  I am still confused and hurt. I don't really know what to do or what kind of help to ask.  My dad is the more stable of my parents (so just imagine how's my mum) and I'd hate to lose him completely."

Meme - "I'm going to explain to you why Peterson is right to not use your preferred pronouns. I understand that for people suffering with gender dysphoria, using pronouns that signify traditional gender stereotypes (he, her, she, him) can contribute to that dysphoria. I am aware of that and sensitive to that (based on what my trans-friends and acquaintances have told me). Nevertheless, it is still ludicrous to ask the vast majority of the human population that are not trans to change their common parlance in order for you to not suffer this dysphoria. Why? Let me speak from my own experience as somebody with Asperger's syndrome. Some of the problems I encounter include having a sensitivity to loud noises, not understanding sarcasm and linguistic cues, and not being able to look people in the eye. These things have made it difficult for me to get jobs and get along with other people. If people, plus the world around me, were to change the way they interact with me to benefit my existence, that would be helpful, sure. If they don't, that doesn't make them disrespectful, bad people. It doesn't mean they hate people with autism. Sometimes people with autism don't fit as well into certain societal but do in others. Now... If I were to go around telling normal people to change their normative way of life... to keep things quiet, to change the way they speak, and to change their work dynamics to suit my issues... and if they don't, call them a prejudiced, ignorant, terrible person... that wouldn't make me a socially conscious, moral person. That would make me a cunt."
Too bad trans people are more important than autistic people to SJWs

Transgender youth: My daughter needs mental health care — not hormones - "In April 2016, my then 14-year-old daughter became convinced that she was my son. In my attempt to help her, her public school undermined me every step of the way.  Throughout my daughter’s childhood, there were no signs that she wanted to be a boy... The only difficulty she had was forming and maintaining friendships. We later learned why: She was on the autism spectrum... At her high school, my daughter was approached by a girl who had recently come out at school as transgender. Shortly after meeting her, my daughter declared that she, too, was a boy trapped in a girl’s body and picked out a new masculine name. She first came out as transgender to her school, and when she announced that she was a boy, the faculty and staff — who had full knowledge of her mental health challenges — affirmed her. Without telling me or my wife, they referred to her by her new name. They treated my daughter as if she were a boy, using male pronouns and giving her access to a gender neutral restroom... the ACLU has sent threatening letters to schools stating that it is against the law to disclose a student’s gender identity, even to their parents. But this letter appears to misunderstand federal law. The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act requires that schools allow parents to “inspect and review” their child’s education records as long as the child is under 18. My daughter told me that the school social worker was advising her about halfway houses because he thought we did not support her. The social worker confirmed this when I scheduled a meeting with him to discuss it. This felt like a horrifying attempt to encourage our daughter to run away from home. We had our daughter evaluated by a psychologist approved by the school district. He told us that it was very clear that our daughter’s sudden transgender identity was driven by her underlying mental health conditions, but would only share his thoughts off the record because he feared the potential backlash he would receive. In the report he submitted to us and the school, he did not include these concerns that he would only share in person. In my attempts over the past several years to get help for my daughter, what I have learned has shocked me.  The National Education Association has partnered with the Human Rights Campaign and other groups to produce materials advocating automatic affirmation of identities, name changes and pronouns, regardless of parents’ concerns. In 18 states and the District of Columbia, including in my home state of Illinois, there are “conversion therapy” bans, which prevent therapists from questioning a child’s gender identity. No wonder my daughter’s therapist would only speak to me off the record. Some agencies, like the New Jersey Department of Education, warn school districts to “be mindful of disputes” between children and their parents over gender identity. The department's “Transgender Student Guidance” document refers educators to the state’s "Child Abuse, Neglect, and Missing Children" webpage, suggesting that school staff might be encouraged to report parents if they disagree with their child transitioning."
And this was in 2016, too

Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon, Gary Alter, MD, Performs Gender Reassignment Surgery on Youngest Transsexual Patient in the United States - "Successful Sex Change on 16-year-old transgender Male-to-Female teen by using scrotal expander to avoid flank grafts and large linear scars."
From 2014.
Weird. I thought this never happened. But it turns out it's not just mastectomies. Minors keep being mutilated while we're told it enver happens

Trainee doctors told not to quiz patients on transgender status - "Trainee doctors are being taught to unquestioningly accept patients are transgender if they self-identify as such, potentially leading to body changes they may regret.  Three-quarters of UK medical schools have signed up to a charter issued by The Association of LGBTQ+ Doctors & Dentists (Gladd) which promotes that trainee medics should be taught to ‘respect and affirm’ patients who say they are transgender, rather than explore other issues they may have... Thirty-three out of 43 medical schools have signed up to the Gladd charter, which equates questioning someone’s gender identity with quack ‘conversion therapy’ which seeks to ‘cure’ people of homosexuality. The charter says medical schools should ‘work with LGBTQ+ patients to respect and affirm their gender and/or sexual identity’. Gladd’s trans rep is Dr Katie McDowell, a trustee of charity Mermaids which allegedly sent breast binders to children behind parents’ backs and promoted puberty blockers to teens as safe and ‘reversible’.  Jane Galloway from Transgender Trend accused medical schools of ‘falling into a trap’ set by Mermaids.  She warned: ‘This means doctors will not be able to properly explore if a child has gender dysphoria, autism or something else.’ Figures from Tavistock clinic said 48 per cent of children treated there between 2011 and 2018 displayed autistic behaviour. Other studies found a quarter of youngsters at transgender clinics may be autistic. There are also fears many who say they are trans may be struggling to come out as gay."

Transgender schools guidance says discussing women's rights could be offensive - "Teachers who discuss sex-based women’s rights with transgender colleagues would be considered “transphobic” under a policy proposed by members of Britain’s largest teaching union.  The National Education Union’s trans and non-binary network has proposed that anyone who expects trans people “to participate in discussion or debate about their rights and/or identities” is transphobic. The draft proposal of a transphobia definition, seen by The Telegraph, also cited “propagating ideas, concepts and misinformation harmful to trans people and which erase and ignore trans history, such as trans as an ideology or contagion”, as an example of transphobic behaviour.  The policy neither outlined what it meant by “trans history”, nor what “ideas, concepts and misinformation” would be considered harmful to trans people...   A whistleblower close to the teaching union told The Telegraph: “I am extremely worried by this. I’m from a Left-wing background and I hate this nonsense.  “We need free speech. Women need safe spaces. If this definition is accepted, anyone who says ‘You can’t logically self-identify as the opposite sex’, you’ll be a transphobe.”   The source added: “I think it will mean that teachers will be too scared to speak up in schools and they will go along with the NEU policy.”...   Toby Young, the founder of the Free Speech Union, said that the NEU trans network was planning to redefine transphobia “in such broad terms that any criticism of gender identity ideology – or the agenda of trans rights activists – would be deemed ‘transphobic’.”"
Of course, not involving trans people is also transphobic. So the only non transphobic thing to do is shut up and accept everything TRAs demand

In The Genital Mutilation Market, Business Is Booming - "I’m so used to reading about “top surgeries,” “bottom surgeries,” and sterilized teenagers that I fear I’m growing jaded. Honestly, that’s a risk. But even I wasn’t prepared for the report on the “sex reassignment surgery” market just released by Grand View Research.   The U.S. market for such surgeries, we are told, “was valued at USD 1.9 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.23% from 2022 to 2030.” At that rate, the market revenue will grow to $5 billion at the end of this decade. Business is booming because of “rising incidences of gender dysphoria and the increasing number of people opting for gender confirmation surgeries.”  The report offers no commentary or explanation for this surprising fact... insurers such as “Aetna and Unicare provide insurance for necessary surgical procedures, such as salpingo-oophorectomy, hysterectomy, orchiectomy, or ovariectomy.”  It’s a stretch to call the removal of healthy penises, ovaries, testicles, fallopian tubes, and uteruses “necessary.” But in cutting-edge medicine, I presume one must expect some stretching of semantics.   And then there are the Medicaid dollars. “In the U.S.,” the report notes, “around 152,000 transgender individuals are enrolled in Medicaid and only 69,000 among them have access to gender-affirming care coverage under state law.”  That hinders growth in this market segment. But how long can such hold-out states resist joining the right side of history? And how long can they hold out against the “government support” which “is also driving the market”?... Simply cutting out a uterus, or cutting off a penis, may only generate revenue once. These tend to be one-and-done operations. But constructing a simulacrum of a penis and attaching it to a woman involves the rerouting of blood vessels, skin, urethra, and nerves. This is far from simple. The initial surgery can take many hours. The follow-up for complications, infections, and maintenance can stretch out for years...   And this is to say nothing of the life-long need for cross-sex hormones. You see, even after a woman has had her breasts, uterus, and fallopian tubes removed, and the skin, nerves, and muscle from her forearm stripped and refashioned in a neo-penis, every cell of her body is going to go right on thinking it’s female. That’s hard on the patient, but if she lives to be 70 or 80, can you imagine the revenue from exogenous testosterone alone? How did this financial research firm miss this part of the story?  But even as it is, this clinical market analysis applied to teenage castration and sterilization is deeply disturbing"

Meme - "Men pretend to be women. *Happy*
Kids pretend to be Indians on Halloween. *Upset*"

Meme - Frances Weetman @francesweetman: "As a uterus owner who is enduring bad cramps right now, can I just say that the male people pretending they have this pain when they don't have a uterus please stop"
MightMel @Melbelle2300: "Biological appropriation"
Jamie NicWonderbar @jamieelisefoto3: "biological purity is a fascist myth"
Frances Weetman on Twitter - "it's fascist to say that people with uteruses have periods, everyone! I'm so so sorry for any harm I may have caused. I'm taking some time out to denounce myself again"

The tide is finally turning on the trans lobby - "MSPs have backed new legislation that would grant 16-year-olds the right to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) without an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria. The plans also cut the time an individual has to live in their “acquired gender” from two years to three months before making an application. Soon, it might well take a man in Scotland more time to apply for a passport than to claim to be a woman, with all the allowances it subsequently provides, such as entering a woman’s space. No proof is required, let alone surgery or hormones – just a transgenderish feeling will do, even for a confused teenager. Presumably we can all now look forward to Holyrood passing a law allowing people to self-identify as teapots or even hamsters provided they’ve dressed like one for 12 weeks. (It’s not as lunatic as it sounds; I recently heard the tale of a school allowing one of its pupils to self-identify as a cat.) Naturally, J K Rowling has once again been pilloried online for daring to point out that this is a bonkers idea that will harm the most vulnerable women in society...   The activists of For Women Scotland, who gathered outside Holyrood in protest, state on their website “that there are only two sexes, that a person’s sex is not a choice, nor can it be changed”. It is, of course, laughable that such a basic statement of biological fact should now be viewed as so controversial. But such is the state of affairs.  These activists, and Rowling, aren’t just standing in solidarity with the women of Scotland but the people of Scotland who, it seems, can no longer rely on the politicians who claim to represent them. For this biology-defying Bill was supported not just by the SNP, but also by Labour and Green MSPs too. This is despite the fact that a survey conducted by the Scottish Parliament’s equalities, human rights and civil justice committee showed the majority of respondents opposed the legislation. If the SNP had that level of support in an independence referendum, it would be rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall before you could sing Loch Lomond – but of course the Nats only take seriously the survey results they agree with... The closure of the Tavistock transgender clinic is a prime example of how the tide has turned...   Attention then rightly turned to organisations like Stonewall and Mermaids, which have spent recent years gaining what Rowling has described as “unprecedented influence” over public institutions, including the police and the NHS.  They built influence among celebrities too, including Harry Potter star Emma Watson and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – even though Mermaids, for instance, is run by Susie Green, a former IT consultant with no medical training, who took her child to Thailand, aged 16, for genital surgery that was illegal in Britain.  Last week, it emerged that one of Mermaids’ trustees, Dr Jacob Breslow, spoke at a conference hosted by an organisation that promotes services for paedophiles who need professional help. Dr Breslow stood down, releasing a statement saying: “I unequivocally condemn child sexual abuse”, but with Mermaids already facing investigation for giving children breast-binders behind their parents’ backs, common sense has prevailed at last. The Charity Commission is investigating the organisation, and the National Lottery has paused its funding. None of this would have happened without women (and trans women and men equally concerned about women and girls’ safety) taking such a courageous stand. We ought to recognise and celebrate them – many of whom have gone to hell and back to fight this worst of all forms of wokery. The wider war is yet to be won, however. This is an opportunity to get some legislative changes to protect children and families, and to safeguard women-only spaces. Liz Truss has promised to do that. She has a 71-seat majority to implement it. Then we can heap pressure on Nicola Sturgeon, who continues to act like the last Japanese soldier, refusing to down her weapons out of some sort of self-deluded desire to be seen as the “right” sort of feminist."

An ideology-infused paper on how to teach college biology - "The article tells instructors in college biology classes how to teach the subject so that teachers do not “harm” the students by making them feel “unwelcome”, by implying that their behavior—particularly that related to sex and their gender—is “unnatural”, or by failing to represent the students’ identities while teaching biology...
'Sexual and gender minorities face considerable inequities in society, including in science. In biology, course content provides opportunities to challenge harmful preconceptions about what is “natural” while avoiding the notion that anything found in nature is inherently good (the appeal-to-nature fallacy). We provide six principles for instructors to teach sex- and gender-related topics in postsecondary biology in a more inclusive and accurate manner: highlighting biological diversity early, presenting the social and historical context of science, using inclusive language, teaching the iterative process of science, presenting students with a diversity of role models, and developing a classroom culture of respect and inclusion. To illustrate these six principles, we review the many definitions of sex and demonstrate applying the principles to three example topics: sexual reproduction, sex determination or differentiation, and sexual selection. These principles provide a tangible starting place to create more scientifically accurate, engaging, and inclusive classrooms.'
The principles, which I’ll give below with quotes, are designed to buttress the appeal to nature (closely related to the “naturalistic fallacy”)—the idea that a person’s identity is good because it is analogous to what we find in nature.  Thus there is great emphasis on the diversity of sexual reproduction and a de-emphasis of generalizations (e.g. promiscuous males vs. picky females) that, the authors say, harm people... The explicit aim of this pedagogy is not just to teach biology but largely to advance the authors’ social program. As they say... Somewhere along the line, the authors of this paper have forgotten that the purpose of biology class is to teach biology as it is understood today, not to coddle the identities of students.
I remember when people were saying it didn't matter if the arts were compromised, since science would be safe.
Even more recently, people have claimed there's no problem because scientists are not saying things like biological sex being a myth, even if science journals and publications are putting out this nonsense. But Ash T Zemenick has a PhD in Ecology and teaches ecology and evolution, Shaun Turney has a PhD in Natural Resource Sciences and publishes in biology, and Marjorie G Weber and Alex J Webster are biology professors. Though Sarah C Jones only has "University-Educated parents" (Shaun Turney also lists that bit on his bio, bizzarely)
Of course, despite this open proclamation of their goals, we will still be told that indoctrination in education is a paranoid right wing conspiracy theory

The largest Lutheran denomination in Europe just announced that it is "trans." No I am not kidding. - "The Church of Sweden -- which happens to be the largest Lutheran denomination in all of Europe, and the single largest Christian denomination in Sweden -- just announced that it, as a denomination, is trans... The church says that if you do not completely reject the clear biblical and biological view of God's creation and embrace the new religion of sexual fluidity, then you are full of hate and should not be allowed to have a voice in society. Cuz that's what God wants. Got that?  In the last bit of this insanity I will subject you to, the Church of Sweden goes on to condemn trans-exclusionary feminism by comparing it to "radical right-wing Christian groups and right-wing populists.""

HUNTER EXCLUSIVE: Offender who IDs as woman busted for shelter attack | Toronto Sun - "Shane Jacob Green — sometimes known as Stephanie — was looking for a place to stay while visiting Parry Sound. So, the convicted sex offender went to a local women’s shelter and told them that, yes, Green identified as a woman and needed a place to stay... Green was allowed to stay, but allegedly made sexually inappropriate comments to staff and clients.  Two days later, Green allegedly sexually assaulted one of the women, a client, at the shelter... “Green really seems to know how the shelter system works and because it’s 2022 and in the current climate, workers at the shelters feel they have to let Green stay”... “So you have these extremely vulnerable women in distress, and they have to deal with Green because of political expediency”... needless to say, it isn’t Green’s first rodeo. In fact, the hulking 6-foot-2, 230-pounder has also been flagged by the shelter system in Strathroy, west of London. Sources say that Green will also allegedly identify as a woman and then claim to have a child just to get in the shelter door.  In 2018, Green was convicted of sexual assault after he dragged a 15-year-old female McDonald’s employee into a bathroom stall at one of the fast food giant’s restaurants. Inside the stall, Green attacked the victim who was cleaning the washroom... At the time of the 2018 McDonald’s incident, Green was on probation for a 2016 theft under $5,000 charge. Green got a suspended sentence on the latter... “Green is very familiar with policies at women’s shelters, and will make comments about his gender identity as a way to intimidate their staff,” the source said.  “Green tries the same stunts with law enforcement.”  Sometime in the past five years, it was decided that biological women were expendable in the steamroller of equity. Particularly vulnerable women struggling with drugs, domestic violence and other plagues."