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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • The chicken-egg thing is easy though, the egg came first. All chickens came out of eggs, including the first one. Two non-chickens combined their DNA to make a chicken, which came out of an egg.

    I don’t know if you’re trolling or not. There is no sudden point where chicken evolution became a chicken. They just get more and more chicken like traits. It’s a spectrum of evolution, which is still ongoing.

    Where did the hormones that control DNA expression come from? DNA.

    No? It was in the environment first. Then evolution selected DNA that responded to the environment in ways that helped it reproduce. This then evolved into cells that produce their own hormones that act on DNA in existing pathways. Without DNA already being effected by hormones in the environment there likely wouldn’t have been evolutionary pressure to manufacture them.

    Not true. Add human estrogen to sex-undetermined plant DNA…

    You’re obviously trolling. Clearly I’m talking about humans. Wtf. Cut out your bad faith shit. You’re wasting both of our time.


  • Intersex people have sex chromosomes

    Yes, and they don’t always match what you’d expect. There are XX “men” and XY “women”.

    Everything in your body comes from DNA first. The first bits of you that ever existed were chromosomes, everything else comes as a result of how your dad’s DNA combined with your mom’s DNA to make your DNA. You can add all the outside hormones to your body that you want, without DNA telling your body how to respond to them, all you’d have is dead meat filled with chemicals.

    Again, chicken or egg. They don’t exist in a vacuum. There are hormones in their environment when the egg is fertilized that tell the DNA how to express itself. Without hormones all you’d have is dead meat. Your body can not function or form without hormones. DNA is a set of rules, and hormones tell it which rules to follow. They work together. Neither is more important than the other. DNA with “female” hormones develop a female body, no matter what DNA they have, and vice versa. The DNA usually (but not always) is an indicator of what hormones they’ll produce, but the expression is also dictated by hormones.


  • To be clear though, hormones don’t define how your body functions, that’d be DNA.

    Chicken or egg. Hormones don’t work without DNA, but also your cells don’t function without hormones. The DNA has the instructions, but the hormones tell it what instruction to follow. Your cells don’t know to create a leg where your leg is until hormones tell them that they’re supposed to be leg cells. The DNA is the same, but the hormones tell them what to do.

    You wouldn’t have hormones or the ability to process them into meaningful signals without DNA.

    Sort of true, but we can now add/change hormones that aren’t created in our bodies by design. We also get hormones through our diet too. DNA does have instructions that allow it to produce hormones when the right conditions are met, but that’s not the only way to get them, nor does that define sex as we all produce both sex hormones in different quantities.

    but it does have an objective, scientific, apolitical, societally functional meaning.

    That’s the funny thing; does it? We all think it does, until you try to define it. Give it a shot. If it’s XX/XY, intersex people break it. If it’s reproduction, sterile people break it. If it’s what gonads you posses, people who have had hysterectomies break it.

    I’ve never actually heard a definition that doesn’t break down somewhere. It can still be useful, but it’s a spectrum. If you define it as a spectrum then it’s actually pretty simple, and it’s based on how their body is currently functioning.


  • Sure it does, it’s the sex you have biologically.

    Exactly what I said, there’s no other kind

    Biology is how the body is functioning and growing. This is defined by what hormones are in the body, as hormones tell cells how to function. In this way, biological sex is the sex defined by what hormones are in your body. Sex assigned at birth does not necessarily match this.

    Biological sex is not a term that has any meaning. It is a term invented to lend the air of scientific authority to a certain group of people making a bad faith argument. Sex is the term that is more commonly used, or sex assigned at birth to be more specific (which implies it changes and is not just gender).

    Iff (if and only if) we’re using the words as their definitions imply, biological sex = what hormones are in your body. Hormones define how your body functions, meaning their biological activity. Then it follows that hormone replacement therapy changes biological sex. It isn’t the bullshit static thing the people typically using the word to mean, as a replacement for “sex assigned at birth”. That term they won’t use because it lends credence to the idea it can change, rather than something that makes them sound as if their opinion is based in science.


  • It’s not redundant. I’d say it’s wrong. If biology is how the body is working, biological sex should be the same as hormonal sex, which would be the same as someone’s sex confirmation therapy is making it, not sex assigned at birth.

    It is not implied to mean “biological sex” because that’s not a term anyone used until anti-trans people made it up. It is only used rhetorically to imply their view is the one supported by science. It isn’t.

    So immediately jumping to “dogwhistle” every time you hear someone say something that’s supposedly in this list of secret right-wing code words is kind of a disingenuous argument and you’re just going to alienate people who then won’t take you seriously in the future.

    Dog whistles can become mainstream. It doesn’t change the origin. Just because you hear it on TV sometimes doesn’t mean that’s the correct term. It was made up as a rhetorical argument to imply superiority. That’s it.





  • I don’t think you understand what’s going on. China is not losing in this. They’re winning. Russia needs their help, and they provide it… for a fee. They’re getting incredibly cheap oil, more power over Russia, resources, and I think some land has slightly shifted towards China that was contested. I expect China to make huge gains from this war. If they don’t end up at least de facto, if not de jure, controlling a tons of land in Eastern Russia at the end of this, I’ll be surprised.

    China and Russia aren’t allies in the usually sense. They don’t assist each other for free. They just have similar opponents, but will extract whatever they can from each other without a second thought. They have no desire to help the other, except when it benefits them directly.


  • The other option is that China provides the resources for training, in return for Russia owing them something. I know they’ve previously given them stuff for the option to buy oil at the same price Russians do, which is not profitable for them. Presumably they’re also going to take control of some land eventually. There’s a few pieces they’ve been wanting control of, and I think they do have some now.

    Everyone needs to remember, Russia and China are not really allies. They’re generally on the same side, but they don’t provide things for free by any means. If China is doing something for Russia, they’re getting something out of it. This could have just purely been a “we provide shelter, food, space, and basic training, you give us…” deal.




  • Yeah, only idiots think taking dirt (which has been shelled to hell and doesn’t produce anything) is a strategic victory. Dirt doesn’t mean anything. It only matters because it’s a number that can be tracked, and has been in Russia’s favor. Money spent/(GDP + reserves), lives lost/population, and resources lost/production capacity are numbers that dictate your ability to continue fighting. How much dirt you’ve taken hold of doesn’t effect this.





  • Again, I’m reasonably certain they don’t actually believe a 90 year old woman is suddenly going to get pregnant, or a woman who doesn’t have a uterus anymore, or whatever else. These might be the words they’re told to repeat to justify things, but they don’t believe them. Not even the most devout would believe that.

    They may believe God could technically do this, but then he could also technically do the same for same sex couples. He’s omnipotent, according to them, after all. His powers are not limited to only making miracles pregnancies to hetero couples. It’s no more outrageous than expecting people physically incapable of becoming pregnant becoming pregnant. If they justify this belief based on miricles, then same sex marriage is equally justified. (This is not their belief. They don’t believe the former premise, but this is the conclusion that it’d lead to.)