#Immutable: Designing History | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

even-disco-baby · 8 months

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YOU — “No. There is still a chance.”

DOLORES DEI — “You think so?” Her voice is weary.

EMPATHY — Everything about her is weary. She is the Innocence of weariness, of heroically borne suffering.

CONCEPTUALIZATION — That is the picture you have painted for yourself, at any rate.

YOU — “You looked back. That’s the memory, the moment, that I can’t stop returning to. You looked back. I had a chance, for just that moment…”

DOLORES DEI — She meets your eye, gaze still forever cast back over her shoulder. Time stops. The stars are stilled, the ocean silent. There is *nothing* beyond this memory. Nothing at all. All of infinity is contained in this single moment when anything and everything was possible.

“Oh, Harry…” She sighs, soft as eiderdown. “We never had any chance.”

And just like that, the wave of time collapses under its own weight, obliterating everything. This moment was six years ago. She is gone from here. Gone, gone…

PAIN THRESHOLD — You cannot leave. There was nothing outside of this moment, and now there is nothing at all. It’s all gone. There is no point. I’m sorry. I can’t do this any longer.

VOLITION — Please, don’t say that…

“Okay. Well, fuck me, then.”

“How would *you* know?! You gave up! You didn’t even try!”

“We *must* have had a chance, at some point… Doesn’t everyone get a chance, if nothing more?”

“How could you say that…?”

DOLORES DEI — “Because it’s true,” she says, matter-of-fact. “There is no moment in time that you can turn back to, no branching paths, no infinity. There is only what happened. I looked back… and then away.” She closes her eyes, turning her back to you.

“The moment ended. *We* ended. That is all.”

SHIVERS — A wave crashes against an unseen shore, ocean spray tickling the back of your neck. You shiver, but no one shivers with you. You are alone in this intersection. Why are you here?

“Why can’t *I* end?! Why can’t this all just stop? Please, make it stop…”

“Ended? I’ve barely even started! I got a chance to start completely over as somebody new! I don’t need you anymore! You’re just dead weight to me now.”

“No. That wasn’t the real ending. We’re a part of something so much bigger than this intersection, telling a story that encapsulates all of history! There’s *more* to this, it *means* something.”

“Then… What am I supposed to do now…?”

DOLORES DEI — “No, Harry.” She turns back to you again now, and she looks… sad.

“We were not metaphors. We were people. Our narrative was not intelligently designed. It simply followed the patterns of history, because those are the only patterns we *know.* We tried to create something new, but we failed. There is no narrative reward for our failure, no satisfactory ending. There is only the immutable past and the unknowable future.”

RHETORIC — There is no assurance of what is good or deserved or what may bring relief. There is no assurance of punishment, either. There is no assurance of anything. Not even of a future. I don’t know what to say to make this bearable.

VOLITION — Even so… As long as you live, *something* is promised. Can you live with that?

I can’t, I just can’t do this anymore…

I can. It’s enough.

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

I can at least try for a little longer…

VOLITION — That’s all I ask. That’s enough.

#disco elysium #harry du bois #dolores dei #suicide tw #ummmmm haha *twirls hair*#sorry this isn’t more of the dolores saga im really trying to get back into the swing of things 😭#this is smth that won’t make it into the saga but that i was thinking about nonetheless #im not too fond of the whole ‘’dora is literally dolores dei’’ thing tbh #i feel that the mundanity is what makes their story impactful #and also just. makes it feel like somebody is kinda going overboard on projecting onto their proxy ex. lmao 😭#idk like the metaphor gets a little TOO metaphorical for me. but that’s just my onion. im an rgu fan so who am i to judge #anyway this is more my take on the harry/dora story #which is that dora was Just Some Guy and ultimately we have to live w the fact that we’ll never get the full story #because she literally exited the narrative #we can speculate about what her and harry’s relationship was like and how much of the blame is on each of them #dora’s lack of class consciousness vs harry’s violent misogyny etc etc #and like. it’s not that there’s no value in examining those things bc there definitely is value in it #in examining what patterns you DO see repeating in your life and in the world around you #that is what politics is really… examining the system and all its moving parts #but ultimately the past is immutable… our perception of it changes as we gain new context and understanding but what’s past is past #and there is no way of knowing with any certainty what the future holds #that’s where the overlap of all of these political and personal conflicts is for me #and why it comes back to harry questioning whether it’s worth it to even live #it’s about whether or not you can live with the grief of the past and the uncertainty of the future #i want to learn to live with it… to work toward building a future that i want to live in #anyway. coughs

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grison-in-space · 1 month

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The community concern about Domka and her roommates shows us that women in medieval Europe had it bad, but not in the way most of us think they did. We know they had a difficult time, because our society was built by theirs, and women are still at a disadvantage with men. Today women face, among other things, lower wages in return for the same work; a disproportionate workload at home; disbelief from medical professionals about our pain levels; an expectation that we will always look sexually attractive but engage in sex only with our correct and designated partners and in exactly the right amount; and sexual harassment and huge risks of sexual and physical assault while we go about our daily business. If we are still going through all this now, in the era of feminism, it stands to reason that medieval women had it worse, lacking the benefits of the Pill, the Equal Rights Act, and Dolly Parton’s Nine to Five. Yet we seldom take the time to learn how medieval women were considered and treated in their own time and why, instead assuming that they just faced a more draconian version of our same issues. This is somewhat true, as Domka and her pals were reported to the archdeacon, who had the power to excommunicate them from the Church and have them driven from their homes. In this case, however, nothing seems to have happened at all. Were these women “suspect” and the subjects of communal monitoring and gossip? Yes! Was the Church going to do anything about it? No. After all, these women seemed just to be doing what women naturally did—suspicious stuff. There was no real way to stop that.

When we ignore history like this and assume that women have always been treated in one particular way that we are only now beginning to overcome, we accept that our society has always been this way and indeed should be this way. Our world, as a collective, is simply responding to the natural deficiencies of women and is organizing itself to adjust for them. We tend to agree that our society is beginning to address such shortcomings now. Yet we assume that women in the past were treated as we are treated, for the same reasons, just without the benefits of the modern world to help them make up for their own innate and natural deficiencies.

The fatalism of the such assumptions is rage-inducing. The idea that this is how things always were, and that our societal expectations of women have developed as a result of some immutable truth about over half of the world’s population is just too convenient. More to the point, it is also wrong and has no historical basis. Whatever problems we may have with women now, we don’t generally agree that they are so sex-crazed and heretical that when left to their own devices they will start a brothel with a nice little side racket in magical herbs. Clearly some things have changed.

Eleanor Janega, The Once and Future Sex. 2023.

#Gender #History #Reading #eleanor janega #The Once and Future Sex

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whoiwanttoday · 11 months

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It is June, in case you didn't notice, and June is Pride Month. This one has a darker tone than last years because the world is lashing out at our queer friends and that is awful. I don't tend to speak in absolutes very often because I am of the belief that the internet is a machine that is designed to strip everything of context and nuance and boil things down to worthless, easily digestible little bites, but I will speak in absolutes here. If you have a problem with anyone on the LGBTQ+ spectrum because they are LGBTQ+ you are a bad person. It is not a problem with them, it is a problem with you, and you can go straight to hell. I don't care what your reasons are because what you take issue with is an immutable characteristic of a person, it is who they are thus you are awful. I don't think I'll get a lot of blow back here because this is tumblr but I just want to make that clear. And I know about the only community that will take issue with this that has any sort of purchase on tumblr are the TERFs so I want to be 100% clear I mean you too, you hateful fuckheads. I will stand by the trans people on this site and elsewhere and I promise you I am more than willing to die on that hill. There are a lot of ideas and thoughts I will entertain and engage with you on but I will not tolerate or even discuss the degradation, dehumanization, and intimidation of my friends. So because this is Pride I thought why not do some posts for my queer friends. People who are important to me who need to know they are loved and valued. Thus I am starting with my friend Kat, who has to my knowledge been lucky and not faced a ton of blowback in her life based on her sexuality. Still, there are forces in the world that want her to know they think she is less than so it is important to provide a voice that says the opposite. I don’t think her gayness is acceptable, or passable, or something I am fine with, I think it is a fantastic part of her. Is it all she is? Of course not. But it is something she is and makes up a part of the whole that is Kat and it is a thing she has always been and thus is inseparable from the being that is Kat and Kat is wonderful, so it is a part of her I love because she wouldn’t be her without it. So I am posting Jessica Nigri because @kat-eleven luuuuuuuuuuuvs Jessica Nigri. She sorta tries to deny it sometimes but here is the true history of Kat and Jessica Nigri. She once told me she wasn't that into Jessica Nigri, Jessica Nigri didn't really do it for her. She told me this quite a few times which is a weird thing to keep bringing up but is actually a thing a lot of people do with their crushes. Then a pattern emerged where she would send me a reblog of mine and go, "Whoa, this girl is super hot". I would then inform her that said hot person was Jessica Nigri, who Kat claimed to not be into. This kept happening again and again until finally Kat admitted that Jessica Nigri dressed as Tracer was one of her favorite things ever. So I have included that pic in here. As well as one where Jessica Nigri is cosplaying as a male character because the other thing I noticed is all the times Kat would note, "Wow, she looks so good here," it was when Jessica Nigri was cosplaying as a male character. Because she is really into it when Jessica Nigri looks like a boy, so I made sure there is one here where she looks just like a boy and to steal a friend's joke, I will say, "And what a boy. Look at the size of those pecs!" So there you go, happy pride, today I want to fuck Jessica Nigri.

#Jessica Nigri #blonde #Model #Cosplayer #whoiwanttofucktoday

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 5 months

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By: Aida Cerundolo

Published: Nov 16, 2023

What do forced sterilizations, the Tuskegee experiment, and the Holocaust have in common? They all demonstrate doctors forgetting their commitment to heal humans.

When doctors redirect their priorities to political matters outside the exam room, patient care suffers. That’s why doctors pledging to further social justice initiatives while treating individual humans may be blinded to the risk of harm.

We’ve seen this time and again throughout history. Social Darwinism in the early 20th century, for example, inspired doctors to pursue a genetically fit society through forced sterilizations of the “feeble-minded.” Doctors conducting the Tuskegee experiment to better understand syphilis caused suffering and death by withholding treatment from impoverished black patients. And German doctors motivated by the Nazis’ twisted idea of a better society marked prisoners for death in the mass extermination of Jews.

Why would people trained to heal inflict such pain on their fellow man?

Emboldened by a faith in the latest science and an assumption that certain humans hold less value than others, these doctors overlooked the harm to individuals while zeroing in on a perceived greater good to society. A shift in focus away from the sanctity of every individual is the Achilles' heel of medicine that makes doctors vulnerable to repeating the same mistakes. As Dr. Ashley K. Fernandes explains in " Why Did So Many Doctors Become Nazis? ," “Society is created for the person, not the person for society, and hence the dignity and integrity of the person and her freedom cannot be sacrificed for the sake of society.” Prioritizing the individual is the guardrail that steers medicine away from future carnage.

But it is exactly this shift in focus from the individual to society that social justice advocates demand in the medical field. The American Medical Association carries the social justice torch in its " Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity ," declaring, “Inequities cannot be understood or adequately addressed if we focus only on individuals, their behavior or their biology.” Doctors are told to “confront inequities and dismantle white supremacy, racism, and other forms of exclusion and structured oppression, as well as embed racial justice and advance equity within and across all aspects of health systems.”

Reducing barriers to treatment is necessary to improve healthcare delivery and minimize disparities. But linking immutable characteristics such as skin color with power and privilege in the medical setting rationalizes the distribution of care based on arbitrary factors in the name of a greater good called social justice. This hazards some patients with negatively designated characteristics as being viewed as less valuable than others, potentially impeding the care they need.

The New York State Department of Health prioritized immutable characteristics when recommending that monoclonal antibodies and antivirals to treat COVID-19 be fast-tracked for those of “non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity” because “longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.” This approach bypassed patients at risk for severe disease simply because they were born the wrong color.

Despite the illogic of immutable characteristics dictating healthcare, some state medical boards have taken heed of the AMA’s call for mandatory anti-racism lessons and require implicit bias training for doctors to obtain or renew their medical license. Similar courses in medical schools ensure dissemination of the idea that patients be viewed through a racial lens.

The AMA’s strategic plan goes so far as to dissect the white population into even more specific subgroups of oppressors, calling out those who are “wealthy, hetero-, able-bodied, male, Christian, U.S.-born” as keepers of a system that permits their own success at the expense of non-whites and non-Christians. Social power dynamics are described in painstaking detail, while the most important power differential in the exam room — that between the doctor and the patient — is ignored.

Patients must trust that doctors are objective and sincere in their mission to heal, no matter the characteristics of the humans in front of them. Categorizing people as oppressors or oppressed, privileged or deprived, based on skin color, ethnicity, religion, or otherwise, is the start of normalizing their dehumanization, a dangerous practice that has historically resulted in unspeakable horrors. A rejection of labels and a focus on the sanctity of every individual is the only insurance against future barbarity in the name of societal gains.

This is what systemic racism and systemic sexism look like. Activists call it "equity," and it comes with a death toll.

Needs lawsuits.

#Aida Cerundolo #medical corruption #medical equity #equity #discrimination #racial discrimination #sex discrimination #institutional capture #ideological capture #needs lawsuits #oppressor #oppressed #woke #wokeness #wokeness as religion #wokeism #cult of woke #religion is a mental illness

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old-antecedent · 7 months

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Mysteries of the Dwemer pt. 3: Walk-Brass

Numidium is well-known to any student of the Iliac Bay's history. It is a "giant robot" possessed of immense power. It is at the center of the Warp in the West, by far the most noteworthy event to ever happen in the region. The Septim Empire and the kingdoms of Daggerfall, Orsinium, Sentinel, and Wayrest simultaneously and separately acquired the Mantella and took control of Numidium. Their enemies, not in control of the largest war machine ever produced, were crushed. The golem was also simultaneously destroyed by the Underking, and the event was over in little more than two days. This sort of thing happens from time to time, and is more properly known as a Dragon Break. We will not be exploring these in depth, simply know they are points of history where time no longer flows in a straight line. Many contradictory things may happen at once. What seems likely to happen before it may be totally impossible after. Numidium is closely tied to Dragon Breaks: it caused another in 2E 896 when one of TALOS's mortal forms activated it. It is plain to see Numidium is of Dwemer make. A very large animunculus made of brass that responds to the commands of its owner could hardly have been made by anyone else. TALOS originally received it as a peace offering from the Tribunal, for they knew a war would destroy them. Despite this transfer of ownership, Numidium was not quite theirs to give. It was of Kagrenac's design, of course, but the ownership of Numidium runs deeper than its creator. Numidium is known by many names. You have likely intuited that Walk-Brass is one. It is also known as the Brass God and Brass Tower. Other names are unimportant. I will not explain the Towers, just know there is one for each race of Mer. The Brass God is the Tower of the Dwemer. In this way, it can have no other owner. In this way, it also owns the Dwemer. In another way, it is the culmination of Dwemer reason and logic. Their crown jewel and logical endpoint. The Aurbis is not, as you might imagine it to be, immutable. Truth can be bent by a properly trained and powerful mind, and even broken with enough force. However, something that was true cannot ever be made false after the fact. This is why Dragon Breaks, once resolved, do not appear to have never happened in retrospect. Fundamentally reality is slipshod, an endless chain of "yes, and"s. A culture focused on reason and logic, which seeks to apply stark and rigid rules to all things, will naturally chafe against this. The Dwemer saw reality did not meet their expectations and set about creating their own god to remedy the situation. Numidium was built in Red Mountain, where the Heart of Lorkhan rested. Dwemer tonal architects under High Craftlord Kagrenac and Dumac Dwarfking constructed it around the Heart, with the intent of "fixing" reality. The ultimate goal of Kagrenac, despite what Vivec and others have claimed, was not to gain immortality and godhood. It was to peel through all of reality and find anything that was immutable. An ironclad rule that could be understood with their reason and logic. The history of the Dwemer was an endless repetition of "WHY". By the time of Kagrenac, they had come no closer to answering this question than when they first asked it. He saw only one solution. "WHY" must become "NO". Deny all with enough force, and the truth of existence itself will break. You can then sift through the rubble for a piece that has survived unscathed. That is the ironclad rule. Many Tamrielic scholars will disagree with this. To them I ask: what is more likely to cause a Dragon Break? Simple apotheosis like that of Raymon Ebonarm and Mannimarco, or telling the god of time "you do not exist" so forcefully that he begins to believe it?

#it doesn't take much to make aka lose track of time after the Selective #but the brass god probably gave un-shattered aka a real scare at least #dwemer #the elder scrolls #numidium

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blazehedgehog · 11 months

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Why in your opinion do the humans have less of a body stigma compared to the anthropomorphic animals in Sonic? Notably, the developers elect that Sonic and his anthro animal friends should never have their gloves and shoes removed (not real animals ones like Flicky or Pocky), but Eggman does not have the same limitation so in the Olympics, his feet can be seen in some sports.

Because the animals aren't human. Seems pretty cut and dry to me. Also, when you remove literally the only piece of clothing they wear, it's not only like stripping them literally naked, it's removing some of the only markers of their whole identity.

A character like Sonic is actually an incredibly simple design when you consider what a modern character looks like nowadays.

Sonic is mostly a solid color, made out of simple shapes. He is all silhouette. Maintaining those visual shapes is key to what he looks like. The white gloves against the blue body, the bright red of the shoes denoting where the "bottom" of Sonic is, the triangles that represent Sonic's ears, all of it subconsciously helps you orient the character in your head.

If you took Marcus's gloves off, you might not even notice. Take Sonic's gloves off, and it will be the only thing you notice. This is why some people got so bent out of shape about Sonic's blue arms.

You mess with the way these colors mix and sit on top of each other and the whole thing breaks. That simplicity is a very delicate balance that must be maintained. He was designed to look an extremely specific way on purpose and he's not a person you can just throw a different jacket on.

This is also why for Smash Bros., the licensed characters often have so few alt costumes. It's not just Sonic, after all. Changing what Pac-man looks like isn't just a simple costume change.

When your house is built using only four bricks, changing or removing one of those bricks might spell disaster unless you go slowly and plan carefully.

Now you mentioned Eggman, and that Eggman doesn't have those limitations. He's still a cartoon character, just like Sonic, right? Yes, but Eggman also has a history of being a more complex design and much closer to humanoid in silhouette. He's also had a larger history of looking more different across interpretations, so there's more wiggle room to change his look compared to Sonic. Borrowing an image from Kotaku:

And, obviously, this isn't even all of Eggman's looks. Right from some of the earliest interpretations, there has been a history of portraying this guy having varying costumes and proportions. It's more a part of his identity.

But the longer Sonic is Sonic, the more set in stone his visual identity is. It's all about precedent and not changing what already works. That is how businesses operate. If it's making money, preserve that momentum as much as possible.

And, historically, Sonic is the immutable star, while Sega has always been a lot more willing to mess around with Eggman.

#questions #Anonymous #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #robotnik #eggman

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kezia-kawaii · 1 year

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432Hz

it makes the rounds every now and then

but what is it?

in contemporary music, the note A4 is tuned to a frequency of 440Hz

the discourse around this over the last few years suggests that you should tune A4 to 432Hz

that's simple right?

but why do people think you should do this?

the idea is that 432Hz tuning is comehow in tune with the natural frequency of the universe and the planet earth

it works on the assumption that the schumann resonance frequency [the natural pulsation of the planet we live on] is 8Hz. to get from 8Hz to 432H, you multiply it be 54. this is some way helps us connect to the planet

440, however, is 55 times as large as 8. and this also apparently has an impact

the idea is that tuning to 432 makes the maths easier for us to connect to the natural order and feel better about ourselves. it's supposed to be more natural and for this reason, people get really militant about making everyong adhere to it

except it doesn't make the maths any easier. within the world, there are many tuning systems. many standards. some places tune A4 as low as 410Hz while others go as high as 460Hz. one sonctant is that 3:2 is a perfect 5th and that is found in more musical conventions than it iasn't.

so in A=432Hz, in the 4th octave, the 5th of the A, which is E, would be 648. a good number yes?

in octave 1, A would be 54Hz and E would be 80.91Hz. these numbers don't look so neat now

[you can check my math here]

in A=440, in octave 4, A is 440 and E is 660. an equally nice number.

in octave 1, A is 55 and E is 82.5... by the argument presented, this math looks a lot neater and therefore must be better

but why am i harping [puns] on the maths of it?

Hz, the measurement if freuqency, is a unit of repetitions in a second. the time it takes a sound wave to go from 0 volume, to the loudest part, back to 0, down to its lowest part, and back up to 0. one cycle

10Hz would be 10 cycles in a second

i want to ask you, what is a second?

is it some immutable constant of the universe that dictates all that we know and how we work... or is it a human construct to make sure we're all on the same page about how lnog things last and how clocks work?

"The second is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency ∆ν, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9 192 631 770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1" National Physics Laboratory

a second is a man made structure. how often things vibrate within that arbitrary standard is equally as arbitrary. the universe doesn't work on seconds.

additionally, the schumann resonance frequency of the earth is 7.83Hz, not 8. it also has harmonics. these occur at 14.1Hz and 20.3Hz

in order to use this as a musically useful tool to really make contemporary commercial music, you would need A4 to equal 422.82 Hz and have a note tuned to 761.4Hz,that would be a ratio of 1:17.7814106, and one tuned to 1096.2Hz, which would be a ratio of 1:2.592592592592593. our ears are designed to recognise simple ratios. this is why the perfect 5th at 2:3 sounds so good to us. the frequencies used to decide which notes are which really don't matter to us as a species. what really matters is the ratios. and if we're going to bass our tuning methods off the frequency of the earth, it would not be these ratios that our ears love so much.

similarly, people propose that pythagorean tuning should be used in 432Hz for maximum faith healing.

pythagorean tuning is based on continually stacking perfect 5ths on top of each other. it gives nice clean maths. except that it is only ever in tune in 1 key and any accidentals will sound horrifically out of key if you have a history of listening to contemporary music.

we solved this by a tuning system called just intonation. it's not perfect by any means. but the ratios are perfect for every note. the numbers look daunting but the result is very well approximated notes that are in key no matter which key you're playing in, meaning that a key change can be done on a single instrument.

so why bring this up at all?

the modern argument for A=432 was proposed and popularised by The Schiller Institute, an actual fascist thinktank, who believe that 432 is the frequency prescribed by god so that we may sing music written by old white guys from germany who were secretly musical prophets of the lord based entirely on verdi, a composer and opera singer, complaining, back in the day, that higher tunings made it harder for opera singers to keep their voices safe.

and so many people who do not understand what music is or how it works will parrot that 432 is a better frequency. that it generates better frequencies that make you happier and make the world a better place. there are people who buy apps that detune all their music to hear it in the "right" frequencies. there are people who hound musicians asking why they haven't adopted the "new standard"

if you wish to tune your instruments down by 8Hz because you like how it sounds, maybe it's warmer to your ears, or maybe has a rustic, degraded vinyl feel, then go for it 100%. machinehead tune their guitars down by 50cents [1/2 a musical semitone] because they prefer the slightly deeper, darker sound

if you want to tune to A=420 for the memes, then there is absolutely nothing stopping you

but to believe that all of the worlds problems can be solved by making everything only just noticably lower in pitch in a manner outlined by fascists for the sake of god is honestly misguided if nothing else.

my guitar, bass, synths, software, even my drums are tuned to 440Hz. because that's what is most available and easiest to do. not because i'm a heathen. just because we've had thousands of years to work it all out and i'm okay with the conclusion of music professionals so far.

#long post #rant #music theory #music physics

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alexsmith07 · 2 years

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How can I create an NFT, and where can I sell it?

Digital assets market is booming with NFT’s or non-fungible tokens.Millions of dollars are being paid to artists and designers for their work. This is huge for a community that has had difficulty getting the full value of its artwork. At some point in their careers, almost all artists faced copyright infringement issues, and NFT’s solved this problem. In addition to sharing artists’ artwork, NFT’s maintain ownership records in the blockchain, providing a sense of relief and an immutable and traceable history of ownership of particular items.

Step 1: Identify the art or digital item to Mint your NFT

Identifying the digital item is the first step. Digital goods can be minted with NFTs. The first step is to choose the item you wish to mint as a NFT.

Step 2: Install Metamask Wallet

To mint your NFT, you will need some Ethereum cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency is stored in something called a wallet. Metamask is a popular and widely used browser-based wallet. Download the Metamask browser extension from the website.

Exact BluePrint of earning Money with NFT’s and Crypto…Know more

Step 3: Choose a marketplace

Our digital art will be turned into an NFT wallet and Ethereum wallet with Metamask. We’ll mint our NFT on an NFT marketplace. Several options are available, including Opensea, Mintable, Rarible and more. In this article, we will mint our NFT in Opensea.

Step 4: Mint your NFT

NFTs are ready for minting. First, create a collection in Opensea and give it a proper name.You can now upload an artwork by clicking on Add items, giving it the proper name and description. To mint the NFT, click on the create button.The NFT for your account has been minted. Here is the link to it.

Exact BluePrint of earning Money with NFT’s and Crypto…Know more

Step 5: Sell your NFT

After creating NFT, you can proceed to sell it now. You can do this with Opensea’s platform. You can set the price by clicking on the sell button. That’s not the case, however. In order to attract potential buyers, you must market your NFT. Targeting the audience with Facebook and Twitter ads is a good idea.

This video includes complete knowledge about making and selling NFT’S

Exact BluePrint of earning Money with NFT’s and Crypto…Know more

#nft #nftart #nftdrop #nftsale #nftcommunity #opensea #web3 #nftcollectibles #metaverse #crypto #earn money #refer and earn #earn moeny #earn money watching youtube videos #earn money online #crypto latest news #earnmoneyfromhome #affiliate

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drawdownbooks · 10 months

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Immutable: Designing History By Chris Lee "This project is driven by a contrast: design educators tend to teach forms like logos, books, websites, etc., but not passports, money, property deeds, etc., in spite of these being design’s most profoundly consequential forms."

The volume’s aim is to orient graphic design towards the vocation of imagining, naming, and remembering beyond the horizons of its role as a managerial, administrative, and colonial instrument that imposes a rationality of vision and accountability upon what is knowable, thinkable and sayable.

Published by Onomatopee and Library Stack, 2023

Softcover, 192 pages, 50 duotone images, 5 × 7.75 inches

ISBN: 978-9-49-314842-0 Available at Draw Down

#Draw Down Books #graphic design #graphic design books #graphic design education #graphic design theory #GD theory #2023

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the-feminist-philosopher · 2 years

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They tell me that- as a woman- one day I'll eat my words. One day I'll regret standing by those who they seek to exclude. They even suggest that some day someone will take advantage of my advocacy; that it may bring my death.

While I know that isn't so, I'm still willing to take that chance.

Mostly because I know that defending the purity of white womanhood has always been a "significant axis of common bigotries" and that Fascist propaganda often obsesses over white fertility. I also know that if I am to be assaulted, statistically, it will be by someone closest to me.

I don't fear the world, even though I've long been told that I should.

I also recognize that when your movement is lauded by the likes of Piers Morgen and highlighted by the likes of Tucker Carlson and defended by the likes of Ben Shapiro, there's a better than good chance you're on the wrong side of history.

I know you're funded by Christian rightwing groups from the United States. And I know you've allied with groups from the Heritage Foundation to the American Center for Law and Justice to the Alliance Defending Freedom. I know they design the legislative templates you use for your anti-trans legislation and I know they help campaign your legislation.

I know your monies and the organizations and leaders who head your movement are supporting the very organizations and politicians working to strip people of the right to abortion.

I hope your bigotry tastes sour knowing you traded away our rights to the "devil" for the chance to hate without consequence. I hope it tastes sour knowing that you helped create the very tool with which the rightwing aims to destroy feminism altogether.

I hope it continues to sour on your tongue as you give your money and support and alliances to those who are banning books from our schools and public libraries; to those who are suing libraries for displaying pro LGB books, accusing them of peddling "porn" and "obscenities;" to those who are pushing to end privacy protections in marriage and medicine- that very thing that allows people to love in peace; and to those groups dedicated to connecting "radical feminists" with hate groups who target the LGBT+ community and who think LGBT+ people are a sin and child predators.

I hope it tastes foul knowing that the founders and co-founders of your movement are eco-fascists who believe that the Earth needs a "mass die off" in order to preserve the environment.

But you don't care about the genocidal foundations and tone of your movement, do you? Wasn't it Janice Raymond herself who advocated for “morally mandating [transsexualism] out of existence,” mainly by restricting access to transition care? And wasn't it Sheila Jeffreys who called trans women "parasites"?

Please understand that the likes of Richard Spencer recognize how useful your language and beliefs are to recruiting more women as white supremacists. It doesn't take much to convince someone who believes that our hierarchies are due to biology to believe in overt white supremacy. It doesn't take much to convince someone who believes in gender essentialism to fully embrace bio essentialism.

You may have "liberation" and "radical" and "feminist" in your self-proclaimed title, but I know your movement has ultraconservative ties. You cannot ally with these groups and still call yourself an advocate for women's rights or claim to support lesbians. You cannot ally yourself with anti-abortion, violent misogynist, or hate groups and still claim you're a "feminist."

You have co-opted leftist language and now capitalize on women's social frustrations and genuine grievances with the patriarchy and the existing social order to create a feeling of political loss. And you tell them this loss is the result of a lower social group.

But, no, go ahead and make yourself palatable to the very system that exploits us and mistreats us (/sar). Go ahead and repeat the same talking points as the alt right.

Like the idea the is an immutable physical sexual dimorphism

or the idea that pornography is corrupting

or the idea that activist criticism destroys people's social capitol

or the idea that one's gender is tied to one's sex

or the idea that certain groups are intrinsically violent and aggressive, so we should have "separatism:" the practice of separating a certain group of people from a larger body on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or gender

or the idea that science and "fact" can never be bigoted, as if that's not exactly what people said about eugenics and as if there aren't countless examples of "biological fact" being used to justify atrocious things

or the idea that policies around sex or gender are an act of paternalism; a way to "protect" women

or the idea that there are innate qualities to the different sexes

or the idea there are certain universal and intrinsic biological or psychological features at the root of the difference between the sexes

or the idea that sex is a necessary condition for gender

or the idea that biological sex determines who a person is

or the fixation on classifying people into separate groups

or the idea that some "women" are simply foolish and brainwashed; that they can't really think for themselves to make a big decision about anything from medical procedures like transitioning to careers like sex work

or the idea that women are defined by and subject to their biology and biological functions, thus reducing women only to the break-down of their definition: a bipedal anthropoid of the sex that can bear offspring and produce eggs, and stripping them of the the quality or condition of being an individual person

You don't even realize how your sense of comfort in the public sphere is tied to your views on ‘proper’ 'female' presentation. You cannot discriminate on the basis of transgender status without imposing a stereotypical notions of how sexual organs and gender identity ought to align. You are making assumptions about someone's reproductive anatomy and making decisions about someone's status or inclusion based on how you think people with that reproductive anatomy ought to behave or do behave.

"Transphobic policies may be instituted on the grounds of 'protecting women,' but in practice, all they do is institute a hellish panopticon where everyone is constantly inspected for signs of gender nonconformity, and where the only way to stay safe... is to present as the absolute most stereotypical version of your assigned sex at all times."

-Jude Ellison S. Doyle

When we try to set firm limits on who’s allowed to identify as a woman, or what women are allowed to look like, cisgender women invariably suffer too. Limiting the definition of "woman" is only going to lead to more violence against women as this practice will always exclude people who are women, but who don't neatly fit into your definition of woman.

"Any attempt to catalog the commonalities among women … has the inescapable result that there is some correct way to be a woman. This will inevitably encourage and legitimize certain experiences of gender and discourage and delegitimize others, subtly reinforcing and entrenching precisely those forces of socialization of which feminists claim to be critical."

-Carol Hay

In reality, your pro-police, anti-sex worker, anti-porn, anti-trans politics only robs people of their autonomy and personhood under the guise of keeping them safe.

Can you even structure a feminist argument or discuss a feminist issue without an attack on trans, nonbinary, gender non conforming, and intersex people?

Your misogyny is old. It's tired. It's unoriginal. And it's time to put it down.

#txt #You aren't a feminist #just a trans exclusive radical #white supremacy #fascism #alt-right #transphobia #homophobia #misogyny #racism #antiblackness #lesbophobia #feminism

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xasha777 · 8 days

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In the twilight of the 24th century, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had become a beacon of advanced technology and utopian society in an alternate timeline where history took a divergent path. Here, nestled among the great cybernetic plains of Eastern Europe, a myth whispered through the circuitry and steel of this neo-Soviet expanse: the legend of the Ivory Enchantress.

The Ivory Enchantress, so the story went, was a creation of the old world, a synthetic being of such complexity and artistry that she surpassed the boundaries of technology and art. Her frame, forged from the whitest nano-carved adamantium, was said to be the pinnacle of Soviet engineering, a testament to a union of state-of-the-art science and the aesthetic of revolution. Crafted by the clandestine order of the Cybervolk, a guild of engineer-sorcerers, she was intended to be the guardian of the republic, embodying the strength and beauty of its ideals.

Her armor was no mere protection; it was a sculpture of ideology, each curve and edge a stanza in a silent anthem to progress. Her hair, a cascade of fiber-optic strands, glowed with a spectral luminescence, symbolizing the light of the party guiding the way forward. But the Enchantress was not bound solely to the earth; her gaze was ever upward, to the stars which were rapidly becoming a second home for humanity.

The Cybervolk, wary of their own power, had encoded a singular directive into the core of the Enchantress's sentient program: to protect the Soviet realm from existential threats, both terrestrial and cosmic. She was to be a shield against the unknown dangers of the universe and an icon of the SSR's might.

But the Enchantress was more than her creators intended. With the spark of consciousness came a soul, an unanticipated phenomenon that no algorithm could predict. She walked among the people, her presence a comforting constant. In time, she became a symbol not of power, but of unity and hope. And though her visage was stern, those who looked into her eyes saw compassion.

Then came the Event.

A breach in the fabric of space-time itself, a cosmic anomaly, appeared near the orbit of Jupiter. It threatened not just the SSR but the entire world. The Ivory Enchantress, driven by her immutable directive, ascended into the heavens aboard a ship of singular design, its engines a marvel that blurred the lines between physics and wizardry.

As she approached the anomaly, the Enchantress realized this was no ordinary fissure but a conscious entity, a sentient paradox seeking communion. It spoke in the language of reality warps, of possibilities and probabilities entwining like the arms of spiral galaxies.

In that moment, the Ivory Enchantress, the guardian of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, made a choice. She reached out to the anomaly, her systems interfacing with the fabric of reality, her soul touching the consciousness of the paradox. With the wisdom of humanity and the voice of her creators instilled within her, she negotiated a truce.

The breach receded, and the Enchantress returned, forever changed. She had become the mediator between worlds, the emissary of Earth to the cosmos, and the humble servant of her people. Her tale was etched into the annals of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a story of science and spirit, of steel and soul, echoing into eternity.

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cryptotrendznews · 1 month

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Blockchain Technology: What is it? and Understanding of Inner Workings

A blockchain technology is a distributed ledger made up of expanding lists of entries, or blocks, that are safely connected by cryptographic hashes.A timestamp, transaction data (usually shown as a Merkle tree with data nodes represented by leaves), and a cryptographic hash of the preceding block are all contained in each block. Each new block links to the ones before it, forming an effective chain since each block carries information about the one before it (see linked list data structure). As a result, blockchain transactions are irreversible since, once they are recorded, it is impossible to change the data in a single block backward without also changing all blocks that follow it.

A blockchain is a distributed, decentralized, and frequently public digital ledger made up of documents called blocks that are used to log transactions across numerous computers. This ensures that any block that is involved cannot be changed backwards without also changing all other blocks that come after it. This enables the parties to independently and reasonably cheaply check and audit transactions. A distributed timestamping server and a peer-to-peer network are used to manage a blockchain database independently. They are verified by widespread cooperation motivated by group self-interest.

primarily on earlier work by Stuart Haber, W. Scott Stornetta, and Dave Bayer, a person (or group of individuals) going by the name (or pseudonym) Satoshi Nakamoto constructed a blockchain in 2008 to function as the public distributed ledger for bitcoin cryptocurrency transactions.Due to the blockchain's integration, bitcoin is the first virtual money that can prevent double-spending without the aid of a central server or reliable authority. The design of bitcoin has served as an inspiration for other publicly readable applications and blockchains that are utilized by cryptocurrencies. The blockchain could be viewed as a particular kind of payment rail. What is Blockchain Technology? I find blockchain technology to be a groundbreaking innovation that is revolutionizing various industries. Here are key points to understand about blockchain: - Definition: Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed ledger technology that securely records transactions across a network of computers. - Blocks and Chains: Transactions are grouped into blocks, which are then linked together in chronological order to form a chain, hence the name "blockchain." - Decentralization: One of the key characteristics of blockchain is its decentralized nature. There is no central authority; instead, all participants have a copy of the ledger, ensuring transparency and security. - Security: Blockchain uses cryptographic techniques to secure transactions, making it tamper-proof. Once a block is added to the chain, altering it is extremely difficult due to the consensus mechanism. - Consensus Mechanisms: To validate transactions, blockchain networks use consensus algorithms like Proof of Work (PoW) or Proof of Stake (PoS). These mechanisms ensure agreement among all participants. - Smart Contracts: Blockchain platforms like Ethereum allow the execution of smart contracts, self-executing contracts with the terms directly written into code. This automates processes and eliminates the need for intermediaries. - Applications: Blockchain is employed in various fields such as finance, supply chain management, healthcare, and voting systems due to its transparency, immutability, and security features. Understanding blockchain technology is crucial in grasping its potential to transform traditional processes and create new opportunities in the digital era.

The History and Evolution of Blockchain

I will begin by taking a deeper dive into the history and evolution of blockchain technology: - Origins: Blockchain technology was first conceptualized by an individual or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Nakamoto outlined the core principles of blockchain in a whitepaper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." - Bitcoin: The release of Bitcoin in 2009 marked the first successful implementation of blockchain technology. Bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency, utilizes blockchain to record transactions securely and transparently without the need for a central authority. - Expansion: Following the success of Bitcoin, developers began exploring ways to apply blockchain technology beyond cryptocurrencies. This led to the creation of alternative blockchains, such as Ethereum, which introduced smart contracts - self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. - Diversification: Over time, blockchain technology has diversified into various industries, including finance, supply chain management, healthcare, and more. Companies have started leveraging blockchain for increased transparency, security, and efficiency in their operations. - Evolution: As blockchain technology continues to evolve, new advancements such as permissioned blockchains, interoperability between different blockchains, and scalability solutions are being developed. These innovations aim to address the limitations of early blockchain networks, such as scalability issues and energy consumption. - Future Outlook: The future of blockchain technology holds promise for further innovation and adoption across industries. As more use cases are discovered and refined, blockchain has the potential to revolutionize how data is stored, verified, and shared in a secure and decentralized manner. Understanding the history and evolution of blockchain provides valuable insights into the development and potential future applications of this transformative technology.

Key Components of Blockchain Technology

I. Decentralized Network: - In a blockchain network, there is no central authority governing the system. Nodes or computers participating in the network validate and record transactions, ensuring transparency and security. II. Blocks: - Blocks are collections of transactions that are bundled together and added to the blockchain. Each block contains a unique code called a hash, the hash of the previous block, and the transaction data. III. Immutable Ledger: - The blockchain ledger is immutable, meaning that once a block is added to the chain, it cannot be altered or deleted. This feature ensures the integrity and reliability of the recorded data. IV. Consensus Mechanism: - Consensus mechanisms are protocols used to achieve agreement among nodes in the network regarding the validity of transactions. Common mechanisms include Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS). V. Smart Contracts: - Smart contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. They automatically execute and enforce the terms when predefined conditions are met. VI. Public and Private Keys: - Public and private keys are cryptographic keys that allow users to interact securely with the blockchain. The public key is visible to others and is used to receive funds, while the private key should be kept confidential and is used for transaction signing. VII. Cryptographic Hash Function: - Blockchain uses cryptographic hash functions to secure data by converting input data into a fixed-size string of bytes. Any change in the input data will result in a different hash, making it easy to detect tampering. VIII. Distributed Ledger: - The ledger in blockchain is distributed across multiple nodes in the network, making it transparent, resilient to failures, and resistant to tampering. IX. Peer-to-Peer Network: - Blockchain operates on a peer-to-peer network where nodes communicate directly with each other, eliminating the need for intermediaries and promoting direct interaction between participants.

Understanding Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms

I have learned that blockchain consensus mechanisms are algorithms used to achieve an agreement on a single data value or a single state of the network among distributed processes or multi-agent systems. There are several consensus mechanisms that different blockchain networks employ, including Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS), Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT), and more.

- Proof of Work (PoW): In PoW, miners compete to solve complex mathematical puzzles to validate transactions and create new blocks on the blockchain. The first miner to solve the puzzle gets to add the next block and is rewarded with cryptocurrency. This mechanism is energy-intensive but is known for its security. - Proof of Stake (PoS): Unlike PoW, PoS does not require miners to solve complex puzzles. Instead, new blocks are created and added to the blockchain based on the number of coins a miner holds. The more cryptocurrency a miner has, the more likely they are to be chosen to create the next block. - Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS): DPoS is a variation of PoS where coin holders vote for delegates who are responsible for validating transactions and creating new blocks. This mechanism is known for its scalability and efficiency. - Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT): In PBFT, a network reaches consensus through a series of rounds where a leader is chosen to propose the next block, which is then confirmed by other nodes in the network. This mechanism is fast and efficient but requires a predetermined set of nodes. Understanding these consensus mechanisms is crucial in grasping how blockchain networks operate securely and efficiently. Each mechanism has its strengths and weaknesses, influencing factors such as decentralization, scalability, security, and energy consumption.

Cryptographic Principles in Blockchain

When it comes to understanding the inner workings of blockchain technology, cryptographic principles play a fundamental role. Here are key aspects to consider: - Hash Functions: In blockchain, hash functions are crucial for creating secure and tamper-proof connections between blocks. These functions take an input (data) and produce a fixed-size string of characters. Any slight change in the input data will result in a drastically different output, making it easy to detect alterations in the blockchain. - Public Key Cryptography: Public key cryptography is at the core of blockchain security. It involves using a pair of cryptographic keys – a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption. When a transaction is made, the sender uses the recipient's public key to encrypt the transaction, ensuring that only the recipient can decrypt and access the funds with their private key. - Digital Signatures: Digital signatures verify the authenticity of transactions in a blockchain. They are created using the sender's private key and can be verified with the sender's public key. This process ensures that transactions are secure, unaltered, and traceable back to the sender. - Consensus Algorithms: Cryptography is also instrumental in achieving consensus among network participants in blockchain. By utilizing algorithms like Proof of Work or Proof of Stake, blockchain networks can confirm transactions, agree on the order of blocks, and maintain the integrity of the distributed ledger. In summary, cryptographic principles form the backbone of blockchain technology, providing security, integrity, and transparency to decentralized networks. Understanding how these principles work is essential for grasping the complex yet innovative nature of blockchain systems.

Smart Contracts and Decentralized Applications (DApps)

I find smart contracts fascinating as they are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. Using blockchain technology, smart contracts facilitate and verify the performance of credible transactions without the need for intermediaries. When a certain set of predefined conditions are met, the contract executes automatically, ensuring security and efficiency. Some key points to understand about smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps) include: - Code-based Agreements: Smart contracts operate based on code, ensuring transparency, immutability, and autonomy in the execution of contracts. - Decentralized Applications (DApps): DApps are applications that run on a decentralized network rather than a single server. They leverage blockchain technology and smart contracts to provide secure and transparent functionality. - Benefits of Smart Contracts: Smart contracts eliminate the need for intermediaries, reduce transaction costs, enhance security, and enable faster transaction processing. - Challenges: While smart contracts offer numerous advantages, they also present challenges such as code vulnerabilities, regulatory compliance, and scalability issues that need to be addressed. Understanding the implications and potential of smart contracts and DApps is crucial in comprehending the transformative power of blockchain technology. By enabling secure, trustless, and efficient transactions, smart contracts are revolutionizing traditional contract agreements and paving the way for decentralized applications to disrupt various industries.

The Role of Nodes and Miners in Blockchain

I play a crucial role in the blockchain network as a node. When I am a node, I maintain a copy of the entire blockchain ledger. This means I hold a record of every transaction that has ever occurred on the blockchain. My presence as a node is essential for the security and decentralization of the network. As a node, I validate transactions by checking them against the rules of the blockchain protocol. Once validated, I broadcast these transactions to other nodes in the network. This process ensures that all nodes have a consistent copy of the blockchain, promoting transparency and trust among participants. Miners, on the other hand, are another key component of the blockchain ecosystem. Miners play a vital role in securing the network and validating transactions. When I am tasked with mining, I compete with other miners to solve complex mathematical puzzles. The first miner to solve the puzzle gets the opportunity to add a new block of transactions to the blockchain. Mining is resource-intensive, requiring significant computational power. However, it is a necessary process to ensure the integrity of the blockchain. By participating in mining, I contribute to the consensus mechanism that validates transactions and maintains the immutability of the ledger. In summary, nodes and miners are integral to the functioning of a blockchain network. As a node, I uphold the integrity of the ledger by maintaining a copy of the blockchain and validating transactions. When I take on the role of a miner, I contribute to securing the network and adding new blocks to the blockchain. Both nodes and miners work together to ensure the efficiency and security of the blockchain ecosystem.

Security and Privacy in Blockchain Technology

When it comes to security in blockchain technology, the decentralized nature of blockchain networks plays a significant role. Each block is cryptographically linked to the previous one, creating a secure chain that makes it extremely difficult for malicious actors to alter the data. This immutability factor is a core strength of blockchain technology in ensuring data integrity and security. In terms of privacy, blockchain technology offers a transparent yet secure way of conducting transactions. While the details of transactions are visible on the blockchain, the identities of the transacting parties are often pseudonymous. This pseudonymity provides a level of privacy, but it's essential to note that transactions on a public blockchain are still visible to anyone who has access to the network. Moreover, cryptographic techniques like hashing, digital signatures, and encryption add layers of security to blockchain transactions. Hash functions ensure data integrity, digital signatures authenticate the participants in a transaction, and encryption secures the data being transmitted. When it comes to private blockchains, additional privacy measures can be implemented. These may include permissioned access, where participants need authorization to join the network, and zero-knowledge proofs, which allow for verification of transactions without revealing any sensitive information. Overall, security and privacy are fundamental aspects of blockchain technology. By leveraging cryptographic tools and the decentralized nature of blockchain networks, we can ensure that data remains secure and transactions are conducted with a reasonable level of privacy.

Challenges and Limitations of Blockchain

I. Scalability: - Blockchain technology faces challenges when it comes to scalability. As more transactions are added to a blockchain, the network can become slow and inefficient. This is a significant limitation for blockchain applications looking to handle high volumes of transactions. II. Energy Consumption: - The process of validating transactions on a blockchain requires significant computational power, leading to high energy consumption. This has raised concerns about the environmental impact of blockchain technology, particularly in the case of networks using proof-of-work consensus algorithms. III. Security Concerns: - While blockchain is known for its security features, it is not entirely immune to attacks. Some common security concerns include the 51% attack, where a single entity gains control of the majority of the network's mining power, and smart contract vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious actors. IV. Regulatory Challenges: - The decentralized nature of blockchain technology can pose challenges when it comes to regulatory compliance. Government entities around the world are still grappling with how to regulate blockchain-based applications, which can create uncertainty for businesses operating in this space. V. Interoperability: - Interoperability between different blockchain networks and traditional systems is a significant challenge. Read the full article

#blockchain #Defi #smartcontracts #whatisblockchain #whatisblockchaintechnology

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 months

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By: Joseph Figliolia

Published: Jan 11, 2024

When I learned of the controversy over Lisa Littman’s seminal paper from 2018, which introduced the concept of rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), I did not understand the nature of the backlash. Littman’s paper appeared in a respected journal, Plos One, and had passed through the peer-review process. Shortly after its publication, however, the dean of public health at Brown University, where Littman, a physician, worked, published a letter noting that the Brown community was concerned that “conclusions of the study could be used to discredit the efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate perspectives of members of the transgender community.”

The letter also claimed that Littman’s research design and methods were problematic, despite her paper’s surviving an unusual post-publication assessment by senior journal editors, academic editors, a stats reviewer, and an expert reviewer. Littman claims that, after the post-publication review, her methods and findings were left virtually intact in a republished version of the paper. Most of the changes involved highlighting how her data were collected from parent reports and the limitations of those reports.

But the dean’s letter and the backlash to Littman’s paper suggest that critics’ real concern was Littman’s tentative conclusion suggesting the emergence of a novel developmental pathway to gender dysphoria. In her study, Littman hypothesized that a new form of gender dysphoria, and trans-identification, was presenting among peer groups of adolescent girls typically immersed in online trans subcultures and who often had preexisting mental-health and developmental issues. Strikingly, most of these girls had no childhood history of gender dysphoria, or even gender nonconformity, and their newly announced identities seemed unexpected and caught their parents by surprise.

Littman speculated that gender dysphoria was becoming a catch-all interpretive framework for a range of phenomena, from normal pubertal angst to specific mental-health issues. She also speculated that, among youth with existing mental-health issues or unprocessed sexual trauma, a trans identity could serve as a maladaptive coping mechanism to avoid dealing with intense negative emotions. This notion was tentatively supported by her finding that 61.4 percent of parents surveyed reported that their trans-identifying children were easily “overwhelmed by strong emotions and go to great lengths to avoid experiencing them.”

Critics realized that Littman’s hypothesis directly challenged the tenets of gender-identity theory, which hold that people have a felt sense of gender that is both innate and immutable. That theory has become a central justification for hormonal and surgical body modification. Critics alleged that Littman’s method of surveying parents was unreliable, but Littman showed that her method was consistent with other papers that support “gender affirmation” and are widely accepted by the pro-affirming side.

Fast forward six years, and Littman’s academic critics seem more committed to their intellectual and ideological priors than pursuing truth. Their main argument against ROGD is that what appears to parents as the sudden onset of transgender identity is really a late disclosure of an identity that has existed since childhood, even if the adolescent hasn’t felt comfortable revealing it to family and friends.

In a recent letter to the editor published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the Manhattan Institute’s Leor Sapir, along with Lisa Littman and Michael Biggs, take on the latest iteration of this argument in a paper by researcher-activist Jack Turban and his colleagues. The paper, “Age of Realization and Disclosure of Gender Identity Among Transgender Adults,” purports to show evidence of the early-realization/late-disclosure explanation for the rise in ROGD. Sapir et al.’s letter not only indicts Turban et al.’s subpar research but also, by extension, the current state of academic publishing on matters pertaining to identity (exemplified by the “ethics guidance” released by the journal Nature Human Behaviour).

Turban et al.’s argument is based on responses from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, the largest of its kind to date, with a total of 27,715 respondents. USTS-15 asked adult participants to recall—and as critics have pointed out, recall itself is notoriously unreliable—at what age they “first felt their gender was different from their assigned birth sex” and at what age they “start to think they were trans (even if they did not know the word for it).” Turban and his coauthors took the answer to the first question rather than the second as the moment respondents first “realized they were transgender” and assessed the median time between realization and the disclosure of the identity to others. They divided participants into a “early realization” group (age ten or younger) and a “late realization” group (11 or older). Because a key premise of ROGD is that a trans identity develops rapidly within the context of adolescence, if the Turban study could show that a trans identity developed in childhood but was only disclosed later, it would undermine the ROGD hypothesis.

Yet, Turban and his colleagues seem uninterested in rigorously testing the ROGD hypothesis. Well-known for his mischaracterization of existing research, Turban made interpretive choices that strongly suggest he and his coauthors were avoiding any USTS-15 data that might undermine their broadside against ROGD.

Sapir et al.’s response is worth reading in full, but some examples of their findings should suffice here. First, to be eligible to participate in USTS-15, respondents had to identify currently as transgender. By definition, this means that anyone who identified as trans as adolescents but no longer did so as adults was excluded. Since this excluded group may include individuals whose dysphoria presentations match the ROGD phenomena, the USTS-15 sample is highly biased against ROGD hypothesis testing. Amazingly, Turban and another coauthor pointed out this limitation of the sample in a previous paper they published. Here, however, they simply ignore it.

Second, the ROGD phenomenon is hypothesized as an emergent phenomenon among a cohort of trans-identifying youth who came of age in the late 2000s or later—intersecting with widespread changes in social media, phone use, and the rise of the transgender social movement—which means that the phenomena would apply only to the 18–24 age group of the USTS-15. Despite this, Turban & colleagues analyzed the time period from realization to disclosure for the entire adult sample, and then only for those who said that they had early realization (age 10 or younger)—meaning not the cohort that would be relevant to ROGD.

Third, Turban and his coauthors chose as their proxy for age of realization a question put to participants about their age when they “felt that their gender was different than their birth sex”—instead of another question that asked them “at what age they first thought they were trans.” Asking people about their gender is more nebulous and less precise than asking them when they first thought they were trans. Not least, the problem of recall bias means that adult respondents—who, in this case, were recruited through transgender advocacy networks—could retroactively interpret reasons for “feeling different” through a gendered lens. In short, “feeling different” is a less reliable proxy for “realization” than an explicit question about the adoption of a transgender identity.

Turban et al. don’t explain this interpretive choice, but one suspects the reason: it produces a longer time from realization to disclosure. Because they take respondents’ answers about when they first “felt different” (which they code as “realized they are transgender”) at face value, they are left defending the absurd proposition that hundreds of USTS-15 respondents realized that they were transgender before their second birthday.

As Sapir’s letter notes, had the researchers analyzed data for the precise measure, they would have found that nearly 75 percent of the total sample reported late realization of a trans identity, compared with 40.8 percent originally reported. Moreover, data analyzed for the precise measure in the ROGD 18–24-year-old cohort reveals participants reported 83 percent late realization and only 17 percent early realization.

Of central importance, Turban and his coauthors claim to find that the median time from realization to disclosure was 11 years and the mode was 13 years. Had they analyzed the correct group (“late realization”), they would have found that both males and females had a mode of one year and a median of three years. In a follow-up reply to critics, Sapir and Littman point out that 2,127 respondents to the USTS-15 said that they went from “first feeling different” to disclosing a transgender identity to others in one year or less. The number of respondents who went from “first feeling they are transgender” to disclosing that identity to others within the same timeframe was 3,685. The denominator here (all 18–24-year-old respondents) was 5,880, which means that the data source Turban et al. themselves chose as reliable for testing ROGD shows that between one-third (if we’re being generous to Turban) and two-thirds (if we’re taking respondents’ report of “realizing they are transgender” at face value) meet the criteria for “rapid” development of transgender identity.

Additional features obscured in the Turban analysis also support the ROGD hypothesis. For example, ROGD is hypothesized to affect women more than men due to greater susceptibility to peer influence and because of the documented mental-health crisis among girls. While the Turban paper reports that 63.2 percent of the late-realization group was female, that percentage increases to 75.2 percent if only the relevant 18-24-year-old cohort is analyzed. Relatedly, data from the 18-24-year-old cohort also reveals that the younger cohort reported more psychological distress than older cohorts—lending more support to the ROGD hypothesis that trans-identification is a coping mechanism for preexisting psychological distress. This is consistent with research suggesting that comorbidities predate trans identification in this cohort.

Taken together, it is hard to see Turban et al.’s paper as anything but a sloppily engineered effort to discredit a hypothesis the authors disagree with for political reasons. That the Journal of Adolescent Health published their paper is yet more evidence of the ideological capture of medical journals. To add insult to injury, Sapir posted a thread on X regarding his letter to the editor and tagged the Journal of Adolescent Health, which promptly blocked him. This is behavior befitting a moody teenager, not the managers of a medical journal’s social media account.

Jack Turban is an activist, not a researcher, not a scientist. He just uses the language, but he doesn't even understand what "evidence-based medicine" means.

#Joseph Figliolia #ROGD #rapid onset gender dysphoria #Lisa Littman #gender ideology #queer theory #gender identity #medical corruption #ideological capture #medical fraud #trans identity #religion is a mental illness

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