Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus iderit

1. Settlers of Catan has been licensed by Netflix. I look forward to finding out the true lore behind "I've got wood for sheep".

(tags:netflix SettlersOfCatan EpicWTF games tv )

2. Tracking down the Romans who survived the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius

(tags:Rome history volcano viaPatrickHadfield )

3. Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time

(tags:ai news fraud )

4. Brainwave study sheds light on cause of 'hearing voices' in schizophrenic people

(tags:hearing schizophrenia )

5. Amazon unveils prototype AI smart glasses for its delivery drivers

(tags:cameras Amazon technology delivery )

6. How to get men to share their feelings, by an Army psychologist

(tags:psychology emotion men advice )

Every so often I see some politician Gotcha'd with "Can women have penises?" - and the results have always either be flailing or in a very rare case (new Greens leader Zack Polanski) just saying "Yes", in a way which basically hands everything to the interviewer.

And I know that it's really hard to deal with an interviewer who is determined to make you look bad. But it bothers me occasionally that people don't try and explain "But here is my point of view, and where it comes from" - because while saying "Yes" might be very reassuring to people already on your side, it does nothing to persuade others who are just confused by/mildly hostile.

So here, in a simple set of 4 steps is my view.

1) Nobody is choosing to be transgender. It's a difference in brain development.
See here. This isn't new, it's the medical view, and has been for many years.

2) Forcing people to live in the gender that they don't identify as is incredibly destructive to their mental health.
This is also long well known. The vast majority of attempts to raise boys as girls and vice versa have appalling impacts on people. The poster-boy for this was David Reimer, who suffered a terrible accident as a baby which destroyed his penis (in the 60s), never knew he was born a boy, and was raised a girl (on the advice of a doctor who believes that gender was just cultural conditioning). And it made him *incredibly* unhappy - within weeks of his parents breaking the rules they'd been given and telling him (at age 13) that he had been born a boy he'd changed his name and presentation. Details here.

3) Most transgender people are not publicly out.
You might get the impression that trans people are all out activists. But the vast majority aren't. They don't want to be "The person who was born one way and is now another", they want to be the person that they are on the inside. So almost nobody they interact with on a daily basis knows that they are transgender. The ones where "Everyone knows about this transgender person" are the exception, most of them are not public about it. As a friend said "My identity is female and back when I transitioned the advice was to deal and vanish into the big bad women's world."

4) Therefore, as a society, we have a choice between either forcibly outing people whenever they want to use a toilet, get married, throw a ball, or otherwise interact with society, or letting them live in the gender that they are presenting*.

There you go. That's the humane, liberal approach to transgender people. And every time you get hooked into arguments about the definition of the word "woman", you get pulled away from those very simple things: Nobody asked to be born in a body that destroys their mental health. Most people don't want to be public about that having happened to them (because it stops them just living as the gender they are in their brains). So we can either be supportive or we can torture them.

*And that's the approach that the European Court of Human Rights took, in Goodwin vs The United Kingdom in 2001. They balanced the right of someone to not have to out themselves, against the the negative consequences thereof. And found that the proven negative consequences were basically nonexistent. Which is what then led to Labour being forced to pass the Gender Recognition Act. The rights coming from that, to live in the gender that you choose, are what is currently under attack.

Feeding the ducks
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Gideon, climbing on to Sophia's lap: "I'll be Alexa."
Sophia: "Alexa, play Soda Pop"
Gideon: sings Soda Pop
Sophia: joins in

I've finally found a use for LinkedIn - it's doing all of the puzzles and then seeing how much better my contacts did.

1. Endometriosis diagnosis from menstrual blood could make diagnosis dramatically faster (still a few years away though)

(tags:endometriosis health )

2. Church of England bishops stop plans to trial blessing services for gay couples

(tags:LGBT bigotry religion ChurchOfEngland marriage relationships )

3. Russia's funding for Ukraine war set to 'contract' as new sanctions loom

(tags:Russia Ukraine war economics trade )

4. The Anglican Church just split in half (40-50 million in each side)

(tags:ChurchOfEngland )

5. Judge rules that trans man can't be denied gender recognition certificate because he is trying to conceive.

(tags:transgender law UK children GoodNews )

6. Happy Tenth Anniversary to the "Leopards Eating People's Faces Party"

(tags:politics meme satire )

7. Liberal Democrats win all six seats in Surrey council by-elections (clearly things afoot in the South-East)

(tags:libdem elections uk )

8. Why FindOutNow polls differ from other polling companies

(tags:polls politics uk )

9. Some reasons to be hopeful about the future (if we can get through 2026)

(tags:thefuture charlesstross )

10. Treating male partners halves the recurrence rate of Bacterial Vaginosis

(tags:Bacteria microbiome )

11. Lothian Buses celebrates a century of keeping Edinburgh moving through the night with the Night Bus

(tags:Edinburgh buses night history )

12. Turkey proposes radical new "reforms" to attack LGBTQ+ marriage, media, & trans people

(tags:LGBT transgender turkey bigotry )

1. 60 minute video of uninterrupted AI driving in London. (See comments for times of interesting points in the video)

(tags:video automation driving London uk )

2. Trans people are hiding their identities at alarming rates

(tags:LGBT transgender USA bigotry society )

3. Greens neck and neck with Labour, new poll shows

(tags:politics GreenParty labour polls uk )

4. FindOutNow are terrible at polling, and their results should be taken with a very large pinch of salt

(tags:polls Scotland UK politics )

5. Now British lawyers are using AI (and not checking that the cases they cite actually exist)

(tags:law ai UK OhForFucksSake )

1. Trying to make sense of the nonsensical decision to drop the Chinese spying prosecutions

(tags:spying china uk law government )

2. Keir Starmer's 'Brexit Is Bad, Let's Make It a Bit Worse' Strategy

(tags:labour economics europe doom uk politics )

3. Flapping-wing robot achieves bird-style self-takeoff (see movie S5 in the supplementary materials)

(tags:birds robots )

4. They traveled to Thailand. They wound up cyber scam slaves in Myanmar.

(tags:Thailand fraud crime )

5. Rice weevil on a grain of rice wins 2025 Nikon Small World contest

(tags:photography )

6. NPR's veteran Pentagon reporter warns new media policy stifles journalism

(tags:USA military journalism censorship )

7. What the Chinese spying case witness statements reveal

(tags:law china spying uk )

Today I spent £108 on getting myself vaccinated against Flu and Covid.

Which led me to wonder what the cost of days off is to the economy. And how far off we are from it being worth the government vaccinating everyone.