Sastra

Dancing in the rain

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

@JamesCantorPhD “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” - Richard P. Feynman

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

This is inversion so callous it's hard to believe.

The Holocaust had a survival rate of about 30%. Millions of people disappeared from European cities and towns over several years. Everybody knew because it was happening all around them.

Gaza has a survival rate, despite the worst and most deadly and horrible periods of the war, of 97%.

All the dead Jews were noncombatants. A large percentage of the dead Gazans were combatants.

And the Jews of Europe, even as their millennia-old civilization was being systematically wiped out, wanted nothing from the societies that surrounded them except to be allowed to live in peace.

Gaza's leadership of religious fanatics, meanwhile, wants every last Israeli dead and gone, is willing to fight to the last Gazan to achieve that aim, has said so publicly and worked for decades to blow up every peace attempt -- and even now believes that Gaza's destruction would be a worthwhile sacrifice to lay on the altar of Israel's destruction, because their god told them so.

So Israelis can reasonably believe, given those features of the Gaza war that aren't true about any genocide ever, and were pretty much the opposite of what was happening in the Holocaust, that Gaza's suffering is a bad and painful war, but not remotely a genocide.

But the point of it all, of course, is not to analyze Gaza, but specifically to lump it together with the Holocaust -- to cast the Jews as the new Nazis.

The only reason this person would dare to make such an insanely ahistorical and immoral parallel is because this is the heart of the bigoted propaganda campaign in which he enthusiastically participates: The point of it all is to make the Jews into the Nazis.

A culture that obsessed about Jews being evil and was then shocked by the Holocaust into obsessing about dead Jews as the apotheosis of righteous victimhood is now obsessively engaged in knocking Jews off that moral pedestal they themselves put them on.

That's why they don't care one whit about Hamas massacres of Gazans, about genocidal wars in Syria or Yemen (even when they've funded and armed the sides), about flotilla activists currently held by the Libyans...literally nothing triggers a response except Jews.

They still, even after all these generations, no matter what else is happening in the world or in their own societies, can't stop thinking about Jews.

And as we Jews learned in the 1940s -- the actual, historical 1940s, not the weird fantasies conjured up by these bigots -- a whole society can be in the grip of a callous, destructive bigotry and still believe it is true and righteous.

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

@sappholives83 The genocide refers to the death of a self-image which hasn’t been affirmed. “Crystal the Real True Woman” dies every time someone reminds Kevin he’s a man.

[Emma Hilton @FondOfBeetles]

On the 28th May 2026, Bharti Fulmali appeared for India in their T20 win over England in Chelmsford.

In women’s cricket.

We need cheap, easily-available sex screening, pronto.

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

@FondOfBeetles @lisakirbie They say we should “ask them.” Meekly.
Unless that bothers them.

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

You’re eliminating the gender nonconforming. There are effeminate male cross-dressers and butch lesbian transwomen. If you want everyone to be supportive of people who don’t behave the way society expects, your explanation of the distinction between the two groups goes against that.

[Wolf of X @WolfofX]

Some nursing homes struggle to attract visitors. One in the Netherlands chose to invite roommates instead.

In the Dutch city of Deventer, a retirement home called Humanitas introduced an idea that would eventually gain attention around the world.

Rather than accepting loneliness as a normal part of aging, they approached it as something that could actually be solved.

For over ten years, Humanitas has allowed university students to live inside the nursing home rent free.

In return, the students spend about thirty hours each month connecting with residents. Sometimes that means sharing meals, having conversations, helping with technology, joining activities, or simply keeping someone company during a quiet afternoon.

They are not nurses or employees. They are simply part of the community.

At first, the idea sounded like a smart response to expensive student housing.

But the real impact appeared in the lives of the residents. Reports from outlets such as PBS NewsHour and AARP described seniors becoming more social, more active, and less isolated once younger people became part of everyday life.

What makes the story even more meaningful is that many students chose to spend far more time there than the agreement required.

Some even stayed connected after graduating. Over time, casual interactions turned into genuine friendships.

Humanitas didn’t really create something new. It brought back something many societies once had naturally: different generations living side by side instead of separately.

Maybe the issue was never aging itself. Maybe it was the distance we created between generations.

Sometimes the most powerful ideas are simply old human connections rediscovered.

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

“Where Stewart-Williams is most persuasive is in laying out the areas of uncertainty, acknowledging the importance of nurture, but arguing forcefully that there is a core of irreducible difference that is so obviously down to nature that — well — it takes a very clever social scientist to claim otherwise.”

https://t.co/f42idMWB5u

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

Do we need a puppy/kitten video?
Yes. Now, more than ever, we all need this video.
Everything is going to be okay.

[𝕐o̴g̴ @Yoda4ever]

Golden retriever puppy heals rescued kitten in just three days..🐕🐾🐈😊

[John Connor 🇨🇦 @jbvconnor]

You have posted the cropped chart popularized by the raging AGP activist, Julia Serano. It was in his sadomasochism biography, “Whipping Girl” back in 2017 when he argued that trans identification is just like left-handedness ‘coming out of the closet.’

I have attached the full image for people’s reference and a quote from Mr. Serano.

The real chart shows that left-handedness was ~10% in the 1700s, dropped sharply to ~3% by ~1880-1900 due to stronger cultural/educational suppression (schools + machinery built for right-handers), then recovered to its natural ~10-12% baseline by mid-20th century… and plateaued for decades.

How does this compare to gender identity syndrome? Referrals exploded 20-60 times in less than 10 years (Tavistock GIDS etc.). The growth was primarily adolescent girls (sex ratio flip) with friend-group clusters. There was heavy social media correlation and massive comorbidities.

The two phenomena are completely different and not analogous. The consequences were also different. The trans phenomena has brought medicalization that has left millions infertile/sterile with lifelong medical problems. This is not just a matter of switching hands.

The analogy was always weak. Cropping the chart to hide the truth makes you look like a fool. See Cass Review + European pullbacks for why caution is warranted.

[Sammy @NeuroSGS]

Before asserting that “gender is in the brain,” several conceptual and methodological questions need to be addressed.

First, what precisely is meant by “gender identity” in this context? Is it being treated as a stable internal construct, a multidimensional psychological profile, a social identity, or some combination thereof? Which traits or experiences constitute it, and how is it operationalized empirically? Through self-report? Behavioral measures? Clinical criteria? Quantitative scales? Qualitative assessment?

Second, why should neuroanatomical sex dimorphism be assumed to underlie gender identity specifically? What is the proposed causal mechanism? Why privilege this explanation over alternative developmental, endocrine, cognitive, social, or biopsychosocial models?

Third, which neural regions or networks are implicated? Are findings convergent across studies, modalities, and populations, or are they heterogeneous and weakly replicated? To what extent are reported effects robust after correcting for sample size limitations, multiple comparisons, publication bias, and overlapping variance with biological sex?

Finally, how are confounding variables being handled? For example: hormone exposure, psychiatric comorbidity, medication, neuroplastic adaptation, cultural conditioning, sexuality, developmental history, and differences in self-concept formation. Which variables should be controlled for, and which may themselves be constitutive of the phenomenon under investigation?

Without resolving these questions, claims such as “a male brain can exist in a female body” risk exceeding the current evidential basis.

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

@zaelefty “Um, well yeah, no - I meant BESIDES that …”

Lesson: if you’re going to dismiss someone’s expertise, it’s a good idea to research them first.

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

@haynes_wiley Have there been any studies specifically focused on the long term effects on babies who were put in early daycare? Did those studies look for a connection with cluster B traits?
What you’re saying seems reasonable, but speculative.

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day prison reformer and philanthropist Elizabeth Fry, born OTD in 1780 in Norwich, the first woman to give evidence to a Select Committee. It was instrumental in the passing of the Gaols Act 1823, which separated the sexes.

Caring responsibilities came early to her. Her mother died when she was 12 — she had twelve siblings — and as a Quaker, she took an interest in the impoverished, the sick and prisoners. A “plain Friend”, she dressed plainly, did not dance or sing, and took philanthropy very seriously.

In 1813 and at the suggestion of another Friend, Elizabeth visited Newgate Prison and found women and children in small overcrowded cells where they had to manage washing, cooking, toilet functions, and sleep on straw. Some hadn’t even been tried at court. She was horrified.

“All I tell thee is a faint picture of reality; the filth, the closeness of the rooms, the furious manner and expressions of the women towards each other, and the abandoned wickedness, which everything bespoke are really indescribable".

She returned the following day with food and clothing, but family finances prevented her from doing more until 1816. At first, she concentrated on the children by funding a school inside the prison for them, but she found it impossible to ignore the plight of the women. They were at the mercy of male inmates who raped and sexually exploited them. On release, the few occupations available to women were beyond their reach. Life was without hope.

Elizabeth founded the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate and encouraged other affluent women to set up classes for women prisoners, providing them with materials so they could learn to sew and knit. It calmed them — “Already, from being like wild beasts, they appear harmless and kind" — and meant they had employable skills on release.

When she gave evidence to a Select Committee on 27 February 1818, she pulled no punches. She told them in graphic terms of the rapes and sexual exploitation suffered by the women. Her powerful evidence helped to secure the Gaols Act 1823 which required prisons to separate the sexes.

Other provisions of the Act included paying gaolers (to combat corruption), requiring doctors and chaplains to visit prisoners (still an important statutory requirement today), and greater emphasis on reform and rehabilitation.

The Gaols Act was far-seeing and genuinely progressive, but other than separation of the sexes, toothless. Town gaols and debtors prisons were excluded and there was no means of checking that its provisions were being met.

Elizabeth returned once more to give evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Lords in 1835, pointing out that "in many instances their condition is melancholy...they may truly be called schools for crime", that some still had "no instruction, no employment, no classification [of inmates]...and they get into a most low and deplorable state of morals...I would not say that all are in that condition, but I fear many are".

In those days, many prisoners faced transportation to New South Wales even for the most minor of crimes (for more serious offences, hanging was the go-to sanction). They faced eight months in vermin-infested cramped holds, often flooded with bilge-water, and strictly rationed fresh water. The women transported by the First Fleet had only the clothing they were standing up in and when this became infected with lice and had to be burnt, they were given rice sacks to wear. Elizabeth campaigned for better care and provision for them too.

In 1825, she published "Observations of the Siting, Superintendence and Government of Female Prisoners", an influential book that laid out in clear detail how penal regimes should be run.

Somewhere along the way, Elizabeth established a "nightly shelter" for the homeless in London after seeing the body of a boy who had frozen in winter and set up a system of volunteers to visit the poor and homeless and provide help and comfort to them. She campaigned against the slave trade, and in 1840, opened a training school for nurses. Florence Nightingale took a team of Fry nurses to the Crimea.

Her abiding principles of kindness and fairness sprang from her Quaker faith and she was the first woman — other than the late Queen, of course — to be depicted on a British banknote.

Elizabeth Fry died in 1845 at the age of 65. I cannot tell you how much I admire this woman.

Less than a century later, Westminster and Holyrood subsequently ditched Elizabeth’s truly progressive approach to prison as a place for rehabilitation, not punishment, and decided that it would be even more “kind and inclusive” to hold men in women’s prisons, as long as they claimed to be women too.

In wartime and in war zones, that would be regarded as a war crime under the Geneva Convention, and those officials who allowed it would be classed as war criminals.

It’s peacetime, allegedly, but I’d still call it a human rights violation, and I have a few choice words for all of those politicians and civil servants who nodded along with it. I hope their complicity haunts them.

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

@JumpDudeTslaQ @LeorSapir They dropped the first one when they realized they could lose the debate because they were asking for a favor.
With the second one, they are demanding a human right. We don’t debate human rights.

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

It’s more insidious than that.
3) 2010-Present: “Little Billy MIGHT be a girl because he plays with dolls - or he might not be, we’re not saying he is because it’s totally fine for boys to play with dolls, lots of them do - but playing with dolls IS a sign of being a girl, we’re just pointing that out - it’s okay if he’s only a boy - but if he’s a girl that’s stunning and brave and we have to love and support Little Billy and buy him - her - LOTS of dolls - so let’s reassure Little Billy by telling him all this and then go ask him. Repeatedly. Don’t be afraid of letting the truth out. You can tell us.”

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

@JumpDudeTslaQ @LeorSapir The first one is open to an honest debate. The second one isn’t.

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

I think the majority believe it’s only a small, confused fraction of centrals/liberals/leftists who don’t understand because they read or heard “something” put out by the right wing. They keep framing it as a moral issue: either you’re for freedom and self-autonomy or you want to control people and send society back to the Dark Ages.

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

Larry Bushart spent 37 days in jail for posting a meme on Facebook.

I’ve been doing this work for 25 years, and I can honestly say this is the worst First Amendment case I’ve ever seen.

Not because Larry threatened anyone. He didn’t. Not because he committed violence. He didn’t. Not because this was a close call. It wasn’t.

He posted a political meme — the kind of thing millions of Americans do every day — and local officials decided to treat it like a crime.

And because they had badges, prosecutors, jail cells, and the terrifying machinery of the state behind them, they got away with it for 37 days.

Larry is a retired police officer and National Guard veteran. The meme he shared quoted Donald Trump’s “we have to get over it” comment after a 2024 Iowa school shooting. Whatever you think of Trump, the meme was plainly political commentary. Perry County officials knew what it referred to. They knew it wasn’t a threat against a Tennessee school.

They arrested him anyway.

In the middle of the night.

They set his bond at $2 million.

He lost his job. He missed family milestones. He sat in jail for more than a month before the charges finally collapsed — because, of course, there was no crime here.

Today, @theFIREorg secured a measure of justice: Perry County agreed to pay Larry Bushart $835,000 for violating his constitutional rights.

This case should scare the hell out of people across the political spectrum.

Because if the government can jail you for a meme by pretending not to understand obvious political commentary, your rights are only as secure as the good faith of the most authoritarian official in your town.

That is exactly why we have the First Amendment. Not for speech everyone likes. Not for opinions that flatter the powerful. Not for the bland, safe, committee-approved stuff.

It exists for moments when fear, outrage, politics, and authority all line up and say: “Surely this is the exception.”

No. It isn’t.

I’m incredibly proud of @theFIREorg’s legal team. And I’m even prouder of Larry Bushart for refusing to let the government get away with treating his constitutional rights like a suggestion.

But despite the correct verdict, I'll probably always get angry every time I think of this case.

Let’s make this the last time anyone in America is arrested — let alone thrown in jail — for a meme.

Celebrate your independence. Defend your First Amendment.

https://t.co/7ADQTxeHsL

[Darya Safai MP @SafaiDarya]

Veel jonge mannen die in een islamitische omgeving zijn opgegroeid, dragen vrouwonvriendelijke ideeën mee. Uit een onderzoek van de VRT blijkt dat veel jonge mannen vinden dat een man een vrouw mag slaan.

Maar hoewel de onderzoekers perfect weten welke culturele en religieuze achtergrond deze jongeren hebben — want die gegevens werden ook verzameld — laten ze dat cruciale onderdeel bewust weg.

Onder het excuus dat men niemand wil “stigmatiseren”, wordt essentiële informatie verzwegen. Een onderzoek dat belangrijke factoren bewust weglaat uit angst voor politieke gevoeligheden, verliest zijn geloofwaardigheid.

Nog gevaarlijker is het systematisch vermijden van elke eerlijke discussie over religie. Door de vrouwonvriendelijke elementen binnen de islam steeds te verzwijgen of te camoufleren, creëert men een taboezone waarin vrouwenrechten juist het hardst worden ondermijnd. Ironisch genoeg gebeurt dat vaak door dezelfde linkse en zogenaamd “progressieve” groepen die zichzelf presenteren als de grote verdedigers van vrouwenrechten.

De realiteit is dat zij de schending van vrouwenrechten binnen islamitische gemeenschappen vaak negeren omdat het niet past binnen hun ideologische verhaal. Daardoor laten ze precies die vrouwen in de steek die het meeste bescherming nodig hebben: vrouwen die slachtoffer zijn van islamitische onderdrukking.

Ik ben geboren en opgegroeid onder de shariawetgeving in Iran, een land dat gegijzeld wordt door islamisten. Ik ken de islam, de koran en de sharia van binnenuit. In de 21ste eeuw zijn vrouwen daar nog steeds juridisch en sociaal ondergeschikt aan de man van het gezin. Zonder toestemming van haar echtgenoot mocht een vrouw vaak niet eens vrij naar buiten, laat staan werken, reizen of studeren.

Dat Iraanse vrouwen vandaag zo strijdvaardig en vrijgevochten zijn, komt niet door de islam, maar ondanks de islam. Het komt door de diepgewortelde Perzische cultuur die nog altijd leeft in onze harten en die weigert zich volledig te laten vernietigen door de islam.

De islam bevat teksten en regels die vrouwenonderdrukking legitimeren. In de koran staat letterlijk dat een man zijn vrouw moet opvoeden en, indien nodig, slaan. Het hoeft dan ook niemand te verbazen dat een aanzienlijk deel van jonge mannen — vooral zij die met zulke ideeën zijn opgegroeid — geweld tegen vrouwen normaliseren.

Wat werkelijk walgelijk is, is de hypocrisie van een deel van links-progressief Europa. Dezelfde bewegingen die vroeger vochten tegen religieuze controle over vrouwen, die zich verzetten tegen opgelegde moraal en zogenaamd streden voor vrouwelijke emancipatie, beschermen vandaag kritiek op moskeeën en sharia alsof die boven elke discussie verheven zijn.

Vrouwenrechten mogen nooit selectief zijn.

[Sastra @St_Equanimity]

Project Human Wisdom

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

I’m extremely excited about Replication Radar, built by Rhea Karty at Harvard’s lab and supported by @cosmos_inst & @TheFIREorg.

It’s close to an idea I’ve been a little obsessed with lately: the “knowledge crawler.”

The basic idea: use AI to crawl as much of human knowledge as possible — papers, books, claims, citations, replications, retractions, old debates, buried null results — and ask the annoying but essential questions.

Does this actually hold up?

Did this famous study replicate?

Is this field resting on three papers everyone cites but nobody has checked in 20 years?

Was this “settled” conclusion ever actually settled?

Are there forgotten papers that were right too early, too unfashionable, or just too boring to get attention?

This would be a gigantic undertaking. Access to scholarship, copyright, licensing, academic incentives, institutional defensiveness — all of it would be hard.

But hard is not the same as impossible. And this is worth doing.

And yes, people will say, “Sure, maybe for science. But what about the humanities?”

Well, a lot more of the humanities than people admit can be reduced to factual claims.

What happened? Who said what? Did this policy produce that outcome? Did this institution actually do what people claim? Did this theory predict anything, or just explain everything after the fact?

Those claims can be tested too. Not perfectly. Not by a magic TruthBot. But tested.

That’s the whole point.

We don’t really know most things are “true” in some final sense. We know what has survived serious attempts to prove it false.

Human knowledge is overwhelmingly a project of subtraction.

You get closer to truth by removing error. Bad data. Fraud. Wishful thinking. Failed replications. Citation circles. Beautiful theories reality refuses to cooperate with.

Yes, my ambition here is huge. Fine. It should be.

A project like this might once have taken a century. With AI, maybe we can get a much clearer map of what we know, what we only think we know, and what most urgently needs to be researched next in a handful of years.

Will it show that we know a hell of a lot less than we think?

Almost certainly.

Good. That’s progress.

Proud that @TheFIREorg and @cosmos_inst are helping push this kind of truth-seeking work forward.