It's a philosophical thing ...

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/03/trum...l-markets.html

Well the markets are tanking, the economy is likely going to crash, we are in a trade war with our two biggest trading partners, a megalomaniac billionaire has control of all our data but at least we have preserved the integrity of high school girls field hockey.

And now we’re pausing the Mexico tariffs.

I’m so glad we are back to the whim of this clown who changes his mind every 10 minutes based on what he sees on social media and Fox News.

The discussion on sports highlights to me an Achilles Heel of the left on these issues: caring about facts more than about where the culture actually is. Yes, objectively, the percentage of female sports participants impacted by having to face a biological male is likely extremely small, but the right has been brutally effective in blowing the issue out of proportion. This Politico piece from this morning actually discusses this specific issue: Just a moment...



Bottom line: "a lot of people care way more about this than they should, so the solution is lean into the issues and lecture them on why they shouldn't care about this" might make you feel morally/intellectually superior, but it ain't how you win elections when--we should be PAINFULLY aware by now--a good chunk of those critical swing voters aren't paying any attention to the nuances of these issues.

I think I mentioned on here about hearing an anti-trans ad on Pandora clearly aimed at black fathers, but even if I did, it bears repeating at this juncture. The entire ad basically sounded like a bunch of bruthas in a barber shop complaining that Kamala wants our daughters to have to play against boys. At the time I thought that campaign was a complete waste of time and money...then Trump basically DOUBLED his numbers among under-45 black males from 2020 to 2024. It appears that he pulled over a third of that demographic. 35%. Let that sink in. I'm not suggesting all of that was because of the trans sports stuff, but it absolutely was a significant factor. (Overall, his black male support only went from 19% to 21%.)

It looks like it was more than a whim. More like hard bargaining.

MSN

I bet he has some demands on Canada and even China

I'm on the left, I believe in protecting marginalized groups and the rights of the lgbtq+ to exist and be supported. I also think that if that if you've made a choice to transition for the betterment of your own life that you shouldn't participate in sports beyond the rec level, period. We all have to make compromises in life. Which one of these things is more important to you personally. It's not stepping on rights, it's not taking away support, it's saying that you have the consciousness about it to do the right thing for others, the same as you're asking of them.

Related comments on "swing" voters (really starting to think we should call these "simplistic/casual" voters...) Honestly, the more I look into and think about this stuff, the more I believe that silly gas prices meme floating around before the election also probably swayed wayyyyy more people than I'd care to believe. Gas prices were way lower when Biden was elected than when he left, because demand was historically low because...you know....that pandemic thing. However, I suspect a number of these folks saw a version of that meme and never thought past the comma in my previous sentence.

No one wins elections on nuance.

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I guess I'm lucky that my trans daughter wasn't interested in sports in high school. Being autistic, she was never much good at sports anyway.

As for the bathroom issue, she does her best just not to use public restrooms at all.

The concern now isn't just about trans rights and if they can play sports anymore. It's about the current administration making all lgbtq+ dissappear from all of society and any recognition of them. I remember when I laughed about Putin saying there were no homosexuals in Russia. That mindset is the final goal of the current administration.

Right. Push hard on issue A, foster a general anti-trans sentiment. Then legislate against A, B, C, D, E...

She caved pretty quickly but probably wanted to come to a deal before Trudeau, who in r/wsb, is affectionally known as a "bag holder" (aka odd man out).

Also, an interesting criticism from Canadian billionaire Lutke. The pragmatic vs idealistic approach to Trump. I know Trudeau is already on his way out and he is pretty unpopular, wonder if this current standoff buys him any love ... my guess, is no.

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke defends Trump tariff demands, slams Trudeau

Well, if we don't need nuance, then Dems need to just message the following:

The US is in the midst coup because a trans girl finished 4th at a swim meet 1 time. Or
because we're scared brown people are trying to do what we did a hundred years earlier. Or
Because black people like having jobs. Or
Our tech companies have gotten so fat they have to steal from the government to survive.

I have a cousin who is a teacher in a heavily Latino area. A third of their students are absent today.

The Politico piece hits an enormous point right at the beginning: common sense.

I'd wager that 80-90 percent of Trump voters have uttered some version of the phrase "it's not so common any more". And it's why so much of the opening days of this term have so many of us mostly on the brink of downright giddy.

Good GRACIOUS it appears that a lot of people who aren't full-on MAGA seem to care wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more about being "forced" to see pronouns in an email signature than I can fathom. The volume and intensity of celebratory social media posts because government employees were told to get rid of them was...something.

Common sense makes a small return, people who value it rejoice.

Considering the near-death state of it in the past few years, I can't say I'm surprised.

Yeah, a demand for stationing 10k troops on a border which already has...15k troops is brilliant.

Because people (see above) love being assholes and/or can't expend any effort to change their behavior. They would rather deadname my kid and insist on using she/her than to do something different.

(Not everyone, obviously. At work -- in a male-coded job -- coworkers actually use he/him. Younger Child has joked that they feel like they're "undercover." They don't correct them. They all use their preferred name - that's how they were introduced - though I'm certain their boss knows their legal, obviously female, name is in the computer system/badging.)

My work necessitates dealing with a fair number of people via email only, so I always find it helpful when an email-only person named Pat/Tracy/Kelly/etc uses them. Further, since March 2020, 100% of my work has been remote, and there are some situations where it's actually beneficial to my job performance to be able to begin to ascertain political leanings based on use/non-use of them in an initial video call with a client. There can be some politically-adjacent aspects of some of my client interactions, so having a sense of where they're coming from can be quite helpful in knowing how to approach certain issues. For that reason I often do basic cyber-research on my clients, and pronouns are sometimes a useful shortcut. ;)

And fwiw, those pronouns? Often kinda helpful. When I have to onboard folks for systems, they are people I haven't met or seen and have names where I don't know if they are male or female (especially true of non-Anglo names, but also because names in general are all over the place these days).

If I have to refer to someone in this case? I will use the generic "user" or even...the dreaded "they."

edit: what Ben beat me to

YMMV, I can accept that as possible but I dare say I'm closer to the norm in having literally never once ever seen that particular use for them. It's always been a political signaling, typically personal although on a few rare occasions something forced upon them by their employer.

Show me on this doll where the pronouns hurt you.

It actually has made a big difference in the polls. Out of 388 seats available, the conservative party was polling around the 220's, and today they are at 195. Still in strong majority area, but a really big swing, and all of it went back to Trudeau's party, the Liberals.

Nothing brings a country together more than having their sovereignty threatened. And he did give a really good speech about it Saturday night when he announced Canada's response to the tariffs.

It is exactly what came to mind for me. It seems like common sense to HAVE pronouns in emails because people can't see your junk in an email. Well, they shouldn't be able to see your junk in an email.

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Curious - are they also celebrating being able to say words like "retard", "faggot", "dyke", etc.?

(Won't go too far into the "etc.")

The new mindset is that I have the freedom to call you by whatever pronoun I want and if you don't like it, you can fuck off, that's my right.

Grr, stupid embeds don't work.

@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social on Bluesky

"Donald Trump’s new State Department appointee."

edit: nor does the image tag!

I agree. And I think where the left loses on this issue, ultimately, goes back to climate change/Covid - "trust the science." You can't use that argument on one hand and then completely ignore the physiological differences between males and females that makes sports participation such an obvious fairness issue.

There's no question that even a transitioning male-to-female has certain physical advantages that you can't ignore in service of the fact that they choose to now be female. That just doesn't work. And it's even worse when you've just spent 4+ years lecturing the right on Covid and vaccines and pretty much everything else they want to ignore science on.

Oh, I'm not saying that's usually the motivation. I'd agree that it's almost always political signaling, yes. (Otherwise, it wouldn't be the reliable shortcut that it is for me. ;)) It's just that knowing the gender of a Kelly/Pat/Tracy in my particular work situation can be useful.

SIDE NOTE: At my junior high school, there were THREE kids named Tracy Jenkins, one white male, one black male, and one white female. We had a black principal, so there exist no recordings from my home town of some white dude over the intercom saying "black boy Tracy Jenkins" or "white boy Tracy Jenkins" had made the honor roll or whatever, but I think he must have specified in that way at least twice a month. :lol::lol::lol:

FWIW, I don't think trans athletes should be allowed to compete against girls. Like someone said upthread, that should be a concession they make in exchange for not being vilified by people who are intolerant of others who are different.

I'm guessing that the Venn diagram intersection of "people who like to go there" + "people who wouldn't go there until Trump was re-elected" is, uh...pretty small. ;)

Elon's update to the resignation email: Agencies can exempt certain jobs and any paperwork outlining the terms of the agreement are up to the agency. So they could refuse to let you just stay at home and get paid.

I mean, there was this (which I can't read anymore), which suggested at least young people may have been holding back with it but feel more unfettered now: I Saw What New, Young Post-MAGA Trump Supporters Look Like

More mixed-company settings, I guess. For some groups I imagine it's more a case of "well, everyone in my selected group thinks that way, so that's just what we do."

To switch gears, this is mildly terrifying:

Trump isn’t Joking About Lebensraum | transpost.social

It depends on when you transition. Like, you can't convince me somehow someone like Kim Petras has any sort of athletic advantage. (Of course if you make puberty blockers illegal, yeah.)

I love the idea of a sovereign wealth fund. What's not clear to me is the governance of its use.

I'm going to guess that Trump wants this as his checkbook to use to invest in/buy stuff on "behalf of the US". I can see this as a foreign policy tool, impact the economy (would it be inflationary?) etc. and I wouldn't want him alone making the investment decisions. So, like the concept, need to understand the details ... (and balance the budget first).

Trump orders creation of US sovereign wealth fund, says it could own part of TikTok

This is just nationalizing companies but not reaping any of the profits from it.

Very Communist.

This is pretty crazy and if there was any opposition party in this country they'd be seizing on it.




Seizing it with what? What exact police force do you believe the Democrats have? The best they can do is file suits, which they have done.

I think he means making a helluva big noise about it, not physically seizing anything. Instead... crickets.

Yeah, even I read that as "seizing upon, not any sort of physical "seizing".

Ok, if it is seizing upon, then they are. Dem politicians all over my timeline speaking about it.

Dola: Just to add what how the hell do you seize on any individual thing whenh they have flooded the zone with so much? Trump just said if Ukraine wants our continued help they are going to have to sign over their natural resources, as well as the only thing that will stop the Canadian tariffs is if they become the 51st state.

Like I haven't seen any leaders mention how the USAID stuff is just Elon making China happy. Pretty big conflict of interest that he's shutting down an agency for a foreign country so that they don't punish his car company.

Haven't seen them talk about taking down direct file through IRS which was extremely popular.

Not a peep from a leader about the largest aviation disaster in a quarter century happening right after the head of the FAA was forced out and they asked for the resignation of tons of ATCs.

I guess Schumer tweeted over the weekend that guacamole would be more expensive for the Super Bowl or something stupid that no one gave a shit about. Just the biggest fucking losers.

Watch CSPAN. They are talking about it, There was a big rally outside the USAID offices today.

Well at least the 14 people watching CSPAN will get to see this. Good thing they gave a 75-year old with throat cancer a leadership position over the young woman with access to millions and millions of young voters online.

I'm sorry but Chuck Schumer spent the weekend tweeting about how guacamole might be more expensive during the Super Bowl. Hakeem Jeffries did a fundraiser for a group wanting more money for Israel. That's your party leadership!

We live in an oligarchy. If you are not worth 25 million life will probably suck because AI and Robotics will take a majority of the jobs.