Open mike 21/07/2022

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, July 21st, 2022 - 39 comments
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For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

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39 comments on “Open mike 21/07/2022 ”

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  1. PsyclingLeft.Always 1
    21 July 2022 at 7:32 am

    "Of the 10 warmest January-Junes on record, five have now occurred since 2016, with 2016 being the warmest (1.4degC above average)."

    https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/hot-start-year-gets-close-top-records

    Another drought for Southern Region? How will ..Dairy farmers deal with that? Water is going to be scarce. More pressure on Councils to “allow” water takes?

    • tc 1.1
      21 July 2022 at 8:06 am

      Plenty in the Waikato and taranaki currently. Knock knock dairy industry this is the reality of CC calling.

    • Ad 1.2
      21 July 2022 at 9:19 am

      Canterbury and Otago dairy production is in large part secured through irrigation.

      Southland could do the same with massive irrigation if it wants to secure dairy production.

      Just need to extrude some multi-kilometer pipes straight out of Tiwai Point.

      It will be an excellent quandary when growing trees becomes more profitable than milk, now that trees are rapidly overtaking sheep.

  2. Robert Guyton 2
    21 July 2022 at 9:09 am

    Ready for a fascinating read?

    Overthrowing the patriarchy with ecstatic sex

    "The foundations of evolutionary biology had been distorted by prejudice.

    Why do you describe sex, as in the male and female categories in species, as anarchical?

    I was really surprised when I came to understand how sexual differentiation actually happens. Everybody at school learns that males are XY and females are XX. You think that the genes that govern being male are on the Y chromosome, and the genes that cover being female are on the X, and that the pathways that take you to being male or female are linear and distinct. That’s what I assumed, like many people. And then I spoke to Jenny Graves, who had been studying sexual differentiation and determination for a very long time, in everything from platypus to nematode worms. She was part of the team that found the SRY gene, which is of course the trigger for the male pathway in humans. She’s the one who told me that it’s a pretty anarchic setup.

    I was amazed by what she told me. When you have a fetus, it starts off as sexually neutral with a unisex kit of parts. Then there’s a trigger—in humans, the presence or absence of the SRY gene—that starts one of these two pathways. The gonads either start down the pathway of becoming a testes or an ovary. Now, what I didn’t know, which Jenny told me—she had to tell me three times because I couldn’t believe it—is that the genes involved in making testes or ovaries are basically the same 60 genes. They just play to a different tune. And these two pathways involving these 60 genes are neither separate nor linear. They’re enmeshed, and they work antagonistically. So, to create an ovary, you have to suppress the testes at the same time.

    They’ve now found in studies of mice that this suppression, this antagonistic relationship between these two pathways, continues into adulthood, which suggests that the gonad is never actually stable in a mouse, an astonishing thing to discover. When she sent me this diagram to explain what these two linear pathways look like, it was like a machine of millions of cogs with these little blue balls being spat out and pumped between things, and destroyed, and the whole thing was like a whirring map. It was chaos. She said that’s what she sees these pathways to be like. This anarchic system is why you get such extraordinary variation "

    Read the full article (and I suggest you will find it more than interesting!) here:

    https://nautil.us/overthrowing-the-patriarchy-through-ecstatic-sex-21451/

    • ianmac 2.2
      21 July 2022 at 9:47 am

      Very interesting Robert. Thanks.

      I suppose that if the antagonistic battle was a draw, then the person could be hermathrodite.

    • Sacha 2.3
      21 July 2022 at 10:06 am

      such extraordinary variation

      Steady on. You'll be challenging some folk's worldviews there.

      • weka 2.3.1
        21 July 2022 at 6:40 pm

        I wonder how many people commenting here read the article. It's pretty interesting. The underlying theme is that sex (how species reproduce) is dimorphic but this doesn't determine behaviour or roles in the way that say Darwin posited. And that Darwin's science was probably affected by his cultural world views.

        Also worth noting is that science has been skewed by the historical dominance of men, and that when we allowed more women into science, we can see they asked different questions. I would say because of their experience of being female, and because there is such a thing as women's culture.

    • Anker 2.4
      21 July 2022 at 10:38 am

      Will read the article Robert, but just the title leads me to suspect Jenny has an ideological position that she is fitting her reseach to. Human genes and the process (which happens in the womb, rather than "assigned at birth" is a complex system. But we are either male or female with the very rare exception of intersex people who have nothing to do with being trans or gender ideology.

      On a separate but related note, this from Salient

      https://www.salient.org.nz/

      This issue which features things Queer includes pictures of young women showing their masectomy scars. Itt appears to be part of celebrating all things Queer and Trans.

      Reseach like Jenny's I suspect is used to support queer theory.

      • Molly 2.4.1
        21 July 2022 at 10:47 am

        From Robert's link:

        What was your impetus to write Bitch?

        We are living in a time where being female has never been more scrutinized or politicized. I feel that there’s been a revolution in our understanding of what it means to be female. And that revolution started in the early 1980s with the likes of Sarah Hrdy and Patricia Gowaty first challenging these stereotypes that Darwin had set in stone of the passive female that’s chaste, submissive, and coy. But even though they started those challenges and, in many cases, won them in as early as the 1980s, much of that thinking has taken a long time to permeate into popular culture and even into science.

        Might be a revelation to some, but many have heard this dross multiple times.

        The ‘recent’ understanding of what it is to be female, the conflation of material sex based body differences, processes and impacts with societal stereotypes, the analogy with sexual reproduction in other species… etcetera etcetera…

        • RedLogix 2.4.1.1
          21 July 2022 at 11:56 am

          Yes. Nothing new in that article you could not have already picked up from any number of David Attenborough shows. Yes we have long understood that sex manifests itself in any number of different ways in a myriad other species.

          But crucially most species evolve one strategy, and stick to it. Humans evolved their own highly complex strategy and one closely linked to our complex societies. There is no reason to think we could mate like bonobos, or preying mantis, without also massively upending our entire social orders as well.

          But then that may well be the general idea for some.

          • swordfish 2.4.1.1.1
            21 July 2022 at 2:30 pm

            .

            Year Zero … perpetual anarchy / permanent revolution … all fixed categories & meanings are "oppressive" and must be immediately & aggressively subverted … everyone outside the Critical Theory Cult is a Fascist, lacking the “unusually-refined moral sensibilities” of the self-enamoured erudite.

            In other words … Another day, another Queer Theory fantasist.

            • RedLogix 2.4.1.1.1.1
              21 July 2022 at 3:50 pm

              Over the years here at TS I have noticed the most radical voices eventually revealing an underlying sexual motif behind their desire to upend everything.

        • weka 2.4.1.2
          21 July 2022 at 6:42 pm

          You know she's not talking from gender ideology, right?

      • Drowsy M. Kram 2.4.2
        21 July 2022 at 11:10 am

        Lucy Cooke, (who Robert is quoting @2) seems to be having great fun here.

        Might suggesting that Jenny Graves has "an ideological position that she is fitting her reseach to" be akin to judging a book by someone else’s cover?

      • Populuxe1 2.4.3
        21 July 2022 at 11:45 am

        …an ideological position that she is fitting her research to

        Pot, meet kettle

    • Patricia Bremner 2.5
      21 July 2022 at 1:33 pm

      yes Thank you Robert.

  3. Molly 3
    21 July 2022 at 10:39 am

    Another interesting read:

    https://differently-normal.com/2021/10/25/the-invention-of-intersex/

    The below essay is very quickly written and still very much a work in progress, but I felt it was important to share some of this information as part of Intersex Awareness Day.

    As someone born with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, I had until recently felt fairly neutral about the term Intersex as I could see its value as a political label and as a way of understanding the bodies of those of us living with complex variations of sex development – and I have found it amazing to see young activists embracing and celebrating their bodily differences under an intersex flag.

    However, the recent appropriation, misrepresentation and even fetishizing of ‘intersex’ has led to me increasingly believing that the term is doing more harm than good.

    I am also increasingly contacted by young people, adults and new parents that have never met anyone else with the same variation of sex development, possibly as they do not feel represented by current activism that focuses only on those who identify as intersex. Peer support can be hugely valuable – and I would like this to be available for all, regardless of how they identify.

    I do not mean this essay to be a criticism of people using the term intersex to describe themselves, however, I am critical of using intersex to describe babies and children, who do not have a choice.

    On Intersex Awareness Day, I want to start with what has sadly become a controversial statement.

    I want to support ALL people born with variations or differences of sex development (DSD) and not only those who choose to identify as intersex. I want to ensure that all children born with differences in their sex or reproductive development, get the family, psychological and peer support they need, to make informed choices about their healthcare. Most importantly, I want them to have access to accurate and precise information about their bodies and to have the opportunity to meet other young people who share their experience.

    For this to be possible, there needs to be activism, advocacy and academic research that is truly inclusive and centres the children and families most in need of support – and listens to a diverse range of voices and not only to adults who identify as intersex.

  4. Anker 4
    21 July 2022 at 10:52 am

    O.k read the article and it is interesting about the differenct species. Thanks for posting Robert

    The edition I posted of Salient show what universities are peddling in terms of Queer Theory and Gender Ideology. The fact that they are showing pictures of young women who have had double mascectomies as something to celebrate should cause a few wake up calls I would hope.

  5. Poission 5
    21 July 2022 at 12:30 pm

    Blackrock signals change in investment strategy,with a change from ESG to value stocks.

    Having lost this financial year an equivalent value of around Australia's GDP.

    https://twitter.com/opinion/status/1549741775144861699

    There should be a lesson for those Governments who want to have Private Equity investment funds,being able to invest in strategic assets.

    • alwyn 5.1
      21 July 2022 at 3:47 pm

      "There should be a lesson for those Governments who want to have Private Equity investment funds being able to invest in strategic assets."

      What lesson do you think they should take? Do you propose they should take the most obvious one? That is that Government should sell all the businesses they own to organisations such as BlackRock. Then when the share price falls it will be BlackRock clients who lose money rather than the taxpayer?

      This sort of story reminds me of a question Bill Gates was asked in 2000, and the answer he is supposed to have given.

      Some reporter asked him, during the dotcom crash, how it felt to have lost a billion dollars in a day. Gates responded that Microsoft was the same company as it had been yesterday and that he still owned the same fraction of it that he had owned yesterday. He hadn't lost anything.

      • In Vino 5.1.1
        21 July 2022 at 4:55 pm

        It seems to me that Govts should Nationalise everything, then use the same argument as Gates.

        • alwyn 5.1.1.1
          21 July 2022 at 8:49 pm

          I have a problem with Governments owning any business.

          It is that politicians will never admit that they have made a mistake and therefore will never stop throwing money at a business that should be allowed to die. Hence they keep wasting more and more money on stupid investments rather than say that it was a mistake and the business should be wound up.

          Sooner or later, in the private sector people will stop putting money into a company and it will collapse if it can't produce goods at a price that people are willing to pay. Governments don't have that constraint. It isn't their money and their only real interest is in trying to show that their judgement was infallible.

          The only time a stupid Government owned business gets closed down is after a change of Government. I vote for a change of Government after 9 years so that this can happen. I was really pissed off in 2017 because there wasn't a competent opposition to come to power. Events since then have shown how correct my opinion was.

          • In Vino 5.1.1.1.1
            21 July 2022 at 11:53 pm

            Sorry, but I don't think of the private sector as being any more honest (often a lot less) or efficient (they hide most of their stuff-ups.)

            The privately-owned fossil fuel industry deliberately lied about global warning, and has probably brought us to the edge of extinction.

            Utter ratbags.

            • alwyn 5.1.1.1.1.1
              22 July 2022 at 9:28 am

              I never said anything about firms being more, or less, honest or efficient.

              I was only discussing whether they were more likely to give up on doing something stupid. Sooner or later a Company has to stop money-losing endeavours. This often coincides with the CEO being sacked. With Politicians running things it happens when they lose an election. A new Government can stop the madder things and talk about how bad their predecessors were. A Government that remains in power doesn't stop things they started. It has nothing to do with their political leanings. They are all the same.

  6. Adrian 6
    21 July 2022 at 3:41 pm

    If this is contagious does this mean that the NZRFU might actually be able to acquire Silverlake. That would delight me enormously. Don’t fuck with theAllBlacks!

  7. Anker 7
    21 July 2022 at 5:14 pm

    Exactly Swordfish.

    It would be laughable to look at the latest edition of Salient, if queer theory didn't impact so negatively young women's (and men's ) who get caught up in it so significantly